Hey all!

I just signed up, finally.. not that it was hard, but I have been reading alot of posts here lately and decided to join up:D

I notice alot of very good comments and tips so I though I might ask you!

I saw that a guy in the hall of fame who completed space race at 1206 A.D. and it was even on immortal I think... I tried it out on settler just for fun and I was reaching Liberalism at 1000 A.D. so I was vastly behind, and I wonder how the hell it is possible to do a spacerace so fast and particularly on that difficulty level. It just amazes me, of course there is a good reason this space race is found in the hall of fame, but still....

Do you think he bee-lined the entire tech tree?
There are of course techs u dont need at all, but many will boost science considerably so you must get them, though they're not required for space techs... At least that's my impression.

Share your thoughts, and help me beat that record:D

Btw... I do not speak or write english properly so bare with me... I'm from Denmark:D

reDie out -

Welcome to the boards, and don't fret--like most Europeans I've met, your English is very good. (And yet like most Europeans I've met, you're apologetic about it. Let me sputter at you unintelligibly in whatever Danish I learned from a Berlitz guide for a minute or two, and trust me, you'll feel a lot less self-conscious.)

I haven't seen any information on the game you're referring to--that sounds exceptional. I think you would have to find a discussion thread that talks about that specific game to find out what strategy was used. I suspect it involves a leader with the Financial trait and lots of cottages--money for research--but I could be wrong.

Hey again

Well I have searched the forums, but nothing interesting came up... Maybe I'm doing something wrong I dont know. None the less I found nothing really...

But I figured that financial and industrius treats would serve this strat well, and I used an alternate tactic for early game where I recieved a worker from first hut which I send to scout for more huts.

This works very well because the worker will find lots great stuff from huts. After maybe 30 turns I had gathered 5 free techs, 4 settlers, 1 warrior, 3 scouts, 3 workers and about 250 gold... I could never achieve this without scoutin with my worker. So I consider this opening extremly good.

I had 6 cities, a few farms for each and rest cottages, going with tech rate of 90%
I got court houses and raised it to 100% and I really cant see how it could be done better... Ofc I could have imba position but .. I didnt:D

Have any of you guys achieved any superior space races? If so, could you elaborate on this, because im quite curious what does the trick since I'm having trouble finding a thread on this!

Thanks for you reply Sisiutil!

reDie out-

I'm working on it. I'll probably have a guide out in a few weeks.

Anyway, I checked the hall of fame, and there's no 1206 space win on immortal. There's an 1106 on settler (easiest) difficulty, maybe this is what you saw?

First of all, I don't think it's possible to get a space win in 1100s or even the 1200s with the current patch, even on the easiest difficulty. These wins were accomplished with patch 1.52, on marathon game speed. Two things have happened in 1.61 which make such an early date VERY difficult.

Marathon and Epic game speeds were lengthened considerably. I don't know all the details, but I know workers take longer to perform tasks, and I think that research was slowed down as well.

Furthermore, tree chopping has been seriously adjusted and yields a lot less (for more work). Before patch 1.61, it was possible to chop an army of settlers and workers very rapidly. You can still chop some, but not on the grand scale like before.

Even further, the rules of the Hall of fame have changed, requiring more AI opponents for every map size except duel (1 on 1). This considerably slows down the space race for 2 reasons: it's much more difficult to grab the large land mass you need peacefully, and engaging in wars hurts your finish time.

I'm still working on several different strategies, so I can't give a lot of specific details yet, but here are some tips I can give you:

Get as many cities as you can, as fast as you can, any way you can. Sure, your research will drop precipitously in the early game, but will be exponentially better in the later game. Playing on noble difficulty, I'm behind until the mid-classical era, then I easily overtake the AI for the rest of the game. I'm not sure overtaking the AI is the right thing to do.... research costs more, and they can't trade anything to you except archery. Again, I'm working on it. Still, I'm reasonably certain that rapid expansion is a good idea. Otherwise, the AI will take the land, and you'll have to fight them to get it, which is probably sub-optimal. It might not be if the AI weren't so stupid, but if you take an AI city, you really have to rework all of their tiles because they do a shabby job of improvement. For your first few cities, this will mean clear-cutting the forests to produce settlers and workers.

Make a bunch of cottages, even if you aren't a financial civ. They provide both income and research, whereas scientists only provide research.

Concentrate on generating great scientists and great engineers. A great person farm is a good way to do this, build National epic and possibly the great library, and the hagia sophia in your GP farm, get representation as soon as possible (usually by building the pyramids), and assign as many scientists and engineers as you can while still being able to quickly grow the city to maximum population. Worry mostly about happiness, but also healthiness when you don't have any more 4+ food tiles left in the city. If all you have is 3f or 2f or 1f tiles, you are growing for the sake of growing, when you could be running a specialist instead.

Every city should be a science city. Learn to love slavery and chopping trees for your libraries, universities, and observatories etc. The only exception is your GP farm, which is a food city. This thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158482
will tell you more about the GP farm.

But, you may ask, if I don't have any production cities, how do I build the space ship parts?

