Beelining to Gunpowder

[Mutineer]

Math-Currency-Col-CS-Paper- Education-Gunpowder is the most economically valible way to Gunpowder, but with Philosofical leader Religious pach could be attempted.

Monotheism-Theology-Paper-Education-Gunpowder.

You can get there by spending 3 GS, 1 on paper, 2 on Education why actially researching soomething else.

That is fastest way posible and could be valible for some leaders in some situations.

 

[Andrei_V]

Spending 2 GS on Education seems like a waste of beakers to me. A single GS gives 1500+ beakers, while Education is worth 1800, an excess of 1200+ beakers from the second one is lost.

Even spending a GS for Paper is not that great, since it's worth 600 beakers -- 900+ are lost.

Perhaps a better way is to spend only one on lightbulbing Education, and build a couple of Academies (or settle as SS) with the other two.

EDIT: No, not that bad, sorry. I forgot about modifiers. To say, on Immortal Standard size map it would be 1.25 * 1.30 * 1800 = 2925. Good for 2 GS.

 

[Mutineer]

On deity Education cost execly 2 GS.
Cost of tech raise, but GS bring the same amount of beakers.
Paper case you losing like 20% of max.

 

[Wodan]

Rapid obsolesence is only half the problem with muskets. They just aren't very good at anything. Attacking cities? They can't get CR promotions, so maces are at least as good. Defending cities? I guess they're marginally better than longbows, but I'm not going to beeline for a defensive unit. Fighting in the field? Knights are more powerful and mobile. About their only advantage is that there is no specific counter unit. So if you need to battle enemy stacks that contain both Pikes and Crossbows, I guess they're good at that.

Attacking cities: Cover works just as well as CR. AIs aren't going to have Maces yet.

Also, Combat I, II, etc, add 0.9 strength. City Raider I would add 1.2 vs a Longbow (.2*6). So it's not that far off.

Sometimes I think people have City Raider on the brain. There are other promotions, you know.

Defending cities: As you say, who cares. The whole point of beelining is not to be defensive.

Fighting in the field: Knights are not more powerful. Their strength of 10 vs the 9 of musketman is more than offset by the +100% spearmen and pikes get, and the +25% of Formation. OTOH, they are more mobile, I agree. However, again, the point here is to attack cities, thus my force is going to be limited to the speed of my seige weapons, so Knights' mobility is negated there.

Currency, Code of Laws, Civil Service and Education will all definitely accelerate your research. More trade routes, lower upkeep, commerce bonuses and beaker bonuses are all cumulative.

Currency is a slight help. You have 3-5 cities, and an extra trade route is +1 gold each, so that's an extra 3-5 gold. Woo-hoo.

Civil Service I don't think helps at all because I think Feudalism is more advantageous in this situation than switching to Bureaucracy. The mere anarchy in the switch will cost more than you get for quite a while.

Education, I disagree. Universities are expensive. They do not belong on a list of "How to rush X". Unless X happens to be something like Modern Armor.

I'd much rather take the former route to gunpowder and have courthouses etc so you can actually afford to hold all of the cities you can take.

Courthouses are a help, but not really in your core cities. Where you need them are in the newly conquered cities. That is, you want courthouses after your musketman war of conquest.

Knights with Pinch (easy to get with Barracks + Stable) kill Muskets almost everywhere.

Pinch isn't available until the AI also has Gunpowder.

The problem with muskets is that they're obsoleted by Grenadiers, who are only 1-2 techs away.

They are not only 1-2 techs away, if you went the Guilds route to get Gunpowder.

There's almost no chance you make it into the midgame without mathematics and currency. There's really no good reason to beeline muskets if you don't already have construction to help you build a catapult army.

If you want a cat army, then there's no good reason to beeline anything except Construction.

A cat army, however, results in a lot of dead suicide cats. It's fairly expensive, all things considered. If, however, you want a Musketman army, with a few cats to knock down city walls, then there are two ways to go about it. One is get Construction first, and build a couple of cats while you research Education (etc) and Gunpowder. Two is to get Gunpowder first (through Guilds), and build an army of Musketmen while you research the cheap techs to get Construction, at which point you have only to build 4-5 cats and off you go.

Wodan

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

Just bookmarked this thread. Definately want to try this out my next run with Mehmed or Napoleon. Thanks guys.

