[BNW] Getting early tech lead on deity?

TurboJ

Warlord
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I would like to open a discussion about ways to reliably ramp up your early-game science, so that it doesn't take until industrial era for you to catch up to the AI on tech.

BNW, playing deity, and most importantly, I'm looking for solutions that suit all play styles and objectives, not only going for science victory.

So many early-game benefits to science are situational, and even more so than before, with BNW as the biggest early science boost is from trade routes.

1. The first thing to consider is your starting location. If you get two or more food tiles right away, you'll get a good boost for early pop. Now then, coastal would allow more food from future trade routes, but it will take a while for that to kick in, and coastal locations usually have less food tiles to work on their own. Rivers are very useful (garden) but unless you settle on a hill, your early production will suffer a lot. Would you prioritize gardens (river) or observatories (mountains) generally? Settling on a lux should also be considered on deity, because being able to work that tile 100% of the time shoud mostly trump the tile improvement bonuses, which only significantly benefit you starting from reneissance/industrial techs. Your thoughts?

2. Early build order - worker or not? If you want growth immediately, or maybe even a shot at an early wonder, for that matter, you need a worker asap, preferrably before turn 25. City states put out a worker at 17-27 turns, and that's too variable for you to count on that for your first worker (especially as the particular CS may be far from your cap and/or the route is full of rough terrain). Rival civs will have workers right away, but you cannot always steal one early. So you need to consider building a worker after a scout and monument, maybe. Workers do translate to beakers pretty soon, as each farm/pasture/camp will help growth immensely.

3. The next thing are the trade routes. Unless your starting location is really great, food caravans/cargo ships are tempting. But, they are expensive to build/buy and the potential +5 beakers for each external route is tempting too. Which do you prioritize in the early game and when do you build your caravans/ships? Teching sailing, engineering early will give you more trade route slots too, but that tech path may interfere with your optimal research order. So, please share your thoughts on early trade routes! Also, there seems to be quite little you can do to attract early caravans from the AI, so that beaker bonus should be considered just that, a bonus.

4. National college. This seems to be the most talked about subject regarding early tech. But it seems getting an early one is also quite situational. Early friends and multiple copies of luxes will allow you to buy a library or a settler, which will ramp things up, but you can't count on that. People are talking about sub-T70 NCs and OTOH, sub-T100 NCs to be the minimum. Now, as you need both population AND science buildings, staying at one city until NC is done, is risky to say the least, especially as the deity AI will take your land if you don't do it first. But, for 4-city tradition, it is quite a challenge to finish NC much before T100, and even a 3-city Tradition usually means a ~T80 NC requires at least one library or settler bought with cash. Liberty would allow you to bulb a GE for NC if you have a cultural CS ally, otherwise liberty will not be finished in time for an early NC. You could also plant a GS, which would mitigate the loss of a slightly later NC..

5. Tradition or Liberty? I guess this is largely map- and civ-dependant. Tradition offers more population and will work with less available space (maybe, if you don't absolutely need the free settler from Collective Rule) while Liberty allows more production and less interruptions hammering up your core buildings. As discussed, the option of an early GS or GE could be very helpful. As strong as tradition can be, on many maps, you will not have room for four cities. And as nice as Liberty can be, the lack of food bonuses does mean you have to prioritize food tiles more which can mean the +1 hammer from Rebublic will be offset by that, if not more.

6. Managing early war - if you want/need to take a neighbouring city soon, you need troops early. If you do not, you may still need troops early; to clear out barbs, protect your worker, escort the settlers, and defend against Attila. But how do you time your military build so as not to interfere with your growth and tech buildings?

