I have been following obsolete's threads on a Wonder-based-settled-GP-no-cottage economy, and was interested in trying a similar approach in BtS.
As much as I wanted to stay true to his approach I needed to adjust it a little to make it more mine - so my goal was to try to squeeze a settler in the mix fairly early in order for the second city to get another settler out ASAP. It seems that there is an early sacrifice for wonders over settlers, which for a mediocre player like me, is sometimes tough to overcome. I didn't feel as if my diplomacy skills were enough to stay out of the mix early, so I wanted the option for the rest of my empire to crank out a military early. I was willing to take the chance at missing a Wonder or two in order to have a more balanced civ. But regardless, the main objectives would remain the same -- no cottages and no lightbulbing. I wasn't planning anything tricky with mass upgrades at a specific time frame, more trying to play a semi-balanced defense. Also, the whole Calvary approach is considerably different now in BtS than Warlords.
Settings: Monarch -- Big&Small -- Epic (can't help myself) -- De Gaul -- Random Religions -- Aggressive AI OFF
Start location was beautiful for a GP farm with 9 floodplains! There was only one resource visible (sheep on a plains hill) with a grassland hills on either side. Additionally, there were 4 forested grasslands and a few regular grassland and a few plains tiles. Not a huge amount of production. . . hmm.
Initial build -- worker while researching AH. Horses appeared in the BFC, greatly increasing my initial production capabilities! Headed towards Mysticism -- got Stonehenge. Definitely wanted my first GPP's to be priests and not spies. Here I did something that obsolete surely wouldn't -- instead of heading straight towards the next wonder, I squeezed in a settler (heading towards a site with bronze and jumbos) -- 2 chops (the grassland hills) so it actually didn't detract too much. Then went for Masonry/GW. Now, in the few BtS games I have played thus far, I have been beaten to the GW even when beelining from the gates, so I wouldn't have been surprised to miss it here (no building resources in sight), but I got it. Then Priesthood/Oracle -- again which I wasn't really expecting to get (I think I grabbed Code of Laws). When I finished that I decided to give the Pyramids a try (30 turns), even without stone and not jumping on it sooner -- figuring the gold on a miss wouldn't be too bad either. Amazingly I got that too.
In the meantime I had gotten city #3 up and running, and focused on trying to keep my power graph from looking too tempting to the AI's.
A note on who I had met and what was going on. I had met Sitting Bull, Isabella, Frederick and Justinian. They were all relatively far away, but were slowly creeping their empires towards me. Obsolete has consistently made comments on how founding too many religions can be a bad thing, and I totally understand here. He seems to do extremely well at playing the AI's against each other in order to slow them down. A key way to do this is ensure there are religious tensions. Isabella had founded Christianity very early, and Justinian had founded Islam. I think Buddhism was FIDL. Unfortunately I founded the rest. Try as I might at one point to spread my religions around to avoid a block, pretty soon Sitting Bull and Frederick were both also solidly Christian. With tensions beginning to mount, and a need for some security I had no choice in giving up trying to split up the block and had to just join it. Although I couldn't keep the AI's at war, I did have the luxury of building more infrastructure in my other cities as opposed to just creating massive armies.
So I then expanded to 6 cities by capturing 2 nearby barbarian cities (barely missing the 3rd to Sitting Bull) making me backfill with a pretty poor at first fishing village, but with the Maoi Statues was pretty good production city nonetheless.
It turned into a pure infrastructure build game with a few units built here and there to try not to far too far behind in the power graph. I ended up building just about every wonder I went for (missed a few but can't remember off the top of my head) and continued to settle all the great people. Despite no lightbulbing, the race for Liberalism never was in jeopardy. Kind of lost my focus in the mid-game -- beelining much too early to get the SOL -- which let the other civs catch up on military techs at a time when I still felt a little vulnerable. Once I got my priorities back in line I pretty much established and kept a solid tech advantage.
