Suleiman and Janissaries

[absimiliard]

Janissaries can get Drill promotions though.

And Drill janissaries walk all over everything pre-gunpowder. The inherent bonus vs. melee, cav, and archery units added to their 9 STR makes them win fights, and Drill means they take damn little damage.

Drill janissaries can sustain a damned fast pace when conquering a pre-gunpowder opponent. (doubly fast when you support them with a medic 3 unit)

After your opponents get gunpowder it's all over though. Then your Drill 3-4 janissaries just become fodder for the rush. At that point you're almost best stopping the wars until you can get Rifling. Drill rifleman can do a lot of damage to musket-bearing opponents and slaughter pre-gunpowder units, and Drill infantry are just damned hard to beat. (I also like the collateral damage reducing aspects of Drill when advancing through enemy lands as well.)

-abs

 

[Gliese 581]

Calculating beakers is nice especially when you consider bulbing but you forget that if you want to go liberalism path you need to burn 4GS. 4GS = academy + 47beakers/turn (with library and representation) or 4GS = 2 golden ages which you can use to build an army. If you build pyramids then using an eng from a forge you can generate GE with high probability to bulb Machinery. Arguments like you need CoL, Mathematics are not very viable because you can easily trade for these techs, AI research them fairly early.

True, but I counted techs that you either need to research or trade for, so even if you go the northernmost route in the tech tree you can do some trading of course, for example aesthetics for alphabets. You do need alphabet and maths to bulb higher techs and I'd argue that you do need CoL and/or currency for your economy, no matter what route you take to gunpowder. How you get them can be achieved in many ways (researching, trading, stealing, popping).

"BTW, how cool that you've chosen as a name a star that could actually host a super-earth in the outer zone of habitability! It's such a pity 581 c is almost certainly a greenhouse runaway like Venus since it's only 1.5 earth masses, but we can still hold hope for 581 d as a habitable-zone super-earth maybe with a habitable moon for example, b is of course far too close in to even have habitable moons. (damn hot Jupiters)"

Thanks. I was REALLY excited when I heard about Gliese 581 and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why everyone else was being so blasé about it.

 

[absimiliard]

Thanks. I was REALLY excited when I heard about Gliese 581 and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why everyone else was being so blasé about it.

Because most people haven't heard of it, and of those who have a lot aren't astronomy buffs enough to realize quite how big a deal Gliese 581 is. I'm with the astronomer who was recently on the TV show The Universe, the "Alien Planets" episode, who said something like "I'm so excited I could jump right out of my clothes!".

Even though we don't know it's size, since Gliese 581c doesn't transit for us, the fact that we're detecting planets 1.5 earth masses is just HUGE! Frelling HUGE!!!!

On the depressing side I did hear that the density equations for d show that while it is a super earth it's likely to be miles deep in water with no solid land anywhere and "warm ice" deep down due to pressure. But a super-earth might well have moons big enough to hold atmosphere, and Gliese 581d is just inside the habitable zone. Totally psyched.

The real good news is that we're finding tons of these planets now, a hundres a year or so from what I'm hearing. So it's practically certain we're going to get a real good answer to a number of the terms in Drake's Equation real soon now. All in all, very cool.

And now, I'll apologize to everyone else for going off-topic.

On-topic: I'm going to try re-playing my recent Suleiman game with a goal of getting Gunpowder as fast as possible via the Oracle'd Theocracy and GS bulbed Paper/Edu route. I'll let you all know how it works out.

(I was getting bored with the current game anyway, I don't really care much for modern-age stuff and I'm at Flight in the 1870 range with my continent all vassalized or dead and Freaky Yellow Martian Dude and his vassal Hatty on the other continent just barely reaching Astronomy now. It's in the bag at this point and I just get soooo bored constantly clicking "Next Turn" all the time.)

-abs

 

[triacontahedron]

Janissaries can get Drill promotions though.

And Drill janissaries walk all over everything pre-gunpowder. The inherent bonus vs. melee, cav, and archery units added to their 9 STR makes them win fights, and Drill means they take damn little damage.


