How do people get sub T300 science victories?

poxpower said:

Turn 200: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8KEoxcib-4
( not a typical game though lol )
Turn 228: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roq3DYYG8FI

his detailed guide: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=534745

I can try to summarize:

- Settle 3 cities, then make National College
- open Tradition tree
- Build caravans ASAP and use them only for food to capital
- Get friendly with as many AIs as you can
- research civil service then education. Build universities in capital and through loans from AI
- build writer's guild soon in capital. pop writers for treatise and only 1 turn before end of golden ages
- After education, get astronomy if your capital has mountain
- build markets where you have time
- build artist's guild in capital and gardens everywhere you can. use artists only for golden ages
- If no mountain, go for Metal Casting, get all workshops
- use first great scientist for academy, keep all others
- finish tradition, then unlock right side of commerce
- go printing press, attempt Leaning Tower ( hard on deity ). get great scientist
- unlock rationalism
- Go for public schools tech, make schools with loans if possible
- research electricity and make sure you finish Oxford university at the same time you finish electricity
- get Radio with your free tech from oxford
- get "freedom" ideology" with +25% great people generation and Great people consume 50% food policies
- At this point you should have unlocked commerce and got it down to the buildings discount
- build Big Ben
- Go for plastics tech
- Build labs with money if possible.
- Check if AIs have porcelain tower. Start/ finish it if you will finish the game before that city will make another scientist.
- After labs, get chemistry and then fertilizer
- Get penicilin for more trade routes
- Now go for rocketry, then sattelites
- start apollo in capital.
- start popping great scientists
- Once appolo is done, start hubble. If you have enough faith, get it with great engineer.
- Get "buy spaceship parts with gold" in freedom.
- Start to buy spaceship parts as they become available. Get loans from the AIs, on deity they should have thousands of gold. On immortal they might have less for you to work with.

There you go.
Of course the devil is in the details, really good players have finished under 200 turns on good maps lol that's pretty crazy.

On immortal you will actually be slower because the AIs generate early workers slower and have less gold for you to take loans. However, it opens up different strategies like getting Temple of Artemis, Hanging Gardens and Petra, which the AI sucks at building. You can also basically guarantee you get Chicken Itza, Globe Theater, Taj Mahal, Leaning Tower and Eiffel Tower if you play right. When I play immortal games the AI can't build any wonder first, basically.

Anyway watch Acken's videos, pretty good times.

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• Stealing 2 workers before turn 40, although one can often steal 3 workers by turn 20. On Emperor, I know that this isn't possible, but stealing as many workers as quickly as you can is of the utmost importance.
• Avoiding superfluous wars, Always know which AI are angry at you and may declare war. Try to pay the closest warmonger to attack them. Sometimes you can get a really cheap deal and get Shaka or Askia to declare war on somebody for 1 gpt / an embassy.
• Four cities, you want to pump settlers early and make sure they have some means to construct a library quickly be it through chopping trees or through actual bonus resource tiles. A fast national college is essential. Make every game a test to see how early you can build the national college. Turn 80 is a good time with 4 cities although not achievable every game. Early wonders like the ToA, stonehenge, and the great library can often hurt you more than help especially if you're building these in place of settlers or the national college. I'm not sure when these wonders are built on emperor, but I would recommend not building them before your national college.
• Rush buy every science building in your capitol except for the library. You should have enough gold to do this by trading excess luxury resources. A strong religion really helps with money because pagodas free up 8 happiness allowing for an entire lux of happiness buffer and tithe straight up buffs your GPT.
• If you don't have a cultural CS ally or build the Oracle, you really want to go into the renaissance era ASAP so you don't have to waste a social policy on the commerce opener. Sometimes this means you will have to go acoustics after you finish education.
• Only plant 1 great scientist. The greatest bottleneck in fast science victories are the cost of post plastics techs, you need to have ~10 great scientists saved to bulb the later techs. Even the strongest Korean empires can only reach ~1500 BPT which means the later techs still take around 10 turns each to research, this is unacceptable and can only be remedied with great scientist bulbing. Additionally, academies also prevent improvements and usually block you from +2 food which is not ideal.
• Bulb all great writers and great artists, do not work the musician's guild unless you win the world's fair.
• Propose and win the world's fair. Every time the first world congress happens, you need to propose and win the world's fair. You will get a ton of positive diplomacy because everyone wants the world's fair to take place, and winning the world's fair gives an unreal advantage. Winning can be done on every game on deity so on emperor it shouldn't even be a problem. Once you can win the world's fair every time through efficient play, save all great writers until ~10 turns after the culture bonus kicks in and them bulb them for masssive culture. My last game as the Shoshone I gained 4000 culture on one turn using this method. On Emperor, the AI's tech will be slow as hell so make sure you get printing press quickly sometime after education.
• After scientific theory beeline for radio and pick freedom for the two free tenets. 1/2 food consumption from specialists and 25% great person generation are the prime picks on the first tier.

