Liberalism in 1 AD?

[Eqqman]

Has anybody managed to get Liberalism finished by 1 AD or earlier on Noble+? I've been following some guidelines on the Apolyton forums:

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1) Reasearch Meditation (rel civs start with it)
2) Try to build stonehenge (doing this after you have your first 2 workers seems best, if not industrious best to skip this step)
3) Reasearch bronze working, polytheism and pottery
4) Get granaries in your cities
5) Reasearch mysticism, priesthood.
6) Try to build the oracle and get code of laws instantly with it (otherwise just research it (~10 turn setback if you miss))
7) Start reasearching towards music (this order: writing->maths then alphabet->literature)
8) Try to build the great library (will give you lots of great scientists) or the national epic
9) Use your first great prophet to instantly get civil service (as long as you dont have masonary you can get civ service with a great prophet)

10)
Ok here is where we branch a bit depending on circumstance.
In your cap you will want to have another great person by this point.
The great person can be either an artist, a prophet or a scientist - it doesn't matter as one way or the other they will all give you education. Do what you need to to get a second great person out (2 wonders will tend to do it even with a non-phi civ, although use caste or a library for a great scientist if you want)

Scientist:
If you got a scientist research philosophy and then use the scientist to get edu. Research music and then use the artist to get nationalism. Research liberalism and use it to get mil tradition .

Prophet:
If you got a prophet research music the old fasioned way. Then use the artist from music to hurry education. Then use the prophet to get philosophy (have to get philosophy after the aritst is used for edu or the artist will want to get nationalism). Research nationalism and then liberalism and then get mil tradition.

Artist:
If you get a great artist research music the old fasion way (now have 2 great artists). Use 1 great artist to get education. Research philosophy and use the other great artist to get nationalism. Research lib and get mil tradition.

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A shorter one is to focus on Great Scientists and use them to pop for Paper, Education, Philosophy, and Liberalism.

I haven't been able to get either done yet before the 500s AD. One thing I'm not sure of is if I should be trying to make a second city or not. Something else is if the Oracle is really required and what is the best tech to use it on.

 

[yavoon]

is this something worth doing?

I'd think something like super early cavalry would be far more productive.

 

[aelf]

Scientist:
If you got a scientist research philosophy and then use the scientist to get edu. Research music and then use the artist to get nationalism. Research liberalism and use it to get mil tradition .

Prophet:
If you got a prophet research music the old fasioned way. Then use the artist from music to hurry education. Then use the prophet to get philosophy (have to get philosophy after the aritst is used for edu or the artist will want to get nationalism). Research nationalism and then liberalism and then get mil tradition.

Artist:
If you get a great artist research music the old fasion way (now have 2 great artists). Use 1 great artist to get education. Research philosophy and use the other great artist to get nationalism. Research lib and get mil tradition.

Doesn't MT= cavalry, which in these cases mean super early cavalry?

 

[yavoon]

btw I generally think shooting for an advanced tech is sketchy on anything thats not marathon. on normal I find that the extra speed at which I conquer ppl is made up for by the fewer turns I can be in war.

course I'm not great at really high slingshotting, so meh.

 

[jimbob27]

Sounds dodgy.

You can slingshot for liberalism if you like. I'll slingshot for macemen and conquer all your cities

 

[Elledge]

The source of that strategy is NAGN on the ladder forums over here:
http://civ4players.proboards44.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1151478076&page=2#1151677397

As described in that thread it's very possible in my experience to get Liberalism from 300-0 BC through just normal teching and use of GS for academy/philosophy/education. You won't be able to take anything interesting with it except Nationalism or Gunpowder, though.

NAGN's strategy hits 500 BC with good execution. In a multiplayer environment, though, Oracle is tougher to get, so I don't like it much.

 

[Betafor]

1) Reasearch Meditation (rel civs start with it)

I think you mean mystisism, not meditation

 

[cheesejoff]

Doesn't MT= cavalry, which in these cases mean super early cavalry?

You still need horseback riding and gunpowder, I think.

 

[Eqqman]

The source of that strategy is NAGN on the ladder forums over here:
http://civ4players.proboards44.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1151478076&page=2#1151677397

As described in that thread it's very possible in my experience to get Liberalism from 300-0 BC through just normal teching and use of GS for academy/philosophy/education. You won't be able to take anything interesting with it except Nationalism or Gunpowder, though.

