Tech Discussion

[T-hawk]

I've known about that undefined-research loophole. But I remember trying it and noticing that the discounts were lost. This may have been some patches ago, though. I'm away for the weekend, but will try it in some detail when I get a chance, most likely Tuesday night.

[Zeviz]

If discounts aren't lost, are they calculated based on the tech you click, or the tech beakers end up going into? If it's the former, is it abusable by always selecting tech with highest bonus multiplier, until on the last turn putting everything into the tech you want?

EDIT: I am not suggesting that we abuse this loophole, but I am curious about it.

[Swiss Pauli]

Long term tech plan

Looking at the tech tree, and considering our current situation, I think a longer term goal should be Paper-Edu-Guns. We can part-bulb Edu (it's above Philo on the GS tech pref), so it's not as big a commitment as it may seem at first glance.

Another plank of this strategy would be setting up a deal with Banana for them to go Feudalism-Guilds. As a PRO civ, they were very keen on trading in Feudalism, but if we offer them Paper & Edu in trade then I think they might bite the bullet and research these techs themselves. Sadly, they don't have horses yet, but if they don't have any they can claim, we can offer them a loan of our horses (when they get Guilds) to spam out a few Knights.

I think we should go HBR-Construction-MC-(Machinery). Then Paper-Edu-Guns.

[mostly-harmless]

HBR-Construction seems clear. I am not sure about MC next. Currency is big for us. We would get a ~35beakers infusion from the added trade routes.

mh

[sooooo]

Well if we get a deal for machinery from banana then I could even see us going metal casting before construction. But otherwise construction. Swiss your idea of setting up such a deal with Banana is a good one.

[T-hawk]

I agree, Construction next. That will certainly also serve as an in-demand trade chit.

[Zeviz]

Construction is obvious for short term.

We could also go for Engineering after MC. Or we could do Swiss' plan and bulb Philosophy to try to get Nationalism from Liberalism. (And say "hi" to Imperio with drafted maces.) If it looks like nobody has paper by the time we have construction and MC, trying to get Nationalism from Liberalism looks quite appealing.

[Sullla]

One of the advantages of traveling on long plane and train rides is plenty of time to sit and think about stuff, like a long-term tech path in the Apolyton Demogame. So let me bounce some unorthodox ideas off of the rest of you:

I think we should go HBR-Construction-MC-(Machinery). Then Paper-Edu-Guns.

This is a very logical path to take, so much so that I expect the other important teams (PAL, Imperio) to head for the Education path as well. Instead, let's try something different. For the purposes of this exercise, I do concur that Horseback Riding and Construction are the two techs we should research next, and I will assume that we can trade for Metal Casting/Machinery. (The second is a given, the first we can hopefully get done. Hopefully!)

After that... what if we ignored the usual middle of the tree, and the lesser-used bottom of the tree, for the TOP of it instead? Think about it. We're already well positioned here thanks to our early Aesthetics/Literature/Great Library push. Only the teams that we've trades these techs to have them, meaning several teams (Imperio, Templars, Banana) haven't so much as started work on ANYTHING at the top of the tree. We use our new research muscle to get Drama and Music, making sure to take the free Great Artist in the process. We either lightbulb Philosophy with our second Great Scientist, or (if the tech is widely known) trade for it. Most importantly, we tell all of the other teams that we are going to head for the top of the tech tree. These are the "peaceful" techs, will little immediate military value. We can pretend to be little old RB, content to build wonders and go after the refined cultural pursuits.

Then we spring our trap! Because, as we all know, the free Great Artist can be used to lightbulb Nationalism. Hopefully you see where I'm going with this. We build Taj Mahal in one of our core cities, likely Pink, use the free Golden Age to swap over to Nationhood civic, and suddenly we have an army of 10-15 maces (or possibly Oromos, if we're lucky with trades) appearing out of thin air. And of course we've been preparing for the previous dozen turns by slowing building up a support force of horse archers, catapults, and elephants. We turn on either Imperio or Templars and crush them utterly, BEFORE they have access to the draft themselves. We do NOT trade Nationalism to anyone, and these slow-moving civs won't be able to respond in time. Heck, they probably won't even know what's going on until the troops start pouring over the border.

Basically, this plan is all about getting Nationalism ASAP, viewing it as the key tech to turn our population edge into a decisive military one. It has the two advantages of seemingly being a pacifist route, and being a path less traveled that other teams are not likely to follow. The disadvantage is that other teams may not be interested in trading us, say Feudalism, for Music and Drama. A gamble, pure and simple. But potentially one with a big pay off!

Anyway, does this hold any weight as a long-term plan, or am I smoking the pungent weed?

[T-hawk]

I like beelining Nationalism. But going via Music may be overthinking it.

The Music Great Artist won't even pay as many beakers with a lightbulb as it took to research Music in the first place. (Great Scientists are so good and popular because their lightbulb yield is 1.5x that of any other GP.) Nationalism could come faster just by skipping Drama/Music and researching Nationalism directly after Philosophy.

Music is empty outside the Great Artist, unless we're going to try for a Sistine-powered cultural victory. It only works as trade bait if the other AIs are dumb enough to trade for it.

[Swiss Pauli]

Yeah, we discussed that earlier, and Nationalism is below Theo & Div R on the bulb chart anyway, aside from the beaker yield, so no dice on that one.

[mostly-harmless]

Drama is huge for us as we it would solve a lot of our happiness issues (draft anger, crowding) with super cheap theaters and readily available Dye.

mh

[Dreylin]

We do still need Calendar to access that Dye ... and our Silk.

[Sullla]

Whoops, didn't realize that Nationalism was below Divine Right. I could have sworn it wasn't... guess my memory was off there. But Drama would definitely be useful for us at some point. Useful enough to divert from a beeline to some other important tech? Probably not, but we'll keep it in mind as an option. I agree that going for Calendar would make sense before Drama.

With that in mind, beelining to Nationalism via Education (to be bulbed with our second Great Scientist, perhaps?) seems like a solid long-term plan.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

regardless of how we do this in the end, I very much like the nationalism-draft idea. Very Sullaeske, that plan. And since many players underestimate the power of draft, the chances of succes in the resulting war are good.

I'm not sure we will be able to get Nationalism so much earlier than the other teams hough; as soon as they see us researching it, they might smell the plan. Let's hope they think we go for it because we'd like to build the Taj...

-Kylearan

[sunrise089]

At Kylearan - Even if they see the plan coming the advantage is that the other teams will probably go Gunpowder before Nationalism and therefore we can just field more Maces then them. The other thing about attacking earlier is that the Elephant/HA/Cat stack we're going to be working on soon will complement the Maces perfectly. All we need to build are a couple crossbows and we're good to go as far as support troops go.

Only big problem is it denies us our UU for a while.