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Hi,
my report can be found, as usual, on my website. I had lots of fun with this game! 
-Kylearan
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
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Wow, I never considered it possible to build the great library after that start. Once that was built the game was over. Well done!
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Nice - I think Alphabet first was a good move. I went for Mathematics, but I weedily was under the impression that No Tech Trading was on...
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I didn't think there was a hope of getting Great Library so I didn't try. Well played to get it. Despite the different tech paths and strategies our key dates ended up very similar...
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This Path (Civil Service - Paper - Education - Philosophy - Liberalism) is a very powerful one
Yeah, I find myself doing that every time too. Slight difference here in that I researched Philosophy first to trade for Civil Service, and I missed Liberalism thanks to war with Saladin interrupting my economy. But for any plan favoring tech over military, it's the one right answer. Also, that path can even deposit you close to Cavalry for military operations, since you can get Nationalism for free off Liberalism; the AIs by then will have researched to Music, and thus you're only Gunpowder and Military Tradition away from cavs.
Good game, even if it was a foregone conclusion at Prince once the player reached tech parity. 
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In a SMALL empire with high science allocation, there's no question that the Liberalism route is best (because science multipliers are the best way to boost already high science).
In a LARGE empire with poor science allocation, the Guilds/Banking/Chemistry route is much more competitive, since raising the gold multiplier frees up a lot of science and of course the military is much better - at least as long as the player has Iron (with only copper, Civil Service for macemen is sort of nessecary).
The vast majority of the time I priortize the Guilds path, since that is the tech path which meshes with my strategy of constant warfare and a permament struggle to get over 50% science allocation. Also Guilds is an extremely tradable tech, I find that even if my research stinks (ie warmongering on Emperor) I can still get to Guilds before more than 1 or 2 AI's have it... Chemistry and Steel are also supremely tradable (the AI wanders off after Rifling).
So I'm inclined to say that the liberalism beeline is sometimes the right choice, but it's far from THE right choice.
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Yeah, I go for liberalism a lot too, but it's not always the right thing to do. The reason I head down that path a lot is if you're using great scientists to speed the way through education (which is THE keystone tech to basically everything in Renaissance), philosophy has to be lightbulbed out of the way first. Once you have both philosophy and education, you might as well try to get a free tech.
Chemistry is the fastest tech for a quick gunpowder age offensive and it's faster to research it direct, liberalism goes well with Cavalry rush or Rifle draft.
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I liked your discussion about your favourite tech path. Looks to be a powerful strategy for boosting research. I will try that in one of my next games.
Wenn die Sonne der Kultur tief steht, werfen selbst Zwerge einen langen Schatten - Karl Kraus
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Hi,
Blake Wrote:In a LARGE empire with poor science allocation, the Guilds/Banking/Chemistry route is much more competitive, since raising the gold multiplier frees up a lot of science I can see your point, but I'm not so sure the Guilds/Banking path is equally good, although that may very well be because I tend to play with smaller empires before declaring war, and thus do not have as much experience with this route. While raising the gold multiplier can indeed outscore raising the science multiplier if you run 30%-50% science only, you still miss out on Free Speech/Free Religion, which will not only raises science output even more, but also often allows you to have more trading partners thanks to "no state religion" (if you want to). And last but not least, being first to Liberalism denies this to the (most of the time) strongest AI, which otherwise very often takes Astronomy, snowballing his science output.
You're right that the Liberalism path is not THE only right choice, but I think it's the most powerful choice most of the time. But I think I have to try out your approach during my next games, to get a better feel for the Guilds/Banking path, so I'll revisit this topic soon.
-Kylearan
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
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Another exellent report! Keep 'em coming 
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