Tech lead - not sure how to keep it

[Orcin]

I am playing Greece on Regent, large map, 12 civs. I am going for the U.N. victory and my rep is spotless. However, I am too small to be invited to the vote unless I build the wonder. Since I am not fighting, I will not have a leader available to rush the wonder. Thus, I feel it is important that I be the first to research Fission.

I only have 13 cities and my science output is not large enough to keep up with the tech leaders. I have trailed in tech most of the game, but by dealing actively I managed to put myself in position to snag Theory of Evolution and come out of it with a 2-tech lead. (BTW the two techs that I got were Replaceable Parts & Steel.) The ToE wonder also triggered my Golden Age. SAVE!!!

Now... I have 20 turns of high production in front of me. Am I better off to keep the new techs to myself and try to maintain the tech lead via my own research? I doubt that I can get to a 4-turn rate even with the GA. My other option is to keep dealing from the tech leader position - I know that selling Replaceable Parts will generate a huge per turn income right now as the entire world (but me ) is at war.

I have never enjoyed a tech lead at this difficulty before, and I am not sure how to keep it. If I sell techs to the former leaders, will their payments to me slow down their own research enough to keep me in front?

 

[CivMonger]

I would say trade replacable parts for all its worth, trying to cripple your opponents as best as you can. Also, take you best city, and start building a wonder in it, the one that requires the most production. Once you get fission, switch to U.N. once you get the tech, and you'll get that wonder ahead of everyone else no problem.

 

[SirPleb]

This partly depends on which patch you have installed for the game. If you have 1.17 or 1.21, then with 12 Civs in the game, odds are not good on your maintaining a tech lead. (Because of the aggressive trading the others will do.) In that case selling the techs earlier is more desirable. If you are playing 1.16 or earlier, there is a good chance you can hold onto each tech until you see that another Civ has learned it, and sell it to the rest of them at that time.

Selling tech for huge gold/turn amounts will slow down the other Civ's research rate a bit. If you can do it repeatedly, with a few techs in a row sold at good rates to all of your strongest rivals, then you can eventually slow their research to a crawl. It isn't clear to me whether you have a shot at that in this game or not.

It is ideal when you can get two "consecutive" techs (such as Atomic Theory and Electronics) from ToE. When you can do that, you can sell the first one, then wait a few turns before selling the second, secure in the knowledge that none of the AIs will get the second one in the meantime and undercut you in the marketplace. Unfortunately, your two tech lead is Steel and Replaceable Parts - it is possible that there are rivals researching both of these already.

My suggestion, in the absence of knowing when the AIs might discover these techs and sell them around themselves, would be to sell one of the techs now, to most or all rivals. Sell to the one with the highest amount available to pay first, then to the next, and so on. In a few turns sell the other. Research at max speed at least for one tech and see if you can indeed hold a lead. I'd say research "depth first", e.g. down the Atomic Theory, Electronics, Radio path. By going "deep" first, each time you get one of those techs, if you are first to get it then you know for sure you are also the first to start research on the next one on that path. If your rivals research other paths on the tech tree in the meantime, then instead of gold, one or more of your sales of new ones you discover can be in trade for the techs they've researched on other paths.

I think that it is more important to be in a position to build UN first than to learn Fission first. If you time one of your cities to complete a Palace a couple of turns after you expect to learn Fission, and you start researching Fission around the same time as your rivals (so make sure to buy the final Industrial Age techs from them if they get to that stage before you do) then you can flip your Palace production to UN and build it first even if they learn Fission before you do.

 

[IronicWarrior19]

J00z iz st00pid. I beatz the AIz on deity every time by 0AD. Jooz shud try deity, d00dz.
Moderator Action: IronicWarrior19 has been permanetly banned. No need to report him anymore. Thanks.
PaleHorse76

Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[LaRo]

Originally posted by IronicWarrior19
J00z iz st00pid. I beatz the AIz on deity every time by 0AD. Jooz shud try deity, d00dz.

Congratulation! This post help the guy so much!

What would he have done without?

