The Prespecified Research Path Challenge

T80ish update

Didn't like my starting location, but was first to find Lake Victoria (T14 map ruin), so 500 gold AND I settled it ASAP. T19 culture ruin so I open Honor. 3rd city goes to the coast to close off Russia, set up my assault, and pick up one more Silver and another unique lux (Silk).

A little while ago, Ashurbanipal came knocking in not-too-subtle fashion, but I sent him away with some Marble and an Embassy and he went after Captain Underpants instead.

I'll denounce him as soon as I hit Construction and maybe he will beat Russia to being my first victim.

It's T80ish now and I already made the mistake of not putting Bronze Working before Philosophy so I'll have to wait a while before I can build the middle city which use the Cocoa and will be necessary to stop barbs constantly spawning in the middle of my empire. To begin with, its good cuz I went Honor but once my army is up and sweeping the pangaea, I'll need to keep the homeland safe.

NC will be in a few turns, and probably Oracle too in my 2nd city. Oracle is a rare bonus for Honor starts, but that city has LV so can afford to work production tiles up the wazoo.

Build Order: Scout x3, Monument, Shrine, Archer, Settler, Granary, Libraries, Cargo Ships, NC
Expo BO: Monument, Archer, Granary, Library, Oracle
2nd Expo BO: Library, Monument, Granary

Religion: One With Nature...hmmm I can't remember the rest. Will update...

T143

Science is floundering around 126 BPT and I have a huge army, but I've had bad luck with diplo algorithms. I took out Catherine and set Ashurbanipal attacking the world, but after 10 turns he made peace and the world chain-DoW'd me (probably paid, but it shows that even one warmonger penalty can be enough to make everyone hate you). Ashurbanipal has less troops than me, and not as good, but his city arrangement makes it difficult to capture any of them. I might have to build a lot more and take some casualties to press on with capturing Assur.

I'd like to know how much you're prioritizing education compared to construction and machinery? Orders on starting techs depend largely on the terrain, but do you have a rough idea when you'd be hitting the medieval and renaissance techs?

Going with a fixed tech path is a lot harder as a warmonger if you don't win domination early....having to swing up the tech tree is a pain.

It seems like this is taking away a large portion of the game's strategy. In effect, making it a some what boring game.

would actually not be too hard, for a tech game for example you could go:

Animal
Pottery
bronze working
archery
writing
calender
Construction
Philosophy
Currency
Civil service
Education
Metal casting
astronomy
acoustics
Printing press
Architecture
scientific theory
Electricity (oxford radio)
Industrialization
Plastics
Sattelites
Nanotech
Particle phys
Globalization
Future tech

CraigMak said:

It seems like this is taking away a large portion of the game's strategy. In effect, making it a some what boring game.

Click to expand...

sure, for some. but as a choice constraint, it just changes the strategy dynamic. responding to it is where the fun could be had. playing outside of comfort zones is fun for some but frustrating for others.

it feels like a 'destiny' game. when you start, History must unfold in a specific way. it probably would be interesting to some of the RPers to do stories alongside these kinds of games. (the Prophecies have foretold of a Master Diplomat uniting the world, or somesuch.) it would maybe be briefly 'interesting' to some of the good/pro players, but not worth it beyond 1 or 2 tries for the sake of trying something 'new'.

I have played a couple of challenges like taking the techs in order - starting at the top of the first column and working my way down and then going column by column or random techs (rolling dice to determine the next tech. I'm thinking of doing an alphabetical challenge -taking the available tech that ranks highest alphabetically.

I dont think this is too hard. If I am playing a science game, its almost always the same path with several predetermined way points. Korea is the one to try for this.