[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[scooter]

No, not that Oracle. But I guess it could become my Oracle too.


Anyway, I'm hoping Q and Cyneheard are still along for the ride. I have some a lot of thoughts on the tech choices, but I would like to hear yours as well. I have a bunch of notes written from last time I thought about this, and I'll round it into a proper post soon. My initial pass at this is there's 2-3 tech choices that are obviously very strong, and then there's a surprisingly large second tier of interesting options that might have a bit less oomph. I suspect leaders will be chosen primarily for synergy, start draft prioritization will depend on how much variance there are in the starting areas, and I think most people will pick civs in the last round, except for India and Inca which may go in rounds 2-3.

[Qgqqqqq]

Reporting for duty!

There's a bunch of different options and I'm very curious how it works in the meta game. My thoughts are mostly from reading the old Adventure where this occurred (I only load up non-FFH when I'm map making or covering), but single player is very different. I'll poke around the tech tree tonight.

There's military options like Steel, Rifling, which might be enough to kill someone who doesn't go for them. Perhaps that means everyone picks one? On the other hand, arguably those have no impact until you can be in a position to rush or kill someone naturally, whereas an economy tech (like Biology, Communism, etc.) could kick in earlier. I think in a PB64-style game I'd be strongly inclined to argue for a Biology esque one, but on a more traditional RB map the impact will be less pronounced.

I think you should plan everything around the possibility of Oracle and failing to get the Oracle. For that reason, IND seems like a good idea to get a leg up. It might be you'd rather not compete with everyone, but I think the impact will be so large.

Do Infantry require rifling?

[scooter]

So I’ve put some time into spitballing ideas. While there’s a couple obviously great choices here, there’s a surprisingly deep pool of interesting sounding options. So let’s talk about a bunch of them. I’m just going to run down techs that jump out to me without trying to rank them (too much) yet. Don’t take this order to be a ranking list - more of an ordering in which they popped into my head.


Democracy

Emancipation is the big prize here. The ability to double speed cottage growth is enormous. Of course, doing so keeps us out of Slavery, so you are virtually required to take Spiritual here to make this work. This will require some micro, but I think the net effect is you alternate Emancipation and Slavery in 5 turn cycles throughout the first 100 turns. As a result, your cottages grow more like 50% faster rather than 100%. That’s still great, though. I think you very likely pair this with Mansa Musa to synergize with BtS un-nerfed FIN. The one downside here is you have no growth curve benefits here. Mansa Musa is a slow starter by BtS standards, and Democracy is purely a commerce enhancer rather than a growth enhancer, not to mention spending less time in Slavery will cost a bit. The other issue is I think this is likely to be one of the first couple picks, so you get less priority on start/leader/civ while taking a tech that takes some time to ramp.


Part of why Democracy is so great is that there’s other goodies available too. Statue of Liberty is yours as soon as you can find a way to build it. The problem of course is that you probably won’t build it for quite awhile depending on whether or not you generate an Engineer for it, and then you do have to wait a bit for it to start profiting for you. Universal Suffrage is unlocked here but unlikely to be used in the early game, although maybe there’s a case to use it occasionally with SPI and quicker Towns. There’s also Security Bureau access which might be a sneaky interesting unlock if Espionage is indeed allowed. Overall, this is likely a high tier choice, but I don’t know that I’d take it #1 overall.


Communism

State Property access is a massive get here obviously. Effectively halving your city maintenance makes absolute city spamming without fear of costs totally viable. Pair it with Joao or something expansion-friendly and really go wild. The 10% hammer boost is small but definitely not nothing. If that’s not enough, you also get Kremlin access here. Unlike the above where Statue of Liberty requires you to cobble together 1,500 hammers which not even an early game Engineer can complete in one shot, Kremlin requires “just” 800 hammers. It’s therefore accessible much sooner. This synergizes quite well with State Property - use it to grow a food-hammer edge, pop an Engineer, rush Kremlin, and then convert your population into hammers with 48 hammer per pop whips. Finally, Communism does unlock some espionage options as well. My gut feeling is this is the best choice for #1 overall.