 

[Crunchy]

I've always found it difficult to maintain a tech lead. With the aggressive trading your basically trying to compete against all of the AI science combined. In addition techs get easier to research when someone else has discovered it so it's made even harder to keep in front. As mentioned before the only way to do it is by crippling all the other AI's research by getting them to give you as much gold per turn as possible. You can tell when they don't have any more gold per turn to give when the Advisor says "They would never accept such a deal". What he is really saying is "They don't have the gold per turn spare", ie their research/spending has been crippled. If you can get this for every AI civ and also maintain this level then you control the world's research and thus maintain a tech lead .

Your problem is time, it takes time to get enough deals to cripple every AI's research capability, you can however make a dent and boost your own research with the gold per turn you get. Don't forget to trade your resources as well as techs.

In the GOTM I had a lot of fun, I ended the game with 25k gold in the bank and 1000 gold per turn from other AI's; all AI spending was crippled. I was researching techs every 4 turns and still had 400 gold per turn surplus .

 

[algfr]

Hi, to get the maximum science input rate, i build a lot of cities at the beginning and then i create a lot of workers which i build A LOT of road with. The trade generated helps you science and then as soon as you can build libraries, JS BAch Cathedral, Sixtin, get in rep/democracy, build copernic observatory, and so on.

 

[unscratchedfoot]

Choose a city with some luxury resources outside it. Then build newton's university, copernicus observatory, seti and all research buildings in it. Make sure all those research multipliying wonders go in the same city and your research output will increase geometically (x2,x4,x8). Then change as many citizens to scientists as possible. The research from this one city will equal an entire nation's research output.

jealous Ai nations :shottie: me

 

[Orcin]

I appreciate all of the responses (well, almost all ). In particular, SirPleb's advice proved to be exactly what I needed.

I resumed play right after getting the ToE, and realized that my 2 tech lead was only one. The tech leaders had also gotten Replaceable Parts on that turn. That made the decision obvious for me. I had to try and cripple their income streams.

I sold Steel to all comers and received over 500 gpt plus rubber. I upgraded my 40 various defenders to Infantry with the profit, upped science to 100%, and managed to beat them to the next tech. I again shopped to all rich parties, although I noticed two of the five previous customers were no longer able to bid large amounts. After one more successful tech, it was down to only me and America still generating any disposable income. It appears to me that they are researching the same techs I am, because no one is getting anything else to trade.

At this point, I am certain that I can maintain the edge with only 4-5 techs to go. I will pre-build the Palace at the appropriate time, use my now-buldging treasury (over 12k gold plus 800 gpt profit) to pay a nice round of bribes, and hopefully collect my first diplo victory .

Thanks again for the sound advice!

 

[Loopy]

Originally posted by Orcin
I will pre-build the Palace at the appropriate time, use my now-buldging treasury (over 12k gold plus 800 gpt profit) to pay a nice round of bribes, and hopefully collect my first diplo victory .

An easy way to get a diplo victory with those bribes is to enter into an alliance with everyone against the other candidate (highest land owner iirc). Entering into a miltary alliance will always pump up AI relations to polite or gracious and the AI will never vote for someone they're at war against.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Orcin
At this point, I am certain that I can maintain the edge with only 4-5 techs to go. I will pre-build the Palace at the appropriate time, use my now-buldging treasury (over 12k gold plus 800 gpt profit) to pay a nice round of bribes, and hopefully collect my first diplo victory .

That's great news Orcin! Please let us know how it ends up!

 

[Orcin]

I reached Fission before any of the other civs had Radio. The Palace was the biggest pre-build I could choose, and that was not enough to compensate for the UN. I had to wait 11 nerve-wracking turns, but the few civs that got into the Modern Age were not researching Fission first. On the last turn, one civ finally started the UN but I got it.

8 of the surviving 10 civs voted for me.

Woohoo!!!

 

[SirPleb]

Nice going! And a landslide vote, good stuff!

 

[Dell19]

Great story! Seems that the advice really paid off as you were way ahead at the end of the game.