Open competition: Earliest pyramids using philosophical civ and no stone

[carl corey]

If you don't use it in the first city, just click on it in the second city screen, and it will light up. Another click and you will work it.

Not sure what happens if it's already in work in the first city, you might have to go to that city screen first and stop working it. I think that if you go directly to the second city and click on it, the game will just get you out of the city screen, since the tile is not available for work.

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, thanks, I will try that!

 

[carl corey]

I found it by accident in my first game on Chieftain (oh, the good ol' days!) when I conquered Isabela and kept all of her cities, even those that were overlapping. It was somewhat of a bad move though, as Barça's needs almost starved two other cities.

 

[Elledge]

I tried it on a whim (in my first singleplayer "game" since about December, hehe - ladder folks represent) and got it in 1200 BC; my starting location was a nice production spot, but I only had 4 or 5 trees around my capital to compensate, so I'm sure you could do better if you got lucky or if you used the "regenerate map" function etc. In fact, I sort of screwed up; I didn't think to hook up my Ivory, my production would have been a bit better with an extra population on the cap.

I expect that the hard upper limit for an optimal time would be around 1500 BC.



Edit: This was Monarch and Normal speed respectively, on a "small" pangaea map with no AI.

Actually doing this in a game would be real suicide, though - usually without Pyramids you'd have 4-6 solid cities, a few axes floating around, and decent beakers by now =P

 

[futurehermit]

Actually doing this in a game would be real suicide, though - usually without Pyramids you'd have 4-6 solid cities, a few axes floating around, and decent beakers by now =P

In multiplayer it would sure be suicide, but I can ensure you that in single player it is not. Yes, you start off a bit slower, but the additional beakers added to specialists helps you recover very quickly.

With the axe-rush, cottages, fast-expansion route you start faster, but you peeter out at a certain point in your conquering because your cottages take too long to mature and you have to pay for your maintenance while also trying to keep your science slider up lest you fall too far behind in tech. Alternatively, you could not worry about science until you conquer for awhile and then develop your empire, but again you're peetering out because you have to take that time to develop your empire.

With the pyramid-specialist econ strat, once you get rolling, you never stop! All you need in a newly captured city to make it fully operational is a library and a couple food tiles so you can run a pair of specialists. This immediately gives you 12 beakers per turn. Show me a newly captured city with undeveloped cottages that can do that! Furthermore, since your science slider is at 0%, you put your commerce towards maintenance allowing you to capture more cities.

Thus, when you really do settle down to boom your econ, it comes at the point when you're DONE your war mongering since you now control your own continent.

Again, not suicide, just a slower start traded for a stronger game throughout.

 

[Eggolas]

Totally capricious and off topic slightly, but I was playing Rome on Monarch/Marathon and had stone in my fat cross, so I decided to chop out the Pyramids after building a couple of archers (no copper anywhere). Finished Pyramids in 1660BC. Probably a good move since someone finished Oracle in 1100BC and I wouldn't have gotten the CS slingshot off.

I'm still not very adept at this specialist stuff, although in my last game I had the fastest space race win ever (1662AD) playing with Representation and specialists all the way.

Interesting strategy.

 

[futurehermit]

Yep, I'm thinking an early science victory is definitely one of the strengths of this strat. If you're on a large continent, using the tech advantage militarily (if that's a word) can allow you a comfortable domination win as well...

 

[Elledge]

In multiplayer it would sure be suicide, but I can ensure you that in single player it is not. Yes, you start off a bit slower, but the additional beakers added to specialists helps you recover very quickly.

With the axe-rush, cottages, fast-expansion route you start faster, but you peeter out at a certain point in your conquering because your cottages take too long to mature and you have to pay for your maintenance while also trying to keep your science slider up lest you fall too far behind in tech. Alternatively, you could not worry about science until you conquer for awhile and then develop your empire, but again you're peetering out because you have to take that time to develop your empire.

With the pyramid-specialist econ strat, once you get rolling, you never stop! All you need in a newly captured city to make it fully operational is a library and a couple food tiles so you can run a pair of specialists. This immediately gives you 12 beakers per turn. Show me a newly captured city with undeveloped cottages that can do that! Furthermore, since your science slider is at 0%, you put your commerce towards maintenance allowing you to capture more cities.

Thus, when you really do settle down to boom your econ, it comes at the point when you're DONE your war mongering since you now control your own continent.

Again, not suicide, just a slower start traded for a stronger game throughout.

