Great Library grants advances even after Education!

[André Alfenaar]

I was playing the Americans and I had The Great Library. After the turn I met some new civilizations that where scientifically wide ahead of me, I was granted technologies way beyond Education up all the way to Navigation and Economics! I don't suppose they intended The Great Library that powerfull, did they?

Nice bug, anyway, and I love this GREAT library!

[André Alfenaar]

Some extra info: all those discoveries where granted in the same turn I got Education for free.

[Tiberius]

Yes, it happened to me too.
The GL grants advances after you get Education, but only in the same turn. Looks like the GL becomes obsolate only starting with the next turn, while the message comes imediately.

[jshelr]

GL in the absence of other civs gives you an interesting strategy choice.

If you clear off your own continent early with a horse rush, perhaps, you can build the GL frequently with a leader. Then you have a choice of whether to continue research by yourself or wait until the "others" show up.

1) If you don't do some research, you will run out of buildings you can start and, while you can stockpile horsemen for upgrade, the upgrade cost is painful. If you do continue research, you will waste the GL.

2) If you don't research yourself, you will be way behind on the time needed to actually complete buildings and units, but way ahead on gold.

In a weekend game, I managed to hit 10k gold running at about +250 per turn.

My experience has been that it's worth it to hoard gold but that you should research at least one government, probaby Republic, and as far as monotheism to get enough buildings to keep you busy. You might want to prebuild the palace hoping to catch a wonder or Wall Street on meeting the other civs. Timing that is tricky enough to keep you awake through a long, boring period.

On contact, when the tech roll in, you have to slingshot to the industrial era with the hoarded gold on 100% science. Race for ToE and US.

[Jethro83]

It happened to me once. I got all the way up to Navigation, Economics, Metallurgy and Free Artistry.

However, I missed out on most of the wonders the middle ages have to offer. Sistine Chapel, Leo's Workshop and Smith's Trading Co. are perhaps the most useful wonders in the game, and I at least want a realistic shot at getting them, or conquering a close neighbour who beat me to them (especially the wonder-hogging French ).

The tons of free techs from this exploit hardly weigh up to the wonders I've already missed out on due to them being built overseas at a point when I've hardly taken all of my own contient yet.