[Spoilers] luddite tries to remember how this game works

[luddite]

Been a while (although I've been playing single player lately and watching AI survivor)

You basically just have to whip a bunch of axes, right?

   
^ pic from messing around with Master of Magic

[chumchu]

Depends on the opposition.

With the variant rule someone might be rushing us with musketeers or artillery or keshiks.

[chumchu]

What kind of tech are you thinking about?

Increased foodhammers?
Commerce?
Strong civic?
Military units?

[luddite]

What kind of tech are you thinking about?

Increased foodhammers?
Commerce?
Strong civic?
Military units?

I don't have any specific plan in mind yet, I still need to think about it more and see the starting locations. But I think I kind of have to pick a military tech.

The way I see it, there's three techs that give a huge military boost: rifling, artillery, and rocketry. All of them give a unit that's ridiculously strong for the early era. Like, strong enough that it could easily walk and take out a fortified archer without needing any bombardment, and maybe even win without taking damage. You could take someone's capital with just one SAM infantry! And you might have to, because at 150 hammers per, an early economy isn't going to be making too many of them.

You could also take gunpowder, steel, or guilds + byzantine. Not nearly as invincible, and they also require iron/horses, but they're still giving a way better unit that's basically unstoppable in the classical age. Let me know if you think of any other techs that give a nice military unit, but I think everything else requires another tech or a resource. I guess with Railroad you can build machine guns, but those are defensive-only.

So if I start right next to someone who has one of those techs, and I chose an economic tech? ...I'm probably going to have a bad time. Because my economy will grow faster than there's, and their military advantage will decrease over time, and they know that, so they're almost certainly going to rush me.

To make things worse: the military people will probably not attack each other. If they're smart, they'll go after the peaceful techers. So if I choose an economic tech, I could find myself in a multi-way war, and one where all of the opponents have overpowered units. That would spell doom no matter how great my economy is.

If I chose an economic tech- well, the best one is probably Democracy, for double-speed cottages. Communism for no-distance-maintenance and the Kremlin for boosting whips would also be great. But it just takes so long for those to kick in. Like, the Kremlin is (edit, not 700) 800 hammers... I'm worried I might have an artillery knocking on my door before I could even finish it, let alone get an economic advantage from it. It takes a whole lot of axemen to stop an artillery or a SAM infantry...

I'd *like* to choose an economic tech, because I think that's more interesting. But I feel like I'm painting myself as a sitting duck if I do that. Well, I'll do some more thinking and sims, then decide. But that's my thoughts for right now.

[luddite]

Seems like most of the late-game techs just don't matter here. They're all either spaceship parts, or some military unit that requires oil. And there's no way to get oil. Even if you choose to start with combustion, you still need scientific method to *reveal* the oil. Or I guess plastics for Standard Ethanol, but then you still need corporation. I vaguely recall there's an Event that can reveal oil early, but otherwise I just don't see any way to get oil in this. So at best you get uh... laboratories from Superconductors as a very expensive library? +3 health from Genetics? Build the UN from Mass Media and go for a Diplo victory...?

The Oracle could also be interesting here. But I'm not seeing a lot of really strong options for it, since most techs still require another prereq. I could start with Computers and Oracle Robotics, but without rifling that doesn't do much for me. (of course, if I could *steal* rifling from someone else... )

All I can think of is the ol' Civil Service Slingshot. Start with Civil Service, use bureaucracy for a fast early start. Then go for the oracle, take metal casting, and hope I can finish machinery before anyone attacks me. At least with maces I'd have a *chance* at fighting the advanced units. Still not good odds, though.

[pindicator]

Glad to see you post here again, Luddite!  Happy to ded-lurk here if you like - though I'm not sure how much help I am as a ded-lurker.  I don't seem to be adding much value for Mjmd in PB70.  Still, some ideas:

Kremlin could be "solved" by going for a Great Engineer first.  It still would be slow but you wouldn't have a city tied to production for 100 turns at least.

Resourceless UUs were things that seemed appealing.  Gunpowder with France for Musketeers or Guilds with Arabia for Camel Archers - stuff like that.  Or even Rome with Iron Working so you can just start building the Praetorians straight away.  Feudalism is another interesting one, giving you longbows along with a couple of second-tier civics in Vassalage and Serfdom.  But Civil Service does seem to be just a solid win for the early Bureaucracy.

If you do the Civil Service Slingshot idea then you could also go Great Engineer for your first GP and bulb Machinery.  It might not be faster than teching Machinery straight away but it would free you up to get the techs you need to develop, like Currency.

[luddite]

Thanks pindicator, that means a lot! I'm happy to have you come on as a ded-lurker, although I can't promise to keep the thread updated every day or anything. But it's at least nice to have you (and chumchu?) to bounce ideas off of for the initial setup.

and yeah, using a GE to either rush Kremlin or bulb Machinery would be sweet. That's probably the best way to do either of those without crashing your economy.

The thing I keep coming back to though is artillery. How on Earth do you stop that? I guess praetorians at least have a decent chance of scratching them... still not good odds though. I wonder what the odds are for 6 skirmishers to stop 1 artillery?

[pindicator]

You might be on to something there. With Rifles at least you can keep spamming out units to keep them at bay, but with artillery you have collateral damage on top of everything else.

The drawback is how fast can you actually build one? They cost the same as an ancient era wonder.

[luddite]

Yeah artillery are 150 hammers, which is no joke. That's a 5-pop whip! Or more realistically, a 3-pop plus some mines or chops. They won't be building huge numbers of them, but it's not like it's impossible to build them either. They're a lot cheaper than the Kremlin!

Actually I did some testing just now... maybe they're not so invincible as I thought. Praetorians seemed to always at least scratch them. 1 to scratch them, another to wound them seriously, then a 3rd to finish them off, that seemed to work pretty consistently. Skirmishers were more random, but they did work. Either way, I'll have to be attacking out, not just sit there taking collateral.

Might it actually be feasable to take Rome/Mali plus an economic tech...?

[luddite]

Cho-ko-nu are also a decent counter to artillery, thanks to their weird loophole that lets them do collateral to siege. They're kind of expensive though, and I'd have to research machinery...