Second Worst Starting Tech

[Dewii]

Is the second worst starting tech Mysticism or Fishing?

I take it as read that Hunting is the worst starting tech. (Unless anyone has any arguments to the contrary?) And that Agriculture is the best, followed by The Wheel, and then Mining. A case could be made that Mining is more urgent than The Wheel, but you'd want them both early on, and The Wheel costs more beakers which I think swings it.

But is Fishing worse than Mysticism?

You don't need or want Mysticism at least until you've either founded your second city, or you've got all the early worker techs in. On the other hand, it's more expensive than Fishing.

There are starts in which you just don't need Fishing for a long time. And it is the joint cheapest starting tech with Hunting. On the other hand, not only are there some starts where you do want Fishing, it is the only tech which gives you options for building or working from turn one. (Monuments do not count.)

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Gonna be boring and say it depends.

Hunting as the worst also depends a bit. In general, you are entirely right, as hunting doesn't improve too many tiles, is cheap, means you start with a scout instead of a warrior, means you cannot build warriors with metal hooked up etc.
There are mapscripts, however, that are actually rich in deer as well as in non-tundra fur. Also, the scout is better then a warrior if you play with huts on. And, lastly, on civs that do not start with agriculture, it leads to animal husbandry, which can be important for early food sources.
Overal though, it is pretty bad, yeah.

On fishing/mysticism: obviously it depends on the map type and or starting positions you like to play. If you play archipelago maps a lot, fishing becomes better. If you play rainforest maps, there might be no sea foodsources at all.

Mysticism is mostly for the oracle, in my opinion, though early access to monuments does play some role.

I'm just gonna call it a toss up, it is too close and too start and map type dependent to make any meaningful kind of comparison.

 

[elitetroops]

Another negative with hunting is that emperor and above all AI start with it as well. Since you rarely research it first, you have usually met a lot of AI by the time you would research it and often get an additional 20-30% research bonus. But still, it depends. Play with huts on settler level and it's easily the best starting tech.

Mysticism/Fishing depends on too many factors. On a 5-6 coastal start with seafood you might miss fishing, on a Rainforest map you certainly won't. Mysticism helps with The Oracle, but also with The Great Wall. And sometimes it can be great to have for early Stonehenge failgold.

 

[Gator Country]

I'm going to agree with the above and say it depends. If you're right smack in the middle of a continent then Fishing is useless, but Mysticism might come in right handy if you've got Shaka to your left and Ragnar to your right, you're not CRE, and you need to chop out fast monuments in your new cities to start grabbing land.

OTOH, if you're on an Archipelago map, the only food around is those two or three fish/crabs off your coast, and your nearest neighbor is 50+ turns away, then Fishing becomes a LOT more useful, and Myst loses a lot of its luster.

 

[Virupaksha]

Depends so much on difficulty level and map. Hunting is worst if you turn huts off as this completely nerfs it but arguably on very low levels with huts on it's the best starting tech of all.

Fishing is very important with a coastal capital with seafood, otherwise it's maybe the most useless of all as it's cheap and not needed too early.

Mysticism is more useful on lower levels for Oracle or SH but personally I normally find myself researching Alpha before it normally if I dont start with it so on emperor where I play i'd say mysticism and hunting as Alpha would be pretty much always researched before either of these whereas fishing after Alpha only most of the time.

 

[Izuul]

Of course this stuff is situational, but i like to evaluate the starting techs by considering how often and to what degree they are likely to help your start. Ag is necessary at the start of nearly every game and, along with The Wheel, is the most expensive starting tech at 60 base beakers. You can never go wrong starting with Ag and it's pretty clearly the best starting tech in the game. I would probably choose Mining second, but The Wheel is also very good and can open up early Pottery.

The other three are all situationally useful, but also potentially useless. Fishing is obviously good if you start on the coast with seafood, but coastal starts are less common on most of the popular map scripts than non-coastal starts, and they are also inherently slower to begin with. Fishing basically makes a bad start a little less bad.

It's even less likely that Hunting will be impactful at the start. Very few starts have only deer for food, and for a pigs/cows start i would much prefer Ag over Hunting to open up AH. Ivory starts are some-what common, but connecting ivory is rarely a priority in the early turns - food is much more important.

Mysticism is good if you want to pursue the Oracle or to build the occasional monument for a border pop. It can also be useless at times. The Oracle is very good though, so this tech potentially being the difference between being able to get it or not is fairly significant.

Additionally, Hunting and Fishing can even be detrimental at times. Starting with Fishing completely kills the machinery/engineering bulb strategy, and starting with the scout from Hunting instead of a warrior can become a significant problem on the higher difficulties. Scouts don't survive long on deity and the starting warrior is very valuable for fog busting and early defense. Most competitive games (and forum games) are played with huts turned off which further devalues Hunting and the scout. That's in addition to the fact that both Hunting and Fishing frequently provide no benefit whatsoever at the start of a game.

All things considered, my opinion is that Ag is pretty clearly the best starting tech and Hunting is pretty clearly the worst. Mining would be second for me with The Wheel a close 3rd. I'd probably take Mysticism over Fishing for 4th simply for handful of turns it can shave off an Oracle attempt.

 

[ikotomi]

Fishing is a little more useful, because it's pretty common that a lake or coastal tile will be the best tile a new city can work for a while with 2 or 3 commerce and 2 food.