You know, on reflection, that might well be true on a Pangaea sort of map where you expect to conquer a bunch of folks; specialists are a good way to get cities doing something useful without having to get workers going in your new empire and waiting for cottages to mature in your cities you just took

I would say that I am not convinced it's a viable strategy for a map (pangaea or island-ish) where you plan to build your own civ and not do much conquering, though. A specialist economy is one thing, and I've seen some fantastic work done with Pyramids and Parthenon, but getting it this early just doesn't fly; specialist or cottage economy, you'll do better using the early game to expand. If you do a good job at tech, you can feel free to grab Constitution by 1000 AD or so in any case (even if you miss Pyramids due to 500 years or so delay on it, which you definitely may if you have an ind or stone civ competing), and have a completely mature empire to boot.

(Plus, the faster earlier tech pays off in the form of Mercantilism, which has such fantastic synergy with Representation.)

 

[futurehermit]

Oh don't worry, I always plan on lots of conquering...Don't even need pangaea, just a couple other civs on my continent.

And, even still, I tried this strat on an isolated start the other day and I had the outright tech lead by 1000AD and was proceeding to head toward a science victory when I started a new game (Monarch, Normal speed).

And, yes, mercantilism does have fantastic synergy with representation and you gain access to that synergy much sooner by getting the pyramids.

Try it out and you'll see that once it gets rolling, it's much more powerful than the expansion + cottages approach, since as I said with the cottage approach, there always comes a lag where you can't capture and keep more cities because the cottages don't mature fast enough...

 

[uberfish]

... this is a new strat? Pyramids/representation has been around since civ 4 was released, and works very well. If you get the pyramids, anyway.

 

[futurehermit]

it's a new variation. obviously, pyramids/representation has been around, but we're working on it with philosophical (i.e., non-industrious) civs and no stone by 1000BC. that's not exactly easy to achieve, especially on the higher levels...

 

[Andrei_V]

(wrong post)

 

[Eqqman]

You've lost EVERYTHING!!! The advantage given by pyramids for this strat is huge. Not getting the pyramids means you're back to a cottage-based economy, which I'm convinced is vastly inferior.

In all seriousness, you really crack me up! You've convinced me in the other thread of the great things you can do with this plan, but I wouldn't call cottages 'vastly' inferior. Given that there seem to be plenty of folks who don't have difficulty winning on higher levels I don't see why you're down so much on having to use cottages. Reading your posts I get the idea that if you start a game where you can't get Pyramids, you'll quit and restart (which is fine, play however you like) rather than simply go on to win with cottages anyway. But it's great to see somebody really gung-ho about something though since it makes the forums interesting reading.

For the cities with overlap, changing control of a tile from one city to another is an annoying process. First you have to pull off the guy working the tile in city A. Then go to city B and click that tile, which is still dark, so that it lights up. Then city B can place a guy down on it. You'd think that if city A is not working the tile, you could immediately drop down a guy in city B, but for some reason they force you to make the tile light up. This process was much more convenient in previous versions of Civ.

I'll agree that it's annoying to have so much overlap in your first two cities under the method I worked out. But keep in mind that the second city's only purpose in life is to build the Forge and work an Engineer (and I think the benefits of placing Pyramids here is obvious). Once this is done, give the capital full control over the tiles in its fat cross and leave the other city whatever tiles are on the far side from the capital. It doesn't need much to serve as an Engineer factory and whatever tiles it gets might be enough to make it a decent size 10 city or so. If you have an exceptional starting location, like riverside Corn or Wheat, and you can pop a goody hut for some early cash then you might have enough advantage to found the second city farther away. But it certainly helps when your Workers can immediately move between cities to make the roads and do the prechopping.

 

[futurehermit]

In all seriousness, you really crack me up! You've convinced me in the other thread of the great things you can do with this plan, but I wouldn't call cottages 'vastly' inferior. Given that there seem to be plenty of folks who don't have difficulty winning on higher levels I don't see why you're down so much on having to use cottages. Reading your posts I get the idea that if you start a game where you can't get Pyramids, you'll quit and restart (which is fine, play however you like) rather than simply go on to win with cottages anyway. But it's great to see somebody really gung-ho about something though since it makes the forums interesting reading.

I played a game today with cyrus going with an early immortal rush. I pulled it off really well, but I ended up having to end the war before conquering all of hatty's lands because I couldn't afford to keep all her cities, I was crippling my economy (I was also building some settlers at the same time since I had a nice starting position with lots of good land).

