Anyone use the Theology slingshot strat?

I can pull off a theology slingshot roughly 95% of the time on monarch. I play a hybrid wonder/religious economy. Early theology guarantees me the AP ( & christianity obviously ), since theology opens up paper ( & is relatively cheap ) I also can snag the U. of Sancor easily. I play as Ramsees so the religious building are cheap to build & give a huge bonus +4 hammers +2 reasearch per city.

If I happen to pop a scientist I can use him to bulb education to get to gunpowder even faster. If no scientists pop I just have to research it manually but with all the religious building bonuses (research and production ) turning all my cities into powerhouses research time isnt too bad.

Once I get gunpowder I can steam roll every civ on my continent. My last game most civs on my continent had yet to even get longbows by the time I had my musket army.

The only downside to this strat is you are very vulnerable to an early rush so if you get Shaka as your neighbor you should prob change plans

oh I forgot to add since you are going down such a strict research path you can trade theology & paper for most of the important techs you skipped. ( dont trade education till you have liberalism in the bag )

Yes, I either sling or bulb it any time I want to make *sure* I get the AP.

I attempt the Oracle->Theology slingshot in probably 95% of my games (Prince difficulty), succeeding the vast majority of the time. Occasionally I'll wait a little too long to build the Oracle, and some industrial AI with marble will beat me to it. The way I tend to play it is almost always the most beaker heavy technology I can choose, not to mention that it guarantees that you found Christianity, and gives you extra experience points for switching to theocracy. I usually build the AP as well, but that tends to be situational. Good to hear that it works on higher difficulty levels, as I thought it might not work on levels higher than Prince. Of course I thought the same thing when I was playing on Noble.

Impressive.

I usually build the Oracle as soon as I possibly can and get Code of Laws as the free tech. Some of the same benefits of course but not as critical as gettting the longbows.

Do you go for preisthood to open the Oracle right away or do you reseach bronze working first?

1. Worker techs for nearby improvements, bronzeworking if a lot of forest or you have a commerce resource that speeds tech.
2. Priesthood
3. Writing
4. Monotheism

Delay oracle until you have 3 and 4.

This isn't bad for military either, but I find it a little rough on higher difficulties .

I tend to research monotheism before writing, as there is a chance that you can discover Judaism as well, although the AI will often beat you by a few turns. It also helps to start building the Oracle before you finish writing, just make sure that you get writing before you finish. I like to keep a good 2-3 turn differential, just to make sure that I don't finish the Oracle a turn before I discover writing.

tuckerthecat said:

I can pull off a theology slingshot roughly 95% of the time on monarch. I play a hybrid wonder/religious economy. Early theology guarantees me the AP ( & christianity obviously ), since theology opens up paper ( & is relatively cheap ) I also can snag the U. of Sancor easily.

Click to expand...

I tried this last nite, started very good as Elizabeth and got 3 gold mines in BFC of London so my research was very fast. Slingshot was success but then I see that I would need like 20 turns for Paper and probably like 30 for Divine right after that, had idea to build Univ of Sancore and Spiral Minaret and build up economy on my religion. My question is do you go straight for Paper after Theology or you build up first and withold for this for couple of turns?

Ypu should get other techs first, and pretty much trade to catch up.
I do this EVERY time pretty much, and like the OP it works almost 90% of the time. Though I play as Mehmed so I can avoid worker techs and Construction. My tech path is:
1) Mysticism
2) Polytheism (with Hinduism about 8% of the time)
3)Masonry (For GW with my second city, which is up by now so I can not use military while doing this strategy).
4) Monotheism (With Judaism 80% of the time)
5) Priesthood (Duh)

Shh! I think they might nerf this if we talk about it too much but yes I've often dominated games on monarch by doing this, and have now been using the AP to completley wreak havoc on all my enemies by getting everyone to declare war, then crusing in to easy wins.

I prefer to bulb my way to Theology, actually, saving the Oracle for the Writing-Alphabet jump, which opens up trading faster as you don't have to research Monotheism yourself.

If we're on the topic of bulbing, the construction sling is pretty ridiculous too. Get an early library, run scientists, then make sure you have masonry and you can bulb math and take construction.

Why would you want to do this? Because elephants dominate the early game just as well as praetorians. SLIGHTLY weaker against cities (they don't get CR, but have the extra promo unlocked and can still get shock and whatnot), they also double as immensively powerful stack defense until muskets show up. Muskets! That's a long time.

Nothing stops a large stack of axes/cats/elephants until those muskets. Cats tend to die a lot to longbows though so be sure to promote carefully with the elephants and balance barrage vs CR on cats...usually you don't lose more than 1-3 cats/city even against fairly large garrisons even after longbows...before that it's just ownage.

I agree with that, too. Complete ownage. If I'm going for that, I Oracle Math then bulb Construction. Is it faster to bulb them both, though?

Roxlimn said:

I agree with that, too. Complete ownage. If I'm going for that, I Oracle Math then bulb Construction. Is it faster to bulb them both, though?

Click to expand...

Doubtful, a 2nd GP would take a while that early on (especially pre-caste, even for philosophical). What bulbs construction, an engineer? I like to bulb math and oracle construction (reverse from you) as this is easily accomplished quickly via a scientist and writing is on the path to bulbing math. Hell, once you have priesthood/writing you can start on HBR right away, then go for construction after (this lets you get stables in place too).

Interesting. Very nice. It's always a bit chancy trying for the Engineer and it always seems a waste to do Construction instead of Pyramids.

I guess my problem is getting the GP early enough that it finishes before the Oracle completes. I'm guessing Oracle second city, but start Library-GS on the capital before that? That's a pretty early and aggressive tech-up, I must admit. More aggressive than me, certainly.

