[Spoilers] luddite tries to remember how this game works

[chumchu]

Artillery is probably among the strongest military tech as it gives anti-tank as well. The limit is production and also movement speed. Your few artillery pieces can not be every where are once which means you opponent might outflank you with 3x horse archers so that they can fork your cities and burn the ones not defended.

A choice I think is underrated is biology. It means you can play a much worse start and still be ahead. You can run specialists much easier. If you have some happiness from the civ/leader you can slave for days. Napoleon of Aztecs with or Willem of Maya might be very scary.

[luddite]

Yeah, the thing is with artillery and anti-tanks, they're so strong that they can potentially kill 3x their number in horse archers. Especially an AT defending a hill city, I think it would be almost invincible.

Biology... maybe? It does have the advantage of kicking in immediately. I still feel like Democracy or Communism give an overall stronger benefit. But I've never tried starting with biology so I don't really know.

[pindicator]

I feel like Biology is start-dependent. If you see a starting position that needs or wants a couple farms then it seems like a strong contender

[luddite]

I feel like Biology is start-dependent. If you see a starting position that needs or wants a couple farms then it seems like a strong contender

Maybe dependant on getting a lot of early happiness? With that, biology could grow like crazy. But otherwise you're just growing into unhappiness.

Anyway, sounds like espionage is going to get banned. So I won't be able to do anything too crazy like start with robotics and steal rifling for mechs, or build Cristo Redentor as Spiritual and stun-lock people with perpetual civic swaps.

[chumchu]

Expansion/Production:

Biology - You need a civ/leader/start with extra happiness. A plains/hills start might actually be a good thing if there are enough possible farms.
Communism - State property pays for expansion when distances get high. Needs machinery or metal casting + caste to get significant production gains. Kremlin is very strong when you can afford it. Somewhat slow.
Steam Power - Worker improvement speed is strong in the very early game. Levée is strong but somewhat expensive. On a coastal start, early Dikes would be beastly.

Teching:

Democracy - very fast cottage growth. Slow on production. Using money to hurry production seems very expensive before turn 100 and towns takes 35 turns to grow. Paints a big target on us. SoL is too expensive until late in the game. Needs 2 engineers.
Constitution - Happy and teching for a fast start with specialists. Do not scale that well. Combine with India?
Corporation - Free trade route but not much else until much later. Currency might be better.

Military:
Tier 1
Artillery - Artillery with Str 18, 150 h collateral and AT with Str 14 120 h.
Rifling - Rifles Str 14 110 h. (Redcoat is a slight upgrade).
Rocketry - Sam Inf. Str 18, 150 h.
Military science - Grenadiers Str 12 100 h.

Tier 2
Rail Road - Machine Guns. Str 18 125 h. Extremely good on defense. No offense though.
Steel - Cannons with Str 12, 120 h collateral. Needs Iron.
Gunpowder - Muskets Str. 9, 90 h. Want to combine it with Ethiopia, France or ottomans.
Vassalage - Longbows are cheap and good city defenders. With the extra xp and maybe celts they can make us unpalatable for rushers. Worker improvement speed is good as well.
Guilds - Needs Arabia for fast rushes. Knights struggle against the tier 1 units.

[luddite]

Thanks for the summary, chumchu!  The only thing that I'll quibble with is that I don't think grenadiers really belong in Tier 1 military. They're a clear step below those other units, IMO.

Democracy still seems like the most powerful of the economic bonuses. The others, well, I don't know how many rivers there will be, but in general I think I'd rather build an extra settler instead of a levee. Same with the Kremlin. Taking constitution plus India would be funny, but probably not all that useful. Democracy is the only one that spirals into giving me more of *everything*, and it does so without costing anything.

That said... like you said, it really paints a target. Since the main benefit of Democracy is having more developed towns, and anyone who attacks you can just take those towns for themselves. That's also true if anyone goes for levees, or the Kremlin, or most other early economic boosts. I still feel like choosing a military tech and rushing is the way to go.

Rushing with camel archers would be hilarious! But bear in mind, they still require researching HBR and archery, so it takes a little while to get them going. Plus, at 90 hammers each, they're not cheap- they cost almost as much as rifles.

I will say that I'm curious how well an early economy of pyramids/representation + biology would work. Would it out tech the standard financial cottage economy? My gut says *no*, but I hope someone at least gives it a shot. It gives you a lot of early great people if you want to bulb something, like maybe astronomy or chemistry or liberalism.

I'm kind of thinking of this as my preferred order of picks:
1)artillery
2)rocketry
3)rifling with England
4)Democracy with Rome
5)biology with an Industrious leader and a really great starting location???

[luddite]

Something I've never been quite sure of... just how good is the biology/representation/farm-scientist economy?
On paper it never seems as good as cottages. But I'm aware that many good players have used the pyramids to kick ass, both in multiplayer and in singleplayer. And that's *without* having biology. I never really saw a good example of mass bio farms in late game.

