aelf
Ashen One
A while back a few people were discussing the strat of rushing to Musketeers with Napoleon by ignoring the Alphabet line of techs and going straight to Gunpowder. The aim was to get Musketeers and overwhelm the AI before they could respond with anything more than Longbowmen.
I tried this out but ended up no better than if I had gone the conventional route. The game tells me that the shorter route to Gunpowder is by Writing to Theology to Education, which overlaps a lot with the Alphabet route. I tried clicking the other route (Metal Casting to Guilds) and indeed it seemed more techs to research and a lot more turns.
The game was an Emperor standard continents with 8 players at Epic speed. My only deviation was researching both Pottery and Animal Husbandry (needed cottages and some health bonus for my flood plain cities), Mathematics (to open up Currency and Construction so that I could trade for them from the AI) and IW (had no copper). I am not sure if these are really deviations anyway (eg. can one research Education w/o Maths?).
I could trade for or extort the religious techs up to Monotheism. I found that I had to trade to keep my economy alive. I traded away even Education and Gunpowder (the latter only to my friends) so that I don't get left behind in tech. Anyhow, the fact that I can trade them goes to show how well the AI is keeping up at my tech route, despite their numerous deviations.
In the end, I got several Musketeers out to demolish some longbows. Several turns later, though, I started seeing enemy musketmen. So much for early Musketeers. I am still doing well with them, but it seems the success of the game thus far is much more the result of my extensive warring with pre-cats swords and axes. The familiar techs I researched and the results indicate how similar this approach is, in effect, to my usual emphasis on getting Alphabet, Currency, CoL and Civil Service first.
So, having failed in my objective, I need the proponents of the Musketeer rush strat to share their experience so that I can see where I've gone wrong. How do you do a proper, deadly Musketeer rush to catch an enemy still languishing in the Dark Ages?
I tried this out but ended up no better than if I had gone the conventional route. The game tells me that the shorter route to Gunpowder is by Writing to Theology to Education, which overlaps a lot with the Alphabet route. I tried clicking the other route (Metal Casting to Guilds) and indeed it seemed more techs to research and a lot more turns.
The game was an Emperor standard continents with 8 players at Epic speed. My only deviation was researching both Pottery and Animal Husbandry (needed cottages and some health bonus for my flood plain cities), Mathematics (to open up Currency and Construction so that I could trade for them from the AI) and IW (had no copper). I am not sure if these are really deviations anyway (eg. can one research Education w/o Maths?).
I could trade for or extort the religious techs up to Monotheism. I found that I had to trade to keep my economy alive. I traded away even Education and Gunpowder (the latter only to my friends) so that I don't get left behind in tech. Anyhow, the fact that I can trade them goes to show how well the AI is keeping up at my tech route, despite their numerous deviations.
In the end, I got several Musketeers out to demolish some longbows. Several turns later, though, I started seeing enemy musketmen. So much for early Musketeers. I am still doing well with them, but it seems the success of the game thus far is much more the result of my extensive warring with pre-cats swords and axes. The familiar techs I researched and the results indicate how similar this approach is, in effect, to my usual emphasis on getting Alphabet, Currency, CoL and Civil Service first.
So, having failed in my objective, I need the proponents of the Musketeer rush strat to share their experience so that I can see where I've gone wrong. How do you do a proper, deadly Musketeer rush to catch an enemy still languishing in the Dark Ages?