stefista
Chieftain
Reading these forum threads about muskets, I can tell that despite popular misconconception, they can completeky own. The trick is to have them early enough to really use them, and to really use them against medieval units.
Look at the synergies: Ottoman Janissary has bonuses vs archery, mounted and meelee (I.e. Older, weaker units); Ethiopian Oromo has free drill promos (for not taking as much damage when mopping up older, weaker units); French musketeer has 2 moves (for quickly attacking older, weaker units); Celtic Dun gives free guerrill promos (again, for quickly attacking older, weaker units in hill cities). Even without a musket UU or a UB synergy, its a unit with a higher base strength than anything from before except knights, which ignores walls and castles, and for which no earlier unit has a strong counter.
In short, muskets and musket UUs are great when you can get them early. This post is about trying to find out how early you can possibly get them. And I don't just want to win liberalism and take gunpowder when everyone else has knights, no...I want it way earlier.
Now, researching deep down the tech tree in Civ IV is not usually a worthwhile endeavor because it quickly becomes apparent that you have to have a broad base of abilities in each era before you can gerenate the beakers to learn the next, but in the early game, bulbs and the Oracle represent a way around this.
Muskets require gunpowder and do not require any resource. Gunpowder requires Guilds or Education. These correspond to two short tech paths (and many long ones).
To go via Education:
Research writing, mathematics, and all the religious techs up through priesthood and monotheism.
Now a great prophet will bulb theology.
Oracle paper, two great scientists will bulb education.
Now manual research gunpowder.
To go via Guilds:
Get religious techs through monotheism and priesthood.
Get Bronze working, Iron Working, and metal casting.
A great prophet will bulb monarchy if you don't have writing, so bulb, research or Oracle Monarchy.
Get writing.
Now, provided that you do not have mathematics, successive great engineers will bulb machinery, feudalism, guilds, and gunpowder.
I have not had enough time to play enough games to get this to work by either method. What I have figured out is what doesn't work.
On the first path, manual research of education after the first education bulb is likely to simply be two slow without currency or code of laws. I am close to concluding that the education path is infeasible, even with many great scientists (and I discuss below how to get them) because there are two many gaps in the tech path where a bulb is unavailable do the order of preferences or the type of great person required and it is too slow to do manual research without a broader tech base.
On the second path, what doesn't work is to try to chop out the pyramids quicklu to start producing great engineers...the 'mids take a lot hammers, and by the time you get them and start making GPP, time has already adavanced significabtly.
So I have concluded that the gunpowder gambit has to mean beelining metal casting right from the get-go. This works best on a start with grain resources because you can use agriculture as your first worker tech as your path to pottery, which is a prereq for metal casting.
You can then chop/whip out forges in every city (shoot for 4-5 cities) and start getting GPPs. If each city starts running an engineer shortly after the last to start, then you can start a pipeline in which each successive great engineer comes out almost as quickly as the first one. It also possible to do this with scientists via libraries or priests via temples if you can get a religion. For this gambit, artists and merchants are off the table because we can't afford to go get drama or currency, not just because of research time, but because getting those techs would mess up the bulbing preferences.
I wonder if there are any threads out there on this type of great person pipelining as compared to a single GP farm.
So to get gunpowder quickly, you need about 4-6 great engineerts. Each bulb will be a bit short of completing tech, so you can either bulb again or finish manually. The only requirement to keep in the back of your mind is that you can't get mathematics or your great engineers will want to bulb construction and then engineering.
The beauty of this method is that you get a single kind of great person and you get it from a specialist through a building and not froma wonder. This means that you needn't be thje first to metal casting, but you probably will because it's not usually a priority, and that you can generate GP in multiple cities. You can also turn the GPP off, if necessary to manage production.
Also, the only sort of expensive tech here that can't be bulbed by a great engineer is Monarchy, which can be bulbed via a great prophet, realistically oracled, or researched manually within a reasonable time.
Again, I have not tried enough games to get this to really work. I have done alternative methods and found unexpected problems. I would appreciate hearing what the community has to say both about bulbing one's way to gunpowder in the BCs and about pipelining great people versus concentrating the points in a GP farm.