NAGN's strategy hits 500 BC with good execution. In a multiplayer environment, though, Oracle is tougher to get, so I don't like it much.

I've been reading through those threads and they don't have enough detail to help me figure out what I'm not doing correctly. For example, one of them claims you can do it with only 3 Great People. However, that plan requires research through Music and doesn't mention the fact that Monarchy also gets in the way of the techs you'd rather be lightbulbing with the GP and GA, so it's been taking me too long to research through all that. I'm suspecting that these plans may also rely on faster game speeds or smaller maps to reduce the tech prices. One plan also uses a GP + 4 GSs which I've been finding hard to get even for a Philosophical civ. Guys like Elledge keep saying in those threads that it's possible without really specifying how it is done (well, specifying in enough detail to make it reproducible).

I think you mean mystisism, not meditation.

That section is copied from someone else's post, and I'm sure they did. Notice also that they say 'get Granaries in all your cities'. How many cities are we talking about here? I have no idea. This person is also expecting you to try and produce Stonehenge and Oracle, which isn't always that easy even on Noble when you are also squeezing in multiple Settlers.

Sounds dodgy.

You can slingshot for liberalism if you like. I'll slingshot for macemen and conquer all your cities.

I'm sure it is dodgy. First I want to see if I can do it, then I'll worry about improving the practicality of it. But it's probably not something you want to try in multiplayer, even though those referenced threads seem to indicate that's exactly where these other folks are doing it.

 

[Elledge]

I've been reading through those threads and they don't have enough detail to help me figure out what I'm not doing correctly. For example, one of them claims you can do it with only 3 Great People. However, that plan requires research through Music and doesn't mention the fact that Monarchy also gets in the way of the techs you'd rather be lightbulbing with the GP and GA, so it's been taking me too long to research through all that. I'm suspecting that these plans may also rely on faster game speeds or smaller maps to reduce the tech prices. One plan also uses a GP + 4 GSs which I've been finding hard to get even for a Philosophical civ. Guys like Elledge keep saying in those threads that it's possible without really specifying how it is done (well, specifying in enough detail to make it reproducible).

That section is copied from someone else's post, and I'm sure they did. Notice also that they say 'get Granaries in all your cities'. How many cities are we talking about here? I have no idea. This person is also expecting you to try and produce Stonehenge and Oracle, which isn't always that easy even on Noble when you are also squeezing in multiple Settlers.


I'm sure it is dodgy. First I want to see if I can do it, then I'll worry about improving the practicality of it. But it's probably not something you want to try in multiplayer, even though those referenced threads seem to indicate that's exactly where these other folks are doing it.

The GP strategy is very dodgy, as you put it (this is all speaking from a multiplayer perspective.) I tried it three or four times and talked about it for awhile with NAGN as we were talking about it during that fairly old thread, as I was really interested in seeing how it did. Here are some tips from my experience:

- Gandhi seemed best for leader choice, since IND is pretty much a must to get Oracle or Stonehenge in multiplayer.

- I would recommend going for either Oracle or Henge, but not both. I personally found it much easier to get Oracle only for my games. Which one you get depends on your own playstyle. It's a pain to try and walk through a whole game to that point in terms of build order, so you'll have to discover what works best with your play; if you tend to plant extra early cottages, go for Henge and research Code of Laws manually (you'll get Henge quicker, which means quicker prophet), if you tend to research slowly go for Oracle and take CoL and research writing/math/alpha/lit while you wait for the prophet pop.

- About Monarchy, I just get it almost every game as a matter of course - Hereditary Rule is vital for early growth - but yeah, I guess you'll likely need it.

- Music isn't a frequent beeline in multiplayer games, so you can usually take it without too much trouble if you aim for it; most other players will be busy getting either monarchy-->feudalism, or CoL-->CS first (you'll get CoL/CS, but it'll be faster with Oracle/prophet.) I don't know how difficult it would be to get music first on a high-level AI game. Not getting music would set you back loads, since Education is quite expensive.

- You really need to build Great Library to get your second GP in time. It's also obviously just a fantastic wonder. With an ind civ and early CS, you *should* be able to get this most of the time in multiplayer using this tech path. It sort of depends on how many trees you have (I wouldn't recommend this strategy in general unless you have at least average forestation.)