Fishing gets you closer to GLH as well, and some games it might make sense to skip TW and go for sailing.

 

[Dewii]

Thanks for comments. Especially to those who point out that I didn't specify map scripts or difficulty level. I was thinking of the earthlike Fractal/ Continents style maps.

I don't think huts improve matters for Hunting much. Scouts fall over when attacked by animals too easily compared to warriors, and large patches of jungle or hills slow them down to warriors' speed anyway.

 

[Pangaea]

Think I'd go with Mysticism as being worse. Fishing can be mildly useful (though it does abolish a great bulb path) on just about any mapscript that isn't Rainforest (probably a few others too, but I've not played all of them, far from it). It's a step towards Sailing, which improves trade routes. Mysticism does give you a little leg up towards Oracle, but between them I'd say Fishing is a little more useful in general.

As always, "it depends" though. This game is so complex and deep, which is why it's so difficult to come up with "rules" or "guidelines" that apply almost 100% of the time. "Worker first" is perhaps the most universal we have, but even that one doesn't apply all the time.

 

[Anysense]

It depends on what kind of starts you play. On most commonly play map types (pangaea, continents, fractal) about 2/3 starts are coastal ones. Then about 1/3 are either far north or far south. If you don't regenerate untill you get a strong start then Mysticism will often be useless and Ag won't be a clear leader. It would be more like 1-3 shared by Ag, Mining, Fishing with Hunting and Mysticism sharing 4-5.
One thing I can't seem to understand is why scouts are so underestimated. Without forests a warrior is merely an easy prey for barbs providing them with free xp and even well positioned fortified warriors have just 70-80% odds against archers. Meanwhile scouts can explore and spawnbust vast flatlands with nearly zero risk or guide a warrior to the only forested hill in the area.

 

[Pangaea]

Scouts can't steal workers. That's a big deal, especially on the higher levels where the AIs start with a worker.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

There are certainly some maps for which Fishing is worthless and Mysticism will be slightly better, but on average I'd prefer Fishing. Coastal starts are fairly common, even on Pangaea. When you're not coastal Fishing still speeds up Pottery a little bit.

 

[MegaLurker]

I don't think there's a 'worst' and 'second worst,' just as there is really no 'best' starting tech.

The Wheel, Agriculture, and Mining are always preferable, the rest not so much. No need for any more complicated ranking than that. What matters is the combination of starting techs, and the higher the difficulty the bigger a difference it makes to have useful techs.

 

[Qactus]

I'm perfectly fine with one of the starting 'weak' starting techs and try to adapt the best possible. What I do hate though is having two of them: For example, I would really like to play Spain or Aztecs for their UBs, but always think twice because of their tech combos.

 

[jerVL/kg]

I'd say Fishing is second worst, or at least, "second least useful." Even with a coastal start, it's so cheap you can research it quickly while building your starting worker/warrior.

Mysticism is clearly the worst. It gives you nothing except the opportunity to nab an early religion, which is often a fool's errand.

Hunting is great since you start with a scout, which lets you, well, "scout" faster. (I've never played on high levels -- do human barbs show up much sooner?) Although it's true that camp resources very rarely come into play.

Mining/Wheel are clearly the best. There's almost always hills to mine, you can start on BW/Masonry right away, and workers can build roads if they have nothing else to do.

Agriculture is useless if you start with no farming resources.

Frankly, I pay little attention to a civ's starting techs -- the leaders traits and UU/UB's play a much bigger role. Poor starting techs can always be worked around.

 

[civfanchambers]

Yes human barbarians do start showing up earlier as do animal barbarians the higher up you go in difficulty.

 

[ikotomi]

Agriculture is useless if you start with no farming resources.

It's still the better tech to start with if you have an animal food start, and is more likely to be useful for your second and third cities.

 

[Macksideshow]

Fishing < Mysticism

Fishing:
Pro - turn 1 enables seafood start (requires good hammer tile and isnt that great anyway)
Con - blocks bulb path (Metal Casting? I dont fully remember but is a good one)

Mysticism:
Pro - assists Oracle, Stonehenge and Great Wall attempts (Be they legit attempts or failgold)
Con - Possibly irrelevant, not a priority tech line (usually)

I choose Mysticism as it has a greater pro and a lesser con. Fishing can also be irrelevant but at least Mysticism doesnt block any bulb paths (afaik)

 

[Windsor]

. Fishing basically makes a bad start a little less bad.

Which IMO is what makes it much better than mysticism.

And the difference fishing makes on a coastal-start is pretty significant. Those turns you have to wait while researching fishing before you can start a WB slows you down quite a lot.

It does have the drawback of blocking engineering-bulb, but that's not much of a problem. Never been a huge fan of that bulb anyway.

I don't mind hunting that much. I'm fairly good at keeping my scout alive and I like being able to build worker first while teching AH straight away.

Mysticism really serves very little purpose. Rarely even speeds up oracle since you need other techs. And oracle is more of a luxury anyway.

Agriculture > Mining > Wheel > Hunting > Fishing > Mysticism

 

[sampsa]

Fishing basically makes a bad start a little less bad.

All things considered, my opinion is that Ag is pretty clearly the best starting tech and Hunting is pretty clearly the worst. Mining would be second for me with The Wheel a close 3rd. I'd probably take Mysticism over Fishing for 4th simply for handful of turns it can shave off an Oracle attempt.

This.