Bulb & Tech Path for Fast Astronomy?

[frisbee]

I looking for ideas on how to get to Astronomy fast by managing the Tech path and a few judicious bulbs.

Assume an Immortal Standard Fractal Map Normal Speed (couple of continents).
Assume Dutch (basically I want to rock some East Indiaman)
Assume you don't get the Oracle

Typically I'll win Lib and take Astronomy as my free tech. Along the way, I'll use a pair of great scientists to double bulb Education, and a 3rd scientist for an Academy.

My tech path is usually something like: Currency-->CoL-->CS-->Paper-->Edu-->Lib
Along the way, I'll grab Machinery & Optics by trades

Since Astro only requires Calendar & Optics, is there a smart way to skip lib and bulb something like machinery & Astro?

Thanks in advance--Frisbee

 

[ecuwins]

You bulb Optics & double bulb Astro. This requires you to avoid Civil Service.

An alternative is to use your first GS for an Academy and double bulb Astro.

This thread may interest you - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=460072

 

[vicawoo]

You bulb Optics & double bulb Astro. This requires you to avoid Civil Service.

An alternative is to use your first GS for an Academy and double bulb Astro.

This thread may interest you - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=460072

The downside of the optics bulb is that you are giving up an academy, and you have to research nearly as many beakers (alphabet and mathematics) to unlock the bulb.

After you bulb astronomy, there's a lot of useful great scientist bulbs left over, so you're always giving up a lot for the academy.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The downside of the optics bulb is that you are giving up an academy, and you have to research nearly as many beakers (alphabet and mathematics) to unlock the bulb.

After you bulb astronomy, there's a lot of useful great scientist bulbs left over, so you're always giving up a lot for the academy.

Given the waiting time and amount of required to reach deep into the astro path to simply bulb astro, it's hard to figure sitting on a GS so long is actually going to beat out an academy with the first guy. As long as the returns average at or above the level of a settled great scientist the academy is probably going to win by the time an astro bulb date rolls around, especially since optics bulb doesn't give any immediate tech multipliers or research benefit of its own aside from the possibility of earlier trades...but to bulb optics you have to have the most important astro pre-reqs already so we're talking about non-astro trades there. Not strong enough to drop academy and sit on a GS IMO.

Even so, that means you'll need 3 GS by the early AD and that isn't easy in a lot of cases. The THIRD city to get a library + 2 scientists has to run them for 50 turns...or the first to run them can cycle a 2nd guy after the first in 67. That means to get 1 AD 3 GS you have to have the first library running by turn 48! Just building a worker, a few barb defenses, and a settler you're already almost out of time there...but that 2nd city needs a library by around t65 AND you have to manage to still expand!

But the real difficulty there is is still coming up with the raw beakers. The guaranteed stuff (palace 8, 2 library cities with 2 scientists each, etc) is not the kind of thing that will give you the 1000's of beakers needed to get astro pre-reqs by t115 to t150.

The timing is pretty tight but if one screws it up then you're getting astro 800-1000 AD with poor infrastructure (IE later cities and fewer workers, which means less overall production). On immortal you will start meeting AI not too soon after that regardless, and often can trade for astro not much after 1000 AD. For the bulb path to be worthwhile, you really need it earlier or it's not necessarily stronger than just going civil service + cottages and expanding normally. I can see the merit when resources are completely crap and you want access to trades + new areas ASAP, but when the surrounding land quality is decent? I'm not so sure.

 

[Mylene]

CoL is what you ideally always want fastest when isolated.

 

[vicawoo]

Code of laws only helps if you have some existing surplus happiness. Also, missionaries and temples are expensive.

If you manage your 3 library cities well, you will get your 3 scientists on time, so code of laws only helps if you manage poorly and need to catch up on great people production, and indirectly by letting you delay your libraries to get more cities up.

 

[Htadus]

I used this tech/bulb plan a lifetime ago on continental game. Hope it help.

Skipping Meditation instead of CoL is better.

Also when possible Oracle Machinary.

 

[ahcos]

Seriously, it's very very VERY rare that you're stuck without any happiness AT ALL. Thing with Academy is: MAYBE you're later for Astro, but your techrace won't end with Astro, so most likely that academy will pay off short before or after you get Astro. That way you're also more free to take some detours for things like Great Lib or Monarchy, which can make alot of sense under the right circumstances.

 

[ecuwins]

Seriously, it's very very VERY rare that you're stuck without any happiness AT ALL.

Mids, gogogo!

Would the same rules apply here as it is in non-isolation? Only if stone and/or IND? You can delay expansion, and don't forget about Police State once it's time for the War Machine to get cranked up

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Delay expansion = drastically reduce production.

The returns for doing so have to be enormous. Arguably sufficiently early astro is.

 

[ahcos]

You have to focus more parts of your empire on research, and that limits your production. It's all about gains and losses, Stone, IND, little or no rivers just as single food resources without anything great around them clearly points towards mids - in this case, isolation is just like normal games.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

You can see early Astronomy in action in ALC20, Ragnar. If I recall properly it was achieved around 600 AD and the trade routes it opened up really throttled up an economy that was not hurting to begin with. With the Vikings on a water map it is certainly worth a go.

 

[Htadus]

Delay expansion = drastically reduce production.

The returns for doing so have to be enormous. Arguably sufficiently early astro is.

TMIT, why does/would the expantion get delayed during run to the early astro?

EDIT: Never mind, you respnded to a comment.