 

[anglosaxon]

Beelining to Gunpowder is pointless, unless you are French. Guns only become important with Rifling, which requires a much research commitment.

 

[aelf]

After so long, I'm surprised that the complaint "Chemistry is only one or two techs away" still makes its appearance. That is purely your fault. If you didn't beeline to Gunpowder, this is probably what happens. So you're in effect arguing that a strategy is useless because you didn't apply that strategy.

And let's take things in context. Why are we beelining to Gunpowder? This thread was spawned from the UU thread because there we were talking about musket UUs (Musketeers and Janissaries), which are very valuable if you get them early. The whole issue may have taken on a larger dimension, with the merits of normal musketmen thrown into the debate, but I don't see why people would not agree that if you have musket UUs, it's a good idea to beeline to Gunpowder, which has the side effect of prolonging the life of your UUs.

 

[fugazi]

As Tokugawa or the Ottomans, I'd say it's pretty nice. Toku gets Combat 1 + Drill 1 + CD 1 for free and if you run vassalage and got barracks, you got a pretty kick ass standard musketman I'd say.

Janisaries are just sweet in general

 

[aelf]

Currency is a slight help. You have 3-5 cities, and an extra trade route is +1 gold each, so that's an extra 3-5 gold. Woo-hoo.

Civil Service I don't think helps at all because I think Feudalism is more advantageous in this situation than switching to Bureaucracy. The mere anarchy in the switch will cost more than you get for quite a while.

Education, I disagree. Universities are expensive. They do not belong on a list of "How to rush X". Unless X happens to be something like Modern Armor.

You're not evaluating things properly here. Bureaucracy (enabled by CS) is often very powerful because your capital usually accounts for a large share of your income. In the same way, a market (enabled by Currency) in your capital itself would make a difference. And a university (enabled by Education) in your capital and maybe in another core city or two can speed things up a little, so it's not entirely useless (we're talking about a stage of the game where Gunpowder can easily take 20 turns or more to research on Epic speed). Put all these factors (which multiply each other) together and you definitely get faster research speed on a tech route that takes fewer turns to get through anyway.

By the way, have you done an actual comparison to test it out? In my own test games in the past, I started off wanting to follow the southern route. However, seeing the number of turns it would have taken to get to Gunpowder, I wound up choosing the faster northern path.

 

[carl corey]

How about starting a Warlords "challenge" game about this? We could post the starting save of an Ottomans game and see how we can best make use of the Janissaries. That way someone who wants to focus on the Bureaucracy route can go that way and those who want Guilds can do that.

 

[cabert]

By the way, have you done an actual comparison to test it out? In my own test games in the past, I started off wanting to follow the southern route. However, seeing the number of turns it would have taken to get to Gunpowder, I wound up choosing the faster northern path.

there is some kind of comparison :
815 AD with the south route, by wodan
560 AD north route by Carl Corey

I know what I would choose

 

[cabert]

How about starting a Warlords "challenge" game about this? We could post the starting save of an Ottomans game and see how we can best make use of the Janissaries. That way someone who wants to focus on the Bureaucracy route can go that way and those who want Guilds can do that.

Make it "earliest date with 5 janissaries" and see DaveMcW bring those guys in 0 AD

 

[carl corey]

Good one. Anyway, I think there's room for an earlier date. As I said, I got lucky with the gold mines, but my Great Scientist strategy was probably not the best. Having the first one build an Academy might turn out even faster. And if you have lots and lots of food then getting Pottery to put down some cottages in addition to specialists would be even better.

One aspect I forgot to mention was that at times I built gold in my cities to keep the research going at 100%. That's an added bonus of getting Currency. I agree that the extra trade route won't make much of a difference, but building gold may make any city a viable one: lots of food = beakers from specialists, lots of production = gold production which leads to increased scientific output from the science cities.

 

[cabert]

one extra route per city, when you only have a few is like 3 to 5 commerce each
with 3 cities that's 9 to 15 base commerce
with bureaucracy and an academy in your capital, that's 10 beakers for your capital + 8 beakers around, which is +18 beakers per turn. After 500 turns it's 900 beakers = a free classic tech.

 

[Andrei_V]

Pinch isn't available until the AI also has Gunpowder.

Like I said, on high difficulty levels they get it soon enough.

