OMG! Futurehermit's Gandhi Opening on Emperor

[Dirk1302]

Ok, i gave it another try (Epic speed), got the usual ice/tundra start with lots of seafood (anybody else who often get that start with Ghandi?) and also lots of forests. Still very difficult, look at the timeline:

polytheism researched in 3310

bronze working researched in 2500, worker ready It's 15 turns to masonry from here, in this time the worker can build a mine and prechop 2 forests (60 hammers) . capital is at 3, builds monument and whips it when there is one turn left,45 hammers. so when masonry is researched we have 105 hammers ,we live in the year 2050 and still have 375-105 =270 hammers to go . from this point on i got 8 H/turn from city and chop one forest every 5 turns for an average of 6H/turn. so GW takes 270/14 * 30 year ~~ 600 year to complete from this point (actually longer because i started to lose some of the 8H/T due to chopping)

I was duly beaten to GW in 1480.

So i tried again: this time i built monument and barracks while researching poly and bw taking them of the queue once they were one step from completion, i was just able to finish the first worker when i discovered bw. i whipped monument and barracks for a total of 90H at this moment so i immediately had a second worker. This worked, i now had GW in 1510 (i made some small mistakes could have been 1600 ithink). Exciting but very unnatural. my empire is really in a sorry state capital full of buildings but whipped down to size 1. Next whip is the temple and settlers will not be built before 1000bc.due to building monument and barracks i haven't got very much warriors either.

The point is that researching the techs took too long so it seems to me that an early commerce tile or a river would be very useful and almost essential. Every turn to accelerate the speed of poly and especially bw is important.

 

[futurehermit]

I can pull this off pretty consistently now.

My build:

Research: Polyth-Bronze-Masonry-Agriculture-Priesthood

Production: Warrior-Warrior-Worker-Warrior-GW-Temple

I've found there is time to sneak agriculture in there while the GW is being built meaning you can get down a farm (great if a farmable resource in capital BFC) to help work mines and also to regrow after whipping of GW or Temple (or if you have nice production and don't need to whip either, whipping settler after).

****

However, although I love this strat and the idea of getting early pyramids, I'm starting to change my mind about pyramids, mainly because I want to start playing consistently on emperor and I just feel like, as acidsatyr has said, that I would be better off just putting focus on early expansion. It just seems to me that expansion is MOST important and the SE can still be very competitive even without pyramids

 

[CivCorpse]

I always play on Marathon speed. Think this might work for me?

 

[cabert]

However, although I love this strat and the idea of getting early pyramids, I'm starting to change my mind about pyramids, mainly because I want to start playing consistently on emperor and I just feel like, as acidsatyr has said, that I would be better off just putting focus on early expansion. It just seems to me that expansion is MOST important and the SE can still be very competitive even without pyramids

I don't know if the Se can be competitive without pyramids, but I know for sure that with the GE for pyramids strat
I had very limited expansion,
and so very limited production capacity
and so a very limited army,
which may not be enough to kill my neighbour.

I'll give it another try (good feeling to have 4 wonders in an "emperor " game by 200 AD), and maybe try the old "3 cities while oracling Metal casting, whip forge, run engineer, GE builds pyramids" to compare.

 

[Dirk1302]

However, although I love this strat and the idea of getting early pyramids, I'm starting to change my mind about pyramids, mainly because I want to start playing consistently on emperor and I just feel like, as acidsatyr has said, that I would be better off just putting focus on early expansion. It just seems to me that expansion is MOST important and the SE can still be very competitive even without pyramids

Agreed i usually found hinduism for happiness as Ghandi if i have no luxury resource nearby but even this is risky because i can't always research bronzeworking and Animal husbandry (if i miss out on copper) in time. It's seems you have to play a very basic expansion/units opening on Emperor to be save. Happiness has to come later it seems.

As for the Se, Pyramids are at it's best pre alphabet for the happiness and the extra research to alphabet and after education to get to liberalism early.
Also resarcing constitution takes time without pyramids (Acidsatyr's idea to lightbulb this with a GM seems like a great idea to me, didn't know this was possible).Between Alphabet and liberalism the Se rocks with or without pyramids.

I don't know if the Se can be competitive without pyramids, but I know for sure that with the GE for pyramids strat
I had very limited expansion,
and so very limited production capacity
and so a very limited army,
which may not be enough to kill my neighbour.

I'll give it another try (good feeling to have 4 wonders in an "emperor " game by 200 AD), and maybe try the old "3 cities while oracling Metal casting, whip forge, run engineer, GE builds pyramids" to compare.

I also tried this one but it is much more difficult than the GW gambit. I found that i just couldn't research the techs in time. Also you'll have to build units against barbs in this case.