The answer is to convert your cities one by one into production cities near the end game. I do the weaker science cities first. That's right, destroy all your towns that you've spent all this time growing, and change them into workshops. In order to pull this off, you'll need to choose the state property civic, since it takes away the -1 food penalty. Start with your weaker science cities first so you don't slow down your research too much. I'm getting good results from researching all the techs before I even build Apollo! I then have an army of workers transform all the towns into workshops, since I no longer need science at all. I produced all the spaceship parts in 31 turns this way once (on marathon speed, no less). I'm not sure if this is optimal yet, however, this is just an idea I'm playing with.

Sorry this was such a long winded ramble. Hopefully I'll figure all this stuff out soon and get my guide together. Currently, I hold the #1 spot on settler difficulty, standard map size (1336 AD), but this was before the patch. Best I've been able to do post-patch is mid 1500s on easy difficulty, and post 1700 on Noble.

One more tip - give in to all the AI demands/requests when it comes to sharing tech, but don't give in to "stop trading with," or "please attack", or anything that will make another AI mad. Think twice about having a state religion, unless all the other AIs have that religion already, and even then it's risky. If the AI asks for a tech for free, give it to them, then tell them you want to trade with them, and ask for one of their techs for free, or all their gold. They'll almost always give it to you. Only make this counter-request if you have pleased relations or friendly relations, otherwise it will be a *demand*, not a request, and it will just make the AI angry.

Pick peaceful civs for your opponents.

Hey! :D
Alot of good pointers indeed, I thought about the switching from science to production too, u will definately need that.

I was wondering how your research line was planned out... Do you beeline specific things? One thing that would come in handy is the three gorges dams... So u could effectively run factories as early as possible.. but there may be other things too, have you thought of any?

Anyways, everybody can share their thoughts on this subject :D

One thing I dont like is to choose my AI opponents... It's a bit cheesy I think, I will go for random for more "real" challenge..

I'm thinking of using this a MP strat too, I play with a good friend of mine and he keeps whoopin me! GRR:P

Anyways thanks for sharing^^

reDie

Hey! :D
Alot of good pointers indeed, I thought about the switching from science to production too, u will definately need that.

I was wondering how your research line was planned out... Do you beeline specific things? One thing that would come in handy is the three gorges dams... So u could effectively run factories as early as possible.. but there may be other things too, have you thought of any?

Anyways, everybody can share their thoughts on this subject :D

One thing I dont like is to choose my AI opponents... It's a bit cheesy I think, I will go for random for more "real" challenge..

I'm thinking of using this a MP strat too, I play with a good friend of mine and he keeps whoopin me! GRR:P

Anyways thanks for sharing^^

reDie

This strat is what I do on Noble and below (though I rarely play below these days).

I agree it's cheesy to pick your opponents, and also cheesy to turn off barbarians, but those are allowed in the HoF, and if you don't do that, IMO it's unlikely you can compete for the top spot (in the long run, in the short term, you can pick whatever #1 spot you want probably because there aren't very many submissions yet).

So, I beeline for bronze in the beginning to chop trees for expansion. This strat is a lot weaker now with 1.61, so this is the only one I'm not sure about.

Next, I get all the worker techs, with the exception of fishing/sailing if I don't have a coastal city, because obviously it's not gonna do any good until I do. If I do have a coastal city with a good sea resource, or that won't be able to grow immediately, I go for fishing/sailing. Otherwise I wait for a while and trade for them.

Next, I get the minimum religious techs for stonehenge/oracle. If I play a creative civ, I don't build stonehenge, but I always go for a COL-CS slingshot with oracle. I get it almost every time, but I tend to play industrious civs, and if I don't, I quit the game if I can't find marble.

Pyramids are also a must, I need that representation so that I can run as many scientists as I want. Again, I almost always get the pyramids, but for both pyramids/oracle, I wait for math before I chop. I use slavery to shave a few turns on all 3 early wonders as long as it only costs me 1-3 pop.

Next I go for drama so I can build Globe Theater in my GP farm.

After that, I go for a liberalism-biology slingshot, taking a few sidetracks along the way for necessary science techs.

Since I get Biology really early (usually around 1000ad I think with the new patch), I mostly have been building only the farms I will need after biology to grow to maximum population for that city. I make exceptions to this rule as the situation warrants, to be able to work juicy tiles, if necessary. Nearly everything that's not a farm or a resource is a cottage. Other than mines on hills, I don't build production in any city! I find that I don't need military, and I can diplo my way throughout the game. For essential libraries/universitys/observatories/labs, I use either slavery or universal suffrage, combined with whatever small amount of production I have.

Next, I beeline for industrialism, to reveal aluminum. Hopefully you've got a big enough empire at this point that you have some aluminum. Otherwise it's gonna take you a lot longer!

Now I go for Rocketry, then robotics, and I build the space elevator while I'm building the casings. Next I go for genetics usually so I can get that +3 health, unless I don't need it. I think you can figure out the rest for yourself.

This was really fast in 1.52, but now with the chop nerfing, and the HoF requirement of more AI opponents, it's so hard to get enough cities through peace, I'm trying very different things. I'm starting to get a very strong feeling it would be faster to go to war with at least one civ and take their land! This was out of the question pre- 1.52 because the drain on productivity was not worth it, since you could get your 9 cities without war. I'm finding that almost impossible now, generally I get 6, and sometimes 7 without war. So, back to the drawing board.

I'm hoping that I can follow the same basic strat outlined above, and take a time out to capture 1-2 civ's lands with axes, basically combine my strategy with an axe rush early conquest strat, but stop the conquest when I've got enough land. Stay tuned for my guide!