In any case it makes more sense to get MC (450) -> Machinery (700) after CS rather than Paper (600) ->Education (1800) -> Gunpowder (1200). It can be done a lot earlier (1AD is quite possible on Prince), and you don't even need cats at this point, since you'll be fighting against Archers/Axes at best for a long while.

Attacking cities: Cover works just as well as CR. AIs aren't going to have Maces yet.

Elephants or even Horse Archers make the cities not so easy to take without CRs.

Sometimes I think people have City Raider on the brain. There are other promotions, you know.

That's probably because they tried a lot of different alternatives, including attacks with Combat II Muskets, and found CRII maces a lot better at that.

Currency is a slight help. You have 3-5 cities, and an extra trade route is +1 gold each, so that's an extra 3-5 gold. Woo-hoo.

Currency is a huge help provided that you did not ignore Bureaucracy. Just rush a Market in the capital, and it will pay for 3-4 conquered cities even before you rush Courthouses there.

Civil Service I don't think helps at all..

That's the whole point. With CS you get cheap Markets and Universities in the capital, since it adds 50% to both commerce and hammers, including whip/chop yields.

Education, I disagree. Universities are expensive.

In my 700 AD test game I rushed one in my capital 2 or 3 turns after Education for 3 pops (Bureaucracy + Org Religion = +75% more hammers), as far as I remember. Another one a few turns after for 4 pops.

Courthouses are a help, but not really in your core cities.

Sure. You build Markets there, not Courthouses.

If you want a cat army, then there's no good reason to beeline anything except Construction.

If you want maces/cats army, rush to maces and trade for Construction along the way. If you do it early, like by 500AD, you won't suicide any cats, just bombard the defenses, and let maces do the rest. They are very good at that. Once they get CRIII, you can fight CDII Longbows without prior suicidal cat attacks.

 

[Wodan]

After so long, I'm surprised that the complaint "Chemistry is only one or two techs away" still makes its appearance. That is purely your fault. If you didn't beeline to Gunpowder, this is probably what happens.

Who are you talking to, aelf? Me?

Also, by "beeline to Gunpowder" are you talking the Guilds beeline or the Education beeline? Or both?

It sounds like you're saying that Gunpowder is such a low priority (compared to other techs available at the same level or lower), that yes it "probably" is indeed the case that Chemistry is only 1 or 2 techs away.

So you're in effect arguing that a strategy is useless because you didn't apply that strategy.

No, I'm saying it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People don't value musketmen so they haven't learned to "min/max" them to their fullest potential. People would much rather have the free Liberalism tech, for example.

And let's take things in context. Why are we beelining to Gunpowder? This thread was spawned from the UU thread because there we were talking about musket UUs (Musketeers and Janissaries), which are very valuable if you get them early. The whole issue may have taken on a larger dimension, with the merits of normal musketmen thrown into the debate, but I don't see why people would not agree that if you have musket UUs, it's a good idea to beeline to Gunpowder, which has the side effect of prolonging the life of your UUs.

I have no idea what you're trying to be a proponent of here.

You're not evaluating things properly here. Bureaucracy (enabled by CS) is often very powerful because your capital usually accounts for a large share of your income. In the same way, a market (enabled by Currency) in your capital itself would make a difference. And a university (enabled by Education) in your capital and maybe in another core city or two can speed things up a little, so it's not entirely useless (we're talking about a stage of the game where Gunpowder can easily take 20 turns or more to research on Epic speed). Put all these factors (which multiply each other) together and you definitely get faster research speed on a tech route that takes fewer turns to get through anyway.

I don't disagree with what you're saying (except the Gunpowder 20 turn thing, see below).

My point is simply this: by the time you get Education, and build the dang University, and research CS, and pay the anarchy to switch... you would have Gunpowder and already be churning out Muskets. The benefit you get from those things by the time you need it is effectively nil.

(Keep in mind that you can make a Grocer, which you can't when you go the other route. This balances out the Market.)

I don't agree with the 20 turn thing because the whole plan is to lightbulb Gunpowder. The cost of Gunpowder is almost exactly the beakers you get from the lightbulbing.

By the way, have you done an actual comparison to test it out?

You mean, play the exact same game, same map, twice in succession, trying it both ways? No, I haven't. I'm not sure it's necessary. Simple math shows the Guilds route is faster.

