Science Victory With Assyria?

I didn't try it myself, but I am interested if anyone tried to achieve a SV with Assyria, conquering cities just for the techs... It sounds a bit like an agressive CV to me: you only conquer your science competitors, because you can only steal techs they have already researched.

Did someone try this strategy? On what difficulty level (it's probably most effective on highr difficulties where the AI get lots of bonuses)? How did the game go?

I'm guessing if you beeline dynamite it's probably quite effective.

But the downside is your competitors will always be ahead of you and if you puppet their cities the tech goal becomes harder to reach.

You'll also be hated by everyone.

It's not practical if you think about it.

To support a big military to conquer on higher levels you need gold, so you need to maintain trade routes, sell luxes and build gold buildings/hold off on other buildings.
-you're likely to be embargoed if you keep attacking everybody
-you're not likely to have good relations with a warmonger penalty, giving you less gold from trading luxes.
-you're going to need to use hammers on gold buildings.

To actually win a science victory, you need science= population+ science buildings.
-you need to use a lot of hammers on science buildings, which by the way, burn gold.
-You'll need to constantly be growing which means you need a constant positive happiness. Which isn't easy while warmongering.
-if you neglect culture you're going to be in a huge happiness ditch pretty fast.



All in all, war all day every day is almost certainly a bad idea, even with assyria. If you're going for tech with Ashurbanipal, it'd probably be a better idea is to scout early, use seige towers to take out your highest-teching neighbor, then sit and grow.

arand86 said:

It's not practical if you think about it.

To support a big military to conquer on higher levels you need gold, so you need to maintain trade routes, sell luxes and build gold buildings/hold off on other buildings.
-you're likely to be embargoed if you keep attacking everybody You won't attack everybody, you'll only attack your science competitors. Also, you're likely to be embargoed also when pursuing an agressive CV (and of course when going for domination), but yet is seems to be the most effective way to achieve it...
-you're not likely to have good relations with a warmonger penalty, giving you less gold from trading luxes. True, but, I'm qouting myself: "you're likely to be embargoed also when pursuing an agressive CV (and of course when going for domination), but yet is seems to be the most effective way to achieve it..."
-you're going to need to use hammers on gold buildings. True, but it's really annoying to copy+paste the same thing again and again.

To actually win a science victory, you need science= population+ science buildings.
-you need to use a lot of hammers on science buildings, which by the way, burn gold. You'll spend hammers on science buildings anyway.
-You'll need to constantly be growing which means you need a constant positive happiness. Which isn't easy while warmongering. True.
-if you neglect culture you're going to be in a huge happiness ditch pretty fast. Neglect culture? You are likely to get some GW with the cities you will conquer...



All in all, war all day every day is almost certainly a bad idea, even with assyria. If you're going for tech with Ashurbanipal, it'd probably be a better idea is to scout early, use seige towers to take out your highest-teching neighbor, then sit and grow. I didn't say you shouldnt' do that.

Click to expand...

Editing qoutes is fun.

YOUR FIRST POINT:If you're constantly taking 1 civ's cities, they won't be tech leader for long. You'll attack the civ with the most techs in your region. More likely than not you'll attack 2-3 civs, which will without a doubt give you warmonger.

SECOND POINT:It's not an effective way to win a science victory. To win science, Research agreements are a giant part of your game, and I repeat, you need gold to do so. It's hard to keep a positive cash flow on a deity war while keeping up in every other category.

THIRD POINT: You're repeating that getting embargoed appears to be the most effective way to... win science? hardly true. Embargo= less gold. Less gold = easier negative cash flow. Negative cash flow= takes toll on your science. Considering you have to field a large army as well, the gold sting is going to hurt.

FOURTH POINT: I was just pointing out; science buildings cost gold. You obviously are going to have a gold problem. That's an issue. And spending hammers wasn't too relevant :/

FIFTH POINT: I'm glad we agree on something

SIXTH POINT: Great works provide tourism. You're going to need culture to protect yourself from other countries' tourism. In addition, as Ashurbanipal you're going to want to go for the smaller, easier to take cities so you can maximize the tech boost-turns ratio. It's unlikely you're going to find many great works in small cities.

SEVENTH POINT: Don't know how to respond to that. I was making an argument for my point, not going against your point, as you frankly didn't have one before your last post. You not saying so isn't too relevant.



One more thing that should be noted; On higher difficulty levels, when the AI declares war, it likes to bring a bunch of friends into it as well. Even with Ashurbanipal, it's going to be extremely difficult to repel that many civs when your goal is to consistently conquer cities.


Using Assyria for a science victory shouldn't be done aggressively, but rather peacefully later on.

I've been playing Assyria strictly for a SV lately (Immortal). I build one city, 4 CBs, one ST, and attack, with a few more units coming. In most cases this gives me two or three techs, occasionally more if I catch a second civ without too many pikemen or 30+ cities. (My first target is the civ with the best Medieval UU, before they have a chance to build it.) I then beeline for Machinery (sometimes Education first) and roll another civ (sometimes two) - figure three to six techs. I'm never too far behind, because I don't build a big army, focus on my two super cities, and annex asap. After that I stop and focus on a traditional peaceful SV game. While I have yet to win under 300 turns, it's a fun way to be at war often while still going for a SV. The toughest part is the frequent early chain denouncement.

I will let you know how it goes, won't be doing a SV but Domination instead, but I except a lot of my science to come from conquest. Maybe enough to overcome 5% penalty or maybe not. But as I say the goal is not SV, but I will have good idea along the way how viable SV is.

I think it can be done. Not very early, just one early war against someone who is already disliked, then few more wars later with allies while spamming RAs with them. I think it will require lots of diplo micromanagement but can be very useful. When you think about it a tech might be 6-12 turns of research if you micro that part as well and that's more then early RAs. You need to capture cities not acquire them, so set them on fire and sell them and move on.