I actually just read this through. Since you don't state anywhere BW is bad or not powerful I must apologize for my behaviour in one other thread.
Apology accepted. And your analytical, cordial response here is most welcome.
Situations in which you don't have food, forests or copper are pretty rare on maps I typically play
Sure. But 1) they do exist; and 2) I don't have that high of a threshold. Food can be used for things other than slavery (specialists, growing cities, building workers and settlers). Having and keeping some forests is just fine sometimes. They have early, mid, and late game benefits, not to mention the fact that they can always be chopped later in sync with a later surge. Granted, it is certainly attractive to chop forests from river banks early, especially of you're ready to work them, but not all starts have that in abundance or at all (lake starts). Chopping forests off of hills can be a good play for an increase to early production, but if you got a lot of bare hills to mine early you don't need to. I think we would both agree that a hill with a lumber mill and railroad is better than a hill with a mine and a railroad (same production, +.5 health). And then copper is a gamble. Of course, calculated gambling is fine sometimes, but if one is more interested in winning every map that is rolled without rerolling or reloading (as I am) then gambling is a bit less attractive than if one is just recklessly abandoning one civ after another and then sitting back and feeling good after leading only a portion of your civilizations to victory.
Sometimes you suffer an unexpected DoW. No matter how much food you have then, you whip and stay alive.
As I've already stated, slavery is attractive anytime you are in a desperate rush to whip up an army, whether that war be offensive or defensive in nature.
Although with good diplo this can be totally avoided and didn't happen to me for a while. But still.
Good diplomacy is a great way to avoid an early war. One can also protect oneself with archery based units, horse based units, elephant based units, catapults, and walls.
Your cities are growing beyond happy cap? WHIP! Never use halt growth. That generates too much entropy.
I would agree that you should only rarely halt growth by not working high yield food tiles. But there are several ways to raise the happy cap. If you are doing so, then having some forests raises the health cap as well. Since there are other things that can be done with the food (settlers and workers) one also doesn't need to go over the happy cap.
Sole opportunity of getting Axemen is sometimes enough for me to go BW. With aggressive leaders Axe rushes can work on deity too.
Yes, it is "sometimes enough". No disagreement. It's also a gamble.
Also, you focus on faster Lib while actually you want Lib as late as possible. And I usually want something big that requires BW. If I don't Lib MT, Steel, or Rifling, Lib is of little value to me. You say you save beakers to Liberalism, but you also lose lot of beakers of potential trades, far more than you save (Metal Casting, IW, Compass all easily traded for). I almost never self tech them. Ok, I play Deity so AIs tech fast, but on lower difficulties you usually want to Lib something really big like Railroad or AL and then you need BW and many more techs requiring BW.
Well, one doesn't want to reach Liberalism so late that someone else has already gotten it! But that would be a "gotcha" response. I'm sure your point is that you want to get the best free tech you can with it. So the further up the tech tree one goes, the more valuable the techs get. But also the earlier you get that free tech, the earlier you can take advantage of it. There's a balance to strike. Be the first to get it. Get a valuable tech. Take advantage of that valuable tech. As to your favorite 3 techs to lib: 1) it shows that you are warmongering in every game if high value non-military techs are not of interest to you. That's fine, but it's not my approach to do that every game. 2) One of your warmongering techs you like to lib (MT) doesn't require Bronze Working. 3) It is still possible to get your other two sooner (and in a more guaranteed manner) by holding off on Bronze Working. As you mention, Bronze Working, Metal Casting, etc. are easily traded for. Go ahead. After you've taken advantage of the efficient Liberalism bulb, there is no real reason to not start accumulating the metal line, specifically that which is needed for the Liberalism tech that you want. Enjoy your mid game chops that you are not used to. You should now also be a little more comfortable knowing that Liberalism is in the bag. I usually am. I imagine that Rifling or Steel with Liberalism are not guaranteed plays on Deity. If you've ever just lost Liberalism by a few turns, imagine how helpful that 1170 savings and direct Great Scientist bulb might have been. Could have got a least something of value for yourself and kept the AI tech leader from extending his or her lead.
You also mention GEs from wonders. Well, it if you want higher probability for getting that wonder, you chop and whip.
If I'm interested in Machinery or rushing a marble wonder, then I'll happily do that.
Building Mids without stone is just a bad play. You'll almost always do better with settlers/workers, infra or military. But you'll usually lose them without stone to someone anyway.
There must be some confusion here. I almost never go for an early stone wonder without stone. Wouldn't advise it on a higher difficulty level. I wrote in the article that "stone helps" but only used that wording because not everyone is playing on high difficulties. I can clarify that.
What I wanted to say is that going for BW is usually the most versatile approach
We disagree. I do not think that always going for Bronze Working early (and always trying to lib military techs) is versatile.
