How fast can you get liberalism on this easy map? - deity, epic speed

[CivilizedTiger]

I've seen that liberalism can be obtained very early, actually, to my noob perception, it seems that some players manage to get liberalism obscenely early so I wanted to see if I can learn a valuable lesson from anyone interested in pursuing the liberalism race on what I hope is an easy map.

The post in which I saw a very early liberalism date is this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7299912&postcount=45

The leader is Gandhi, Spiritual, in order to facilitate the transitions between building civics and GPP civics, and Philosophical, for the double GPP rate.

The difficulty is deity and the speed is epic. The events and goody huts aren't enabled.

The map is Pangaea, because I wanted all leaders to be met as early as possible, to facilitate tech trades. There is enough room for 6 cities here, I think, so it should be enough for the main national wonders. You can also block what might be called a peninsula rather easily.

This is the start:


The only modification I made to the map was to move the warrior so that you may get better information on the best possible settling spot. I did reload a lot until I saw stone and a lot of food, though.

The leaders were chosen so that the game may be peaceful and the deity research may help fuel the player's progress through trades. The leaders are:
- Darius
- Elizabeth
- Mansa Musa
- Pericles
- Roosevelt
- Willem van Oranje
Those should offer one religion for the whole map and great research rates, but my knowledge of AI behaviour isn't the best, so I might be wrong.

The goal here is to get liberalism as early as possible and to be the first to it in your game. Please offer a screenshot with the liberalism tech choice and a savegame file from the turn you win the liberalism race. (though I can't guarantee I can open all save files from any mods)
If you would like to continue the game after liberalism and would rather delay the tech so that you may get a more expensive freebie, feel free to do so, but please offer the save and screenshot for the earliest lib date you could get and then just reload from a save file 1 turn earlier than finishing lib, for instance or another earlier file.

I'd also like to ask you to offer some pointers on how you played the game.

Thanks and I hope you have fun.

View attachment Liberalism game.zip

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Early lib dates

20 BCE
NihilZero - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9332305&postcount=10

 

[DampRain]

Darius

Not the most peaceful of fellows. Nor this guy

Willem van Oranje

But should be interesting. Why epic though? Just personal preference?

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Yeah, I know that they don't shy away from war and that Willem is a backstabber, but they don't strike me as the aggressive kind of leaders, but rather the kind of leaders that would go to war on occasion, should a good opportunity arise. Willem also doesn't train too many units, so even if he does go to war, he isn't much of a conqueror. I don't know how much Darius trains, though.

The speed... well, normal feels too fast to me, so that part is personal preference, but marathon adds some rather important imbalances and I've read opinions that tech dates are a lot earlier in marathon.

 

[NihilZero]

Well I've never played Deity, but I note that you have included all the leaders with Free Religion as a favourite civic - they tend to pursue Lib pretty hard.

 

[Jet]

You didn't explicitly say that you have to get Liberalism first. You could give away the prereqs, let the Deity bonuses research it, then steal it. Edit: damn it, yes you did.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

@Jet
You're right, I didn't mention that, it was only implied and not quite clearly either. Thanks for the tip, I've edited the first post.

 

[lymond]

340AD

Spoiler :

Pericles won Lib in 340AD while I was very close to finishing. I probably would have actually won it sooner than that date if two things didn't happen:

a) freakin' barb galley crushed my seafood TWICE...limiting the amount of scientist I could run in Caste

b) if I could figure out the combo that allows you to bulb Lib. I had a GS ready to bulb it but got the option for PP instead. I actually have never bulbed Lib before as far as I recall, but I know you can.

c) actually a third thing was culture pressure on my western stone city from Liz. I think AI culture is kinda BS how they can get such strong culture on you from several tiles away. I was running artists and building culture buildings int that city. It was a minor thing but kept that city from contributing much to the whole.

Everything was pretty peaceful though and I made some key trades here and there to keep me at pace, although really I was far behind in the bigger scheme of things. Luckily, AI seems to not prioritize Edu and LIb a lot.