Let's compare 1 grass river tile, vs a financial cottage (no uni suffrage or free speech or golden age)

farm gives +2 food and +1 commerce (from the river), supporting a scientist that generates 6 beakers
the cottage starts off at +3 commerce (one river, one cottage, one financial), eventually grows to +6 after 70 turns
70 turns is a long time! Let's say that a reasonable average is +5 after 30 turns, for a village

1 beaker is ~ 1 commerce. There's edge cases where maybe one is better, like if you've got libraries but no markets. Or the capital benefits from bureaucracy. But overall I don't see a big difference there. You can also run merchants instead of scienists, but again I don't see a huge difference between a wealth and a beaker.

per tile, that's +6 vs +5 in favor of the scientist, almost the same. per citizen, it's +5 for the cottage vs + 3 for the scientist (because he also requires a farmer). Seems like a big advantage for the cottages, unless you're really restricted on land.

One advantage I can see for the food-scientists is they're a little more flexible. Maybe you've got a city with two food resources and the rest of the land is shit. You can still run scientists there (or merchants). Cottages really require grassland, and ideally some rivers. Of course, if you're financial, working coast tiles is not the worst thing either.

One big disadvantage for food-scientists is they require a specialist slot. I can't use them at the start of the game, I have to wait for either libraries or caste system. And if I'm running caste system, I can't use slavery, which is a big production disadvantage. Unless I go spiritual... that might be too complex for me to manage though.

The big advantage for scientists, of course, is that they also produce Great Scientists. Or Great Merchants or whatever. Those can potentially be worth a lot. But, it's hard to rely on them. They work best when you can bulb an expensive tech and either trade it around, or get great value from it. But in these multiplayer, no-tech-trading games, you don't get great value from, say, bulbing philosophy. Scientists are great for the central route through liberalism, but people here usually prefer the bottom tech route through guilds, which is much harder to bulb (most of them require a great engineer, which are hard to come by and don't produce many beakers)

Settling also tends to be rather weak tea. Even with representation... a settled great person is just one person. Usually you have enough cities and citizens that one settled great person isn't worth much. The exception is One City Challenge games, or things like that where you're extremely limited in space. This could *maybe* turn into that, if there's enough warfare that noone can settle many cities. But if I'm getting invaded to the point where I have no cities I'm probably doomed anyway.

Golden ages can be great though. Extra commerce, extra commerce, extra GPP, free civic swaps, they really make a noticeable change in the economy. Especially if you have MoM, you can kinda run your economy from one golden age to the next until the game is decided. If you have the chance to get a golden age with towns *and* Universal Suffrage it's just amazing, you get fantastic commerce and production at the same time. That said, you don't need to run a specialist-heavy economy for this, you're better off just running lots of cottages and then having one or two great person farms. For that style, I'd rather start with Democracy and spam cottages everywhere.

I dunno, am I missing something? I've *seen* pyramids economies do great, but I just don't get the math of it. The only thing I can see is they maybe have a brief window of opportunity in like, the late classical-early medieval time, when cottages are not yet mature but every city has a library. But even then... so what? What do you want to do with that narrow window of tech edge- race to guilds? not so appealing when other people start with rifling or SAM infantry or artillery.

[luddite]

Quick pics to show what I mean:
First, a standard cottage economy (but with one settled great person):
   
51 commerce. 39 science (with a library at 50% science), 34 wealth (9 of that from hammers building wealth), and a 4 food surplus. Call it 73 beakers/wealth. This is with 8 villages, 7 of them riverside, all financial. No golden age, no academy, no Universal suffrage, and not even any towns. It's not supposed to be an amazing city, just something you could typically get in the early-mid game. This will only get stronger as the game progresses!

Alternatively: scientist-land:
   
3 farms, 5 rep scientists. 53 science and 17 wealth. 70 beakers/wealth. and only 1 food surplus. And these scientists are never going to get any better than they are right now, and the city will have to take off a scientist if I want it to grow. It just doesn't seem anywhere near as good as the cottage city. Of course it also produces GPP, but is that really enough to even the odds?

Overall I think I'd rather have the cottage city, then throw in democracy and a great people farm. Maybe go Elizabeth for maximum golden age potential. But I'd be very interested to see someone really push the bio farms.

[chumchu]

You have to count the bulb value of great persons in some way. On their own they are not amazing but with that they can catapult you ahead of your opponents. The first great persons give thousands of beakers for a few gpp before it starts to level out. Cottages gives flexibility and long term power. You will always have a bit of both though. Biology is most important with food poor land such as plains/tundra/hills.

If you go for a tier 1 military tech as a safe first pick. What is the rest of the plan? Conquering a neighbor with worse tech with a fast leader like Catherine/Shaka/Washington/Sury and then snowball? It could be slow going with expensive 1-movers

Spam cottages in safety with an economic leader like Darius/Elisabeth/Willem/Pacal? You could be significantly behind those with an economic tech.

Maybe a balanced approach and playing opportunistically?

To me at least, I do not see an obvious choice which is what I like about the variant.

[luddite]

Yeah, bulb value is important but the problem is most of the bulb-able techs are... not really techs I want. At least, they're not immediately useful. They're techs that unlock other techs, like Scientific Method, liberalism, and Physics. Or they boost the research rate, like Education, Printing Press, and maybe Philosophy. It's hard to bulb something that will directly boost production or military power. It's probably better to use a great merchant for money, but then there's also the risk of someone killing your merchant.

I feel like if I can directly conquer a neighbor with minimal losses thanks to superior military tech, that alone will be enough to snowball and win. There's not much that counts as much as just having twice as much land. Especially if the land I conquer comes with mature cottages or nice wonders. But also, there's nothing stopping me from picking a top military tech *and* a financial leader. There's only 5 of us in this game, so not too much competition for leaders.