My capital became ridiculous (for production and science (and gold)) even by mid-game. If ever the need arose for military might, the empire focus could easily have shifted to protect my holdings and probably even made a little advance. But as it was, I never ended up in a real war, only getting pulled into a fake war at the end of the game (damn Apostolic Palace). The Space Race wasn't even close as I completed the entire ship before anyone had more than 4 parts. Being able to crank out spaceship parts in a handful of turns is foreign to me, but pretty nice.
Ended up with something like 11 prophets, 2 engineers, 3 scientists, 1 artist
, 1 merchants and a great spy -- I stopped keeping track at the end. I messed up by putting Oxford in my capital, forgetting that I had already put in the National Epic. When Ironworks came around I was a little disappointed that it had to go somewhere else. Regardless, Oxford wasn't a bad option here.
I understand now the priority of keeping a small empire to reduce maintenance. Even so, some specialists could easily have been switched from prophets to merchants to stabilize if necessary.
I'm not sure how easy this would have been without Industrious, but I'm sure it is possible. Also, the dynamic of the game was a little strange that the main continent was one huge friendly religious block keeping military out of focus. But with some good diplomacy, I think it is possible against a nearby aggressive neighbor.
Can't remember the last game I played where I only ever lost 3 units -- one wandering Warrior to a bear, and 2 axes in one of my barbarian city conquests -- fairly bizarre.
All great people joined Paris, and I never built any cottages (until the very end when a few of my automated workers did). I think if I was doing this again I would have let my others cities make a few cottages on their own, but it seems completely possible to win without any at all.
So all-in-all, I have to say that a no-lightbulb technique is certainly possible on BTS. Things certainly played out favorably for a builder-game, but I think I would have been successful at keeping a defensive force around if the game had gone differently. I'm not sure I would have been able to been offensive militarily until the late-game, but probably more a function of how the early game transpired. I ended up pretty even from a manufactured goods perspective even though I only had 6 cities compared to Sitting Bulls 20 or so.
As much as I wanted to stay true to his approach I needed to adjust it a little to make it more mine - so my goal was to try to squeeze a settler in the mix fairly early in order for the second city to get another settler out ASAP. It seems that there is an early sacrifice for wonders over settlers, which for a mediocre player like me, is sometimes tough to overcome. I didn't feel as if my diplomacy skills were enough to stay out of the mix early, so I wanted the option for the rest of my empire to crank out a military early. I was willing to take the chance at missing a Wonder or two in order to have a more balanced civ. But regardless, the main objectives would remain the same -- no cottages and no lightbulbing. I wasn't planning anything tricky with mass upgrades at a specific time frame, more trying to play a semi-balanced defense. Also, the whole Calvary approach is considerably different now in BtS than Warlords.
Settings: Monarch -- Big&Small -- Epic (can't help myself) -- De Gaul -- Random Religions -- Aggressive AI OFF
Start location was beautiful for a GP farm with 9 floodplains! There was only one resource visible (sheep on a plains hill) with a grassland hills on either side. Additionally, there were 4 forested grasslands and a few regular grassland and a few plains tiles. Not a huge amount of production. . . hmm.
Initial build -- worker while researching AH. Horses appeared in the BFC, greatly increasing my initial production capabilities! Headed towards Mysticism -- got Stonehenge. Definitely wanted my first GPP's to be priests and not spies. Here I did something that obsolete surely wouldn't -- instead of heading straight towards the next wonder, I squeezed in a settler (heading towards a site with bronze and jumbos) -- 2 chops (the grassland hills) so it actually didn't detract too much. Then went for Masonry/GW. Now, in the few BtS games I have played thus far, I have been beaten to the GW even when beelining from the gates, so I wouldn't have been surprised to miss it here (no building resources in sight), but I got it. Then Priesthood/Oracle -- again which I wasn't really expecting to get (I think I grabbed Code of Laws). When I finished that I decided to give the Pyramids a try (30 turns), even without stone and not jumping on it sooner -- figuring the gold on a miss wouldn't be too bad either. Amazingly I got that too.