I was basically one of the first to Edu in the game but just didn't have enough land/development to make the final push to Lib without bulbing it.

 

[DampRain]

b) if I could figure out the combo that allows you to bulb Lib. I had a GS ready to bulb it but got the option for PP instead. I actually have never bulbed Lib before as far as I recall, but I know you can.

You can't have machinery, need compass, calendar and philo obviously .

 

[NihilZero]

My first Deity game. I got to Lib several centuries earlier than I had ever done it on Immortal.

Spoiler :

Of course, it's a lot easier with a cooked map and when you're not actually trying to win the game.

Strategy was - small empire, pacifism and caste, NE in the capital, and bulb everything. After the base techs, Mansa gifted me Writing (!), which I have never seen before, then I went Aesthetics which gave me plenty of trade bait. I bulbed Philosophy (via Drama), Paper (went the Theology route to get there as it seemed faster - all the religious techs were up for trade except for Theology itself, which I self-researched), Education, and Lib (two bulbs, had to self reserach Compass first obviously).

It was all funded with stone and marble failure cash, slider was 100% at all times. When I needed more cash I sold techs or asked for money.

The problem with such an early Lib is finding something good for your free tech - although having gunpowder in the BCs has a certain mystique to it I suppose.

edit - oh, and my most built unit was Great Scientists (tied with warriors at five).

 

[DampRain]

@ NihilZero

Well done!

 

[NihilZero]

It was strangely easy!

 

[DampRain]

Try it again on normal and see if anything different . Getting lib isn't the hard part :\, taking advantage of it to win is ^^". Although a 4 city epic should give you a reasonable chance even on deity . (According to the OP link anyway).

 

[CivilizedTiger]

@NihilZero
Well done!

I can't view the save file for another 12ish hours, unfortunately, so I can't see how your empire looks, but, just a few more questions:

- did you build granaries? If so, when did you build them?
- did you build libraries?
- did you get to build any universities?
- did you finish any wonders or did you only use the materials for fail gold?
- how did you balance infrastructure building with growth and GP generation?

Also, if you wish, you can load from an earlier save and delay lib to get a better freebie, although judging by your reaction to the easiness, I guess you won't.

 

[NihilZero]

Agreed, this was purely an exercise and I doubt if the game is winnable from here - I certainly didn't play it to win. I don't know if Epic made any difference. I always play on Normal and find that I usually play worse on Epic, mainly because my sense of timing is messed up.

 

[bhavv]

I'm trying this, it will be my first Diety attempt too.

-Forget that, this map actually is horrible, too many nearby AI on Deity, no thanks.

 

[NihilZero]

@NihilZero
Well done!

I can't view the save file for another 12ish hours, unfortunately, so I can't see how your empire looks, but, just a few more questions:

- did you build granaries? If so, when did you build them?
- did you build libraries?
- did you get to build any universities?
- did you finish any wonders or did you only use the materials for fail gold?
- how did you balance infrastructure building with growth and GP generation?

Also, if you wish, you can load from an earlier save and delay lib to get a better freebie, although judging by your reaction to the easiness, I guess you won't.

Sorry CT, I didn't see your post until now, my post above was in response to DampRain

To answer your questions - granaries, yes, but not in my capital as far as I recall. Never needed it as my growth there was always manageable.
Libraries - yes, everywhere I think.
Universities - nope. After education I researched compass and then double-bulbed Lib immediately. I was probably building failure cash to try to squeeze in a quicker Lib date.
Wonders - didn't finish any, got failure cash from several.
Infrastructure was pretty minimal. I had one money city (gold mine), my other cities were running scientists. So I didn't need much infra other than libraries and granaries. Oh, and at least one monastery, because I needed to spread my religion to the GP farm to get the pacifism benefit. No academy anywhere.

As for delaying lib, well I probably could, but I didn't play this to win. My situation is pretty bad I think.