ChrisAdams3997
Prince
Playing a good game, and the tech lead is very promising. You will need to get some military production going before too long, though for now the AIs should still be happy to expand peaceably for a bit longer. I'll often use a similar strategy of going for imperial and CHOAM fairly quickly, but, as most should know by now, I play with tech trading off, which makes a big difference since you can't just trade for the other techs you really need early, you've got to break off of your big goals to get them. Gives you a different look at your priorities, and there is no such thing as a tech you never plan to research on your own .
That's really the aspect that makes this so different from my games. It's harder (with tech trading off) to build a large tech lead (or one at all) since you can't 'play the field' and opportunistically cherry pick technologies from AIs, something humans tend to do better than the AIs. Instead of outright trades of course, the tech diffusion from knowing civs with the tech you are researching becomes important, an effect that is strengthened by having open borders (this is why it's still important to keep good diplo relations, besides the motivation to not get dogpiled and to trade resources). Unfortunately this number isn't shown in the interface and is something most players don't know how it works (something I might improve upon).
I also tend to see a stronger Tlelaxui. They still have the negatives of less open borders so less trade income and tech diffusion, but they aren't crippled by being left out of the tech trading game and can be quite scary if they get a military in place early enough (for the inevitable wars they'll be fighting).
It's really something I encourage players to try in some of their games as it gives a really different feel to the experience and a little more challenge.
I also wonder if you've noticed that the AIs are less likely to have explored the whole map by the end of the early game . This might have been more of a problem on epic/marathon games where there are more turns for units to explore, but the AI pumped out so many explore units from vanilla AI code (where they are limited in what they can explore early), it was ridiculous. This meant lots of hammers wasted on worm food in the early game, and a very asymmetric behavior to how humans tend explore (no-one tries to explore the whole map in the first 100 turns).
Oh, and if it makes you feel any better, I've forgotten to switch civics after researching feudalism plenty of times (even after beelining it mostly for them )
That's really the aspect that makes this so different from my games. It's harder (with tech trading off) to build a large tech lead (or one at all) since you can't 'play the field' and opportunistically cherry pick technologies from AIs, something humans tend to do better than the AIs. Instead of outright trades of course, the tech diffusion from knowing civs with the tech you are researching becomes important, an effect that is strengthened by having open borders (this is why it's still important to keep good diplo relations, besides the motivation to not get dogpiled and to trade resources). Unfortunately this number isn't shown in the interface and is something most players don't know how it works (something I might improve upon).
I also tend to see a stronger Tlelaxui. They still have the negatives of less open borders so less trade income and tech diffusion, but they aren't crippled by being left out of the tech trading game and can be quite scary if they get a military in place early enough (for the inevitable wars they'll be fighting).
It's really something I encourage players to try in some of their games as it gives a really different feel to the experience and a little more challenge.
I also wonder if you've noticed that the AIs are less likely to have explored the whole map by the end of the early game . This might have been more of a problem on epic/marathon games where there are more turns for units to explore, but the AI pumped out so many explore units from vanilla AI code (where they are limited in what they can explore early), it was ridiculous. This meant lots of hammers wasted on worm food in the early game, and a very asymmetric behavior to how humans tend explore (no-one tries to explore the whole map in the first 100 turns).
Oh, and if it makes you feel any better, I've forgotten to switch civics after researching feudalism plenty of times (even after beelining it mostly for them )