So now that we’ve adjusted the happiness system to include more luxuries being used for ‘wide empire’ city spam, rather than just Research Agreement Spam, let’s start looking at the Social Policies.
Right now, the ‘elite strategy’ (as defined by the math and how obvious it is) to win all but a cultural game (though even that can benefit from it) with most any civ is the following:
Locate a good capital spot, settle. Explore and gain lots of gold from meeting City States and selling Open Borders. (post Writing to Friendly civs)
Get to Writing and build a library (or Great Library on lower difficulty levels) and then get your luxuries hooked up. (after hitting the appropriate techs)
Sell all luxuries for cash. Steal a City State worker (Hostile is best) and, if possible, ally a friendly Cultural City State. (to push through Liberty faster and get another luxury item)
Social Policy path is Liberty, Citizenship, Collective Rule (if 400g for a Library) or Representation. (if not)
Get to Philosophy. (Either Great Library or just tech) Build the National College. (2-3 city National College start is possible with the right locations/cash)
Either direct research to Education (if alone/peaceful) starting with Theology, or clear to Compass/Metal Casting and use 2-3 RAs if not. The latter is safer overall as you’ll have more buildings/tile improvement ability and can get more exploration with a trireme. It is also better if you have sea based resources, or are getting attacked by a neighbour.
On the way to Education, build the Hagia Sofia – take a Great Engineer. Finish Liberty off as you finish Education (Great Engineer) and use the Engineers for the Notre Dame and Porcelain Tower.
Sign Research Agreements with EVERY civ that doesn’t hate you, then use the free Great Scientist to bulb Astronomy, to enter Renaissance. Use your sixth policy choice on Rationalism and gain 100% median beaker agreements for every Research Agreement from now on.
Rapidly expand, where possible, and get Universities into every city. Eight cities is usually enough to create a Great Scientist Cascade. Use Research Agreements and Great Scientists to ‘median shift’ your way to Modern before turn 200. Along the way, take one to three points in Freedom (right side) to boost your Great Scientist production and take the left side of Rationalism to gain more science/scientist slot, better university output and two free techs. Win as you like.
It’s really easy to do, even with aggressive neighbours. Early game, use archers to defend/attack. Later, use whatever you need (counter the AI choices) and beat them down if you want, or just keep spamming Research Agreements if you want to stay peaceful. Effectively, make space and keep everyone from your borders to ensure they don’t attack you. Allying City States is just a bonus, but not needed.
Notice in the above, I only talk about maximally 14-16 Social Policies needed. Which is a fine number for a ‘wide’ empire that didn’t build everything up to museums. The strategy also stays ‘small’, but not ‘tall’, until the Renaissance, at which point a major expansion phase can commence. This is usually just before turn 100. (provided nothing wonky happens)
Given how short the Tech tree is, this strategy owns all others, even with neighbours, since you can keep them busy in other wars. (in Single Player. MP players are not likely to sign Research Agreements en mass) By the time the ‘runaway’ forms, you’ve already far out teched them, and didn’t need ‘raw beakers’ from the late Renaissance on, except for maybe 1 tech every 30 turns. You get two techs from Scientific Revolution (Rationalism), one from Oxford, one from the Porcelain Tower and eight to 12 from Great Scientists. The rest is in Research Agreements. The Great Scientist Cascade depends on your ability to get universities up and if you also add Public Schools part way through.
So a tall civ, in that same time, gets… the same free techs, except for the amount of Great Scientists. The ‘tall’ civ won’t get as many, down to around 1/2 as many in the same time frame, due to how the Great People generation system works. The Cascade is by far better due to this fact. There are only three scientist slots available along the way to modern, so if you load them all in n cities, you’ll generate n Great Scientists. Once the first Great Scientist is produced, each city only needs another 100 scientist generation points to produce another, while the city that produced the Great Scientist has to start over from scratch. With just the university, and Hagia Sophia/Freedom Opener, that’s 9gpp/turn = ~11 turns until the next one. At eight cities, and assuming the 2nd generated Great Scientist is the ‘first’ of the Cascade, that takes 23 turns (give or take) to the 200gpp Scientist, then 11 turns/Scientist after that. So for eight cities, that’s 101 turns to generate the 10th Great Scientist.
And what can a 2-3 city ‘tall’ civ do about it? Likely fight GDRs with infantry. But then their nice tall cities would have been nuked by then anyways. (easier to buy nukes than it is to build a GDR; advantage ‘wide’)
Raw science works best as a measure when there’s no Cascade ability or mass Research Agreement spam ability. Players just need 1 lux+Open Border/RA, which is by far easier for ‘wide’ empires to do (more territory) than a tall empire. The more civs in the game, the easier it is to get to modern before turn 200. (all times in Standard speed)
So, now that I’ve rambled on for far too long… How can we fix this with Social Policies? One ‘advantage’ of a tall civ, or at least that’s the theory, is that ‘tall’ civs get more Social Policies (assuming equal cultural development) than ‘wide’ empires. But when a ‘wide’ empire can get the same key policies as a ‘tall’ empire, and even ignore the true ‘wide’ empire social policy trees, (Order/Autocracy – depending on VC considered) in favour of the ‘tall’ empire ones, then there’s a real problem in how the Social Policy mechanic functions, let alone how they are arranged. While I won’t suggest changing HOW you get Social Policies (we really don’t need more of that) I will suggest changes to the timings and when you can gain those ‘key’ benefits.
See more in part 2.
MadDjinn's Blog 