- After you get Oracle/Henge, just expand as usual. (Obviously in MP to have a chance at Oracle or Henge you will probably have to get them up before you put out a settler, so that's assumed. Then chop and slave some settlers and whatever you would usually do.) You don't have anything else to do until you get your prophet done and you get to literature, so there's no real tricky things you need to worry about. Tech helps, of course. Just play a good game; it's assumed that you're a good player here. By the time you get literature, you ought to have 5 or 6 cities, I guess, depending on land, AI, whatever. I don't know how well early war might help or not help this; I'm a pacifist. I'm not sure why he bothered to mention the granaries; obviously granaries are nice

Okay, all that is regarding NAGN's music jump strategy. I personally prefer doing it the old-fashioned way with straight research. The best I can do is refer you to my post in the link above, almost.

I play a very capital-centric game when I am going for early beelines like that. Elizabeth is my favorite pick; philosophical is key in my tech game for an early academy, and I also try and coincide my CS research with a GS on Philosophy. Just get out your settlers early and build your capital. By 500 BC or so your capital should be making about 120 beakers a turn (on an average start with a river but no super resources), size 12 or 13 or so using Hereditary Rule and a pile of Warriors, working a bunch of cottages and with an academy up, and you should have a few satellite cities starting to grow and workers running around. If you don't have that level of tech, that's what you need to get Liberalism in that timeframe; perhaps examine your worker control or early tech.

The biggest decision I make in those games is whether to get CS or Monarchy first. It usually depends how much food I have in my capital. As I'm generally slaving constantly for production, I can often put off Monarchy for second - especially with luxury resources - but there isn't a hard and fast rule. I don't think Oracle is possible unless you're playing against really crappy AI; Priesthood first pretty much sets you back 500 years since you don't have BW or agriculture early.

Um, what else? You should be able to at least get Lib by 100 or 200 BC without much struggle like that. Recommend you try it out on an islands map for practice so you can just forget about the enemy factor.

Regarding map size, etc, everything in that thread is generally going to be referring to Noble, Quick, and either Small or Standard map size. A huge map would certainly slow it down a bit (but AI tech trades would definitely speed it back up again.)

 

[Eqqman]

I've been trying it both with and without Wonders. The main benefit of getting a Wonder seems to be access to the Great Prophet, but if you can get a religion then running a priest yourself is faster. If I found Confucianism then priest + Wonder really speeds things up.

I think the main issue has to be the game speed. All the threads imply that you can burn a single Great Person to get all of the needed techs, but after Paper on normal speed things like Nationalism, Education, and Liberalism are all half-finished only. I've also been relying on Pacifism and 2 Great Person farms but maybe I should switch to National Epic instead- I'd thought it would be far preferable to have unpolluted Great Person pools but maybe that's not an issue.

I've also been begrudging having to get that first Great Prophet for Civil Service. This basically forces you to get either an early Wonder or a religion. The GM also can do an early pop for Civil Service but ironically you still need to get all the religion techs anyway so there's not much advantage to going that route. I haven't tried using the first GS on an Academy yet, without it and without Great Library I'm still able to get my capital with ~175 beakers by 1AD. The beeline to Education for the early University helps a lot, but doing that means I didn't use a GS on an Academy. I haven't tried the Academy route yet so I'll have to see what difference that makes.

The other question is, what is it going to be worth using Liberalism on? Working to get a fast Military Tradition is okay but I haven't found Cavalry to be that much superior to entrenched Middle Ages units. Plus you also need to have the infrastructure in place to be able to produce them in decent numbers. I think Peter has a huge advantage here being Philosophical and having Cossacks, since Cossacks are so superior to regular Cavalry. Nationalism is alright but drafting Musketmen is no great shakes- they just aren't superior enough to the units your enemies will have out by then. I'd thought I'd had a good plan for having Rifling out by 1000 AD via GS/GM, but the GM tree is too sidetracked on the economic/government techs and the GS sidetracks down the Astronomy path. I'll have to take another look at that to see if I've overlooked something. Maybe there is a combination that goes with the MC/P gambit, you get hereditary rule for free and can finagle yourself a second GE to burn on Replaceable Parts. Phil/Fin may be the required combo for this, especially with Elizabeth if you can get yourself drafting Redcoats by 1000 AD or earlier.