garmeth said:

The aspects that make the biggest difference to consistently have a pre 300 SV are

• Stealing 2 workers before turn 40, although one can often steal 3 workers by turn 20. On Emperor, I know that this isn't possible, but stealing as many workers as quickly as you can is of the utmost importance.
• Avoiding superfluous wars, Always know which AI are angry at you and may declare war. Try to pay the closest warmonger to attack them. Sometimes you can get a really cheap deal and get Shaka or Askia to declare war on somebody for 1 gpt / an embassy.
• Four cities, you want to pump settlers early and make sure they have some means to construct a library quickly be it through chopping trees or through actual bonus resource tiles. A fast national college is essential. Make every game a test to see how early you can build the national college. Turn 80 is a good time with 4 cities although not achievable every game. Early wonders like the ToA, stonehenge, and the great library can often hurt you more than help especially if you're building these in place of settlers or the national college. I'm not sure when these wonders are built on emperor, but I would recommend not building them before your national college.
• Rush buy every science building in your capitol except for the library. You should have enough gold to do this by trading excess luxury resources. A strong religion really helps with money because pagodas free up 8 happiness allowing for an entire lux of happiness buffer and tithe straight up buffs your GPT.
• If you don't have a cultural CS ally or build the Oracle, you really want to go into the renaissance era ASAP so you don't have to waste a social policy on the commerce opener. Sometimes this means you will have to go acoustics after you finish education.
• Only plant 1 great scientist. The greatest bottleneck in fast science victories are the cost of post plastics techs, you need to have ~10 great scientists saved to bulb the later techs. Even the strongest Korean empires can only reach ~1500 BPT which means the later techs still take around 10 turns each to research, this is unacceptable and can only be remedied with great scientist bulbing. Additionally, academies also prevent improvements and usually block you from +2 food which is not ideal.
• Bulb all great writers and great artists, do not work the musician's guild unless you win the world's fair.
• Propose and win the world's fair. Every time the first world congress happens, you need to propose and win the world's fair. You will get a ton of positive diplomacy because everyone wants the world's fair to take place, and winning the world's fair gives an unreal advantage. Winning can be done on every game on deity so on emperor it shouldn't even be a problem. Once you can win the world's fair every time through efficient play, save all great writers until ~10 turns after the culture bonus kicks in and them bulb them for masssive culture. My last game as the Shoshone I gained 4000 culture on one turn using this method. On Emperor, the AI's tech will be slow as hell so make sure you get printing press quickly sometime after education.
• After scientific theory beeline for radio and pick freedom for the two free tenets. 1/2 food consumption from specialists and 25% great person generation are the prime picks on the first tier.

No other cute techniques are needed. You do not need to sign RAs, you don't need to take out loans to get science buildings faster, you don't need an extreme spain opener, and you don't even need a religion although it makes the game way easier.

edit: Also, I'm not an S tier player like Vadalaz / tommynt/ and numerous others, but I'm pretty sure there are a good number of starts that are borderline impossible to even get a pre 280 science victory. If you don't have any bonus resources and your only lux is a desert spice or you start in the middle of the jungle the game is going to be absolute hell. Sometimes those games can be salvaged with some other extraordinary luck like amazing land for your 2nd-4th cities or random natural wonders like Sri Pada, but in general if you get a terrible start where you capitol isn't on a hill and can't even work 3 good tiles at 3 pop you're going to have a hard time no matter how good you are. I would recommend rerolling until you get a mining lux start with a good hill and see if you can get pre 300 science victory that way first and then see if you can win quickly with bad starts.

