The benefits of avoiding bronze working

The cake is a lie. Sorry.

Tachywaxon said:

Quick speed certainly decreases the value of chops in an indirect manner. Given chops consume more worker turn in parallel to a slower gamespeed (turn loss to go on the forest AND the actual action takes as much as normal speed), it certainly lowers a bit the power of chops. Nonetheless, lacking BW, still misses slavery...but again the gain is far weaker as organic production takes huge parts in low cost builds. For instance, a chariot "factory" exists well with a good production city even without help of chops.

I think quick speed favors his strategy a bit.

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Very good point about chopping being nerfed by Quick speed which takes three turns for a Worker to chop a forest which is no different than Normal speed, but the Hammer is only 2/3 that of Normal speed. I've always thought that a Quick speed chop should be only 2/3 to scale with the # of hammers the chop provides. Unfortunately, Civ IV computes this # as 201/100 which rounds up to the nearest integer value which is 3, even though 2 would be much closer to being "correct".

Excellent point about organic hammers being more important for Quick speed. As you suggest, a city can eventually generate enough organic hammers to build a Chariot, Immortal or War Chariot in a single turn (20 Hpt).

Sun Wu Tzu

^
Someone said quick speed was intended for multiplayers where the devs nerfed means for power surge.
Faster border pops and less effective chops as instances.
Anyways, quick speed is one hell of an unbalanced gamespeed.

Quick and No BW may go along.

Sun Tzu Wu said:

I wouldn't bother responding to anyone posting dismissive comments in your thread, without any solid reasoning or facts to back them up. It takes your valuable time to respond to troll-like posts from players that seem to make a point of including half-thought out comments in every thread of S&T. They are usually brilliant players, but they spread themselves too thin by responding to strategies that they have apparently not given critical thought to. They do themselves and readers of strategy articles like this one a disservice.

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Thank you for this. I agree.

Sun Tzu Wu said:

Your strategy would be best tested by someone who hasn't taken sides and thus would probably more fairly judge whether a BW or delayed BW strategy is best for a given map.

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Again, I agree. I will be posting a game at some point. I'm confident that delaying Bronze Working will lead me to my best victory on that map. I look forward to seeing what the range of possible outcomes are for impartial, more experienced players when they do and do not intentionally delay Bronze Working.

Sun Tzu Wu said:

I will keep your strategy in mind as I continue to play some Quick and Normal speed Deity Domination games for the HoF tables.

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I'm honored.

I mentioned that I would play Deity game with Zara Yaqob on a Small map and Quick speed avoiding Bronze Working. I avoided Bronze Working until turn 60 (BC 600). Until I was building Universities in preparation for building Oxford University, I chopped Forests only on Hills to mine them. I chopped all 5 forests in my Capital's BFC to shorten the OU build by 6t. I rushed only one settler out to claim a Horse plot. I was able to peacefully settle six more cities in about the third ring of my capital. The AI could not settle close to my capital, because my Culture expanded rapidly due to the Creative trait, Stele +25% Culure and especially Quick speed where the culture pops at 5 (turn 2; ring 2) and 50 (turn 13; ring 3). The AI's only chance to settle close is with its second settler, since the first settler is usually settled in place. The AI's third settler comes out after turn 13 which is already too late for it to settle in the capital's third ring, since it can only settle in its own culture or neutral land.

As of turn 122 (AD 1240), I'm second in score right behind Washington. The other leaders are Lincoln, Mehmed II and Napoleon. If I can get to Steel soon enough, I can dominate the map with Cannons and Oromo Warriors. I'm building 7 XP (Barracks, Vassalage & Theocracy) Oromo Warriors now and promoting them to Drill IV. There is also a possibility to upgrade some of the Drill IV Oromo Warriors to Grenadiers or Riflemen to protect the Canons from mounted flanking attacks or the random Rifleman attack. EDIT: Drill II Oromo Warriors can take Formation, so maybe Combat I and Formation would be better promotions for defense against mounted units.

This is my first attempt at using Zara Yaqob with the goal of Domination and made some rather costly mistakes, but there is still a good chance to win. From my current position, a Cultural Victory may be the easiest, though it won't be a very good date, since I was totally focused on a Domination Victory.