Banking

Here’s one of the oddball choices that I think are worth considering if I have one of the last tech choices. The immediate perk is the ability to unlock Mercantilism from Turn 0. The downside is that this will just be a citizen until you get an eligible building built. This tech wants Creative to get cheap Libraries and turn your free specialist into a scientist more quickly. The other trait has two routes - Financial for double speed Banks or Philosophical to spawn more GP from your free specialists. Financial sounds better I think. Pyramids would be quite nice with this too, but not mandatory and probably challenging to get. The good news is that because this is a low priority tech, it should be easy to get your pick of the rest to pair with this.


Biology

Here’s a simple but alluring one - one I actually picked back in the original Mao’s Muse game. Biology lets you go wild with a specialist economy. The nice thing about having More Food is it can be twisted nearly any way you want. Maybe pair it with the Aztecs to whip limitlessly. Maybe pair it with Creative to get scientists up and running quickly. By all means take a swing at Pyramids for obvious reasons. If the map is low in food, well, it’s not low in food for you. If the map is lush, you can run specialists and grow cities and whip all at the same time. Spiritual sounds really nice with this to open up on-demand Caste. Early National Park access is a minor perk here too.


Civil Service

I think this is a serious sleeper pick because it’s kind of boring relative to a bunch of flashy options discussed in this post. But boy you should not sleep on T0 Bureaucracy. Nothing snowballs harder than this. There’s also some great synergies available. A mace UU might be fun. How about Agg/Org Vikings if there’s any signs of water, for example? If I’m picking in the 4 or 5 spot and everyone before picks techs and this is available, I’m probably taking this + the best capital screenshot.

There are a couple small perks worth mentioning. Early irrigation chaining access is a nice perk, especially if presented with a capital that would benefit from it. You could also Oracle Paper, I guess. That doesn’t seem like a huge advantage or anything, but it’s a bigger tech than you can normally Oracle. I would imagine having early CS also does some interesting things to bulb choices, but I’d have to review the list to be sure.


Constitution

T0 Representation for “free Pyramids.” You have absolutely no happy problems. Pair it with an appropriately specialist-friendly leader and go nuts without actually investing the hammers needed for Pyramids. Sounds great to me. In addition, Jails are probably good buildings to have available if we allow Espionage. Pick India with their already S-tier UU and now you can have their UB be useful for the first time in your life.


Computers

Please someone, do it. Build The Internet and turn off tech. It’s uh, easier said than done, and it’s definitely the wildest possible option here. There are a bunch of problems here! One, it’s a Project rather than a wonder, so you can’t GE rush it at all. Seconds, it’s 2k hammers, so even with the copper doubler it’s the equivalent of building the Pyramids twice and without Organized Religion as an option to boost it. On the other hand, you don’t have to race for it. If you can get a city to around 20 base hpt, you can get enough modifiers to built it in 35-40 turns. That’s a lot, but keep in mind you could just blow off commerce entirely once you have the techs/hammers necessary to build the thing. Or you could go wild with Espionage. I have no idea if this is viable, but I really hope someone goes for it. Of course, you probably still need to tech, but it allows you to do deep beelines and let other players backfill for you which sounds unbelievably powerful. Also it allows your neighbor to build army while you build it for them, and then capture it from you. So there’s that.

But wait, there’s more. You could technically Oracle Superconductors or Robotics which would be hilarious. This sounds like a joke, but Superconductors is actually interesting because it unlocks the Russian UB which is essentially The Great Library. Also, Computers obsoletes some of the monk-adjacent wonders, so you have to be OK with skipping that route entirely.


Radio

This is the Cristo + Cultural Victory path. Unlock Cristo Redentor for free Spiritual except without the 5 turn cooldown which sounds like great fun. The downside here is this does nothing from T0 and requires a serious investment to actually unlock it, but once you do, man it sounds nice. 1k hammers means you’re probably popping an Engineer for this one, but that’s fine.