Your strategy seems viable to me on Great Plains map where you start in plains part with 3-4 plains cows and no other food, very close stone, horses for protection so you don't need metal units.
And that is just too "particular" start to have its own strategy.
At least you acknowledge that it could be used on one super ultra-cow map! But I don't need the ultra-cow map to find myself in a situation in which avoiding Bronze Working is attractive. I actually find it attractive on about 30% of all random terrain/random sea levels/fractal maps I roll. Most people call those types of starts "crap" however and never try to play them.
I wanted to satisfy my curiosity and rolled up a few great plains starts WBed in stone and tried for longbow / HA rushes on Immortal. Some observations:
1. Feudalism comes seriously late with this method even with PHIL or IND, so your window of opportunity is very small (we can safely assume that it's close to non-existent on Deity). (In comparison oracling Feudalism is not even that difficult to do if you spawn in the GP mineral region, does not deny you BW and leaves you much more time for preparations.)
2. Not being able to use emergency / opportunity whips can be fairly deadly. (But then again maybe the OP is much better at spawnbusting then me.)
3. You don't really need Rep because you don't have too much food so PS is the way to go if you landed the Mids for the GE. (I found it's virtually impossible to grow an engineer from the HG in time.)
So in fact I think if you want an early vassal then oracling Feud is better but if you want the Mids then even the Oracle --> MC --> GE gambit is occasionally faster then slow-building the Mids as you suggested. In general. But then again I'd really like to see a map that you deem appropriate for your proposed strategy.
I didn't play either scenario until Lib (in some I wouldn't have even got it first) but as a gut feel I'd say forgoing BW to get a "faster" Liberalism is only viable if you don't need BW / IW / MC and any other tech that require them (and that's a lot). What do you choose to Lib with this method usually?
I genuinely appreciate your efforts at simulations. Some thoughts: 1) I have no idea what this world builder map looks like or what strategy I would employ in it; 2) Oracling anything without marble is a gamble, in my experience the GE from the stone wonder is not (provided that you have stone and shoot for it); and 3) you're specifically interested in using Feudalism to vassal your neighbor (which sounds cool) but is a different goal than using it for defense and continuing up through Civil Service, or getting to Guilds before attacking. Nowhere have I written out an "early vassal" strategy, although I do find it intriguing (but that doesn't require Feudalism before the war starts, just once they are beaten up enough to give in). As to what I Lib, it depends on what my ultimate goal is and what is available before Liberalism is snagged by someone else. My technique does not mean that you cannot grab a tech that requires metal. Once you've used up that Great Scientist on Liberalism, you can then start to acquire metal techs rather easily, focusing specifically on those that link up with the tech that you want.
Moderator Action: Removed trolling discussion. Please report trolling, do not talk about it, only makes it worse.
I am looking from my perspective when I joined this forum. I didn't know who is who on the forum and started reading Strategy articles. Didn't know many strategies were misleading at least but got a feeling after I played more serious games.
Point is, people who just joined this forum think these articles have high authority. Giving them and author a second opinion from pretty solid player without flaming will probably make them evaluate whole this strategy better.
Analytical feedback from Deity players is welcome by me as well. But after hearing everything, I see no reason to abandon the argument. In fact, my winning percentage on Immortal jumped when I started viewing Bronze Working as an early option, not an early necessity. I'm of the opinion that the previous advice of "always get Bronze Working no matter what the map looks like" is more misleading for new players than my article. If they're going for Bronze Working they should understand WHY they are going for Bronze Working, and what the other options are that they are passing up to do so.
I think that the BW discussion is important to have every now and then.
As the best tech in the game, we can sometimes tend to take it abit too much for granted.
Obviously, I agree. And I think the constant rerolling of non-early Bronze Working maps in the club games is also an issue that should be looked at. It just reinforces one approach to the game.
I agree, especially as the author did not attack anyone or any of the generally favored tactics. It's just more of a very much 'niche strategy' he presented here. Besides I don't believe in glorifying only those tactics that work on Deity. Every level has its own set of possible strategies. (E.g. warrior rushing half the map on Noble is fine but will not work on Deity, whileas teching Aesthetics for trade purposes early on Noble makes no sense as the AI might only get Alpha around 500 AD etc etc.)
Thanks for the defense. I agree wholeheartedly with your two points. I would also note that I am effectively utilizing the substance of this article on Immortal, not Noble, although a Warrior rush does sound like fun. ;-).
Here is a thread where we explored the possible benefits of a GMerch CS-bulb.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=451710
iirc BW was avoided in that strategy.
We found nothing that made this strategy more compelling than a more orthodox version.
You are more than welcome to continue the study though.
Thanks for the link.
I'd be happy to shadow your next game then.
