Closing an intercontinental tech gap.. eek!

[Coast]

You've probably all experienced it. You finally make contact with the 'other continent', and they're researching democracy while you're just building castles. They've been all chummy-chummy and at your own end it's been 500 year wars, SoDs, and vassalizations.

How do you recover? All I can manage to do with my current game is try to research the rare techs they don't have yet and trade them around for upgrades. I've identified the tech-monster of the other continent and am building up EPs, but I can't decide how to continue - if I should just try to steal my way through his tech list, spread techs around all my own allies in hopes of getting them to give me their own modern-era research in turn, or just plain launch a missionary invasion and hope to convert one of the crowd?

Hints appreciated!

 

[Percy]

I've just started a game where i was isolated, and couldn't manage it. I abandoned without even making contact, seeing the wonders they were building. Isolation seems really tough to me. Okay you can expand at will, but maintenance can kill you, especially if you have to self-research everything.

I really believe you should be able to cross oceans a bit earlier.

 

[Underdawg]

I try to incite as many wars on that continent as possible. Though I guess that depends on how many AI there are in the game... I don't understand though, how people can only play with 6 AI... say you take over one and then there are only 5 left! What room is there for any diplomatic maneuvers?

 

[InvisibleStalke]

1) Don't build up EPs, just do enough to see what they are researching.
2) If you can research paths they don't take for trade then definitely do so. Seeing what they research is a big advantage.
3) If you have more land (which you should if you have been successfully fighting), then you should eventually pull ahead - especially if you can cottage up the land.
4) Vassals are fairly useless for tech research, but if there is a tech that you don't need for 30 turns or so then maybe they can research it for you.

 

[AThousandYoung]

Rush for Caravels if you're isolated.

 

[Cer]

Rush for caravels is good advice. My last game (monarch, civ4vanilla) i made contact and found out that mansa musa had gone crazy with techs while i was busy taking over my continent. I spent some time really working on commerce stuff in my newly conquered territory and my old cities (I needed banks and courthouses in a bunch of cities) and aggressively traded with Mansa's neighbors, who didn't like each other (wouldn't trade with each other) and had both done a bit of tech trading with Mansa. I built a sea armada and a vast army, which became semi-obsolete while i was building it and sending it to the other side of the world with no railroads or oil-powered ships. I took 4 cities from mansa, razing two I didn't think I could hold (one of those being his capital). After that he didn't tech very quickly.

Anyway that was kind of a tangent. Point is, rival tech leaders need to find themselves at war, and it doesn't hurt to capture or raze some of their cities yourself. Any way you cut it, you want to give yourself a good research rate. With a mega-empire you can pull this off by cottaging up the majority of your cities and building bank+libr+univ+obser in those cities. Smaller empire, you still want some solid research cities.