Bombers and Beakers

[MagnaCarta]

Hey everyone, pretty new to this game, been playing for about 3 months... i still cant believe how late i am on such a great game but im glad to see there is still a community and online play!! thats awesome for a 3+ year old game and i really hope they make a sequel soon!!! a fresh start with the rest of the field :)
Played my first MP game a couple a weeks ago using America vs. 2 Spains and a greek... i was very close to 4 of the 5 civs so decided to D-up and expand , tech to fuedalism and start popping KA's all over the map :) (didnt know about horserushing).. i was left alone the whole game so i managed to achieve my goal pretty fast, the greek player quit so i took his AI down right away moved towards the spanish human to take him out ... he had a big tech lead. i got to madrid with 12KA's all elite courtesy of DAVID ,GG and 4 well equipped archrer armies and a few singles only to be greeded by a platoon!! of BOMBERS!! lol, i looked at his tech count and was saying "how the he** did he get bombers this early..." he wiped out my entire force in a very short time and i resigned as he was teching and also culturing i think ... he was popping wonders by the turn lol.. later i found out about the oxford bombers and the way to get them.



Can oxford be beat once someone gets them?
It would seem pretty hard , even for USA to stand with them cause they cant be attacked until flight which i would think gives him plenty of time to demolish me.

how about the idea of getting oxford first, for whatever you get (flight) if behind in tech? worth trying?
or is it pretty much who ever gets oxford wins?

Been playing GotW a lot lately and i love it! fun to compete for scores with other players kind of a mix between SP and MP.. i read a lot of people talk about walkouts, is that when the AA escorts a settler out and stays out for one turn? do you need horses for this or can be done with other units? i tried both ways and just cant get it done ... and finally the most important Question:

When i read one of the many great threads and posts at this forum about the oxford bombers it gave a conditions to skipping from banking to industrialization to have a specific amount of beakers/turn when banking is discovered, is there a reason for this specific amount? why 105? is there a tech formula for skipping to future techs? can this be done with every tech? i play the chinese sometimes and if i set my workers to science on my first settled turn 6 beakers, at the begining of next turn it gives me an option to skip to CoL passing alphabet but if i work production for a warrior it doesnt.
i also read somewhere that they got a tech victory skipping advanced flight???!!! was never able to do that so maybe there is a way to skip techs??

sorry for the long post and all comments are appreciated... Great game, super fun and super addictive..(called in 16 'sick' days in 3 months!!! and had one 32 hour session,lol)
If you dont feel like typing too much please keep the last part as a priority.

[ScottieX]

Can oxford be beat once someone gets them?

1 - take one of their cities - good chance you will get adv flight - you will want to sneak attack with lots of units fast.
2 - get flight.
3 - hope they got adv flight without much gold to by bombers - if so attack fast


how about the idea of getting oxford first, for whatever you get (flight) if behind in tech? worth trying?

yes, for flight - in fact I suspect you should always build oxford for flight - unless you are lazy and wantthe easy bomber victory.


i read a lot of people talk about walkouts, is that when the AA escorts a settler out and stays out for one turn?

yes


do you need horses for this or can be done with other units?

if the ai sees you it will probably stay in the city. It will see you if your units are only one square from the city. BUT you could make the archer army stay ot more than 1 turn - for example by injuring it. if you are using horses try being more diagonal as opposed to straight line from the city.


When i read one of the many great threads and posts at this forum about the oxford bombers it gave a conditions to skipping from banking to industrialization to have a specific amount of beakers/turn when banking is discovered, is there a reason for this specific amount? why 105?

having higher tech rates alows you to avoid teching prerequisites. thre are some posts on here explaining that it's called tech jumping um maybe one of the others can rewrite the formula.

[Legatus]

Scottie covered most of the details on bombers, but a couple things to add:

1. Bombers can only overrun one unit/army per turn (unlike say, Zulu tanks, which can overrun your entire force in one turn).

2. Of course, they use fuel, so they have to retreat on turn 4, or crash.

3. Bombers can not overtake a city. Your foe will need to bring some sort of ground unit.

4. Bombers will prevent him from making knights. So he either needs to have some around, make a slow defensive unit (a cruiser helps), or build a tank.

[newsgothic]

"or is it pretty much who ever gets oxford wins?"

I think that's why the forum tourneys ban it. Early bombers=game over.

[HydroDragon]

Just out of curiosity, what date would you consider 'early' to have bombers?

[Pedal2Metal]

When i read one of the many great threads and posts at this forum about the oxford bombers it gave a conditions to skipping from banking to industrialization to have a specific amount of beakers/turn when banking is discovered, is there a reason for this specific amount? why 105? is there a tech formula for skipping to future techs? can this be done with every tech?

The tech skipping post by Sigmakan (I believe) is the gospel for tech skipping. However, it's doesn't apply 100%, more like 99%. Unfortunately, tech-skipping for Oxford Bombers falls into the 1%. This is why it's 105 instead of 87ish as it should be per Sigmakan's reference. It's a CivRev mystery as to why. No one really knows although there are endless theories & speculation. At the end of the day, I opted for writing what one needs to do for Oxford Bombers & leave the speculative theorizing to the CivRev experts.

There is nothing cheap about using Oxford Bombers imo. It took quite a bit of work to distill it down to it's essence & that's not cheap, that's the benefit of taking the time to meticulously experiment, measure, & document & then share it with the community. One still has to play & dynamically adapt to each game specifically so it's no guarantee of victory but it's a pretty useful generic strategy that can usually tilt the odds in your favor assuming all other things are equal. I did it because I prefer to end games within a bounded timeframe with high reliability if they weren't ended earlier. Oxford Bombers allowed me to do that when I played regularly (assuming the games didn't end earlier). You will still have the occasional long game even with Oxford bombers.

Glad to see you're enjoying CivRev. It is one of the best games I've ever played on the Xbox 360 with a great replayability & longevity (although I'm retired now & virtually never play anymore).

thanks & best regards,
Pedal2Metal

[danthechan]

if you are worried about making it to bombers flight is a very good alternative for a few reasons. it can obsolete the eitc. it can be combined with a gs to get bombers too. they can attack and destroy tanks and cruiser fleets. they are relatively cheap to produce. correct me if i'm wrong but i believe invention is the tech to stop at if you want flight from oxford.

[newsgothic]

Just out of curiosity, what date would you consider 'early' to have bombers?

I would think around 1000 AD is pretty early. I'm guessing the elite players can get it much earlier though.

[ScottieX]

here is a link
http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?18743-Technology-Tree-An-In-Depth-Look

I think indstrialization is different becase it thinks you still need to jump banking too even though you don't. either there was a third preq and it was disconected or its somthing to do with banking being a tech you can get free with 250g (although it is stil 105 even if you tech both currency and banking manually).

[ScottieX]

I would think around 1000 AD is pretty early. I'm guessing the elite players can get it much earlier though.

I forget now becase my games never get to bombers - as in no bombers in the last maybe 6 months...
but I used to try to get BC bombers with egypt.. I suceeded some games

[MagnaCarta]

thanks everyone :) very helpful info.. this forum does an amazing job of explaining and breaking down the game from all angles, great stuff guys, i learned A LOT going through the threads and posts and its usually the same group of people that are posting them so Thank You!! for taking the time to spread your civ wisdom :)

cant wait for GotW to come out tomorrow mornig..... :)))