7. Money. This has to do with everything - being able to buy libraries, settlers, workers and later universities and factories, you need a lot of gold. And getting it can be situational. You may or may not have close neighbours for trade, you may or may not have multiple tradable luxuries and strategic resources, you may or may not get early friendships with AIs, you may or may not get a Mercantile CS ally. Building markets and later banks will help, but they also cost many hammers, especially banks. Buying tiles may also be necessery (especially if not on Tradition), as may be upgrading many military units. Or maybe bribing Attila to attack somebody else instead of you. So how do you build your economy early-and mid-game, where gold is harder to come by?

8. Hard building or buying the key buildings. Now, unless you have really great production on your cities (in which case food surplus must be, in turn, a bit less impressive), hard building science and production buildings can really take a while. If it were possible, getting those universities and factories up right away when the tech is researched, would be a huge benefit. But you can't always (not nearly) do that. Borrowing money could work... But if you do hard build these, would you sacrifice your growth for those 10-odd turns the build will take, and change your citizens to work on hammer tiles instead of food until the build is finished? What other thoughts do you have on this?

9. Religion and culture. Culture is mandatory, religion is very nice. How do you balance with these and your tech progress? Remember, we're looking for general strategies here, not only for a science victory. When do you build the guilds? What about shrines and temples? Temples are quite hammer-intensive but they also give +2 faith per city... Decisions, decisions. High culture output will also be necessery if there's even one cultural runaway AI, otherwise you don't get to choose the ideology you want.

10. Social policies up from the opening tree. Please just share your thoughts - rationalism should probably be a part of 90% of games, but when do you open it, and will you settle for secularism, or always also want to score free thought too? What about the optional 'third regular tree' apart from ideologies? Would you go for Commerce, Patronage or even Aesthetics, Exploration or simply focus everything on your ideology once you have your opening tree and rationalism? Could you actually skip rationalism and still pull ahead of the AI on deity? Any tricks for timing your SPs? Cultural CS allies are always nice, but the added CPT can be a double edged sword if it forces you to 'waste' a SP when the time isn't right tech-wise.

11. Great Scientists - planting, bulbing or saving - quite simply, what's your view?

12. When to do the Oxford Uni? The free tech is so useful, but timing it right can be a tough call to make. And, it is not unimportant that Oxford gives you two GW slots and a potential theming bonus, and as great writings are usually your earliest great works, Oxford could really help your early tourism too...

13. When do you start working your specialist slots and with what priority? This will be a trade off between growth and other important bonuses, so it can be a difficult decision. What are your rules for specialists?

There, that's a long one! But I hope some useful discussion, we can learn new things and improve our game :) Keep them comments coming!
 
Patronage and the policy that gets you beakers from city state allies is not to be underestimated. I sometimes skip rationalism altogether and get this instead when going for a cultural viictory and i've had it make up more than a quarter of my science output. As a rule of thumb, if I can get 3 city state allies, I usually find it worth going for. Just wanted to mention that since you didn't bring it up...
 
I always go for Patronage and never want for Rationalism. Even though I play on Emperor this can help. I og with a commerce-based civ, like Portugal and or buy or coup all the CSs I want as allies. Help with science, Great people and delegates on World Congress. Going for Order and adopting Iron Curtain is good too because you can maintain your cities growing even when focusing on production.
 
Quite often i don't catch up at all. It just isn't possible. (huge maps) And still win by culture or domination.

Guilds

As for the guilds, i really like prioritising writers guild, right after NC, and NOT in the capital city. It's a bit of an art (or headache) to settle a city, which can work two writer slots without stalling in growth, but it's often possible with right combination of irrigated farms and bonus/strategics. When it becomes a problem, there is always a caravan, or even a cargo ship to solve that city's growth issues. Maritime city states help eliminate that problem, given there is a chance to ally one.

The reason i like this type of tech path (Drama) is it leaves the doors open for culture victory (the noblest of all!) until the time Education is researched, where i make a final decision in favour of VC. On top of that, there will be less ideological problems later on if one builds the guild early on.

Scientists

For culture/science i like to plant two and bulb the rest.

For domination, i am planting just one and bulb the others as i go along, for key military techs.

