Science Victory is far too easy.

Its also the only victory I have ever seen an AI achieve.

The fact that you can just turtle yourself to SV without really doing anything on the international stage shows something is wrong. The only remotely hindering thing might be not having aluminum but even then you can just build recycling plants.

It also comes across as some kind of cop-out victory condition. For example, if you fail a domination you can juist say, or well I'll just build the space ship.

Nothing in the UN can slow you down really. Spaceship Factory and International Space Station are pretty much useless because by the time they come around chances are you've already built half the ship.

I think at very least the spaceship parts need to be knocked back in the tree. Ideally all at Future Tech, seeing as they are all sci-fi anyway.

I've seen the AI win a Diplomatic and a Cultural (pre BNW variety) victory.

To be honest, if you aiming for a Domination or a Cultural victory, you should be able to win well before you reach SS components in the tech tree. Both can be achieved in the Renaissance Era if you start the game with a strategy in mind.

Pretty sure deity AI can win all except domination.
I've had Alex almost win Diplo, the only way to stop him was to buy his CS and DoW drop his votes.
Several civs are able to win culture if they manage to push rationalism and get quick internet while winning IG.

If science focused AIs picked and played Rationalism, we would see sub 300 finishes on Deity every time, I guarantee. Babylon/Korea in the 250 range

I remember one game where France ran away by conquering his entire continent's capitals, was influential with everyone except myself, and had 90-100k culture by 250, and the only way out was to conquer him completely. Luckily I had the other continent to myself and could resist his tourism long enough for me to conquer him.

Science victory requires you to research all techs, including a lot of useless tourism stuff in the upper part of the tree, except for four. Two of which exist only to augment progress towards other victories, which leaves two.

Stall is also completely unviable in multiplayer, considering nukes, Xcoms and stealth bombers always beat everything else in the game, especially little tall empires. I personally don't think SV is ever the optimal way to go.

The AI's cheaty ways don't really say that much about the actual mechanics.

Science victory did become easier in Civ5 now that capturing the capital no longer destroys the spaceship, it merely magically teleports it to the next capital city.

Which is why science is the only VC that I ever turn off.

As you've said and I'm not afraid to admit, it's always my back-door victory. Early game social policy track (particularly after finishing the first tree) usually is my statement that I'm heading down this or that victory path. When things seem insurmountable, I switch to science.

It's also by far the hardest VC to block an AI from achieving.

So turning science VC off offers a positive and a negative. The positive is that the AI can't snipe a victory condition under your nose when you're on track to reaching one of the other VCs. The negative is that your back-up plan is gone.

i usually turn science off but that's more because i'm extremely unfocused regarding aiming towards a specific victory and end up defaulting to science before someone else beats me to it. if i had more of an idea of what i wanted to do in a game this wouldn't be an issue but there it is

First of, if its too easy, increase difficulty level.

But if you are already playing deity, i guess its still ok that science victory is easy. It sucks to play 400 turns and then lose after all
Kind of a last resort then. You failed to win in a proper way, so the game gives you sci victory for your efforts.

WackenOpenAir said:

It sucks to play 400 turns and then lose after all
Kind of a last resort then. You failed to win in a proper way, so the game gives you sci victory for your efforts.

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Isn't that what time victory is for?

Mesix said:

To be honest, if you aiming for a Domination or a Cultural victory, you should be able to win well before you reach SS components in the tech tree. Both can be achieved in the Renaissance Era if you start the game with a strategy in mind.

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I won my first cultural victory today on Immortal and found it much more challenging than Emperor. Unless one get real lucky with Sacred Sites or something I can't imagine it being possible to win without getting Internet, in which case you're already well into SS part territory.

stormtrooper412 said:

If science focused AIs picked and played Rationalism, we would see sub 300 finishes on Deity every time, I guarantee. Babylon/Korea in the 250 range

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I would like to see Brazil or France achieve CV or Alex or Siam achieve DM within the same time frame (with their respective SP trees). What I mean is that SV is comparatively too easy compared to the other victory conditions.

ShakaKhan said:

Which is why science is the only VC that I ever turn off.

As you've said and I'm not afraid to admit, it's always my back-door victory. Early game social policy track (particularly after finishing the first tree) usually is my statement that I'm heading down this or that victory path. When things seem insurmountable, I switch to science.

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Yes, I've had a few close cultural games where I start build SS parts 'just in case an AI starts to do the same before I can win CV. Turning off science victory may be a good 'training tool' so to speak.

WackenOpenAir said:

First of, if its too easy, increase difficulty level.

But if you are already playing deity, i guess its still ok that science victory is easy. It sucks to play 400 turns and then lose after all
Kind of a last resort then. You failed to win in a proper way, so the game gives you sci victory for your efforts.

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The AI difficulty is relevant, what I mean is that SV is comparatively too easy compared to the other victory conditions.

kamex said:

The AI difficulty is relevant, what I mean is that SV is comparatively too easy compared to the other victory conditions.