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu said:

I mentioned that I would play Deity game with Zara Yaqob on a Small map and Quick speed avoiding Bronze Working. I avoided Bronze Working until turn 60 (BC 600). Until I was building Universities in preparation for building Oxford University, I chopped Forests only on Hills to mine them. I chopped all 5 forests in my Capital's BFC to shorten the OU build by 6t. I rushed only one settler out to claim a Horse plot. I was able to peacefully settle six more cities in about the third ring of my capital. The AI could not settle close to my capital, because my Culture expanded rapidly due to the Creative trait, Stele +25% Culure and especially Quick speed where the culture pops at 5 (turn 2; ring 2) and 50 (turn 13; ring 3). The AI's only chance to settle close is with its second settler, since the first settler is usually settled in place. The AI's third settler comes out after turn 13 which is already too late for it to settle in the capital's third ring, since it can only settle in its own culture or neutral land.

As of turn 122 (AD 1240), I'm second in score right behind Washington. The other leaders are Lincoln, Mehmed II and Napoleon. If I can get to Steel soon enough, I can dominate the map with Cannons and Oromo Warriors. I'm building 7 XP (Barracks, Vassalage & Theocracy) Oromo Warriors now and promoting them to Drill IV. There is also a possibility to upgrade some of the Drill IV Oromo Warriors to Grenadiers or Riflemen to protect the Canons from mounted flanking attacks or the random Rifleman attack. EDIT: Drill II Oromo Warriors can take Formation, so maybe Combat I and Formation would be better promotions for defense against mounted units.

This is my first attempt at using Zara Yaqob with the goal of Domination and made some rather costly mistakes, but there is still a good chance to win. From my current position, a Cultural Victory may be the easiest, though it won't be a very good date, since I was totally focused on a Domination Victory.

Sun Tzu Wu

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A very interesting report. This makes me think a bit of the delayed-Bronze Working map that I am now (slowly) playing. In fact, I am utilizing a delayed Bronze Working/delayed Fishing/delayed Pottery/delayed Monarchy strategy. The reason for delaying Bronze Working and Fishing is that it will allow me to bulb Liberalism more efficiently. But the reason for delaying Pottery and Monarchy is that after the Liberalism bulb has been used, I can then get Bronze Working and Iron Working and then bulb Gunpowder with a Great Engineer (before I finish Liberalism) or with a Great Scientist (after I finish Liberalism). Having Pottery forces one up the Metal Casting/Machinery Line for both types of great people. I have the Pyramids and am running Scientists in Caste System (with Republic and Pacifism to increase their effect), so those are the only two types of great people that I am generating. The end goal is Cuirassiers for a sweep. I have never played Zara, but the fact that you are using Oromo warriors makes me think of the Gunpowder bulb. How early did you get Gunpowder and did you self-tech, trade, steal, or bulb it?

You could also use the free GE from Fusion to bulb... HBR? I don't think you can delay Pottery for that long...

On a more serious note I very often lib MT before teching / trading for gunpowder. (Gives you time to build some HAs / elephants for upgrade purposes and to generate a merchant.) Muskets are pretty weak units IMO, not worth beelining for. As for your strategy:
delay Fishing: works if you have no seafood / no calendar resources / don't want coastal trade routes / don't want to build the MoM. This is already a niche strategy but great for bulbing towards Machinery - Engineering with 2 scientists and then stomping the neighbours with trebs + maces. Muskets are much weaker than maces IMO as they cost more and cannot get any CR promos. So either early trebs or cuirs for me.

The side effects of delaying BW have already been discussed in this thread. Delaying Pottery means foregoing another hugely important technology. Representation cities need to grow too so you will miss those granaries badly (even if you take a no-cottage approach, although I do build some even with Rep).

Delaying Monarchy if you have the Mids: sure, for a while if you don't want to vassal anyone.

I like playing Zara, mainly because of his traits. Organized is fine on the higher levels and creative is just good on any level.

UnforcedError said:

You could also use the free GE from Fusion to bulb... HBR? I don't think you can delay Pottery for that long...

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Thanks for the Fusion/Horseback Riding suggestion. Comments like that are very helpful. Yes, it would be nice to have a couple of granaries, but it is my hunch that I will get to Military Tradition and Gunpowder faster by leaving open a Gunpowder bulb.