 

[Eqqman]

Okay I had Nationalism + Rifling out in 1250 AD, but I made a few mistakes. Firstly, I accidentally took Masonry in a trade so I had to waste time going down the Divine Right path before I could use GAs to bulb what I wanted. Secondly I used my first GS on Philosophy and switched to pacificsm to help spew out Great People. Then I forgot to select a state religion for 1000 years . I also needlessly delayed my first GM to wait for a GE to pop out. I was going to use the GE on Machinery, then I noticed that the GM also would have had Machinery as his first pop. This path worked out much better than the first version I was trying. Before, the best unit you get is an Axeman until you can make Musketmen. With the new path you have Macemen/Crossbows by 1 AD and can easily start a war if you need one. It helped a lot to manage 2 separate Great Person farms running in parallel since I got them much faster than trying to run just one. The downside is I still had to build Oracle so there was some risk involved. Now tell me drafting Redcoats ain't cool .

 

[mice]

Eggman, would it be too much to ask you to write a step by step for dummies to this strat. For example to the point of drafting Redcoats, or Cossacks, with some round-about dates so we know when things should be happening (Noble/Prince, whatever you used)

I realise all the info is contained in the posts above but it's pretty confusing for a brain my size.

 

[Elledge]

I've been trying it both with and without Wonders. The main benefit of getting a Wonder seems to be access to the Great Prophet, but if you can get a religion then running a priest yourself is faster. If I found Confucianism then priest + Wonder really speeds things up.

I think the main issue has to be the game speed. All the threads imply that you can burn a single Great Person to get all of the needed techs, but after Paper on normal speed things like Nationalism, Education, and Liberalism are all half-finished only. I've also been relying on Pacifism and 2 Great Person farms but maybe I should switch to National Epic instead- I'd thought it would be far preferable to have unpolluted Great Person pools but maybe that's not an issue.

I've also been begrudging having to get that first Great Prophet for Civil Service. This basically forces you to get either an early Wonder or a religion. The GM also can do an early pop for Civil Service but ironically you still need to get all the religion techs anyway so there's not much advantage to going that route. I haven't tried using the first GS on an Academy yet, without it and without Great Library I'm still able to get my capital with ~175 beakers by 1AD. The beeline to Education for the early University helps a lot, but doing that means I didn't use a GS on an Academy. I haven't tried the Academy route yet so I'll have to see what difference that makes.

The other question is, what is it going to be worth using Liberalism on? Working to get a fast Military Tradition is okay but I haven't found Cavalry to be that much superior to entrenched Middle Ages units. Plus you also need to have the infrastructure in place to be able to produce them in decent numbers. I think Peter has a huge advantage here being Philosophical and having Cossacks, since Cossacks are so superior to regular Cavalry. Nationalism is alright but drafting Musketmen is no great shakes- they just aren't superior enough to the units your enemies will have out by then. I'd thought I'd had a good plan for having Rifling out by 1000 AD via GS/GM, but the GM tree is too sidetracked on the economic/government techs and the GS sidetracks down the Astronomy path. I'll have to take another look at that to see if I've overlooked something. Maybe there is a combination that goes with the MC/P gambit, you get hereditary rule for free and can finagle yourself a second GE to burn on Replaceable Parts. Phil/Fin may be the required combo for this, especially with Elizabeth if you can get yourself drafting Redcoats by 1000 AD or earlier.

That's a very good point about the game speed. On Quick a single Scientist or Artist can nearly finish Education (about 1050 of 1400 beakers if I recall,) and a single Prophet can nearly finish Civil Service (about 650 of 675 beakers.) Slower games mean that great people aren't quite as useful for tech.

Redcoats take a lot of research. I don't think you'll be able to easily leverage great people all the way to rifling - it'll just take plain old beakerage. Can't say my experience is better than yours for that (although one Islands game I recall I managed to drop redcoats around 600 AD; I played a pretty flawless Elizabeth game there though.)

On the usefulness of Cavalry, they are a game-breaker in multiplayer for sure, and the definitive unit until Rifling. Against an enemy with no better counter than Pikemen, they should be an instantly won game - roll up two-stacks of Cavalry and Macemen pillaging their land, and use them as cover to bring in catapults - and if the enemy doesn't have Pikemen, just send pure Cavalry and pillage every tile they own before ripping apart their bombarded cities. Longbowmen don't cut it at all. There is really no answer until you have cannons, riflemen, or perhaps aggressive grenadiers with formation.

I didn't even think to found a religion and pop a prophet yourself that way. Why not shoot for Oracle-->CoL and do both?