I guess it depends on the "feel" of every particular game. (world tech rates matter here) After crossing 250 bpt i see little reason to keep settling them though.

10. Social policies up from the opening tree. Please just share your thoughts - rationalism should probably be a part of 90% of games, but when do you open it, and will you settle for secularism, or always also want to score free thought too? What about the optional 'third regular tree' apart from ideologies? Would you go for Commerce, Patronage or even Aesthetics, Exploration or simply focus everything on your ideology once you have your opening tree and rationalism? Could you actually skip rationalism and still pull ahead of the AI on deity? Any tricks for timing your SPs? Cultural CS allies are always nice, but the added CPT can be a double edged sword if it forces you to 'waste' a SP when the time isn't right tech-wise.

Yes, i won games without rationalism. Domination games often can be worked without it, although, it's fair to say that they most likely will end faster with it, if the thing you are plotting isn't some kind of early Xbow super rush. I think double - edged sword from your example is an overstatement. The more culture = the better. Period. If you have too much, go Aesthetics, keep snowballing culture. Adjust your initial VC plans to be in line with current culture dynamics. Bend yourself to match the map, not the other way around.

As for the trees: the best for domination - commerce. For culture - aesthetics. Diplomacy - no idea. :)

As for the rationalism itself, the decision when (and how deep) to delve into it depends heavily on map size, AI's tech speeds and victory condition. Ideally, my game will look like this:

Culture: Secularism, free thought, ideology, finish aesthetics.
Domination: Secularism, full commerce, ideology.
 
As for the guilds, i really like prioritising writers guild, right after NC, and NOT in the capital city. .

Interesting. Why not in the capital? To balance the specialists' food load onto two separate cities? Then you probably also build other guilds and eventually the Hermitage in that other city?

I always go for Patronage and never want for Rationalism.

Patronage and the policy that gets you beakers from city state allies is not to be underestimated.

I like Patronage, but somehow I never seem to have enough money to really benefit from it until Modern era. If there's one or two AI civs that have taken Patronage, I can't compete much (lower difficulty is easier here). I think it's the choice between internal and extrenal trade routes; if you do external, you could get science back from city states, that you'd be losing out on your lower population growth, but for that to really help you'd need a bunch of CS allies. Somehow Greece is also always in my games :)
 
Interesting. Why not in the capital? To balance the specialists' food load onto two separate cities? Then you probably also build other guilds and eventually the Hermitage in that other city?

I like huge capital. And i build artist guild in 90% of my games. Having writer, artist guild, university and public school will kill your cap outside of coastal start, so, yes, in my eyes, it's a decent balancing act. National epic, garden and hermitage will obviously go into Cap., as it is by far the biggest culture/science generator. Always.
 
"Kill" is a pretty strong word.

Spoiler :


And, mind you I stopped focusing on growth about ~50 ish turns prior to this screen shot because I have nothing else for the citizens to do, though this is immortal, not deity.
 
Strong, but true. Size 25 cap. is quite small at t.236, Abraxis. I don't find it problematic to reach 25 (in cap.) around t.170-190, and that's with 3+ satellite cities. If the start is OP, 25 comes much earlier.
 
Indeed, so why do you want it any bigger? The science is nice sure, but what will those citizens do? Be unemployed? Is that really worth the effort when you could be producing things better? And is the extra science coming from sub-optimal workers really going to out-weigh the science you get from building your infrastructure faster?

I mean it seems to me you need writers and artists just to give your citizens something to do. I don't see how it kills your capital.
 
Thing is, you seem to look at the problem through the prism of your particular game, where, indeed, unemployed citizens wouldn't make much of a difference, where as i was referring to opening stages of any game, where growing capital to size 20 in 120 turns can make a world of difference in terms of gaining the upper hand. Fast.

