Quick Science Victory

It all comes down to tile management. Skilled players are always focusing on the tiles. Which tiles are your cities working? Which tiles do you want your cities to be working? Which tiles will you want to be working in the future? What kind of tiles does your city have plenty of? What kind of tiles is your city lacking? What buildings will help your city the most, given its tiles? Food buildings first? Hammer buildings first? Does this city need a rush-buy to help it out? Does that city have enough hammers that you have time for a happiness building? These are the sort of questions you should be asking.

With good tile management, you get more of everything. If you have more stuff, you win faster. Strategy tips about tech priorities and social policies are pretty irrelevant next to this. That's like trying to get better at golf by figuring out what clubs the pros use -- it might help, but just getting your swing right would be far, far more helpful.

Just watch an hour or so of a let's play video from a skilled player (Acken, who posted above, knows his stuff and has a link in his sig) and see how they manage their cities. That should help.

I've found the easiest way to get libraries up fast is to REX, or rapidly expand. Something like scout/scout/monument or shrine/archer/settlers. If you can't steal workers, which you can't really can't do early enough on lower difficulties, you have to add a worker or two in there before settlers. You want to try and beg, borrow, or steal a worker per city, minimum, to start.

Here's a general approach to try: You grow your expos to two pop working a food tile, then deprioritize growth and work a production tile(s) to finish your granny ASAP. Stay on the production tiles and use the granny to keep growing while you get your library built. You'll be tight on happiness early anyway with a quick expansion, so you may even hold off growing that first pop until after the granny is done. As soon as enough luxuries are improved, chop everything in sight to speed up those two critical builds, then get back to improving and selling everything so you have the cash flow to rush in universities. Once your libraries are built, you switch to max food and grow into your happiness. It's a stretch goal, but you'd like to find the food and happiness to get all of your expos over 10 population by the time you buy/build your universities so you can work specialists.

Don't be afraid to push your happiness really hard before universities because they'll slow growth a bit. I know it's popular to say there's a lot of happiness in a tall game, but I think that's bunk for a fast science game and I ride my happiness cap like a rented mule all game long if I can, while avoiding unhappiness like the science-killing plague it is. 9gpt for a lux is cheap if it keeps you growing.

If you have lots of forest around an expo and no workers to chop, I'd recommend buying a worker and chopping in the library over buying the library. Forests are at their strongest at the start of the game, and now you have a worker and a library instead of just a library. You'll have to save up for buying a library in a food heavy expo with no chop around.

Once your settlers are out of the capital, you need to grow it like mad. Don't worry too much about how soon you get a library built there, as long it times up with your expos. Your goal is max hammers for building the National College. Food is king right now. Hopefully you've got a sizable capital when it's time to start the National College, and can grab all of your best production tiles and build it in 8-10 turns or less.

I use some variation of this in most of my science games, provided no Attila/Shaka etc.

One final note: I don't prioritize writing until I'm close to starting to build one in my first expo because most of the early techs have critical goodies in them, but with Babylon you ALWAYS beeline writing and plant that academy. You'll be a little slower to archery/mining/etc., but it is so much stronger after that it is absolutely worth it.

on stealing more than one worker from the ai:

this is actually not that hard, especially against city states. just make sure to never ever steal a worker, make peace and then declare war again. the penalty is absurd.

the way you want to do it is:

1. steal a worker from a very near city state
2. move your scout or warrior away, stay at war
3. return about ten turns later
4. position yourself outside their field of vision (hill, forest, jungle) and near a not-yet improved luxury
5. wait
6. snag another worker
7. repeat

city states are also really useful if you have idle military and there are no threats or city state missions, they'll give you free promotions.

You mentioned that you sent food caravans to your other cities instead of your cap. With tradition's monarchy you should focus as much food as you can to your cap. You can get 2 population per happiness instead of 1 per happiness with other cities. And (correct me if I'm wrong) I believe the capital food multipliers should effect food from caravans as well. It is more efficient to send food caravans to your cap thanks to the capital bonus in tradition.

Also you said you got NC after turn 100 which is pretty slow for fast science game.

OK, I would like to focus this thread a little more. Since I last posted here, I have conducted about 15 tests to see how quickly I could get National College / Education going. In these 15 tests I played as Babylon on emporer using roughly the following build order in my capital:

Scout - Scout - Worker - Settler - Granary - Settler - Library - National College

In my second city I would build Library - Granary, and in my third city I would buy a library and build a granary. My research order:

Pottery - Animal Husbandry - Writing (plant scientist on food tile) - Luxury Tech - Philosophy Beeline - Civil Service Beeline - Education Beeline

My social policy choices were straight up the tradition tree, prioritizing landed elite over monarchy when I could support the happiness. Additionally, I re-rolled to ensure I found a cultural ruin before my second social policy. Finally, I stole two workers in each game (either one from a neighboring civ or two from a neighboring CS, hat tip yung.carl.jung). Here are my results:

1) In only one game did I build the national college before turn 100. In this game I had three salt tiles near my capital and I found two cultural ruins and two technological ruins, both of which were instrumental. I conclude that you cannot build 3 cities and the national college within the first 100 turns without getting extremely lucky or re-rolling constantly for optimal ruins.

2) I was not able to research education before turn 115 in a single game. It might have been possible in my game with the early national college, but since my build order had no room for military units I was overrun by barbarians.

3) It is not reasonable to build a shrine and the national college before turn 100. When pursuing a fast science victory, it is probably not reasonable to expect to found a worthwhile religion.