-abs

Ok, I am not very good with combat math so I fired up WB to see what were the combat odds against a LB with 2CG promotions in a city with 0 defense bonus. To some extent you are right, combat odds for a Janissary with 2 drill is 33%
for a mace with 2 CR is 25% but if you get one more promotion situation changes: a Janissary with 3 drills have 39% chance and a mace with 3 CR has 63%!!!
So I would still bet on maces they have slightly less chance of winning when they have few promotions but 3CRs is a killer. The other plus for maces is that they are slightly cheaper and you can eventually upgrade them to rifles with 3CR .

 

[absimiliard]

Hrmmm. Interesting math Tria. What do you see if the longbows don't have 2CG promotions? Does it alter if you bombard the defenses down and hit them with one colateral damage?

The thing Drill gives you isn't really better odds of winning. What Drill gets you is less damage if you win. So if it's a close battle CR or even just Combat will get you better odds than Drill will. But if the battle is in your favor then Drill will produce much less damaged units after the fight is won. With some bombardment for collateral damage you can guarantee the wins, and Drill means your Janissaries get less damaged in the fight, and so heal faster and keep the advance up.

All that said, my testing tonight still didn't produce Janissaries until the 200s AD. Which is far too late. I probably need to work on the progression a bit more. Maybe more focus on food and less on the early GSs. Basically I found I could get Education pretty easily in the BC era, circa 100 BC if I recall rightly, but the trudge to Gunpowder took far too long. I'll need to work on it a bit.

I was a bit surprised at how easy it was to get Theology with the Oracle, and how fast I got Construction as well. Not quite sure of the implications of that though.

-abs

{edit: I'm having real trouble getting Gunpowder in the BC era. So far the best I've been able to do is like 150 AD. Tomorrow I'll try again, maybe if I go Code of Laws once I've got my base techs of Writing, Monotheism, Alphabet, and Math. That should allow me to run loads of specialists in a massive SE econ, that will get me more research AND get those critical Great Scientists faster. Admittedly it does mean a major diversion, but the research and GP speed it imparts just might turn the tide and get me Gunpowder a bit faster. If I can just get it in the BCs I'll be happy, until then not so much. (In fact I'd keep trying right now, except that it's 1:30 AM on a work-night and this tired sysadmin desperately needs some sleep, sorry.) Anyhow, more tries tomorrow.}

 

[CivCorpse]

Wanna have a lot of fun? Tokogawa of the ottoman empire. Promote along the combat line instead of drill. with 2 promotions you have combat3 drill1 CG1 jans....and that is just the start. As they go up....you eventually get combatFIVE ...which is just plain mean. Do a test in WB with combat3 drill1 jans vs LBs

 

[absimiliard]

Damn, BC Gunpowder is tough. I just can't get it.

I can get Gunpowder by 150 AD, 200 AD pretty consistently. But BC, gah!

I've tried a straight run to Education and researching it, tried going for a Liberalism sling, went with Philosophy for extra GP points, nada. About the only thing I haven't tried is to Academy and settle, or go with a massive cottage spam. (cottage cheese would seem to run counter to Suleiman's Philosophical trait.)

I'm thinking even I could get Gunpowder BC it wouldn't be great. Trying these tactics doesn't leave me an empire that's terribly set for conquest. I think I did better game-wise when I was just playing for full effect and just happened to get janissaries moderately early.

But damn BC janissaries were tempting to try for.

-abs

 

[kniteowl]

i remember attempting the Gunpowder beeline back on WLs with Medmed. The northern route is probably better with Suleimen.

I reckon the Fastest Way would be to use your 1st GS for an Academy in your Capital and, delay meditation so you don't bulb Philosophy (I know the +100% GPP looks nice but it's a beeline right, I reckon that would only slow you down)

But if you're just playing general game then bulbing philosophy is never a bad thing most of the time.

Research Civil Service then Bulb Paper Education and research Gunpowder but that requires you to ignore Liberalism (free tech) and Nationalism (Drafting) but that's just theory though.

But I personally think that's the best method for a direct beeline.

It's annoying that Machinery has a higher bulb rating then Gunpowder, if only if it wasn't you could potentially bulb Gunpowder too but it's require to ignore fishing.