EDIT: Why settle that coastal city so close and in such terrible spot? It seems to be just eating up into capital's potential without bringing much benefit.. Oh, looking even closer, i think you could have settled the north-eastern city by the mountain for one extra irrigated farm and observatory. ;) That alone would outweigh the benefit of settling that coastal city and allow your capital to breathe freely.
 
Not sure how any of this applies to the current discussion, but that northern city would have sacrificed a garden, a watermill, and the river bonus for the observatory. Also, just off to the right, there's another river I wanted to cover before Berlin's influence covered it. Under the UI are 3 farms on river tiles, which I would have had to sacrifice for the observatory and some garbage mountain tiles to the left. Also, there were tactical reasons why placing the city there was easier to defend than placing it to the left.

But Maybe I should have clarified the context. As I said, this is just my current immortal game, I built and rebuilt that road network 3 times to get it to what I considered most aesthetically pleasing. I built that port city there because historically, large cities like that so close to the sea would generally spawn a port city or two. Like what Valparaiso is (or was...) to Santiago, which is where I just was. I only just recently built it too, not because I needed it, but because I thought the capital area looked weird and naked. I could have built one two other places which would have been prime spots, but I just didn't really want to :queen:

So, I guess you could say I'm just messing around.

I did not post it to brag (as I take it you're implying with your off-topic criticisms), or thinking it was the best city In Civilization history. I posted it, as an example of how you do not need to min-max every little detail in favour of growth in order to max out the potential of a capital. They're actually pretty easy to over-grow if you're trying that hard.
I felt it was relevant to the discussion by illustrating that having a writers guild is not going to plunge your city into the depths of desolation, and putting it elsewhere is not going to turn your capital into the greatest city that ever was and will be. Building a writers guild in another city isn't this clutch strat you're making it out to sound.
You said writers' guild would kill a capital. Well, that's a living capital with a writers' guild. Not to mention how it's survived every ineptitude this demented mind has thrown at it. :lol:
 
I've actually been trying out games with writer's guild in secondary cities. My reasoning isn't so much growth, but production. To keep growth the same, you are giving up two potential mines.

That, coupled with the last string of games where a secondary city has run out of stuff to do. Thus, I've been leaving the writer's guild for a secondary city to soak up some of its production instead of capital.
 
I tried max growth for my last game, and had three +20 pop cities by turn 160, while the cap was at 26 by that time. Science was OK (got it to 100 BPT at T120 without a single university and no external trade at all), but I had no way of managing happiness. Tradition, Pagodas, two Mercantile friends (had not the money to ally them though). Lack of gold finally killed me, but all my pronlems may have been because I had 5 cities and also couldn't get all the NW's up..

I must say though, Patronage really paid off a few turns later; the Science bonus was more than I'd have got from opening Rationalism, with only 3 CS allies.
 
As i said, i agree that it was a strong word. Yet i can think of many situations, where it would fit. No rivers? No goddess of the hunt? No sun god? No coast? Just a bunch of plains/grassland tiles. And you put three guilds in your cap and kill it, essentially. Sure, you can send four caravans and feed them, but do you really want to?

Few extra points of food/hammers by moving writer's guild out makes my deity capitals a little bit easier to manage. And then little things lead to big things, like everything in this game. Sure, i will get one less writer on a grand scale of things as a result (no national epic, where writer's guild is), but that's the price i am willing to pay to grow a tiny bit faster. Just personal preference, if you wish.

I understand your wish to role play, but you don't get to do much of that on deity, hence the difference in our perception of this little issue, i guess.

Building a writers guild in another city isn't this clutch strat you're making it out to sound.

I take it you have a lot of experience in deity cultural/domination games. And you honestly never considered moving out writers guild?
 
Indeed, so why do you want it any bigger? The science is nice sure, but what will those citizens do? Be unemployed? Is that really worth the effort when you could be producing things better? And is the extra science coming from sub-optimal workers really going to out-weigh the science you get from building your infrastructure faster?

