How To Get To One Turn Per Tech?

[Adam Smith]

Current game:
Diety, large map, raging hordes, large continents, seven civs, etc.

I am on the bottom leg of a huge Z-shaped continent, with the Germans to the east, Zulus to the northwest, Egyptians to the north.

It is 100 AD, in democracy, and have eight cities, seven of which are size three. My SSC is size 15 and has all available research infrastructure in place, including Copernicus, Newton, Colossus, Shakespeare, library, university, marketplace, etc etc.

I have been managing beakers and gifting techs to the key civ (Indians in this case), so I can research a tech every two turns with science at 70 percent. Since I can still grow the SSC, and can eventually pick up automobile and computers, so it looks like I can keep going at two turns per tech pretty much indefinately. By doing nothing much more than hitting the return key I can land on AC sometime around 1600.

The question is how to do better. The key seems to be to get to one discovery per turn, and the sooner the better. This will eventually happen when I get computers, but I am trying to figure out how to do it by about the time I hit automobile, 30 or 40 turns from now. I can think of four possible strategies:

1. Build Mike, Bach, and expand the number and size of cities. There is room to grow existing cities, and room for eight or ten new cities before running afoul of the Zulus. Problem is it may take too long to establish and grow the new cities.

2. Foreign trade. The Germans have some good sized cities I can trade with, and repeated commodity trading would probably help alot. Problem is that this would involve a long sea voyage (30 some squares around a peninsula) or an enormous road construction project (about 15 squares through hills and mountains). It would be difficult to get caravans and freights through consistently every turn.

3. Domestic trade. Establish three trade routes to every domestic city, build Marcus-roads in the correct path to increase trade route bonus (need to learnn more about this), and then build libraries to boost science. Question is whether this would be enough science in total to get to one discovery per turn.

4. Grow the SSC to max size (what is max size?) using food caravans from other cities. This appears to give the biggest science per number of shields expended.

5. Other bright ideas?

How and when do people usually make it to one discovery per turn? Which of these or other strategies works best. Other ideas?


Adam Smith
Old posters never die,
they j.u.s.t f..a..d..e a...w...a...y...

[Julius Brenzaida]

I would definitely advocate the foreign trade way, even if it is a bit tedious at the beginnig, because of the trade bonus. Then, if your SSC is not last on the list, you might get 2 techs each turns. The key would be to have SSC never run short of commodities (unless you "cheat" with rehoming). Xin Yu explained it somewhere. If I recall you must give a foodline somewhere and then your SSC can produce as many commodities as it wants. With big production, it should be one caravan for 2 turns and huge, huge bonusses. What's more, with the gold, you can buy what you want and improve the other cities pretty fast. Let them grow with WLtPD and then you have 7 strong trade citiies (trade routes for them too) and a monster one
If you would post your saved game, maybe some could try different strategies

[Xin Yu]

You need to increase the SSC's size. That will be benificial (more instant and per-turn trade bonus), no matter if you want to do foreign trade or domestictrade. Grow it to size 36 and hire 16 scientists.

[Scouse Gits]

On a large map you must build more than eight cities (scientific advances are slower on large maps) and trade relentlessly with a foreign civ on a different continent.

On large/giga maps and I have found the following guidelines useful:

a) Build cities on a regular basis - and don't stop building. This doesn't mean classic ICS as the pattern of cities in this strategy leaves insufficient room for them to expand when you change to a representative form of government. Two/three squares apart is ideal - but don't go perfectionist as expansion will be too slow.

b) The large number of cities is necessary for many reasons. Apart from the trade/production boost to your empire, each town must be regarded as a caravan factory. A typical building pattern for a new city will be Garrison/settler/caravans…along the way you may add a temple plus the occasional boat if it's coastal. Continual expansion is important, as a constant supply of available goods is needed to trade. Later in the game the most recently founded places are often suppliers of the most demanded commodities like uranium. Even though such freight originates from a humble size 2 city, when shipped half way across the world to a large AI metropolis the rewards are worthwhile.

c) Transport infrastructure at home and on the high seas is crucial. Each city (except the capital/SSC) builds one settler not only for city production but also for roads and later railways. Ship chains are essential at times but the combination of land and sea transport is more effective if the geography of the map allows it. For instance, suppose you find a continent near to one of your coasts. Exploration has shown that beyond this landmass lies the Babylonian Empire with whom trade will be lucrative. However, the sea distance is huge. Cut across the intervening continent with a road/rail link and establish trade ports with connecting ferries.

d) Don't rush to become a republic. The above strategy relies on armies of settlers and in Monarchy they don't need as much food! Shield support plus the unhappiness caused by boats at sea makes republic difficult. Attempt to revolt to a Democracy at the time Magnetism is discovered - Leo's will turn all those trading caravels into galleons without red faces.

e) We all have our favourite wonders but on a large world the three "Ms" of Marco, Mike and Magellan are most significant. The Gardens are essential to quell early riots, as is Leonardo's Workshop to upgrade boats, settlers and caravans.

f) Once the caravan blitz is operational it is awesome. Watch F6 to make sure not too many are used per turn. Using this tactic playing in Fundy it is easy to keep a tech per turn going for several years.

