This was supposed to be my triumphant return to CIV4, but it seems I’m not going to get new computer anytime soon since car repairs are going to eat my income for foreseeable future. So I might as well share this. Especially since most recent Noble’s Club is with Suleiman who works best with this strategy, being philosophical and having unique musketman unit that is actually good, if you can just get it soon enough.
The basic idea is to pulp through paper and education and then partially pulp gunpowder. To be able do this one must avoid metal casting. There is two ways to do this, both requiring skipping of certain crucial early techs. First is to avoid lower branch of the tech tree altogether e.g. no mining. This is the shortest way to gunpowder requiring least beakers, but I’m yet to find a start that would warrant approach this extreme. The second option that I’m going to examine here, is to skip pottery and thus one of the more important buildings e.g. granary.
The basic tech path is as follows:
agriculture
Wheel
Animal Husbandry
writing
alphabet
mining
bronze working
myst
polytheism
masonry
monotheism
theology
iron working
math
paper
Aesthetics
education
gunpowder
Of these we are going to pulp paper, education (double pulp) and the gunpowder itself. In order not to open unwanted pulp paths we need to avoid pottery, meditation and fishing. To get the scientists we don’t even need dedicated GP farm just four cities with library and +4 food surplus.
New players are often advised to try and expand to four cities by 2000 BC or turn 50 on normal speed. We will use this as our baseline. Playing Suleiman who starts with first two tech of the list above we first beeline writing. We should easily be able to do this by the time we have our four cities up. Getting to writing early is important to get our libraries online as soon as possible and to open foreign trade routes, as we will be starving for commerce without any cottages. Then depending on hammer and commerce situation (can we slow build libraries or do we need whip?) we either continue to alphabet or first detour to mining and bronze working.
When we have the alphabet we trade for mysticism, polytheism, masonry, mining and bronze working, if we did not get them already. AI’s don’t usually like to trade monotheism so we probably have to self tech that or if we are lucky maybe steal it. We then dedicate our beakers to slow teching theology that we will use to trade for the last missing techs from our list, iron working, mathematics and aesthetics.
For philosophical leader getting the fourth GP is going to take 34 turn using only the two scientists from library. Let's say we have all four libraries ready by turn 70, enough time to slow build them and maybe also settle extra city or two if our commerce can support it. Now we can pulp gunpowder at turn 104, 250 BC. Then it’s just whip / build a bunch of Janissaries and go rampage through armies and cities of your technologically inferior neighbors. And if we require help from siege, construction can be researched next.
Providing we only have those four cities, during those 34 turn we wait our GP we produce ~1450 beakers from scientist and commerce. On deity and standard map size this is enough for alphabet and theology. Above supposes rather modest commerce of 20 for our 4 city empire, 8 from palace and 3 commerce per city from tiles and internal trade routes. We also estimate to be able to keep an average tax rate of 50% to account for city and unit upkeep. If we have luxury tiles or foreign trade routes we can produce quite bit more.
I will continue later with variations and discussion about pros and cons of this gambit / strategy.
Meantime it would be delightful if somebody could try this out and report how it went.
Cheers
The basic idea is to pulp through paper and education and then partially pulp gunpowder. To be able do this one must avoid metal casting. There is two ways to do this, both requiring skipping of certain crucial early techs. First is to avoid lower branch of the tech tree altogether e.g. no mining. This is the shortest way to gunpowder requiring least beakers, but I’m yet to find a start that would warrant approach this extreme. The second option that I’m going to examine here, is to skip pottery and thus one of the more important buildings e.g. granary.
The basic tech path is as follows:
agriculture
Wheel
Animal Husbandry
writing
alphabet
mining
bronze working
myst
polytheism
masonry
monotheism
theology
iron working
math
paper
Aesthetics
education
gunpowder
Of these we are going to pulp paper, education (double pulp) and the gunpowder itself. In order not to open unwanted pulp paths we need to avoid pottery, meditation and fishing. To get the scientists we don’t even need dedicated GP farm just four cities with library and +4 food surplus.
New players are often advised to try and expand to four cities by 2000 BC or turn 50 on normal speed. We will use this as our baseline. Playing Suleiman who starts with first two tech of the list above we first beeline writing. We should easily be able to do this by the time we have our four cities up. Getting to writing early is important to get our libraries online as soon as possible and to open foreign trade routes, as we will be starving for commerce without any cottages. Then depending on hammer and commerce situation (can we slow build libraries or do we need whip?) we either continue to alphabet or first detour to mining and bronze working.
When we have the alphabet we trade for mysticism, polytheism, masonry, mining and bronze working, if we did not get them already. AI’s don’t usually like to trade monotheism so we probably have to self tech that or if we are lucky maybe steal it. We then dedicate our beakers to slow teching theology that we will use to trade for the last missing techs from our list, iron working, mathematics and aesthetics.
For philosophical leader getting the fourth GP is going to take 34 turn using only the two scientists from library. Let's say we have all four libraries ready by turn 70, enough time to slow build them and maybe also settle extra city or two if our commerce can support it. Now we can pulp gunpowder at turn 104, 250 BC. Then it’s just whip / build a bunch of Janissaries and go rampage through armies and cities of your technologically inferior neighbors. And if we require help from siege, construction can be researched next.
Providing we only have those four cities, during those 34 turn we wait our GP we produce ~1450 beakers from scientist and commerce. On deity and standard map size this is enough for alphabet and theology. Above supposes rather modest commerce of 20 for our 4 city empire, 8 from palace and 3 commerce per city from tiles and internal trade routes. We also estimate to be able to keep an average tax rate of 50% to account for city and unit upkeep. If we have luxury tiles or foreign trade routes we can produce quite bit more.
I will continue later with variations and discussion about pros and cons of this gambit / strategy.
Meantime it would be delightful if somebody could try this out and report how it went.
Cheers
Last edited:
Jans to kill 25 
Jans to kill 25 
