Improving Players: Using Oxford to Leapfrog the AI

[Browd]

Sorry... what's NIA?

National Intelligence Agency, a national wonder unlocked at Radio.

 

[brasaelal]

I used this strategy in my current game as germany and it worked really well!

I researched Radio and adopted an ideology before having 3 factories and about 10 turns before anyone else (emperor, standard).

Not only it gave me a substantial advantage, I also quickly built two wonders (Eiffel Tower and Broadway). That was really important, because I was defeated at most of the medieval and renaissance wonders races.

 

[beetle]

I used Radio to unlock Ideologies for my two most recent games, and it works much better than the way I had been doing things.

One game was wide though, and I had a couple late cities to prevent AI civ from getting a foothold on “my” continent, they do so love to spam. Being meager sites, they really slowed down Oxford because I was already having cash flow problems. I ended up using Oxford for Satellites. SV with two parts ahead of my closest competitor (Shaka, taking over most of the world), four+ parts everyone else.

 

[soprof]

I nearly always go Freedom

cute.

 

[Martin Alvito]

My rationale for rationalism bulbing Satellites is that you can beeline straight to info age from modern, and that it unlocks Hubble. Use the 2 GS from Hubble to fill your tech tree out, regardless of VC. Hubble just happens to help SV more than the others. But it still helps CV, because you can bulb your way to Internet, and it helps domination because Satellites reveals the map.

There isn't a consistent answer here; it really depends on your RA timings. If you're going to get Plastics rapidly after Replaceable Parts, you want to save Oxford for Satellites. If not, you'll come out ahead in the long run by using Oxford to accelerate your Labs rush buy. You get 8 more turns on parts in addition to the increase from accelerated Labs, which can be significant.

I don't like the Hubble GS (or any GS at all) to come too late. Otherwise you don't get to enjoy science lead as long, and you get slimmer pickings for tech as you start to finish the whole tree.

The downside to this approach is that the Hubble GS pair bump your counter. In most cases, you want to time Hubble to land soon enough that you can complete the other five parts before the last one unlocks, but otherwise delay it until the turn after you pop the last GS you're going to get via GPP.

 

[tetley]

I just Oxforded Industrialization in a really bad game, and boy did that save my behind. I barely beat Pacal to ideology. Got an RA to get economics first, industrialization depended on only economics. I would say that was textbook leapfrogging an AI. And we're talking a game where I just found out that betraying a DOF has dipomatic penalties even for unmet AI's (ouch), and I beelined Heathen conversion and can't find a single barb camp.

 

[Nick31]

I enjoyed reading these. Leap frogging to dominance in a wide open game is so fulfilling

 

[beetle]

You get 8 more turns on parts

Please explain this bit.