I am genuinely looking forward to seeing what strategy you would employ on this map. It was the second map I rolled, and my hunch is that most people would be disgusted by it and just reroll. In actuality, it's quite fun and challenging. Feel free to tech fishing if you like. There is a single clam in the BFC.

Why don't you post the saves or some screenshots? I have no idea what strategy I'd employ without seeing the map.

UnforcedError said:

I have no idea what strategy I'd employ without seeing the map.

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Nor do I presume to know what strategy you will employ.

UnforcedError said:

Why don't you post the saves or some screenshots?

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Because of my work schedule right now, it is going to take me a couple weeks to get through the map. I would prefer to post my results with the save and then let everyone have at it. If I post it now, others might finish it in a day or two and draw their conclusions without even seeing what my delayed-Bronze Working result was. Sorry for the delay.

As I mentioned above, this is the first time I played Zara Yaqob with a Domination Victory goal. In this Small Quick game, I made lots of mistakes, one of which may have been skipping Aesthetics and Literature which would have allowed faster Great Scientist generation and GPP rate via The Great Library and National Epic. Another may have been saving the first Great Scientist for the Paper bulb rather then use that extremely early GS on constructing an Academy and manually researching Paper. I wanted 3 GS to bulb Paper (1) and Education (2), but I had 11t left to generate the third GS. I foolishly kept researching Education waiting for the third GS to be generated via Caste System when I should have set the research slider 00% and switched to Metal Casting for those 11 turns. That would have set up a near 100% research of Gunpowder right after the second bulb of Education.

What actually happened was 1st GS bulbed Paper, 2nd GS bulbed just over half of Education, researched rest of Education, 3rd GS constructed an Academy, manually researched Gunpowder. By the time I finished Gunpowder, Washington had just finished Machinery, and the other AIs did not even have Metal Casting, but one of them did finally finish Feudalism after I had built my first wave of Oromo Warriors. I considered using the Espionage slider and/or a Spy specialist in most cities to generate enough Espionage for the Support City Revolt mission just before 6 or more Drill IV Oromo Warriors attacked the Longbowmen, but most of the cities were too heavily defended for that approach to work well.

(With only four opponents, it may be possible generate 2-3 Great Spies with The Great Wall, so up to 3 could be infiltrated but it would cost more in GPPs to get the necessary 3-4 Great Scientists for the optional Academy and Paper & Education bulbs; Both Great Spies and Great Scientists would be generated in the capital. If capital is cottaged and Bureaucracy used, a single Great Spy can create Scotland Yard in the capital to double its Espionage output once research is turned off after Gunpowder and Espionage slider is maximized instead.)

The above is just to give you an idea of the strategies I'm trying to put together for Zara Yaqob. I'm quite excited about what Drill IV Oromo Warriors can do, if enough can be whipped or organically built before the AI have Longbowmen or even versus non-promoted or Combat I Longbowmen. Drafting is also an option if Nationalism can be Liberalized and Theocracy and Nationhood run; the drafted Oromo Warriors could be Drill III and would be 3XP short of Drill IV, but drafting is a vastly more efficient means of converting Population to Hammers than whipping; 1 Pop to draft an Oromo Warrior and "almost" 3 Pop to whip an Oromo Warrior.

I will be posting more on this subject in the HoF Gauntlet #107 thread, zara Yaqob on Large map and Normal speed:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=473763

Sun Tzu Wu

I forgot to mention how I got the prerequistes for Paper --> Education --> Gunpowder:

1. Beeline Writing through Animal Husbandry (Zara has Hunting)
1. Alternative: Mysticism --> Polytheism --> Priesthood --> Writing to allow earlier start of The Oracle while researching Writing
2. Build Creative Library ASAP.
3. Hire 2 Scientists
4. Oracle Theology (at least one Gems or Gold Mine or other source of commerce might be needed; Marble nice to have, but not required).
4. Alternative: Oracle Civil Service (First Great Scientist bulbs Mathematics; research Code of Laws rather than Masonry and Monotheism; Marble not needed; Good chance of being beaten by AI).

Sun Tzu Wu

Since the OP asked: In my rather poorly played Zara Diety Small Quick game, Gunpowder was completed by turn 93 (AD 590). With some optimization, turn 80 (AD 200) should be easy to achieve. Even turn 70 (BC 200) should be possible, especially with more early cottages.

