ALC Game 15: Ottoman/Mehmed II

And Maths? The UB will be vital in making the GP farms all that they can be. Although, now that I think about it, Maths is a prereq for education, isn't it?

It's a prereq for CS, which means it's included under "research towards CS".
 
In regards to the comment regarding founding religions... do you think that if you hit them early and hard enough (with missionaries) you really need to hog all the religions? Don't they serve a purpose by dividing other civs into blocs and preventing their cooperation? Maybe it depends on how many missionaries you are willing to build?

I just depends on who founds what other religions. From what I've seen, the AI's tend to favor a religion they founded themselves over a foreign one.

So if, for example, you have Isabella founding Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism herself, then you probably don't need all the others yourself. There are few enough to go around that you can probably convert a few other civilizations to whatever is your religion of choice. Or convert yourself to their religion of choice.

On the other hand, if Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism have all been founded by 3 different leaders, then you've got 3 natural blocs formed already. If those leaders happen to be religious kooks like Isabella and/or Brennus, then you have 3 blocs that will hate each other passionately. If you let them found 2 more religions on their own soil, you're just going to see even more splintering.

So at this point we don't know, but I would argue that founding religions ourselves increases the chances that we'll find a bloc of 2 or 3 Hindu (for example) leaders that we can bring over to our side. Letting the AI found the remaining religions increases the chances that we'll find a complete diplomatic mess where everyone hates everybody else.

Since founding the religions also plays into the cultural victory (which I think is probably the easiest and surest path at this point), I'm all for that. Philosophy is on the path to Liberalism too, but Theology would be a diversion if we went for it.
 
My problem with that is we need techs like Iron Working, Maths, Currency and Calendar before beelining to Liberalism.

I think there is enough time to research all those techs without problems.

If we have time to generate only three GS (philo/paper/edu), why don't we research other techs for a while and delay lightbulbing, if we are then able to get 4th GS in time? Probably we reach the Liberalism not many turns later, as benefits of other techs (currency?) help our empire and give us a little bit more beakers

In my opinion it makes more sense to spend 20 turns for currency and then lightbulb rest of the education, than simply research 20 turns for education.
 
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On the other hand, if Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism have all been founded by 3 different leaders, then you've got 3 natural blocs formed already.

In one of my last games every player (me + 6 AIs) founded a religion and adopted it. I was powerful enough to adopt my religion but I tell you, switching to Free Religion was a relief. :)

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In one of my last games every player (me + 6 AIs) founded a religion and adopted it. I was powerful enough to adopt my religion but I tell you, switching to Free Religion was a relief. :)

</end derail>

This is not off-topic as far as I'm concerned. It's another reason for Liberalism to be an attractive target, for the FR civic. I played an isolated game once where all the other civs were Buddhist and I was the lone Confucian heathen who was pursuing a cultural win and was therefore low in power too. :eek: FR was a blessing, if you'll excuse the oxymoron. ;)
 
What if an AI suddenly lands on your shores with a huge stack? You never know when you might meet them and they could pounce quickly if they are aggressive.

To be honest, I've never actually seen an AI land anything resembling a "huge" stack. ;)

But mostly, the discussion is centering on the short/mid-term strategies involved in an isolated start. And vormuir's right, that in the short-term, the AI won't have more than 2-4 units (galley, then galleon) to land for a time. And one of those will likely be a settler, at least at first. So for the near future, all we need is enough military to prevent barbs from thrashing us.
 
It got eerily quit around here.... is everyone just following the spoiler thread now?
 
As I suck on isolated starts I will be interested to see how our champion manages to stay with the tech pace. I imagine there will be some aggressive trading when the out-of-towners start coming around. I play (and lose) at Prince and I'm amazed at how everyone here seems to be convinced that Liberalism is still a possibility. I have never come close when isolated. I know I will learn something (as always) from this game.
 
It got eerily quit around here.... is everyone just following the spoiler thread now?

I just don't have any more constructive input ... I'm waiting for the next installment.