 

[Eqqman]

Eggman, would it be too much to ask you to write a step by step for dummies to this strat. For example to the point of drafting Redcoats, or Cossacks, with some round-about dates so we know when things should be happening (Noble/Prince, whatever you used)

I realise all the info is contained in the posts above but it's pretty confusing for a brain my size.

One thing I've been discovering is that this is far less amenable to an easy step-by-step than other openings. I'll see what I can do, though. This is going to be a combo of things I've been finding out myself and the advice Elledge has been giving here.

I'll start with the easy route, going for Cossacks with Peter. Then I can go over how things are going to be different if you want to gamble on Rifles.

As Elledge points out, the capital is going to be very important. You'll be trying to have it grow to size 14 or so. So you need to have a good early food surplus for growth that will slowly decrease as you work more and more cottages and lose food from being unhealthy. You may also be getting Iron Working rather late so you have to make sure that Bronze Working is enough to clear out the space to erect 12-14 cottages. Peter scores an advantage here with the health bonus from Expansive. A start with a lot of floodplains is going to hurt more than it helps since you'll be chopping down any nearby forests. Heavy floodplains is also going to be a detriment to your Great Person farm from the health hit.

We'll be relying on Oracle so your opening moves are going to have to deal with building that quickly. I'd definitely start a second city before beginning Oracle. Use forests to help chop out the Settler. Chopping a 2nd Worker is debatable. If you have lots of trees, it's worth it, if you have few trees, you may want to save them all for Oracle. If you haven't chopped a 2nd Worker then the second city should probably start one right away. There's no exact guideline on getting done, but preferably you're in a decent window like 1800-1600 BC. But you really can't do much about it since it relies on how fast you get to Priesthood and what production you have available to your capital.

The tech tree is complicated since we need to produce Oracle quickly plus make sure we keep the Workers busy. If you get Bronze Working first, you can chop or pre-chop trees and build mines while you wait for the next tech, which will be Agriculture or Animal Husbandry depending on what you got for food bonuses. Agriculture is prefered since you'll be building far more farms than pastures. I'd then go for Mysticism so that you can get an Obelisk going in city #2, and then maybe the Wheel to make sure your Workers don't run out of things to do. Then Meditation->Priesthood to start Oracle and Pottery->Writing to set up for Code of Laws. Then get Code of Laws as your Oracle bonus. Next I would start up Monarchy while growing the capital to the happiness limit and building cottages for the capital. Any time the capital is below the happiness limit work tiles to maximize food/growth then stagnate on cottages/mines.

After Monarchy is done you'll need to use hereditary rule. Unfortunately this plan requires a lot of civics changes which leads to lots of Anarchy. So I'd hold off on hereditary rule until you can change to caste system at the same time. If things are going well this should be very soon. What you've been doing with city #2 is pretty open, but you need to get a Great Person farm very quickly. If city #2 doesn't have enough food to support 6 specialists then you need to quickly settle a city that will. But time is of the essence so if the city you have available now can handle at least 3 specialists then I would switch to hr + caste now. Run nothing but Artists- you only need GAs from this point, aside from the GP you'll get from the Oracle. Run specialists as heavily as you can but be careful not to pop a GA until you've gotten the GP from Oracle. After Oracle is built (and aside from the specialists issue) you're pretty open on what you have your cities doing. I'd suggest getting one of your first 2 cities past the capital going as a decent production city. You need to keep your power rating up to avoid being attacked (or to start a war yourself, if you want) and you need to help provide extra troops to the captial. After Monarchy the capital should be in a continual state of growth until bogged down by unhealthiness.

The GP from Oracle you'll burn on Civil Service. The GAs you accumulate will be used on Philosophy, Nationalism, Education, and Liberalism. Military Tradition you pick up for free from Liberalism. I can't give you a hard end date since it depends entirely on how fast your Great Person farm can create 3 GAs (you'll get one from Music).

Now for the post-Monarchy tech path. You need Polytheism and Alphabet. Check the progress of the Great Prophet, if he will be out in less time than it takes to research both, start with Polytheism. You need this researched to make sure you get Civil Service from the GP as soon as he appears.

After Alphabet you can start making tech trades. Good things to pick up are Iron Working, Calendar, Animal Husbandry, and Horseback Riding. After a GA has been burned on Philosophy you need to get Horseback Riding before you can use them on the rest of the techs you need, better to trade for it if you can. Depending on how things are going though in the AI kingdoms they may not have time to research a lot of things you'd like to get. Hold out as long as you can to get decent deals, or try to finagle lesser trades like giving away the pre-CoL religious techs. Make sure you do NOT accept Masonry in a trade. Masonry is going to divert your GP and GA down the path towards Divine Right.

