early gunpownder

[Brancaleone]

Hello, 1° post!

So, im about to get the game. I was looking at the info center, and i think its possible to beeline for gunpownder now? Since you dont need all techs to get the next one, and you can get medieval techs early, you can go straight for gunpownder with:

Hunting > animal husb. > writing > math > currency > code of laws > civil service > paper > education > gunpownder

Wouldnt it be a good idea to build musketteers until industrial age? Would it work

Cant wait to get my hands on this game.

 

[RogueNine]

Those last 4 researches take a long while, and you'd probably just be hurting your overall growth by not getting some of the more useful techs along the way. Also, Musket troops cost alot to build, so again if you get them far sooner then your empire is ready for, you might just be waiting 14-15 turns for each to build in most cities.

 

[LabMonster]

gunpowder musket units are insignificant. Knights and cavalry is the only significant conquesting gunpowder units.

 

[Yoshua]

You can get to gunpowder quickly. It's something I did a lot in my first few games. The problem is you ignore a lot of good techs to get there quickly. You won't get many, if any, good civic techs (least not the ones you would want for a military strategy, which is the reason to go for early gunpowder at all), you delay getting financial techs, and may miss some growth techs. It's harder to manage your empire skipping all those techs early on.

And your reward once you do get there is musketmen, which really aren't all that great. About 1 strength more than other midevil units, but no inherant bonuses. They just aren't that great. Cannon's and riflemen are definitly worthwhile, but they are further off.

I've been trying to find a tech order that gets me to gunpowder quickly but doesn't cripple my empire in the process. Only been moderatly successful though. It may actually be fastest to just beeline for the tech you want, then play catchup in the other areas (or trade techs for what you need, but I hardly ever do as I like to maintain a tech lead if possible).

 

[Brancaleone]

Well if those techs are so expensive, you can trade one of them (lets say, civil service?) for all the early techs you missed (i think). Still, you get two good civics (bureaucracy and caste system), the confucian religion, and some other stuff (but you miss even roads!).

Oh well. Still want to try.

Where can i see the cost of techs (in beakers i suppose)?

 

[Andrzej]

Once you have the game, if you mouseover a Tech almost anywhere, you'll get a tooltip that lists, among other things, its cost in beakers (and how many you've already put towards it).

As for now... If you download the poster from 2k games, you can see the number of beakers in the bottom right corner of each tech.
Edit: Or, more blatantly, in that huge table underneath the tree.

 

[blueinf]

It would work if noble and lower difficulties as you can keep up with your enemies in term of tech research, but by giving yourself so many disadvantages by skipping the early techs, you would die in monarch+ especially if you can't harass enemy civs in early game.

 

[Andrzej]

More importantly, you're looking at the quickest as in "least number of beakers". The quickest in this sense is actually:
Mysticism(50) -> Masonry(80) -> Polytheism(100) -> Priesthood(60) -> Monotheism(120) -> Writing(120) -> Theology(500) -> Paper(600) -> Education(1400) -> Gunpowder(1000) = 4030 beakers (just over a thousand beakers cheaper than your first example).

But that's not the point. The key isn't "shortest in terms of beakers", it's "shortest in terms of game turns", even if you are focussed solely on getting gunpowder. Neither this route nor the originally posted route includes pottery - and pure and simply, you can double a city's commerce with a few mature cottages. And pottery is just one example (albeit a good one), I'm not suggesting merely adding that at the start would make this a good plan.

It's a point that's been made - Civ's all about acheiving balance with your limited resources (food, shields, commerce, worker time etc) and military tech isn't the be-all and end-all. I just figured I'd draw attention to the fact that even if all you care about is getting that tech, you'll do so quicker if you generate more beakers - which generally requires building up a strong and well-managed empire, and that generally requires side-tracking to pick up lots of useful (but off the beeline) techs on the way.

 

[vinstafresh]

Well if those techs are so expensive, you can trade one of them (lets say, civil service?) for all the early techs you missed (i think). Still, you get two good civics (bureaucracy and caste system), the confucian religion, and some other stuff (but you miss even roads!).

Trading techs is not possible then... Just the fact that you will not able to trade techs (requires alphabet) and buy/sell techs (requires currency) once you have gunpowder, will set you back a LOT of turns. This, plus the fact that you can't work your land in the mean time, makes it a doomed strategy...

The gunpower beeline could make for a nice challenge on lower levels though...

 

[Fieryphoenix]

You don't have to have alphabet to trade techs, if your trade partner has it.

 

[Shillen]

I've done this successfully for a diplomatic win. Mass media actually has very few prereq techs. You can skip half the tech tree. I still pick up techs that are useful. Like I of course pick all the worker techs in the beginning, writing, currency, code of laws, etc. But a lot of techs aren't as important.

 

[anton_z1]

There is no point to get gunpoweder when a swordsmen costing half as much with city raiding 2 can do the same job.

Dont try to get military Supremacy. You will loose anyway in higher levels. Simply make sure you use good units. ( Like a VERY early spearmen devastating all the horses until knight.

 

[DaemonDivinity]

I'm going to be making a beeline for Liberalism every game I play from now on though. Those two civics very quickly allow you to recap any missed tech. Still gotta get the worker techs though.

Early gunpowder was definitely best in Civ I, barely manageable in CivII, but in neither case was it dominating enough to win. Certainly isn't now.

 

[RogueNine]

Depends on the size of the map you play, but checking some numbers it is usually worth sticking with Bureaucracy for a while, instead of going to Free Speech. The +2 from Town's only makes sense if you have ALOT of towns on a big map. Also, my Capital usually has the majority of those, so +2 isn't enough to make up for the lost +50% Brcy gets your home city. I usually play on standard though, on a Large or Huge map it probably makes the most sense to go right into it.

Free Religion is big though, especially if you gave up a State Religion civic to placate your AI friends. (I know I do often on Monarch and higher, if I'm not ready for 3+ wars.)