I looked at the spoiler once. It's boring ... there's something to be said about giving it up on the first post ...

... if you know what I mean. ;)
 
I'm amazed at how everyone here seems to be convinced that Liberalism is still a possibility.

FWIW, I'm not entirely convinced that it is still a possibility, but I am convinced that whether or not we get there first, that's a good general direction to head. The reward for success is high, and the cost of failure is minimal if we're going for a cultural win.
 
It got eerily quit around here.... is everyone just following the spoiler thread now?

I just need to post the next round, which I'll do tonight (I played through it last night, then it was bed time for little Sisiutils).
 
FWIW, I'm not entirely convinced that it is still a possibility, but I am convinced that whether or not we get there first, that's a good general direction to head. The reward for success is high, and the cost of failure is minimal if we're going for a cultural win.

Or Diplomatic, or Space Race. Free Speech will help with the CE, and Representation (just a few techs away) is vital for a SE. Plus, it may give us a tech or two that is tradable, letting us catch up an era or two. I wonder if he can win this game bypassing Rifling and Military Tradition entirely?
 
Being isolated, I have to agree with taking a shot at liberalism if only for the civics unlocked on that path and for the benefits of education on research.

Even if Sisiutil doesn't make it, he needed to go that way anyhow. I do think that is essential to get a couple of scientists to help out with the expensive techs (education).
 
The problem will be trying to combine liberalism beeline with rex. If you want to build settlers fast your high food cities will be producing settlers not great people; if you rex you have increasing maintenance costs which slows down research (and you can't lightbulb all the techs required). If you don't rex you have more barbarians to annoy you.

It will be interesting to see how Sisiutil balances this equation.
 
"How" or "if"? :(

Hi Sisiutil et al.,

This is my first post to the ALC threads. They're all entertaining reads & instructive to boot.

You might consider getting Monarchy, cottage spamming the capital, revolt to HR & Bureaucracy, and using units on MP duty so the city can get to the health cap. Essentially, the capital would be carrying the rest of the empire both financially & scientifically until the rest of the empire can grow & build/whip some infrastructure. Mehmed is Organized, so you do get a break on civic upkeep & cheap Courthouses to offset some of the costs of REX. As the HR/Bureaucracy CE capital is coming into its own, you'll want to shift Settler & Worker spamming duties onto another city so the capital can grow as fast as possible as well as build needed infrastructure.

As far as the Liberalism race, if you generate GSs (and not any GPs), you can still pull it off. I would save GSs for lightbulbing Education & Liberalism itself, but not Paper, because the overflow from bulbing Paper doesn't seem to roll over to Education. Also bear in mind that you'll need to research things like Sailing & Optics (I think) to unlock the Paper-Education-Liberalism line for GS lightbulbing.

Good luck with the next round. Isolated starts are tough.
 
Welcome, Traiano!

A couple of points:
- lightbulb overflow never carries over to the next tech
- here is the list of great people tech preferences: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952 ; lightbulbing Liberalism itself is pretty hard with a GS, but Education is easy, no need to research anything before (you'll already have writing and math); so either GS on Paper + two GSs on Education (lose some beakers, but that's life), or Academy in the capital and GS on Edu, or combinations of this are the best ways

Sisiutil, don't forget you can build research directly. With a lot of small cities you can actually have a decent tech rate as long as you have a food source per city. I think cottages will be too slow to mature in most cities anyway, so food + production of research + scientists might be the way to go. I really don't think either beelining for Astronomy or wanting to take over with Janissaries will be possible. If you're lucky the AIs will find you before you get Liberalism and you'll trade to make Astronomy available.
 
Is the Liberalism beeline worth a major discombobulation? You get one free tech, usually Nationalism, and I don't see that as a particularly critical tech to get early here. So, basically, it's just bonus research. Offhand, I'd guestimate that having Monarchy during the runup to Liberalism would generate more commerce via larger cities. Is early Free Speech all that critical? How many towns do people have by the time they score Liberalism? I generally don't seem to have many.
 
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