"Beeline" for internet?

[jerVL/kg]

Why would Fiber Optics need both? Just pottery would be enough.

If someone would give it a try, may the following list help you

Unless I'm mistaken, Writing requires 2 out of 3 techs (Pottery, Animal Husb., Priesthood). Plus it's good to be able to see all those horses you will never be able to use.

I like the Civil Service path much better than Theology! With macemen, the Middle Ages just might be survivable.

As for steam power/plastics etc., that's a whole lotta extra techs and the whole point is to get to The Internet as fast as possible, so you can learn as many older techs as possible. (Thanks for posting that route, though...I knew I'd reached The Internet w/o Rocketry once.)

While Agriculture, Literature & Code of Laws may get you there faster, I think it violates the spirit of the challenge to acquire techs that lie outside the "beeline" path. (Besides, you can always "pop a hut" for Agriculture if you're really, really, really, really lucky!) Trading techs is indeed possible w/o Alphabet (as long as the other civ has it) but I think there should be a restriction that you may only trade for techs that are part of the beeline.

It might also be worthwhile to use an Industrious leader so you can build Wonders faster (esp. Oracle & Great Library, maybe Pyramids too.) Gandhi might be a viable choice.

Anyway, if I try this it will probably be on Warlord or below...just started playing this game and I'm only up to Noble so far, so Prince is right out!

 

[jerVL/kg]

it is strange how can be writing without alphabet...

Not really...lots of real-life languages don't bother with an alphabet, like Chinese.

 

[Adonias]

Ok, just for sh*ts and giggles I started a new game to see what techs would be required for The Internet. Elizabeth starts with Fishing & Mining, both of which are requirements; clicking on "Fiber Optics" gave me these techs in the order the game chose them:
<list>
Hmm, lotta important techs missing...like Agriculture, Archery, and Horseback Riding...no Priesthood

No alphabet

woops... overread a previous reply

 

[ekanata]

Just realize that fiber optics makes kremlin obsolete

 

[Mathemagician13]

So...I tried the "Al Gore Challenge." I fired up a game, continents/standard/noble, as Washington (I figured financial would help me speed along the tech tree, and then organized would let me have lots of commerce cities, so, meh).

The way the game progressed, was rather weird. Since the research tree was rather awkwardly chosen (such as, it bee-lined for mathematics, but put off masonry for as long as possible, so no aqueducts...why did I get mathematics again?) and resulted in not being able to hook up resources / cities til waaaay late. Lucky for me, I had some iron on a river connected to my capital, so once I finally got around to research iron working, I overpowered Isabella and claimed the continent as my own. From here, it was a runaway victory, as I had commerce cities everywhere, and a continent to myself, and I was buying off anyone that landed there.

What I want to comment, though, is the general uselessness of this strat. It's hard to say you get 40 free techs out of it, because by the time you have the internet, all the early techs you bypass take just one turn to research. Indeed, I researched a new tech every turn until the internet was built, and then I didn't really gain too much because I outpaced the AI by quite a bit.

So, it was interesting to start, and then boring to finish

 

[mmmbeerz]

So I tried this strategy twice--both with Isa (fishing & mysticism)--on prince (I'm positive you'll get steam rolled in just about any non-handicapped level). I see that others have suggested starting with "other techs", so you might have better luck with better traits. Anyway, the first time I simply clicked the tech tree. The second time I printed out the list and picked my way through the list manually. Either way was somewhat foolish but kinda funny.

I found myself really missing agriculture, which as it happened, I got late when I stumbled across a hut in the second game.

I found that my ability to trade techs was somewhat limited by this strategy since I didn't have much breadth and my trading partners didn't always have the pre-reqs for the better valued techs, which severely limited my ability to trade well (without gifting).

Needless to say, manually seemed to work better and got me things in an order that let me maximize the early part of the game, but both didn't work so well. You're constantly under threat of losing the early game so I spent significant time building silly defensive units rather than being able to build city improvements.

A better player could probably do better than me; it seems a pretty futile strategy and certainly is NOT a good way to cheat.

 

[flytyer]

What I want to comment, though, is the general uselessness of this strat. It's hard to say you get 40 free techs out of it, because by the time you have the internet, all the early techs you bypass take just one turn to research. Indeed, I researched a new tech every turn until the internet was built, and then I didn't really gain too much because I outpaced the AI by quite a bit.

I agree 100%. it is the most useless "wonder" there is and the only one I never try to get.

 

[jerVL/kg]

So which techs did you guys get out of it?

 

[TeraHammer]

the alphabet is appearently considered as the superb way of writing stuff

 

[ButSam]

You can get Jet Fighters and Stealth Aircraft without researching Flight (an oversight in the tech tree, IMHO). Try it next time--you can research Composites without knowing Flight! I found this nugget last game when I was working toward an Apollo Victory, making a beeline for only the required techs for spaceship parts (first the one that lets me build the Apollo wonder, then Computers so I could build the labs, then no particular order for the rest). When I was about 3/4 of the way toward all spaceship parts, I didn't have Flight, and I noticed the enemy starting to build planes, so I wanted to gain the ability as well...and lo and behold, Composites was an option (so I took it)!

Sam

 

[fpstream]

it is strange how can be writing without alphabet... but I guess you would fail... unless tech trading is allowed.

You can have writing without the alphabet, pictographs, the most famous being hiroglyphics (spelling?), I'm going to try this game sometime soon. Prince, but have a somewhat standard research plan.

 

[cleverhandle]

You can get Jet Fighters and Stealth Aircraft without researching Flight.

No, you can't. You can research Composites without Flight, but the units themselves require Flight to build.

 

[Mercade]

Seems like this thread died out without anyone ever posting the link to the thread by jerVL/kg with the excellent recap story on how he took the challenge and posted the story of how it went. A well recommended read.