BTW, in my opinion, avoiding Pottery costs too much just to be able to bulb Gunpowder. I would slowly build up research rate with developing cottages plus progressively bigger Great Scientist Farms, so that Gunpowder can be completed in 5-10t. Not being able to build Cottages will likely cause much more than just 10 turns of delay.

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu said:

BTW, in my opinion, avoiding Pottery costs too much just to be able to bulb Gunpowder. I would slowly build up research rate with developing cottages plus progressively bigger Great Scientist Farms, so that Gunpowder can be completed in 5-10t. Not being able to build Cottages will likely cause much more than just 10 turns of delay.

Sun Tzu Wu

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You might be able to cottage this capital, but there isn't really a good alternative Great Person farm location nearby. So I decided to run specialists in the capital early and therefore giving up pottery was only a matter of the granaries, not cottages. I am now sitting on 2 Great Engineers (only 10% Great Engineer chance!) and will be happy to use them in some meaningful way towards the end techs. Nevertheless, I am confident that you will finish this map more efficiently than I am and look forward to seeing how you accomplish that.

Brennus.Quigley said:

You might be able to cottage this capital, but there isn't really a good alternative Great Person farm location nearby. So I decided to run specialists in the capital early and therefore giving up pottery was only a matter of the granaries, not cottages. I am now sitting on 2 Great Engineers (only 10% Great Engineer chance!) and will be happy to use them in some meaningful way towards the end techs. Nevertheless, I am confident that you will finish this map more efficiently than I am and look forward to seeing how you accomplish that.

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Sorry, I'm very busy with HoF Gauntlet Major #107 in which I will use delayed BW strategies for maps that favor it. The last good map I played on it was loaded with Seafood and Forests, so no match for this thread (this time).

I've been thinking that most deep GS bulbing strategies (with target Gunpowder for example) can utilize an early beeline to Literature for The Great Library (base 8 GS GPPpt) and National Epic (+100% GPP; helps most any Great Person deep bulbing strategy). Once The Great Library is secured, Aesthetics and Litrature can be traded to the AI, possibly gaining Alphabet and smaller technologies. Philosophical leaders like Suleiman can avoid this diversion since the Philosophical trait should suffice on its own (at least for GS/GM/GA generation).

Sun Tzu Wu

this shouldn't be here yet. It's largely unfinished without any kind of maps/saves (you can take inspiration in the Horse Archer Rush strategy article done by Vicawoo where he clearly demonstrates the case and possible paths with exact maps to follow).

The definition of "delay" is very vague too. You're citing what some GP's can bulb if you don't know BW, but how it correlates with the approach?

I miss analysis why
1) I should build some particular wonder (Mids for GE, GLH for GM)
2) don't cite the risks (no chops into quickening the wonder dangering the finish date and competition - you should cite typical dates for target difficulty level and compare how you would achieve the wonder yourself)
3) where is at least some kind of timeline? at what point you expect to build wonder, at what point you get the GP and at what point the bulb appears and what benefit at that point it actually offers.

it's very vague.

(typically you get Mids with stone cca T70 on normal speed with chops and sometimes whips, not sure how quickly you build it without this and stone in your ideal situation, Mids give 2 GE GPP, you get your Great Engineer T120 - I hope you realize it's something like 100 AD and thanks to that you can have Feudalism at 100 AD. Nevermind that on Deity and sometimes Immortal first AI to get Feudalism is 200 BC and sooner and you would be better off to build library, run GS's and bulb Philo with 2nd GS at T110 trade for feudalism... )

The only BW avoid I do regularly if the situation calls for is to secure commerce like Pottery/Writing depending on start. But no way I would wait with BW until T 120 like the Mids->GE strategy would suggest.

I don't like when magically we switched for couple of last posts into quick speed. The case should be DEFINED PRECISELY THEN.

We compare Standard/Normal speed strategy or Huge/Marathon or Small/Quick?
What is the case here?

edit:
here is an example of game where team couldn't selftech BW due to enforced limitations http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=461171 it's on Monarch though.
Not sure now when they traded for BW, I run shadow of the game with same limitations and have to say it was very crippling.
I actually didn't have that much of problem with expansion, but the lack of slavery for whipping monuments, libraries and chopping hills to mine them was very crippling for overall production of empire. I couldn't trade for BW as soon as them I remember, since the AI's weren't cooperating.

