Some advice for playing immortal/deity as babylon

[RohirrimElf]

When i start out as babylon on immortal most time i go to writing afap to get an academy up for science from the free scientist. When i pop my first city (preferably on a high production location) i start building my army. After that i have no problems taking out another civ with a number of units around turn 100 on epic speed. But most of the time when i do this i end up somewhere in the middle on the score board and doing ok.

But i was wondering if i could go high on science first. Maybe play peacefully with 3 citys. Just building up a small army and have some cash (550 gold or something) to rush buy a babylon wall just in case. Pop a library in each city and go national lybrary as fast as possible. Maybe get some medieval army out before my neighbours do. Will i be able to do this strategy against immortal/deity? Or is it best if i just destroy my closest 2 neighbours first like i always do. Is going science and play peacefully doable?
I have tried it with other civs but always lacking behind to much on science.

i hope someone knows

 

[RohirrimElf]

no responce?

 

[Streams]

I have no experience with what you need, but one of MadDjinn's videos adresses this issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3gfRmWNVKQ

Enjoy.

 

[Browd]

The relatively peaceful science strategy you describe is more efficient with Babylon than other civs, but some aggressiveness will still be required for best results.

Babylon's early academy is not a substitute for National College (in fact, NC is needed to get max benefit from the academy -- immediate 50% boost to academy yield, in addition to all other science yields), so early libraries in secondary cities is necessary. If you can, rush-buy libraries to allow your capital to keep building NC as you found cities. If you want to get the most from Babylon's UA, get NC up by turn 60-70 and beeline Education and get Universities up (and work those scientist slots) in as many cities as possible as quickly as possible. This is true whether you plan to pursue domination (a Babylon science strategy can get you to key techs, like Machinery, Biology, Flight and Dynamite more quickly than the AI) or a pure science victory.

Don't worry overmuch about early defense -- Bowmen are strong enough to delay Comp Bows for longer than other civs, so getting to Education before Construction is possible (depends on how bellicose your neighbors are, of course).

Since RAs were nerfed a bit in the Fall patch, a purely peaceful, 3-city science victory with many waves of RAs will take longer than it did several months ago. And, for a quick science victory, 3 cities will be slower than 4, or 5, or 6, or 12 cities. An early puppet or two (bowmen can pull off an early rush better than mere archers) can be helpful, since those puppets can be annexed later in the game when the more powerful science buildings come on line and you have enough gold to rush buy courthouses and the science buildings.

As for a medieval rush, Babylon doesn't have any medieval UUs, while your neighbors may, so any rush after the ancient era will depend on tech superiority (you certainly won't out-produce the AI's unit spam).

 

[joncnunn]

I'll defer to everyone else about Deity

But on Immortal level, playing Babylon is like playing a regular civ on Emperor; it's that over powered
First GS: Indeed you want an academy; but it's not in place of NC. You still want to get NC built early.
And like everyone else Education is a key beeline for you as well.
Remaining GS: In Vanilla the rule of thumb was use second and all further to pop expensive techs. With G&K, this now looks like a math problem (what is your current science rate; what is the expected number of turns remaining)

 

[omnishakira]

I very strongly doubt that you will get a medieval army before the AI on diety.