In my own test games in the past, I started off wanting to follow the southern route. However, seeing the number of turns it would have taken to get to Gunpowder, I wound up choosing the faster northern path.

I'll ask again... how is it faster? I asked this before and you pretty much said it was a purely subjective impression of your own.

Besides, how can we view the 1200 beaker cost for Gunpowder as a negative, and not see the 1800 cost for Education in the same light?

Plus, you need Gunpowder anyway. Unless you're planning on getting Liberalism and spending the free tech on Gunpowder? If so, we should compare the 1400 for Liberalism to the 1200 for Gunpowder. If not, then we should compare the 1800 for Education to the 1000 for Guilds.

The math is not that complex. The only thing that really helps is lightbulbing with GSs instead of GMs or GEs. But that doesn't even come close to the cumulative difference in tech costs of the two paths.

there is some kind of comparison :
815 AD with the south route, by wodan
560 AD north route by Carl Corey

I know what I would choose

You can't compare two different games, cabert. You know better than that.

One aspect I forgot to mention was that at times I built gold in my cities to keep the research going at 100%.

Moot point. You can build research with either route. Building research is going to be more net bonus than building gold simply to run your civ at 10% higher.

one extra route per city, when you only have a few is like 3 to 5 commerce each

What maps are you playing on? In 100AD or so, 3-4 commerce is a primo route to a capitol. The "extra route" you get on average is the bottom line normal route, which is 1 gold, maybe 2 if you're on the coast.

Wodan

 

[Wodan]

Like I said, on high difficulty levels they get it soon enough.

I think if we beeline through Guilds that won't be the case.

In any case it makes more sense to get MC (450) -> Machinery (700) after CS rather than Paper (600) ->Education (1800) -> Gunpowder (1200). It can be done a lot earlier (1AD is quite possible on Prince), and you don't even need cats at this point, since you'll be fighting against Archers/Axes at best for a long while.

I thought you said the AI would get it soon eough?

Elephants or even Horse Archers make the cities not so easy to take without CRs.

Formation.

That's probably because they tried a lot of different alternatives, including attacks with Combat II Muskets, and found CRII maces a lot better at that.

When the AI effectively uses Cats against incoming stacks, plus uses its xbows and shock units before the incoming stack is in position to attack, that will change. Even now, that's not true in MP.

Currency is a huge help provided that you did not ignore Bureaucracy. Just rush a Market in the capital, and it will pay for 3-4 conquered cities even before you rush Courthouses there.

The difference between the Market under Bureaucracy and a Grocer with no Bureaucracy is 12.5% of commerce in the capitol * the gold slider, under a CE the gold slider is going to be, what, 20%? Say the capitol is making 50 commerce. That means we're talking a difference of 3 gold. You guys are nitpicking.

That's the whole point. With CS you get cheap Markets and Universities in the capital, since it adds 50% to both commerce and hammers, including whip/chop yields.

Market we already talked about.

For University, again, presumably we're going to war, so you would be much better served to argue the production bonus to be used in churning out muskets, rather than the dubious benefit of blowing pop/forests on a building that will provide a bonus to research that we won't get in time to help us reach our goal (gunpowder).

Wodan

 

[carl corey]

Moot point. You can build research with either route. Building research is going to be more net bonus than building gold simply to run your civ at 10% higher.

I didn't have Alphabet.

First, it costs to get Alphabet and lightbulbing it means using one of the Great Scientists for something else than the desired path.

Second, producing gold or beakers has a one-to-one conversion rate: 1 hammer = 1 beaker = 1 gold. No added library, monastery or Academy bonus for the beakers. So I don't think there's much difference between the two. I'm not sure which one is actually better, I'll have to look. And since you have a small empire by this time even a small amount of gold could make you jump 20% on the slider.

So since I can use Currency to get Code of Laws I'll also enjoy all its bonuses: markets, added trade routes, building gold, however small they are.

 

[aelf]

Who are you talking to, aelf? Me?

Not referring to you at all in that post, so there's nothing much to say about it. It was just a reaction to somebody bringing up that stale idea in this thread.

My point is simply this: by the time you get Education, and build the dang University, and research CS, and pay the anarchy to switch... you would have Gunpowder and already be churning out Muskets. The benefit you get from those things by the time you need it is effectively nil.