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I agree with this in the context of someone who plays deity only unless I want an immortal vacation, but am surprised that this is your perception since you mentioned earlier in the post that this was your first immortal CV and were very experienced at emporer play, which I took to mean that you spent quite a few games at emperor and had recently bumped up. When I was going through the same transition where emporer was getting boring and needed more of a challenge, I found that domination was the easiest, or at least by far the quickest. I had a few culture/space games on emporer that wrapped up before turn 220, but dom was always before turn 200.

ShakaKhan said:

I agree with this in the context of someone who plays deity only unless I want an immortal vacation, but am surprised that this is your perception since you mentioned earlier in the post that this was your first immortal CV and were very experienced at emporer play, which I took to mean that you spent quite a few games at emperor and had recently bumped up. When I was going through the same transition where emporer was getting boring and needed more of a challenge, I found that domination was the easiest, or at least by far the quickest. I had a few culture/space games on emporer that wrapped up before turn 220, but dom was always before turn 200.

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Yeah recently stepped up, but I've played 100s of games on Emperor and its usually this pattern, I don't expect it to be different higher up as the AI never gets 'smarter' just bigger handicaps.

I usually find Domination the hardest, even on Emperor. What map type and settings were you using? I usually play Fractal or Continents as I find Pangaea boring 2bh. But that's just me. lol

Science Victory is ondly so easy in SP because the AI does not know what to do vs it
if u play with players that know what they are doing Science Victory is ondly possible if u won anyway since else you wil get killed while trying

especialy since civilian unit's normaly go of last in the first move order so that it is realy easy to nuke parts if u have a spy in the city to know when it finishes and a nuke in range

kamex said:

I would like to see Brazil or France achieve CV or Alex or Siam achieve DM within the same time frame (with their respective SP trees). What I mean is that SV is comparatively too easy compared to the other victory conditions.

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It's been known to happen. Let me link to a post:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13831217&postcount=124

kamex said:

Its also the only victory I have ever seen an AI achieve.

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That is because you are not playing at a high enough difficulty level. AIs can win by Diplo and CV too.

Spaceship Factory and International Space Station are pretty much useless because by the time they come around chances are you've already built half the ship.

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Again, this is only because you are not really challenging yourself. I agree that ISS project comes too late, but Hubble and SS factories are key to each of my Immortal/Deity SV.

Sectopod said:

Science victory requires you to research all techs, including a lot of useless tourism stuff in the upper part of the tree, except for four. Two of which exist only to augment progress towards other victories, which leaves two.

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This is the key observation as to why OP premise is off the mark. SV already requires one to fill out the tech tree. As compared to Diplo and CV, it is very complete!

kamex said:

I usually find Domination the hardest, even on Emperor.

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I agree with you on this as Domination is a real struggle for me, but actually I do better with Dom than CV. But Dom can at least be completed with a relatively low turn count.

ShakaKhan said:

Which is why science is the only VC that I ever turn off... So turning science VC off offers a positive and a negative.

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Turning off SV is only a negative. The positive aspect you list is an additional strike against it! Unless you are hand-selecting opponents, turning off SV nerfs a few of the AI. But with or without that, even if you do win, but it is late game, did you really win? Or did you win only because you prevented an AI from launching by disabling SV? Some of the AI, even those that favor Autocracy, are perfectly capable at working out their own fallback SV. Disabling any VC hollows out the challenge for the player. Now, its a game and the point is to have fun. But I think most players enjoy the game more when there is the possibility they will not win!

kamex said:

Yeah recently stepped up, but I've played 100s of games on Emperor and its usually this pattern, I don't expect it to be different higher up as the AI never gets 'smarter' just bigger handicaps.

I usually find Domination the hardest, even on Emperor. What map type and settings were you using? I usually play Fractal or Continents as I find Pangaea boring 2bh. But that's just me. lol

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I don't like continents for domination. Only do those with a VERY aggressive civ when I'm trying the "wiped the whole continent before anyone else noticed - no diplomatic blood, no diplomatic foul" then create a civilization of gods among men and steamroll the other landmass.

Otherwise, I like water maps when I want to get through a game quickly, maybe even in one or two sittings, but pangaea when I'm in the mood for an epic (scale, not game-speed) game. Donut maps are awesome too as they are both one continuous landmass (with flatter terrain) and have all coastal capitals, so you can either march your carpet of doom or wrap things up with a navy finish.

My modded AI wins pangea domination in less than 300turns at Immortal+ (in an all AI game, I don't stick around if I'm losing). It also wins culture and science as in the base game.

That said, yes in the base game science is the easiest since it's a pure isolationist victory.

Now if the AI was more likely to nuke your tiny 4 city empire... science victory wouldn't be as easy. Truly if OP you find the game too easy please give the mod a try

Science victory is way too easy, I had my culture victory ruined by a long war with 2 other civs (which were both my friends the entire game, then one went freedom when I went order and DOW'd me) and I couldn't get any bonuses as only 1 other civ liked me, so I was only getting the open borders bonus with 1 civ at ~50 tourism.

After the war, I was up against a snowballing Korea with 800 tech, while I was at ~700. I got as many great scientist as I could with faith, and great engineered the Hubble, focused international space station. I was use them to tech up to the space ship parts and easily beat Korea who had been working on this for twice as long as me.

So yeah I'd say it's a bit too easy, and a bit of a cop out for when you loose. I probably could have won it even if I didn't use GEs.