After Alphabet you need Literature and then Mathematics. If you're lucky you can trade for Mathematics from an AI who is trying to beat you to Music. If you can be assured of being first to Music, then divert to Drama, since it will reduce the costs of researching Music and you need Lit, Music, and Drama anyways before the GA can be used on Philosophy. At this point you should be close to producing a GA yourself, burn the first on Philosophy and the second (provided you have Horseback Riding) on Nationalism. You're then researching Paper and finishing off Nationalism so the next GA offers Education. Then the next GA starts you on Liberalism, you will most likely be doing Gunpowder while you wait for him to pop out. Finish Liberalism and collect Military Tradition, and you've got your Cossacks.

Getting Philosophy opens up another quandry. You need to switch to bureaucracy, switch to pacificsm, and pick a state religion so that the GA farm gets the pacificsm bonus. This is 3 turns of Anarchy that you can minimize by waiting to take bureaucracy & pacificsm at the same time. I think Spiritual civs have a huge advantage here because of all the Anarchy you end up with otherwise. Aside from that, as long as you managed the capital correctly and have a decent GA farm going you can pretty much do what you like with your empire. The capital needs a Granary, Library, and University, but don't make these at the expense of city growth. Only focus on production when you've reached a happiness limit. I'd recommend making sure you've gotten Granaries out by the whip if need be in the capital and GA farm before you leave slavery for caste system.

Now Rifles are not for the faint of heart and I'm not convinced I have all the kinks worked out yet. For Cavalry you need capital, GA farm, and production city. For Rifles you need capital, production city, GM farm, and GS farm. Having access to 2 cities that can each support 6 specialists and are close by is going to be a challenge on most maps. Early scouting is going to be key, if it looks like you can't manage 2 such cities then you'll have to give up and settle for Cavalry.

One of the things that makes this troublesome to work out is that there are multiple tech lines you want to progress down simultaneously. I'll make note of them, but bear in mind that these should not be interpreted as literal lines of research:

Myst-> Med-> Poly-> Priest-> Mon-> Philo-> Feud-> Guilds-> Gunpowder
Wheel-> Pot-> Writing-> CoL-> Civil-> Paper-> Edu-> Lib
Math-> Curr-> Bank-> Rep Parts-> Rifle
Bronze-> Metal Cast-> Machinery-> Printing Press

This is obviously quite a lot. As a consequence, we need 2 Great Person farms running in parallel. The cities take turns on being allowed to make a Great Person. The city who is currently not allowed to make a Great Person spends its time running a minimum of specialists to allow the city to grow. The other city maximizes specialists and runs a food deficit as much as it can. Both cities will need to share a religion so they get equal benefit from pacificsm. When each city is running maximum specialists they should be about the same amount, 6 or more ideally. Otherwise one city will be too slow when its turn comes and you'll have lopsided production.

You're going to need far more GMs than GSs, after the first few come out you'll want to have both cities going on GMs. The GSs will bulb you for Philosophy, Printing Press, and Education. GMs give you Banking, Civil Service, Machinery, Guilds, and Printing Press. Lots of useful things, but to get them you need to delay the availability of Banking as long as you can. This means wait on Feudalism until the last possible moment. Your goal is hold off on completing Liberalism until you can get Replaceable Parts as the free tech. Then research Rifling yourself, by the time you finish Rifling you should have produced a GA from one of your farms. Pop him for Nationalism after (hopefully) trading for Lit, Drama, and Music. Or, if you've got your Great Person farms switched to making GAs at just the right time, bulb GAs for these too. Trading is going to be very helpful in this strategy as well. In addition to what I mentioned in the Cavalry plan you might also be able to pick up Construction and other useful things.

Your opening is very similar to pursuing Cavalry, except you're getting Metal Casting via Oracle. Use the GP from Oracle on Code of Laws, you'll now use a GM on Civil Service. The tech research path after Alphabet is tricky. Pick things that are going to be cheapest to research at the time. You need to get Mathematics before you can use the GS, and you need Math + Currency before you can use GMs. If you started with Fishing (which Elizabeth does) then you also need Sailing to use the GM, I suggest you trade for it (you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to trade for it). Some of the techs that you could theoretically bulb for you may end up getting yourself because you see they are now cheap and you don't have time to wait for a Great Person to pop out. Education, Liberalism, and Gunpowder will all likely be self-researched. When the research time on Liberalism gets down to < 15 turns you may want to start it, then stop when 1 turn is left if you're not ready for grabbing Replaceable Parts.