I mean it seems to me you need writers and artists just to give your citizens something to do. I don't see how it kills your capital.

To be honest you want unemployed citizens. Having so many people that every tile is being worked and every specialist slot is being worked is a grand position to be in.

Citizens provide science just for existing. Unemployed citizens also provide +1 Hammer. Free science and free hammers - can't easily say no to that.
 
To be honest you want unemployed citizens. Having so many people that every tile is being worked and every specialist slot is being worked is a grand position to be in.

Citizens provide science just for existing. Unemployed citizens also provide +1 Hammer. Free science and free hammers - can't easily say no to that.

Right, but it's a trade-off. Usually you'll be using food caravans to grow your capital, which by all means you should do up until your capital has reached optimal potential.
This also means you could just as easily be redistributing that growth elsewhere, once this potential is achieved.
So you think over-growing and having unemployed citizens in the capital is good. Unless I'm misunderstanding my math here (I'm certainly no mathmagician) they give you 1 net science (from national college) more than what citizens elsewhere will produce. They however only work a single hammer, and they take WAY more food to be created.

Instead, your citizens should work useful stuff, producing great people, rather than focusing on more food to produce more relatively... un-great people. Send these food caravans somewhere else and they're more efficient. You have a citizen born faster, due to being in a lower population city, and they're actually able to work something to produce more than a single freaking hammer.

This is all also assuming you're not wanting for happiness. And ignoring the efficient management of population for maximizing golden ages.

So, consider me unconvinced.
 
I have been doing more experimenting.
Somehow I never seem to get along without a runaway getting the better of me.

I wanted to try how far I could go on a cultural game without opening Aesthetics.
I needed to focus quite hard on science as the growth prospects weren't that great (capital location was fine but satellites pretty average if that).
I started with two food cargo ships prior to Philosophy, NC at ~T88 and 6 cities at T120. This time money was going well (multiple luxes help SO much) but
I would have liked more river tiles...
Barcelona was up with a bought settler on T20, worked Mt.Sinai exclusively before I had enhanced my religion at T52. One with Nature, Pagodas, Monasteries so at least I had cultural defense :)


So, I thought that this kind of beaker output would be OK for turn 256.
...but on the second pic you see that clearly it was not. Yes, I had two GSs that
I hadn't bulbed yet, but that would not catch me up to Russia.

So, as France was very strong culturally, my plan from the beginning was to let Nap grow a huge tourism base, and then annihilate him & take the works and wonders.
But now, looking at Russia, I may never get there in time :/ And even militarily, I may not have enough time to break both Nap and Cathy.

BTW, to comment on your discussion about guild locations; I found in this game's case it was best to build the Musician's guild in Cordoba and the other guilds in the capital (Cordoba still had a Garden). I wanted as many policies as possible, so lots of writings were my goal.
Musicians I wouldn't need apart from one final bulb at each remaining civ after wiping France; so I didn't need NE for musicians. I'll post back when my game is over, win it or lose it...
 

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Are you the best explorer known to man? I never have even important parts of the map explored by 250, much less every freaking hex :eek:
 
Are you the best explorer known to man? I never have even important parts of the map explored by 250, much less every freaking hex :eek:

Satellites.
 
To be fair, moving the Writer's Guild out of the capital is non-intuitive to most people. But it's totally worth doing *if you can*. I'm more likely to move the Artist and/or Musician's Guild out, because I don't generally have enough population in any other city to work the WG otherwise, especially when I hit Universities. (4 specialist slots is a lot on t100!)

But, if, say I find Lake Victoria and settle my second or third city next to it? You're damn right it's getting the WG! ;)

Also, scouting is everything. The way I play this game, Satellites usually (at best) reveals one CS I've missed, perhaps one ancient ruin, but rarely if ever do I still have significant exploring to do after t100 on Pangaea, or t200 on Continents. The best thing most people could do to improve their play is to scout more aggressively.
 
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