I played another two games, this time with Carthage going for a CE. Didn't finish them, I just wanted to see how it would play out. All games including the one above were played on regular, undoctored fractal.
Gameplan for the Carthage games:
- Writing -> Alphabet -> Currency -> CoL
I squeezed in Myst somewere there because Hannibal is CHA and +1
is nice.
When getting CoL, revolt to caste and hire a bunch of merchants to generate a GM. I managed to hire 5 without losing pop to starvation, which means 7 turns.
- In the meantime, research Math if not traded yet and get about 150
into CS. Get some workers out.
- Bulb CS with the GM. Revolt to Bureau, then research bronze. Took me about 3 turns at this point. Chop and mine.
- Get a GS for an academy. Not urgent, but the earlier the better.
Unfortunately, both of my games were semi-isolated with just one neighbor before Optics. They were Ragnar and Pericles respectively, both of which don't trade techs if they aren't known to at least one other known rival. This meant no tech trading after Alphabet for me, and I had to backfill the whole lower branch to get to Optics. I was much later to paper and Lib but still got it first and took Astro.
Observations:
+ CE works beautifully. Getting a GM out quick with caste is no problem if it's the first GP.
+ Early bureau does wonders for a CE. I was probably a bit slower than in the SE Suleiman game, but still faster than usual, especially in isolation. In game 2 I revolted in 50BC IIRC, don't remember the first.
+ I got first to Optics by a mile. By the time I found the others, none of them even had Compass, most didn't have Machinery, nobody had CS. That was on a peaceful 5-AI continent with some reasonable techers.
+ Delaying bronze until after the CS bulb is very doable. The production loss isn't felt very strongly as long as you have some cottageable grass or a nice coastline. I didn't build much until BW anyway, just settlers/workers, some warriors and very basic infrastructure.
+ On Emperor, the pace is just quick enough to handle barbs with warriors only until BW.
+ Caste is cool early when not creative. Because you get caste early you can use it to pop borders at a time when you're still in expansion mode. Allows much more flexible placement than having to wait for growth and whip a monument.
+ You know what you're in for. With BW early, if you don't have bronze, you need settle further away or spend lots of turns on IW.
- Two turns of anarchy within 10-15 turns. The Bureau bonus makes up for that easily though.
- I had an army of cardboard cutouts until BW. Ragnar wanted to take advantage of that, but by the time he was ready and declared I was close to Machinery. Not a wise choice for him...
In conclusion, I think the CE approach with BW after CS could become a regular opening move for me. Early Bureau is huge. With some AIs to trade techs it should be even better.
The SE approach still needs work.
Attached is the start of the second Carthage game, the one with Pericles keeping me company. I actually thought of getting Sailing as my first tech at the start, but changed my mind after a bit of exploration. It still ended up being my 3rd tech though.
starting position. In my opinion, a strategy is strong when you can use it on an average map, not when it requires 10+ map regens or a specific map script to get one that's suitable. I wasn't forced into any particular expansion strategy either, I had 4 or 5 pretty normal cities when I got to CS.