 

[futurehermit]

yeah, the great thing about the GW gambit is no worrying about barbs

 

[NaZdReG]

hermit,

wanted to give you some feedback after giving the strat a shot with egypt.

researched mining, bronze, masonry, mysticism, poly, AH, writing, alpha, lit

built warrior, worker, warrior, great wall, obelisk, settler, settler

ran 2 priests, turned them off to let the wonder finish the gp pool. popped an engineer got pyramids at 940bc with 2 cities up.

no religion on the whole continent until I founded taoism.. but didnt need the religion to run the priests!!!

was able to continue expanding while pulling off your strat, very cool and the chariots helped me in an early war with the romans.

give it a shot let me know what you think and how to fine tune it

NaZ

 

[futurehermit]

why did you research poly at that time?

why no wheel? wouldn't you want to hook up horses/bronze/(stone?) asap?

what were the odds of you popping that GE? it sounds great, but if the odds are low then you can't count on it with egypt most games. with gandhi i'm looking at 60/40, which is not great odds, but better than 50/50 i'll take anyday.

not having to rely on founding a religion is good imo (although it does give you a fall-back option of building a shrine with your gp if you don't get a ge).

war chariots are an insane complement to this strategy however (to recover from initial lack of expansion). so if we could get it to work consistently, that would be great. plus, obviously, industrious really helps build the GW initially, another bonus.

however, no philosophical

 

[cabert]

^^ egypt starts with the wheel!
but researching AH would be needed to get the horses

 

[futurehermit]

oops, my bad, forgot about that!!!

****

i played around with this strat with stalin. bronze-masonry-anhusb-writing.

chopped great wall (industrious) and then a library and ran 2 scientists. nearly 50-50 chance GE and GS and got a GS at 1200BC. so same timing for gp as with gandhi. slightly worse odds of getting GE, but the nice thing is i would rather have a GS than a GE. you can lightbulb math early and trade that, keeping a monopoly on alphabet for as long as possible. however, you still end up in a hole expansion-wise, so if you don't have copper nearby, you could be hard pressed to expand quick enough to recover. but, stalin is aggressive, so that would help during this recovery period.


EDIT: PS, Stalin has cossacks so if you want to go for a miltrad liberalism sling that could make for a nice early domination win. and of course he also has research institutes helping late-game space race push.

 

[NaZdReG]

hermit,

time for a recap of game 2, and I'll include a couple of saves for you to look over. mind you this is only a prince game, but your micro should be able to pull it off at emperor.

smarter research path this time, (egypt starts with wheel btw)

mining (from hut on like 2nd turn), bronze, (hut popped masonry whee) ah, poly, mono, priesthood, writing, alpha, lit
founded judaism


warrior, worker, wall, obelisk, chariot, settler, chariot chariot chariot
(running police state of cource)

ran 2 priests in capitol, engineer popped turn after 850bc with 52% odds from priest microing.

I got lucky in that regard.. city 2 to the southeast had stone available. saladin was not well protected and my chariots took his cities out.. kept them for myself. his capitol became the great library's location and my gp farm from 3 different 5 food spots

so my feedback. the early prophets add hammers and gold to help keep research at 100% harder to do without the tech popps but hence why I could deviate and pick up other techs. starting with agri and wheel is a huge boon, your worker can start farming right away and hooking up resources.

what I did notice is I have to be mindful not to let the chance of a prophet go over 50%, turn them off until engineer pulls ahead then run them etc. I've popped at 50% or better twice now.

and the chariots make it easy to run someone else over

games attached

NaZ

 

[futurehermit]

Good idea about microing the priests, I didn't really consider that.

Would you be willing to try your start a couple times on emperor?

You don't need to play the game out, and with the GW, you won't have to worry about early barb slaughter.

I'm just curious about how it works at a higher skill level.

Let me know.

 

[JackOfClubs]

Playing with priests to boost the GPP rate is a dangerous game. I've done this on occasion and had Great Prophets pop at <15% (don't remember the exact number but it was 15 when I turned the priest specialist off). This can work if you have a good use for the other GP, (I always try to found a religion or two if possible) but in this strategy it seems like it might be disastrous.

 

[futurehermit]

Not disastrous, assuming we found an early religion. Worst case scenario, you can always use him to lightbulb theology for early theocracy to help your recovery expansion.

 

[NaZdReG]

hermit,

other way around friend. I don't even play at monarch yet post patch because I always get my ass whooped. try the strat out per my suggestions, tweak it a bit and get back to me, I'll run it your way to see if we can pull off similar effects. I've been using priests with an engineer under a forge to speed up great engineer production the obelisk rocks towards a SE hehe thats why they took away phi from egypt.

NaZ

 

[futurehermit]

^^^once i'm finished playing around with gandhi then i'll take a crack at it with egypt.

 

[NaZdReG]

what happened with this thread?

NaZ

 

[futurehermit]

Holidays

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, I tried this out with Egypt. It definitely can work...although it requires some luck to get the GE instead of GP. If it works, you will have to try and recover expansion via conquest, so hopefully you have horses nearby for access to the UU.

I managed to get a settler out BEFORE chopping GW, which I think is a good idea.

 

[NaZdReG]

good to hear you had some success with it! I've played like 5 games with it so far.. only 1 I didn't get the engineer. most important thing is to make sure you dont run priests until after the wall is up.. throws off the percentages. and make sure to turn them off so there are points left to get before the GE could spawn.. helps the % a bit.

getting a prophet early could result in a good tech pop if you plan it right.. but the cost could really hurt.

horses are more important than stone when settling the 2nd city I think

any more feedback hermit?

naz