My main problem in getting tech ups this early has always been the cost of these pachyderms. When you only have 4 cities at size 5, it's hard to get them out in enough numbers.

One of the things that was beaten into my head on immortal U is the importance of early great people. Even if you don't bulb or anything like that, you want the first GP early.

To put it another way, when I posted a save around 100-200 AD, DMOC asked what I was going to do (or had done) with my 2nd GP when I'd not yet popped one - big learning experience right there.

Now, on levels above monarch (possibly emperor with philosophical) you'd need a strong commerce start to oracle construction. An early tech path would be along the lines of:

1. Food improvement tech
2. Mining/Bronze working
3. Writing, through either pottery, AH, or priesthood depending on what kind of tiles you have (priesthood is fastest techwise, but you don't want to cripple yourself with a FP start or only livestock for food, so you'll have one of those possibly even before BW)
4. Whip or chop library, run scientists
5. Get to priesthood and put some chops into oracle (time it so that you get the GS earlier, but not too much preferably 1 turn)...research HBR while doing this but be sure to have masonry before doing so.
6. Bulb math and finish oracle.

It'd be pretty easy emperor and below if you have gems or something, although what AIs are in the game would be a factor (you can tell by where SH/great wall go).

Note that it isn't technically required to oracle anything if you want construction fast, for example from madscientists most recent RPC:



If you're not going for some exotic wonder nonsense, you still want an early GS though, and badly. Rusten said something along the lines of "you have to be disciplined to run those scientists early", and DMOC and others mentioned that they'll usually start towards one on their 2nd to 3rd cities. Uses vary, but more common than bulbing that early is an academy, or if you're settling with ridiculous aggression and tanking economy to claim valuable land, just settling the guy in the capitol.

A lot of players don't realize just how strong +75% science in the palace city with any appreciable commerce at all, even just a couple riverside cottages, can be. With a power commerce resource or flood plains?

I just tried this with Mehmed II on prince. I had gunpowder at about 1500, and had prebuilt a group of CR catapults to bombard defenses. I've heard of people getting gunpowder around AD 0, but I don't know how to do that. (WE/SSE on tiny tropical pangea?) Its 1670 now, and I'm moving through Ethiopia and Mexico with janissaries and cannons. I suspect my enemies are still a ways off from steel, but could get muskets soon. Still, I have the initiative and will press on until I carve out all the best land, then vassalize the both of them. Hoping I can get my first domination win on prince.

<edit>
Mission accomplished. Aztecs and Ethiopians vassalized.
</edit>

NarutoAvatarDBZ said:

Ypu should get other techs first, and pretty much trade to catch up.
I do this EVERY time pretty much, and like the OP it works almost 90% of the time. Though I play as Mehmed so I can avoid worker techs and Construction. My tech path is:
1) Mysticism
2) Polytheism (with Hinduism about 8% of the time)
3)Masonry (For GW with my second city, which is up by now so I can not use military while doing this strategy).
4) Monotheism (With Judaism 80% of the time)
5) Priesthood (Duh)

Click to expand...

Don't you need writing if you want Theology?

EDIT: Never mind. You get that while building the Oracle.

Magma_Dragoon said:

I just tried this with Mehmed II on prince. I had gunpowder at about 1500, and had prebuilt a group of CR catapults to bombard defenses. I've heard of people getting gunpowder around AD 0, but I don't know how to do that. (WE/SSE on tiny tropical pangea?) Its 1670 now, and I'm moving through Ethiopia and Mexico with janissaries and cannons. I suspect my enemies are still a ways off from steel, but could get muskets soon. Still, I have the initiative and will press on until I carve out all the best land, then vassalize the both of them. Hoping I can get my first domination win on prince.

<edit>
Mission accomplished. Aztecs and Ethiopians vassalized.
</edit>

Click to expand...

Very high or very low difficulties are best for tech pace (either through trades or just your bonuses).

1500 AD is pretty late for gunpowder, it's even kind of late for rifles unless you went something else first.

Make sure you're getting your first great scientist early (well before 1 AD), and make sure you get cottages up early for commerce sites. You can run an SE but it's actually harder that way IMO - just make sure to have a strong specialist site no matter what you do and the cottages can fuel research otherwise.

If you go into my spoiler here I had that tech rate with straight cottages (the rules didn't even allow me an academy). I had gunpowder around 700 AD, which isn't going to set any record but I didn't have much cause to pursue it before then honestly (elephants vs archers is a winning proposition, so I milked that until opponents had longbows). That said, it was accomplished without wonders and without bulbing anything but math, so it can easily be done quicker.

One of the fastest ways to gunpowder is just running a lot of scientists in a city (go literature, get great library in a strong food site, put national epic there, and run tons of scientists), or even just run pacifism and specialists and skip literature entirely. Once you've done the important whipping go caste and run those guys, pacifism should get you 2-4 great scientists in addition to the one used on an academy earlier. Bulb the lib path! If you wait to research machinery and backfill on compass you can even bulb liberalism itself, and education opens up gunpowder. Happy hunting.

Do note that in many situations an axe rush will take care of things just as nicely, but with janissaries you do have some potential if you can do all of this while still getting enough cities (not hard, it's a tradeable path and has CoL on it and whatnot). 8+ cities with jans can be pretty dangerous. Even more so if you take nationalism, self-research gunpowder, and draft them. All of this should easily be doable pre-1000AD but the GPP management has to be tight to get it much faster than that.

Completely agree! I'm actually a little surprised that you could do Emperor without knowing the importance of early GPs. I certainly couldn't get above Prince without them!

I discovered how important they were in a Pericles game, as Pericles is uniquely suited to leverage lots of very early great people just from Libraries. Creative + Philosophical does that remarkably well. In fact, I rather think that doing a Pericles demonstration on the Noble's club just for effect would be instructive to a lot of people. It was for me.