While certainly not short enough to be a 'slingshot' by any means, you can still get things done fairly quickly. Once you're done with Rifling you can switch back to making GSs to help with Chemistry, Scientific Method, Physics (get a free GS) and then Artillery. Making a big push for Artillery will certainly be a game-clincher if nothing else at this point has. You'll also be finding it quite cheap to bulb a GA for Military Tradition (or just do it yourself) to get Cavalry backup for your Rifles.

While obviously a very long-haul plan, there are some pros. You'll have early access to Watermills, Workshops, Crossbows, and Macemen. During the time you are working on making GMs you are earning good money to put towards upgrades and to keep your research rate up.

 

[mice]

Wow ! What a brilliant and comprehensive guide. I really appreciate it.

I asked about cossacks, but did you use Peter because of the philosophical trait mainly?

I think Ghandi in Warlords is philosophical/spiritual . This could be a good leader to try for early cavalry.

I'm going to work on the cavalry approach a good few times before trying the rifles.

Last question, are you finding success with this strat?

 

[Eqqman]

Wow ! What a brilliant and comprehensive guide. I really appreciate it.

I asked about cossacks, but did you use Peter because of the philosophical trait mainly?

I think Ghandi in Warlords is philosophical/spiritual . This could be a good leader to try for early cavalry.

I'm going to work on the cavalry approach a good few times before trying the rifles.

Last question, are you finding success with this strat?

Any plan that relies on multiple Great People is naturally going to benefit from being Philosophical. I certainly wouldn't try going Rifles without it though . Since Peter has Cossacks (still good even with the Warlords nerf) and Philosophical he's an obvious choice, with Expansive even more icing on the cake. He's just about perfectly set up for it... with a Phil/Spir leader coming in second, mainly to stave off all the Anarchy that comes up. Even regular Cavalry is still pretty decent, so you might be able to try it with just about any leader. You'll just have to be able to run more specialists to make up the difference. This should also work at least up through Monarch as you should be able to get Oracle more often than not. Rifles is probably out- you'll likely get interrupted by at least one war and you'll be cutting it close with Liberalism. On Monarch one of the AIs will usually have Liberalism out just after 1200 AD so you'll be cutting it close, but that path is probably best saved for lower levels.

Eventual success mainly relies on what's happening in your other cities while you're doing all this other stuff. I've had no problems with eventual victory going either route, although I haven't played through every game where I was going through Rifles since I'm mainly interested in fooling with the opening. But when my cities are filled with Macemen in 1200 AD and I'm drafting Riflemen I'm not too concerned about the game. Getting a good early production city is pretty important and I'd try to get 6 cities out by 1 AD, 4 in your first expansion and then 2 others later that fill in gaps. Don't be afraid to have plenty of overlap in your city borders since you might not have room to expand to 6 cities with no overlap at all. Something I forgot to mention, is when you're done running 2 Great Person cities going after Rifles you can convert one of the Great Person farms into a Rifleman farm by adding Globe Theater, so you can do a draft in this city every turn. This may almost be a neccessity since otherwise if you've only got a handful of cities you'll run into problems doing 3 drafts every turn. If you've managed to squeeze in an early war you might have enough cities where this is less of an issue.

 

[juggerxnaut]

sure thing
the significant point is u have good luck to have 2 prophets or more,not other GP
its easy if the prophets give u civilservice,and many beakers for education and liberalism.
if so,before century u can get it definitely

 

[Eqqman]

No luck involved at all. Unless you are building extra Wonders in these cities that add a chance of getting somebody else, you have total control over who pops out.

 

[drkodos]

I have not yet been able to get it done before 1 AD, but in several games I have been able to nab it by 200 AD. IIRC, there was a link in that original Apolyton post to yet another site that gave even greater details and another link to a saved game in which the original protaganist succeeded in nailing it before 1 AD.

Calvary by 300AD had some noticeable effects on gameplay.

The deep slingshot is doable, but map conditions have to be almost perfect (Barbaraians or Agressive Civs make it impossible) so as to be practically tweaked for it.



In my most recent efforts to succeed with the deep slingshot playing Noble on Warlords, I managed to pop Masonry from the first hut I found.