So, I was like "this sucks", I'm going back to the specialist strat.

Started with Alex, and I was going to try the oracle build. However, I started with stone in a very good 2nd city site that low and behold also had copper.

On top of that, Capac was nearby. I got the pyramids, wiped out Capac, kept all but 2 of his cities which were in super-crappy tundra locations, and then immediately proceeded to take half of genghis' empire before I had to sue for peace since he got longbows before I got maces (he made it top priority in medieval and I made a couple deviations, such as drama for the culture slider to deal with war weariness).

The difference? I was able to capture substantially more cities without crippling my econ because I was using scientists to get my beakers. Furthermore, I was able to use the culture slider to deal with war weariness without infringing on my econ. Finally, if you try to do this without representation, your econ is only 1/2 as strong.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I notice such a severe difference, that I don't know why people wouldn't want to go for the pyramids

 

[drkodos]

For the cities with overlap, changing control of a tile from one city to another is an annoying process. First you have to pull off the guy working the tile in city A. Then go to city B and click that tile, which is still dark, so that it lights up. Then city B can place a guy down on it. You'd think that if city A is not working the tile, you could immediately drop down a guy in city B, but for some reason they force you to make the tile light up. This process was much more convenient in previous versions of Civ.

It is a far cry easier than that. Just click on the resource in the city you wish to work the tile.

Period.

 

[Eqqman]

It is a far cry easier than that. Just click on the resource in the city you wish to work the tile.

Period.

You're right, I ended up finding that out shortly after my original statement. So it's one click in city B to light up the resource and boot the citizen from city A off the tile, then a second click to place the guy from city B down on it.

Somebody mentioned in here that although the Forge-building window is calculated at 8 turns, in practice it is shorter. I had the Engineer specialist in place at what I think was 4 turns after the Oracle went up and I had a tie with both cities hitting 100 GPP at the same time. Sadly the Prophet popped out so all my work was for naught in that game. People planning to try and pull this off should try to set up the Forge to be built in 2 turns after the Oracle goes up to be safe, so delay the Oracle a turn or two if needed to make sure you've set this up.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

I had the Engineer specialist in place at what I think was 4 turns after the Oracle went up and I had a tie with both cities hitting 100 GPP at the same time.

That really seems strange. Did you build the Parthenon in that game? If not, do you happen to have a save somewhere so you can check some figures? In particular, I'm wondering a) how many GPP were required to create the first GP b) how many GPP was each city generating with and without bonuses?

It really ought to be 100 GPP required with the Oracle generating 2 per turn * 2 with the Philosophical bonus and the engineer specialist generating 3 per turn * 2. I can see how you might lose 1 or even 2 turns to odd side effects of when the GPP are counted (ex. does the Oracle generate points on the first turn it's created? What about the forge?), but there's really no way it should be 4 turns. The correct number should be 8 with maybe a rounding error of 1 or at most 2.

 

[Eqqman]

It worked out exactly like you said- 6 GPP/turn in the Engineer city and 4 GPP/turn in the Oracle city. I've already wiped over those autosaves so I can't compare and get an exact count... but if you're willing to try some research it probably wouldn't take too long to set it up yourself on a map to get the answers to these questions.

I've had a few more practice games and think it's better to take the two extra turns to research Polytheism instead of Meditation as Saladin. You still have a shot at getting Hinduism (depending on your adversaries) and you need Polytheism for the Literature you're hoping to use the 2nd Great Engineer on. Obviously it helps to minimize techs you are researching yourself and there's no need to waste one of your valuable AI trades on Polytheism. Just trade for Meditiation later if you really need it for the Monasteries.

 

[Eqqman]

Okay, I have half an answer-

Let's say on turn X I have the production bar for the Oracle filled up. I click the end turn button. Now at the opening of turn X + 1 I watch the movie and select my free tech. Looking at the city, I already have 4 GPP accumulated. However, when I build the Forge, I don't have this benefit since I have yet to assign the Engineer to start the GE points.

 

[playshogi]

I met the requirements in 950BC on Emperor with Mao. The start had wheat and corn (nice with the agriculture start) and a river. No floodplains, but farmed a sugar tile to get 4 food. Also, had 2 gems, covered in jungle. Research, Bronze, Masonry, Iron Working. I had to found the 2nd city off the river to grab copper, and should have built obelisk instead of worker to claim it. Obviously, I'm surrounded by Washington, and need axes right away.

EDIT: I was lucky, on a second try the AI built it in 1000BC.