[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[pindicator]

I say go with what sounds fun If trying your hardest to win is fun, then absolutely go with that

[antisocialmunky]

It would be amusing to try for lib -> economics -> bulb PP or something to get 3 techs however many turns that is.

I assume the real tech path will be edu -> guns -> ? nationalism for draft ? -> chem -> PP -> sci. method -> lib -> communism?

[Brian Shanahan]

Your start will be this, or a mirror/rotation of this. Fog lies.

Just my quick impressions from the map. Iron is in an awkward spot & probably will be looking at seafood for any cities built to work it. You can build a corn/banana city 2S of the lake whales, perfect for a whip factory (it'll miss the river health and later levees). Rice in the north might be irrigated, that's deffo a river under the fog by the hill 1E of it, if so it'll be useful, you can think about getting a 2 elephant city.

The 5*5 grid of the open area looks very awkward for a SIP IMO, a lot of decentish half sites but no real second site beside the opening spot. Settling 1NE of the initial spot looks to me a good option, it opens up a good spot 2N of the South Eastern corn and another spot between the marble, fur and banana in the South West.

My tuppence ha'penny.

[Sullla]

With regards to Taj Mahal: a free Golden Age is always going to be a free Golden Age. It’s still going to be a nice prize. However, I concur that it’s likely to be a bit weaker than what we saw in the last Industrial Pitboss. Dreylin and OT4E were effectively able to turn the wonder into three Great People, which turned into two techs and allowed them to land the Kremlin plus a free Great Spy from first-to-Communism. It’s going to be tricky to do the same here, for the following reasons:

* Fewer cities. We only start with 2 settlers in this game, not 3 settlers. That inherently provides one less city to run specialists inside.
* Fewer starting population. Cities start at size 2, not size 3. That means they get up and running a lot slower, especially since everyone will likely be whipping down to size 1 in the desperate quest for early workers. Smaller pop means fewer tiles being worked, longer to fill up the granary foodbox on that first population growth, etc.
* Smaller era discount. The Industrial era discount is 80%, while the Renaissance discount is 90%. That applies to food growth requirements as well as GPP needed for each Great Person. This also makes it harder to pop out rapid Great People early on.
* No Representation civic at the start. This one also hurts a lot in terms of depressing science. Running Caste System Artists is totally fine when they get the Representation bonus. Without it, they kind of suck. I think the lack of Representation will also limit what kind of specialist moves are available, both for whoever pursues the Taj Mahal and what they do with it once they land it.

Anyway, what I really wanted to discuss in this post is a potential tech strategy. I was thinking along the lines of scooter’s first research path (a push for an eventual Statue of Liberty), and I didn’t even consider the Communism route until seeing that post. That left me thinking about these approaches all day today – fun stuff. Let me offer some points in favor of and against each of the two plans.

Democracy/Statue of Liberty: As scooter posted, the required techs here are Nationalism, Constitution, and Printing Press to reach Democracy. Unlike scooter, I feel that this is inherently the “safer” path of the two to contemplate. There’s a lot of good stuff available: first, we have an outside shot at the Taj Mahal by going Nationalism first, although I wouldn’t expect to land the wonder against Spiritual and Philosophical rivals. Nationalism also opens up Nationhood civic, which could be useful to have in a pinch, even if our team lacks Spiritual for this venture. Even drafted maces are better than nothing if you really need units right now. I suppose even Hermitage might have some value with marble here at the start, although most likely not.