(Keep in mind that you can make a Grocer, which you can't when you go the other route. This balances out the Market.)

CS is on the way, man. The tech path would be CoL -> CS -> Paper -> Education -> Gunpowder with Liberalism and Nationalism as free tech an option before Gunpowder itself. I can accept that universities probably don't make enough difference, but Bureaucracy does.

Anyway, markets come way earlier than grocers.

I don't agree with the 20 turn thing because the whole plan is to lightbulb Gunpowder. The cost of Gunpowder is almost exactly the beakers you get from the lightbulbing.

I'm talking about a GS-oriented path, in which case you'd be lightbulbing Education (which is on the way) and not Gunpowder.

You mean, play the exact same game, same map, twice in succession, trying it both ways? No, I haven't. I'm not sure it's necessary. Simple math shows the Guilds route is faster.

Ok, let's get down to numbers. I started a new game with Mehmed (starts with The Wheel and Agriculture, same as Napoleon) and went to look at the shortest routes to Gunpowder.

The southern route: Pottery -> Mining -> BW -> Metal Casting -> Machinery -> Writing -> Mysticism -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Monarchy -> Feudalism -> Guilds -> Gunpowder

13 techs to research in total.

The northern route: Pottery -> Writing -> Maths -> Currency -> COL -> CS -> Paper -> Education -> Gunpowder

9 techs to research in total.

Where do you want to begin comparing? Where is the simple math you're talking about?

I'll ask again... how is it faster? I asked this before and you pretty much said it was a purely subjective impression of your own.

Why is it subjective? You haven't really explained that clearly.

Besides, how can we view the 1200 beaker cost for Gunpowder as a negative, and not see the 1800 cost for Education in the same light?

Plus, you need Gunpowder anyway. Unless you're planning on getting Liberalism and spending the free tech on Gunpowder? If so, we should compare the 1400 for Liberalism to the 1200 for Gunpowder. If not, then we should compare the 1800 for Education to the 1000 for Guilds.

The math is not that complex. The only thing that really helps is lightbulbing with GSs instead of GMs or GEs. But that doesn't even come close to the cumulative difference in tech costs of the two paths.

I don't know what you're talking about here. I know a GS gives about a 1000 more beakers (I need verification and exact figures, if anyone has the time) when lightbulbing compared to other GPs. Doesn't that tell you something?

 

[idiot_savant]

The math is not that complex. The only thing that really helps is lightbulbing with GSs instead of GMs or GEs. But that doesn't even come close to the cumulative difference in tech costs of the two paths.

I think this strategy does have some legs if you're Ottomans or French, though I think Ottomans have a much better unit. Though I do agree with the points made about Jans vs. Longbow not being that big of an advantage and the continued need for seige weapons. In a way, it almost seems like you're looking at Trebs vs. Jans as Engineering is a pretty expensive tech in own right....

The issue with lightbulbing as I'm thinking through all this is that GSs are easier to come by early/mid in the game than GEs. Despite this, GEs have less techs prior to being able to lightbulb Gunpowder: only 9 if you don't try to get Construction which makes you lightbulb Engineering as well. Getting more GEs is a challenge given you only get 1 specialist and have to rely on wonders makes this even tougher (though Louis is Industrious... hmmm...)

GSs have many more stops before Gunpowder -- as many as 14 in fact. And, if you go Civil Service, they will lightbulb Education and Liberalism prior to Gunpowder as CS opens Paper. This will naturally lead you more toward lightbulbing Education and possibly Liberalism before Gunpowder. The other main caveat of GSs is that, if you can get Printing Press out of the way w/o Astronomy, the next lightbulb is most likely Chemistry (assuming you have Engineering). Again, possibly negating the upside to Gunpowder. Therefore, it seems like GS along the Liberalism route provides much more benefit and the fact that the ease in producing GSs more than negates the extra stops which provide economic, etc., value which you may not get by a GE beeline to Gunpowder.

Anyway, that's just how I read the tech preferences and I'm sure more experienced folks will have a better impression of how to work this. I'm going to try to work out a more flexible, clearer path with GMs thrown in, but not sure that will beat the primarily-GS route. Once I get home from work anyway...

aelf,
Sorry, we posted at same time... and you did much better than mine...