Look at the synergies: Ottoman Janissary has bonuses vs archery, mounted and meelee (I.e. Older, weaker units); Ethiopian Oromo has free drill promos (for not taking as much damage when mopping up older, weaker units); French musketeer has 2 moves (for quickly attacking older, weaker units); Celtic Dun gives free guerrill promos (again, for quickly attacking older, weaker units in hill cities). Even without a musket UU or a UB synergy, its a unit with a higher base strength than anything from before except knights, which ignores walls and castles, and for which no earlier unit has a strong counter.
In short, muskets and musket UUs are great when you can get them early. This post is about trying to find out how early you can possibly get them. And I don't just want to win liberalism and take gunpowder when everyone else has knights, no...I want it way earlier.
Now, researching deep down the tech tree in Civ IV is not usually a worthwhile endeavor because it quickly becomes apparent that you have to have a broad base of abilities in each era before you can gerenate the beakers to learn the next, but in the early game, bulbs and the Oracle represent a way around this.
Muskets require gunpowder and do not require any resource. Gunpowder requires Guilds or Education. These correspond to two short tech paths (and many long ones).
To go via Education:
Research writing, mathematics, and all the religious techs up through priesthood and monotheism.
Now a great prophet will bulb theology.
Oracle paper, two great scientists will bulb education.
Now manual research gunpowder.
To go via Guilds:
Get religious techs through monotheism and priesthood.
Get Bronze working, Iron Working, and metal casting.
A great prophet will bulb monarchy if you don't have writing, so bulb, research or Oracle Monarchy.
Get writing.
Now, provided that you do not have mathematics, successive great engineers will bulb machinery, feudalism, guilds, and gunpowder.
I have not had enough time to play enough games to get this to work by either method. What I have figured out is what doesn't work.
On the first path, manual research of education after the first education bulb is likely to simply be two slow without currency or code of laws. I am close to concluding that the education path is infeasible, even with many great scientists (and I discuss below how to get them) because there are two many gaps in the tech path where a bulb is unavailable do the order of preferences or the type of great person required and it is too slow to do manual research without a broader tech base.
On the second path, what doesn't work is to try to chop out the pyramids quicklu to start producing great engineers...the 'mids take a lot hammers, and by the time you get them and start making GPP, time has already adavanced significabtly.
So I have concluded that the gunpowder gambit has to mean beelining metal casting right from the get-go. This works best on a start with grain resources because you can use agriculture as your first worker tech as your path to pottery, which is a prereq for metal casting.
You can then chop/whip out forges in every city (shoot for 4-5 cities) and start getting GPPs. If each city starts running an engineer shortly after the last to start, then you can start a pipeline in which each successive great engineer comes out almost as quickly as the first one. It also possible to do this with scientists via libraries or priests via temples if you can get a religion. For this gambit, artists and merchants are off the table because we can't afford to go get drama or currency, not just because of research time, but because getting those techs would mess up the bulbing preferences.
I wonder if there are any threads out there on this type of great person pipelining as compared to a single GP farm.
So to get gunpowder quickly, you need about 4-6 great engineerts. Each bulb will be a bit short of completing tech, so you can either bulb again or finish manually. The only requirement to keep in the back of your mind is that you can't get mathematics or your great engineers will want to bulb construction and then engineering.
The beauty of this method is that you get a single kind of great person and you get it from a specialist through a building and not froma wonder. This means that you needn't be thje first to metal casting, but you probably will because it's not usually a priority, and that you can generate GP in multiple cities. You can also turn the GPP off, if necessary to manage production.
Also, the only sort of expensive tech here that can't be bulbed by a great engineer is Monarchy, which can be bulbed via a great prophet, realistically oracled, or researched manually within a reasonable time.
Again, I have not tried enough games to get this to really work. I have done alternative methods and found unexpected problems. I would appreciate hearing what the community has to say both about bulbing one's way to gunpowder in the BCs and about pipelining great people versus concentrating the points in a GP farm.
but once again a classic one liner 