However, the real value of this tech path isn’t in Nationalism itself, but in the tech that lies behind it: Constitution. We will be in Mercantilism civic for a very long time, and we’re also likely to be spamming out a lot of cities in a wide build. Mercantilism paired with Representation specialists dovetails with that setup extremely well. I would argue that this is the main benefit of choosing this path, because as awesome as the Statue of Liberty would be, Representation comes a lot earlier and does more to get us to Democracy tech in the first place. There’s also a nice secondary benefit in the form of Jails that you probably wouldn’t consider, but it goes well with a courthouse-heavy espionage background strat. Put one jail in the capital, and all of a sudden the city produces 12 EP/turn passively. (4 EP from the Palace, 4 EP from the Jail, and +50% from the Jail.) Or any city with jail + courthouse is worth 9 EP/turn, although I doubt we’ll be spending much early game production on freaking jails! Anyway, not game breaking or anything but nice. I kind of think we should head down this path because I expect Representation to be a really strong economic kickstarter. We won’t have production to spare for universities/markets/banks, and we won’t have mature towns for the Printing Press bonus, so this could be our best option to keep expanding + teching at a non-terrible rate.

The rest of the Democracy path is unlocked by Great Scientist lightbulbs. Use one of them for Education, and the second one for Printing Press, and then go on to Democracy from there. We can think more about a Great Person strategy with time, but that seems like the best general setup. Since we will not have Representation civic at the start, working non-Engineer and non-Scientist specialists are pretty inefficient. I would rather use Great Scientists on useful techs, with the bonus Great Scientist lightbulb beakers, rather than trying to swing something with Artists or Merchants or whatever. Hopefully we have enough passive espionage going to watch the research of our key rivals, and we land Statue of Liberty without much competition. I genuinely wonder if other teams will try to head that route. Statue of Liberty was mostly ignored in the Industrial Pitboss game, and it’s much more off the beaten path here. Now for the other tech path:

Communism/Kremlin: This tech is much deeper into the tree, and I would suggest that it’s riskier to pursue. There are two ways to get here, one path using Astronomy and the other path going Gunpowder/Chemistry instead. I’ll state the best case possible for this route first: if by some chance we could land the Liberalism prize, then this would be the stronger tech path by far. Research/lightbulb Education, land Liberalism first, take uber-expensive Astronomy with the free tech, and then all we need is the cheap, easily lightbulbed Printing Press and Scientific Method to reach Communism itself. It’s landing the Liberalism prize and turning it into Astronomy that makes this a winning move.

The problem is twofold though. Number one, I’m dubious that we can land Liberalism first with our chosen leader, and number two, I think this tech path doesn’t synergize well with the style of game we’re likely to be playing. Let’s cover the first point. In a setup where our rivals are most likely going to be sporting a lot of Spiritual and Philosophical traits, how confident are we that we can land Liberalism first? I think it’s extremely unlikely. Spi and Phi leaders can always pump out Great People faster than we can, with their innate GPP bonus and ability to ignore Anarchy for Caste System/Pacifism abuse. I don’t see how we out-research or out-bulb them to Liberalism. Keep in mind that we’re going to be whipping our starting cities for settlers a lot – like, as soon as either one hits size 6, we’re popping out a three-pop whipped settler with our Imperialistic bonus. That’s not conducive to early game teching, to say the least.

If we can’t land the Liberalism prize, then this tech path gets a lot rougher. We would either have to research Astronomy tech, which has no pre-requisite bonuses and is therefore very expensive, on a map with non-coastal starting cities where it pretty much just provides observatories. Or alternately we have to research both Gunpowder and Chemistry techs, which have more value but also cost even more beakers to land both. That extends the time needed to reach Communism by orders of magnitude. It’s Astronomy tech that’s the real bottlestopper for this plan. If we could somehow get it for free, it opens up Great Scientist lightbulbs on the key techs behind it. However, if we can’t remove Astronomy tech somehow, we have to spend way too much time on either a non-essential naval tech or non-Scientist lighbulb techs. Rough going.