In the meantime I had gotten city #3 up and running, and focused on trying to keep my power graph from looking too tempting to the AI's.
A note on who I had met and what was going on. I had met Sitting Bull, Isabella, Frederick and Justinian. They were all relatively far away, but were slowly creeping their empires towards me. Obsolete has consistently made comments on how founding too many religions can be a bad thing, and I totally understand here. He seems to do extremely well at playing the AI's against each other in order to slow them down. A key way to do this is ensure there are religious tensions. Isabella had founded Christianity very early, and Justinian had founded Islam. I think Buddhism was FIDL. Unfortunately I founded the rest. Try as I might at one point to spread my religions around to avoid a block, pretty soon Sitting Bull and Frederick were both also solidly Christian. With tensions beginning to mount, and a need for some security I had no choice in giving up trying to split up the block and had to just join it. Although I couldn't keep the AI's at war, I did have the luxury of building more infrastructure in my other cities as opposed to just creating massive armies.
So I then expanded to 6 cities by capturing 2 nearby barbarian cities (barely missing the 3rd to Sitting Bull) making me backfill with a pretty poor at first fishing village, but with the Maoi Statues was pretty good production city nonetheless.
It turned into a pure infrastructure build game with a few units built here and there to try not to far too far behind in the power graph. I ended up building just about every wonder I went for (missed a few but can't remember off the top of my head) and continued to settle all the great people. Despite no lightbulbing, the race for Liberalism never was in jeopardy. Kind of lost my focus in the mid-game -- beelining much too early to get the SOL -- which let the other civs catch up on military techs at a time when I still felt a little vulnerable. Once I got my priorities back in line I pretty much established and kept a solid tech advantage.
My capital became ridiculous (for production and science (and gold)) even by mid-game. If ever the need arose for military might, the empire focus could easily have shifted to protect my holdings and probably even made a little advance. But as it was, I never ended up in a real war, only getting pulled into a fake war at the end of the game (damn Apostolic Palace). The Space Race wasn't even close as I completed the entire ship before anyone had more than 4 parts. Being able to crank out spaceship parts in a handful of turns is foreign to me, but pretty nice.
Ended up with something like 11 prophets, 2 engineers, 3 scientists, 1 artist
, 1 merchants and a great spy -- I stopped keeping track at the end. I messed up by putting Oxford in my capital, forgetting that I had already put in the National Epic. When Ironworks came around I was a little disappointed that it had to go somewhere else. Regardless, Oxford wasn't a bad option here.I understand now the priority of keeping a small empire to reduce maintenance. Even so, some specialists could easily have been switched from prophets to merchants to stabilize if necessary.
I'm not sure how easy this would have been without Industrious, but I'm sure it is possible. Also, the dynamic of the game was a little strange that the main continent was one huge friendly religious block keeping military out of focus. But with some good diplomacy, I think it is possible against a nearby aggressive neighbor.
Can't remember the last game I played where I only ever lost 3 units -- one wandering Warrior to a bear, and 2 axes in one of my barbarian city conquests -- fairly bizarre.
All great people joined Paris, and I never built any cottages (until the very end when a few of my automated workers did). I think if I was doing this again I would have let my others cities make a few cottages on their own, but it seems completely possible to win without any at all.
So all-in-all, I have to say that a no-lightbulb technique is certainly possible on BTS. Things certainly played out favorably for a builder-game, but I think I would have been successful at keeping a defensive force around if the game had gone differently. I'm not sure I would have been able to been offensive militarily until the late-game, but probably more a function of how the early game transpired. I ended up pretty even from a manufactured goods perspective even though I only had 6 cities compared to Sitting Bulls 20 or so.
(though i think i'l still be close to friends with him).