Another thing being with lack of bronze working I even didn't need the workers lol, since I very quickly run out of tasks.

Sun Tzu Wu said:

Very good point about chopping being nerfed by Quick speed which takes three turns for a Worker to chop a forest which is no different than Normal speed, but the Hammer is only 2/3 that of Normal speed. I've always thought that a Quick speed chop should be only 2/3 to scale with the # of hammers the chop provides. Unfortunately, Civ IV computes this # as 201/100 which rounds up to the nearest integer value which is 3, even though 2 would be much closer to being "correct".

Excellent point about organic hammers being more important for Quick speed. As you suggest, a city can eventually generate enough organic hammers to build a Chariot, Immortal or War Chariot in a single turn (20 Hpt).

Sun Wu Tzu

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It should be noted that while chops are nerfed on Quick speed, whips are buffed.

Not only is the whip anger timer rounded down to 6 turns (60% of 10 turns), but the food growth thresholds is also rounded down. So hell no will I avoid slavery if I can't get away with it.

I could see delaying BW a few dozen turns becoming useful in some cases, but delaying it until Liberalism? Maybe I'm underestimating the tech pace of Diety games, but it sounds absurd. I could have built a half dozen more workers or settlers using BW (all of whom will snowball and pay back the investment beyond that of a mere 20-30 hammers), or entire wonders, using BW. It's not like other things have better opportunity costs.

I've been reading all of the posts here. I have to say Brennus, I honestly don't think your strategy is viable on almost all maps. On difficulties like Immortal and Deity, not researching BW means you are probably going to get boxed in (more so than normal).

However, this strategy COULD be a lot more powerful in multiplayer depending on how early you can get it. Longbows will be pretty awesome if you can get them very early and will protect you from a lot of hassle I'd imagine.

Edit: I'd also like to see an example of this as well. How early can you get Feud? What will you actually do with it? What if you are on continents? You mention opening up the path to CS, but ideally, you want to get Astro ASAP on those maps to see how advanced the other continent is. Trade routes and tech trading with the other continent will help a lot more than early Feud. Astro requires Calendar, Optics, Compass, IW (thus requiring BW)

Hell no. The time between otherwise getting BW and slingshotting Feudalism is a massive window of vulnerability for someone to march into your land and take all your stuff. Archers are not good enough, they'll just pillage everything they can, fork your cities, and you'll need 3 times as many archers to clear those axes off your land (and that's just on flatland).

Not to mention that while you're restricting yourself from BW, your opponents won't be and they'll use the hammer advantage to box you in. LBs might beat axes on the defence, but not on the attack.

Nick Carpathia said:

It should be noted that while chops are nerfed on Quick speed, whips are buffed.

Not only is the whip anger timer rounded down to 6 turns (60% of 10 turns), but the food growth thresholds is also rounded down. So hell no will I avoid slavery if I can't get away with it.

I could see delaying BW a few dozen turns becoming useful in some cases, but delaying it until Liberalism? Maybe I'm underestimating the tech pace of Diety games, but it sounds absurd. I could have built a half dozen more workers or settlers using BW (all of whom will snowball and pay back the investment beyond that of a mere 20-30 hammers), or entire wonders, using BW. It's not like other things have better opportunity costs.

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First of all you are overstating the whipping advantage at Quick speed. While you make a great point that whipping anger lasts only 6 turns at quick speed, there is little food advantage at Quick speed. One needs 24F to grow to Pop 3 on Normal speed and 16F on Quick speed; considering that a whip on Normal is 30 and on Quick it is 20H, neither has the advantage here (16/24 =20/30).

Sure whipping can be very efficient on Quick speed, assuming one has aound 6 Fpt excess or more coming in. However, at 0 Fpt to 2 Fpt, one may prefer to built things organically rather than whipping. In this case one can still build up population enough to produce 20 Hpt, enough to build a Chariot/War Chariot/Immortal unit each turn. At least in a low growth situation (2 Fpt or less), whipping down a city producing 20 Hpt organically would be inadviseable.

Also, to get just whipping (assuming few forests to chop) one still has to research Bronze Working and that has an opportunity cost of not being able to research something that is probably (fog of emipre building) more useful that Bronze Working (such as something that will provide extremely early Gunpowder and Nationalism via being 1st to Liberalism).

Sun Tzu Wu