Getting back to my second point, I also think that the techs on this path don’t fit with our strategy that well. Education grants universities, which we do want in time (Oxford is super important!) but does little for us immediately. Even less than Nationalism does for us. Liberalism is great for the free tech… and almost worthless if we are second to the prize. Seriously, if we go Education -> Liberalism and don’t land the free tech, we’ll be in a pretty crummy position on the tech tree. Neither tech does much of anything for us in the expansion phase. (Constitution/Representation is vastly better here.) The other techs on this path also don’t feel too helpful. Gunpowder alone does relatively little, needing Military Tradition or Rifling to unlock its power. This doesn’t look like a map for Astronomy tech. Printing Press without mature cottages and Scientific Method… not much there. Chemistry could be pretty good, I will grant that, once we reach it. But that’s a lot of beakers getting sunk into this route without much to show for it until we reach Communism itself. Don’t get me wrong, landing Kremlin with a population and territory edge on an Organized leader could be a game-ending move right there. I’d love to see it! I’m just worried about getting there, since I don’t think we will win the Liberalism prize.

I dunno. Maybe I’m overestimating the value of Representation as a civic? It has me leaning towards the top of the tree though, since we get more useful goodies along the way to Democracy tech, it takes a lot less time to get there, and it leaves us in better position when we’re done. We can also call off a Democracy beeline after going Nationalism/Constitution if we don’t like what we’re seeing, and that leaves us right next to Military Tradition tech, with Representation and Nationhood civics in hand. If we call off the other plan after a failed Liberalism play, we have… uhh, universities and Free Speech/Free Religion civics to show for it. And Liberalism leads to nothing, unlocking no additional techs to research. That’s a little bit weaker methinks.

Long story short: the second path is better if we think we can turn the Liberalism free tech into Astronomy. Otherwise, I think it’s a lot worse off. Thus the more “risky” plan.

[Nekira Sudacne]

My 2 cents: If you are going the Settler Spam-Whip for production route, then the Aztecs might be a good choice on the second snake if all the good UU Civ's are taken. 5 turn whip cycles are phenominal for cranking out Units. Sure, your Musketeers/Knights are only average, but you'll be getting LOTS of them. Might want to even consider forgoing cottaging and some production and focus on farms/Specalist economy. 5 turn whip cycles, with good overflow management, is one of the strongest production methods in this game, but if and ONLY if you have the food necessary to sustain it.

Can someone with a lot more Civ knowlege than me (I'm more than a little rusty) crunch numbers on that? What's the bare minimum food necessary to sustain a 5-turn 2-pop whip cycle, and is such a thing even possible without tons of food bonuses pre-biology?

If it is, however, you might have a winner if it's on the second run of the snake draft. 9 cities all 2-pop whipping every 5 turns can crank out knights like nobodies business, and does infastructure nearly as well, by alternating unit/build overflow as needed. It also lets you crank out workers virtually on-demand.

[antisocialmunky]

My main motivation for going bottom of tech tree is there are more military techs. I think we use the word 'safety' to describe different things. I think the bottom path is safer because it gives us useful not dying techs as a side effect of researching the path. You seem to be using safer to mean higher percent chance of success. I see your point as the top will be less heavily contested.

I think the biggest persuasion of going democracy is that we should not forget that PB33 was won by someone that rapid expanded in his corner of the map with a high sustained tech rate. A person who didn't have to rely on converting hammers to wealth to research. It was that player rather than the guy who ran a slaveconomy while rolling over two whole neighbors nearly for free with a massive production advantage who won the game.

I think its also going to be useful to calculate the average cost per city to estimate the type of tech rate we might have. Maybe sim it on a random map with Caesar, Gandhi, and Vicky so we can see how imp/org compares to Bulbing and FIN tech rates.

[scooter]

Mackoti is definitely going to take Byzantium at #3 and make me regret everything isn't he.

CALLED IT. That's going to be a terror. That's actually why I suggested 3rd pick was probably the best pick here. You're guaranteed to get something top tier (Julius, Khmer, Byz, Gandhi, Victoria) without sacrificing as much on the back half of the snake. I am already regretting everything.

I dunno. Maybe I’m overestimating the value of Representation as a civic? It has me leaning towards the top of the tree though, since we get more useful goodies along the way to Democracy tech, it takes a lot less time to get there, and it leaves us in better position when we’re done.