There are a bunch of cultural victory things opened up here. This is a weird one because you aren’t exactly going to build the Eiffel Tower in the Medieval era or something, but what this does is allow you to build it unreasonably early and get a head start on cultural snowball. I don’t think this is hugely beneficial, but it synergizes fairly well at least. Finally, you could Oracle Mass Media. If you really want to commit to the cultural route, this also unlocks Civilized Jewelers, which obviously you still can’t found until Corporation, but this makes the path to it that much quicker. The larger point here is you still have to get yourself into a contending position without any of this stuff helping you, but if you CAN get there, you can throw down a blazing fast CV attempt. (Should be noted that Oracling Mass Media is slightly incompatible with popping an early Engineer for CR.)



So, that’s 8 options. I think it’s reasonably likely my tech choice will be one of these 8, but Q or Cyneheard might be able to convince me of something else. That said, there’s some glaring omissions here, including a couple military techs that some are concerned will utterly break this game. I’ll split the rest into a separate post later because this is really long already. My initial feeling is Communism is the best here followed by Democracy, and it gets muddled quickly after that.

[scooter]

I think you should plan everything around the possibility of Oracle and failing to get the Oracle. For that reason, IND seems like a good idea to get a leg up. It might be you'd rather not compete with everyone, but I think the impact will be so large.

Surprisingly, I’m not sure Oracle will be that big of a deal here. There’s surprisingly few techs that are powerful on their own and open up a big Oracle because so many next techs have pre-reqs. I’ve tried to call out a few that are available in the post above, but I’m sure I’m missing some. I think a couple players will have an Oracle option available, but most of the power techs won’t I don’t think.

Do Infantry require rifling?

They do. There are a few late-game units that can be built with just one tech though - SAM Infantry and Artillery, for example. I’m a bit skeptical of going that route as they’re so expensive that I’m not quite certain they’re a win button. Will talk about those a bit more later. Basically, picking them means playing from behind with a telegraphed game plan that can be prepared for and no eco/growth bonuses. But I definitely could be wrong about that.

[Krill]

Artillery and SAM Inf are the same cost as Oracle, or a market.

View that hiw you will.

[Qgqqqqq]

I actually think Constitution might be better then Democracy there. Constitution lets you Oracle Democracy, and Democracy shouldn't be relevant till around when Oracle falls. It relies on getting it of course, and theres some anti-synergy there.

One thing to think about is the strength of vanilla FIN. Communism I would tend to prioritise above Democracy, because I think you want something strong early to help snowball ahead of someone who goes for the military route, but Joao means giving up FIN - so I'd be more inclined to Pacal or FIN/IMP.

[scooter]

Artillery and SAM Inf are the same cost as Oracle, or a market.

View that hiw you will.

Sure, but also it takes 4 Horse Archers to have a 40% chance at defeating a SAM Infantry for just 30h more, and 5 get very comfortable odds. Plus they have mobility advantage. If those HAs are backed up by an economic tech that results in you having 20% more population at the time of the fight, who is actually winning that trade? I think at worst it's a draw. My guess is both players lose from that.

[scooter]

Constitution lets you Oracle Democracy, and Democracy shouldn't be relevant till around when Oracle falls.

Democracy requires Printing Press, so that's why this doesn't work.

[Krill]

Artillery and SAM Inf are the same cost as Oracle, or a market.

View that hiw you will.

Sure, but also it takes 4 Horse Archers to have a 40% chance at defeating a SAM Infantry for just 30h more, and 5 get very comfortable odds. Plus they have mobility advantage. If those HAs are backed up by an economic tech that results in you having 20% more population at the time of the fight, who is actually winning that trade? I think at worst it's a draw. My guess is both players lose from that.

Yeah I make no analysis, only offer the observation

[Qgqqqqq]

This is why I need to actually open the game before commenting.

I also think it's just more furn to play with an economic test.