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Iamteehee said:

Are you making an effort to settle your satellite cities next to rivers and other sources of fresh water? It provides a huge boost in growth once you get Civil Service.

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CivAddict2013 said:

Hmm, I tried and one of the problems I run into, is I just get can't my cities to grow like in Acken's playthrough. Even with a granary, a water mill, jungles, aqueducts and farms, I'm still seeing low growth. I can get my capital to grow pretty well; but my other cities are either growing slowly or stagnant(Despite being next to jungles).

I just played a game as the Maya. I had a jungle start, used caravans, got the Hanging Gardens and I'm still getting Scientific Theory by Turn 200. I also built the National College. I planted one Great Scientist.

The problem seems to be growth. There's something about Acken's starting location, that allows him to grow his cities super quickly.

Even with caravans and the Hanging Gardens, I'm just not getting the same fast growth as in those vids.

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Nick31 said:

There a lot of threads through the years that talk about going Tall Science. I've started a couple, and certainly there are plenty of guides. I'm not sure what to add to them other than to reiterate some very key core concepts:

1) Core-4 Tradition, with sometimes 3-city NC and sometimes 4-city depending on the start.
2) Stealing workers, particularly from CS
3) Internal Trade Routes at all times, especially to Capital. Occasionally you may send a caravan to a CS quest, but generally all food all the time.
4) Plant first GS, and have 2nd GS ready to bulb into Industrialization (for Order) or Sci-Theory (if you're going to Oxford into Radio and go Freedom)
5) Religion is a nice thing to have. On Immortal and below, I actually prioritize building Hagia Sophia after I complete NC. If my neighbor has great religion, I'll plant the prophet, but otherwise I'll take something since the AI generally leaves behind Tithe and some form of hammers or food.
6) Saving all GWriters for post World's Fair victory, with GA for Golden Age, and some Cultural CS all lined up.
7) Artillery Rush

The last part doesn't have to even be rushed (you can go Research Labs first, particularly with a bulb/Oxford combo) and then swallow a juicy neighboring cities. But you want to finish the game with 7-9 cities. You can get your science up to 2000 if you know what you're doing, i.e. Order with skyscrapers and Big Ben and buying science buildings in your new cities and some other things.

To relate this to the Civ VI discussions, Ed Beach is right that once you nail down fast science wins, its very hard to get yourself to play differently (i.e. sub-optimally). On Immortal, getting pre-275 Science becomes second nature if you hone your skills, and then it's a matter of whether you can get things to go smoothly for the pre-260. Things can be delayed if you play with Mods that make things harder (I only play with mods that enable an AI to move and shoot, and take Rationalism, for instance), but frankly, once you get better, any non-Diety game becomes a question of whether you want to play around a bit or go "optimal."

Certainly, there are a bit of skillsets that come with hours and hours of time (city placement, AI bribing, CS quest hunting, wonder building or passing), but the above 7 things and reading the various tall science growth guides, will help. Just put your nose down into going Tall and you'll get there . Even a "weak" civ like Assyria can go pre-275 Science once you just forego its Uniques. I haven't played a game below Immortal in years, but I guess on Emperor and below you can play around with earlier conquests, but on Immortal, barring certain factors, go high growth into Ideologies and just wait for Artillery. Most efficient swallowing up possible.

Timing Hubble, or faith-buying GE, or buying parts if Freedom comes down to practice. Once you get to T230, and you've taken cities, and have your set-up, you can map out how to get GS, GE, and timing the victory. If you can time the World Congress, you can sometimes bulb into Satellites super early, propose ISS and then use that for extra powered GS, but often you finish the game so fast once you're set up that waiting to complete ISS doesn't speed you up.

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CivAddict2013 said:

I actually do most of that stuff.

I still can't hit the benchmarks people are claiming. T110 Education seems only possible with Babylon.

I rush settlers and get 3 cities, but can't get the national college until around T110.

I'm thinking the whole "settle 3 cities and build the NC" strategy is too slow and doesn't even give you that much science.

I've tried the "settle 3 cities and build NC" strategy and I have never gotten Education around T110.

It may just be faster to build the NC and then settle later.

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CivAddict2013 said:

I rush settlers and get 3 cities, but can't get the national college until around T110.

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CivAddict2013 said:

I play on Emperor difficulty.

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