I guess the value of Representation is the key question here. My main concern is the number of beakers it costs to get these things in place. Constitution alone costs 2k base beakers - how many turns in Representation is it going to take to make that up? I guess it depends on how many cities we can spam out, which IS what our leader is designed for... Mercantilism will help here a lot.

(There's also the 1600b from Printing Press, although that's needed regardless of which path we pursue.)

On the positive side... If there's significantly less water on this map than 33 (seems likely), that gives a nice boost to Mercantilism. With the lack of IC routes, the foreign trade routes are generally less powerful which means we'll be in much less of a rush to swap to Free Market (if we even bother at all). That'll allow us to ignore Econ-Corp for a long while. So maybe it pays for itself quite quickly after all.

Finally, one other positive with Democracy is it takes far fewer beakers than a Communism run will, which will give us time to divert for a few military techs. The deep Communism beeline likely means defending with longbows and elephants for a very, very long time, which is basically just blindly betting on not being next to Mackoti.

[scooter]

Just my quick impressions from the map. Iron is in an awkward spot & probably will be looking at seafood for any cities built to work it. You can build a corn/banana city 2S of the lake whales, perfect for a whip factory (it'll miss the river health and later levees). Rice in the north might be irrigated, that's deffo a river under the fog by the hill 1E of it, if so it'll be useful, you can think about getting a 2 elephant city.

I'll have a few actual comments on the map later (somehow I've barely even discussed it), but Mardoc did say the fog lies. I'm guessing that means there's not actually any water off to the west for example, or if there is it'll be purely a coincidence.

My 2 cents: If you are going the Settler Spam-Whip for production route, then the Aztecs might be a good choice on the second snake if all the good UU Civ's are taken. 5 turn whip cycles are phenominal for cranking out Units. Sure, your Musketeers/Knights are only average, but you'll be getting LOTS of them. Might want to even consider forgoing cottaging and some production and focus on farms/Specalist economy. 5 turn whip cycles, with good overflow management, is one of the strongest production methods in this game, but if and ONLY if you have the food necessary to sustain it.

Can someone with a lot more Civ knowlege than me (I'm more than a little rusty) crunch numbers on that? What's the bare minimum food necessary to sustain a 5-turn 2-pop whip cycle, and is such a thing even possible without tons of food bonuses pre-biology?

If it is, however, you might have a winner if it's on the second run of the snake draft. 9 cities all 2-pop whipping every 5 turns can crank out knights like nobodies business, and does infastructure nearly as well, by alternating unit/build overflow as needed. It also lets you crank out workers virtually on-demand.

I wasn't able to play a test game tonight with the Aztecs, but I'm definitely going to before our pick happens. Anyway, Aztecs are a weird case because the last time I played them (pre-PB1) I was much, much worse at Civ than I am now, so I don't have much of a feel for how much we can abuse the Altars. Anyone in here with some experience in that area that can comment on how much we can really exploit it in this type of setup? The viability really depends on whether or not we can sustain multiple cities running 5-turn whip cycles. If not, we won't really need the fast happy timer. I'll test it out, but if there's anyone with some recent Aztec experience around, let me know.

Finally, one other civ consideration. Commodore kindly pointed out to me that the Janissary 25% bonus also applies to mounted units rather than just melee/archers as I thought. Ottomans were already a decent civ for the underwhelming but potentially useful Hamman, but having a UU that serves as Phract deterrent might be legitimately very useful. Now, I expect the other players actually know how Janissaries work unlike me, so I think it's fairly likely someone nabs them before us... but if they fall to the last pick, they deserve some serious consideration.

EDIT: almost missed this.

My main motivation for going bottom of tech tree is there are more military techs. I think we use the word 'safety' to describe different things. I think the bottom path is safer because it gives us useful not dying techs as a side effect of researching the path. You seem to be using safer to mean higher percent chance of success. I see your point as the top will be less heavily contested.

I'm definitely okay with rolling the dice a bit if it means we win a big tech race. If we die a horrible Phract death, on to the next game. I'd rather get eliminated first than spend 6 months grinding out a loss to Mackoti.