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SG(2)

[Adam Smith]

OK, just for grins here is a somewhat later save, at 220 AD.

I misremembered the location of the mountains relative to the Germans, but as you can see reaching them would still require a pretty substantial road building project.

Though the plot has advanced somewhat beyond the original description (researched Monotheism, two new cities, one of which could be used as a port), all the basic options are still open.

My questions primarily apply to games which finish really early (which I consider before 1500 on a large board). I know I will need to build more than my usual 8-10 cities, and I suspect that the best strategy involves boosting the SSC as big a possible as soon as possible, as Xin Yu suggested. But I also suspect that other conventional strategies might be overtaken by events or more pressing needs. For example, a ship chain might be outmoded before it is completed, and the shields used to builld Magellan might better be used on the SSC.

Any further thoughts?

[Scouse Gits]

This link may prove useful:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28891&perpage=30&pagenumber=1

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SG(2)

[DrSpike]

There is a thread called 'high speed research' somewhere where Xin and Solo give the most concise and useful explanation of multiple techs per turn that you're likely to find.

[La Fayette]

Thank you, DrSpike.
I started that thread and just gave it a bump, so you can find it on top of THIS forum NOW.

[Adam Smith]

Thanks to all for the information and the bump.
Hope I have the time to turn this strategy loose tonight.

Now for a further set of questions related to highway planning:
Does anybody have specific knowledge or link to a thread on how to set up the roads and railroads to boost the per turn bonus? (A quick search of the stretegy archives did not turn up any obvious threads) Somewhere I have a graph of the supposed road configuration, but still have additional questions.
1. Does the increase in the per-turn bonus apply only with railroads, or with roads and railroads?
2. Is connectivity reciprocal? In other words, if I connect A and B using the optimal path from the graph, does that mean that B and A are also considered to be optimally connected? (According to the graph, the optimal road configuration from A to B is not the same as from B to A.)
3. Does the direction in which the roads are connected have any implication for the direction in which the caravans need to move? In other words, if A and B are optimally connected, do I only get the increased per turn bonus by moving caravans from A to B, or also from B to A?
4. Lastly, is connectivity additive? In other words, if I optimally connect A to B, and optimally connect B to C, are A and C considered to be optimally connected and get teh increased bonus, even thought the road between them does not follow the optimal path? I did some fiddling around which suggests this may be the case.

Thanks again.

Adam Smith
Old posters never die,
they j.u.s.t..f..a..d..e..a...w...a...y...

[DrSpike]

The optimal trade route thing is kinda fuzzy; I have never seen a comprehensive explanation. You can use the go to command with say explorers to 'find' the optimal route. If you ask Markus or War nicely they'll probably explain it properly.

[dunk]

I think the most important part of the trade route is whether...

1) Your caravan is carrying something the destination city has a demand for

2) The destination city has a supply of something your city has a demand for.

If one of these conditions is met, then the trade route will be lucrative. If both are met, whoa mama!

[DaveV]

AS: I'm not by any means a trade expert, but I think I know the answers:

1. Roads are +50%, railroads are an additional +50%.

2. No, the paths can be (and usually are) different.

3. No. If A is connected to B but not vice versa, a caravan delivered from B to A will produce 50% more trade in A than B.

4. If the path from A to B passes through another city, C, and A is connected to C, then A is treated as being connected to B (even though B and C may not even be connected!).

Reference: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=19659

[DrSpike]

Of course it's finding the optimal route that's the key. It is sometimes not the route you'd expect.

[La Fayette]

From memory:
1) Yes, roads= 50% and RR=100%
2) No, not reciprocal (a superb graph coloured orange and black has been published on this forum by a Swede who had chosen a viking boat for his avatar, but I fail to remember his name)
3) If the connection is optimal both ways, the bonus is valid both ways (this is the cornerstone for my strategy named 'twin cities' that I shall try to dig and bump)
4) I don't know whether this has been studied thoroughly. IIRC it has been demonstrated that only the first steps were important (and you could for example get the RR bonus without having the 2 cities connected by RR)

[DrSpike]

And of course with roads/railroads but not optimal route there is no bonus whatsoever.