(That's not to say I won't try to make sensible defensive decisions of course.)

[Cheater Hater]

Why is Oxford important? Heck, will we even build six Universities, or have six good science cities for them?

How many diminishing returns are there with Espionage when there are no active missions? Graphs you get naturally, tech either comes with courthouses or a turn or two of the slider, but visibility can come from just building spies.

Is the realization that most techs suck for this position outside of the beelines (which also have a lot strength in first-to bonuses) mean Julius was a mistake? How can we end up leveraging our production and expansion-based advantages? Do we need to do so with our civ, either through a Courthouse UB or a UU at the right place on the curve (France early, England or Russia later)?

Here's a thought: are we supposed to go Chemistry first just to get the workshop bonus and start a production economy? That sounds so wrong, but the pieces fit.

[scooter]

Good questions.

Why is Oxford important? Heck, will we even build six Universities, or have six good science cities for them?

Oh I think it's very important. Let's say we SIP and cottage all those riverside tiles ASAP. It only takes like 30 turns for them to become villages, and we'll be getting PP anyway. Including furs (may as well be a village), that's 7 riverside PP-enhanced villages. A couple of the non-riverside grasslands can be cottaged too.

Take that + trade route income + Rep-enhanced Merc scientist + (fingers crossed) SoL scientist + palace commerce + Bureau + a couple more scientists specialists when we run out of tiles we can cottage quickly enough... and that Oxford is worth quite a bit. Maybe not immediately, but there will definitely be a break-even point I think. I think the name of the game here is expand while growing cottages and then turn on the tech jets in the core once we've claimed a bunch of land.

How many diminishing returns are there with Espionage when there are no active missions? Graphs you get naturally, tech either comes with courthouses or a turn or two of the slider, but visibility can come from just building spies.

It's not a huge benefit, but it's a nice perk when the EPs come from stuff you're building anyway like Courthouses. That's still better than running the slider or investing extra hammers in spies (not that they don't have their place).

For a tangible example: in 33 we had a shot at Fascism, but we thought BGN would get to it first because he had a 1T head start, so we held off. We didn't have tech visibility, so we didn't know at the time that BGN was teching Industralism instead. When REM unlocked Fascism a couple turns later, he saw via his tech visibility that 1) BGN had ignored it and 2) we got a late start on it, so he promptly burned his merchant on a lightbulb and stole the General from us. That stung.

REM's spamming of ORG courthouses also gave him such an EP edge that it forced us to dump hammers into EP buildings just to keep his demos. It's a minor thing overall, but it's something.

Is the realization that most techs suck for this position outside of the beelines (which also have a lot strength in first-to bonuses) mean Julius was a mistake? How can we end up leveraging our production and expansion-based advantages? Do we need to do so with our civ, either through a Courthouse UB or a UU at the right place on the curve (France early, England or Russia later)?

I think the reason Sullla laid out the case for the Statue is it helps do exactly what you're asking. I think the challenge with this setup is you NEED to be able to pull off two things: expansion and tech pace. Just one or the other won't be good enough, which is why I'm starting to suspect Gandhi may struggle more here than in 33. Put this way: do you think BGN would have won 33 had he won the Communism race? I don't. He was too far behind Dreylin in expansion. Dreylin's trick was doing all that stuff while still expanding by using UniSuffrage.

1) Expansion: we will comfortably out-expand everyone who isn't IMP.
2) Tech: we have the best pure economy secondary (non IMP/SPI) trait here.

The Statue boosts both of those, which is why it probably fits better than normal for us.

Here's a thought: are we supposed to go Chemistry first just to get the workshop bonus and start a production economy? That sounds so wrong, but the pieces fit.

Nah I don't think so. Before State Property a grassland workshop is equivalent to a grass hill mine, and Slavery beats that. We're a lot further away from State Property here than we were in 33, so we don't gain as much worker efficiency by building the workshops in advance. By the time SP rolls around we'll have the workers on hand to get workshops into place ASAP in the cities that need them.