So I don't know how important the turn 110 benchmark for education really is, but I can safely conclude that this benchmark is utter nonsense and can safely be ignored (except possibly with fewer cities, which will probably be costly later in the game). If you disagree with this assessment and feel like arguing the point, please post:
-Your build orders for all cities, INCLUDING THE NUMBER OF TURNS YOU THINK EACH BUILD SHOULD TAKE.
-The number of workers stolen (including turn numbers for each worker).
-The results from ancient ruins on which your strategy depends.

I have not yet evaluated the advice in this thread for turns beyond about 120; a lot of this advice looks sound and will likely improve my game. But I think many players on this thread and elsewhere are overly optimistic about what one can reasonably hope to achieve in the first 100 turns (without lots of luck and/or re-rolling).

I assure you that it is possible to get a National College before turn 80, especially with Babylon. I'd recommend watching Acken's lets plays as he is one of the best Civ5 players on this forum. Also, if you post a map, I'd be happy to play it and post screenshots documenting my progress. Though I am really only an Immortal player so I won't be as quick as the Deity players.

pwsiegel said:

1) In only one game did I build the national college before turn 100. In this game I had three salt tiles near my capital and I found two cultural ruins and two technological ruins, both of which were instrumental. I conclude that you cannot build 3 cities and the national college within the first 100 turns without getting extremely lucky or re-rolling constantly for optimal ruins.

2) I was not able to research education before turn 115 in a single game. It might have been possible in my game with the early national college, but since my build order had no room for military units I was overrun by barbarians.

3) It is not reasonable to build a shrine and the national college before turn 100. When pursuing a fast science victory, it is probably not reasonable to expect to found a worthwhile religion.

So I don't know how important the turn 110 benchmark for education really is, but I can safely conclude that this benchmark is utter nonsense and can safely be ignored (except possibly with fewer cities, which will probably be costly later in the game).

But I think many players on this thread and elsewhere are overly optimistic about what one can reasonably hope to achieve in the first 100 turns (without lots of luck and/or re-rolling).

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It's all very easy doable - please stop acting like if something is hard for you is also impossible for all players on this forum.

Instead post some save and I can show you how fast NC and education can be obtain (with 3 or 4 cities).

Quick advice - I looked at your screenshot - 8 pop capital on turn 115 is probably your main source of problems with fast science.

I'm certainly not arguing that these achievements are impossible - after all, advanced players have posted plenty of videos with early national colleges, early education, and so on. Rather, I am arguing that these achievements are not typical: they require unusually good fortune with either the map or ruins or both. This is consistent with the videos that I've watched, and with my experience trying to imitate those videos (and other online guides) about 15 times since my original post.

So I'll make my claims in the last post a little more precise. It may be true that if you want a science victory in under 250 turns (which is actually more ambitious than what I'm going for - I'd just like to replicate the supposedly easy achievement of a sub 300 turn science victory) then you need 3 cities and national college before turn 100, but I don't think you can expect this in an average start without re-rolling. I would be delighted to be proven wrong, and it should be easy to do so since we're only talking about 100 turns: post a build/tech order for all 3 cities with turn numbers, and others can try to replicate them.

You are wrong on everything you said

while my fastest science deity win is on standard 252, I'm fairly certain that I could win consistently in the 260-280 range with an AVERAGE start, that is, if I don't spawn in heavy jungle/tundra, and if you compare my DCL numbers, you'll see I'm hardly among the better players here. So, I'm obviously not going to repeat what everyone else just said, either learn to play better or give up

pwsiegel said:

then you need 3 cities and national college before turn 100, but I don't think you can expect this in an average start without re-rolling. I would be delighted to be proven wrong, and it should be easy to do so since we're only talking about 100 turns: post a build/tech order for all 3 cities with turn numbers, and others can try to replicate them.

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You know civilization is not only about buid/tech order it's also about micromanaging tiles, priority in tiles improvements, scouting, founding good spots for cities, SP choices, trades, etc., etc.

Really don't know what give you exact turn numbers for builds and techs since OBVIOUSLY there will be different on different maps.

It's also problem what average start mean for different people, so if you really want help post starting save which you consider average and I will give you exact turn numbers (only disable scrambled map packs if you have them)

phillipwyllie said:

This is your problem. On Deity the AI starts with half(it seems) the Ancient era techs which for you means cheaper early techs, assuming you meet everyone. Although not impossible to achieve a pre t200 SV on Emperor I'd wager it would be easier on Deity on with the same map and civs

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I don't think that's true. You can get pretty much all the wonders on Emperor including Great Library and late Oracle for Secularism, you can always get a religion, there is no competition for City-States, AIs expand slowly so you have more room, AI capitals are easy to capture even with a small army, there's no ideological pressure, you never lose World's Fair etc. Deity is harder.

I'm not a great player by any means, but I can get my NC up by turn 100 on a tough map. An amazing start would net me education around then. I always play amazing starts for culture though.

A video is worth a thousands words. Map for demo also includes salts and is on deity.


Link to video.

Turn 89 Education... wow

academy too stronk

vadalaz said:

I don't think that's true. You can get pretty much all the wonders on Emperor including Great Library and late Oracle for Secularism, you can always get a religion, there is no competition for City-States, AIs expand slowly so you have more room, AI capitals are easy to capture even with a small army, there's no ideological pressure, you never lose World's Fair etc. Deity is harder.

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On Deity the AI gets a free settler so their second city is usually founded t4-5. This goes for every civ in your game. Every tech they know, and they will know more techs than you gives you a bonus for that tech. The bonus is small but it adds up.
Very few wonders actually help your science so wonder-whoring isn't going to get you a SV any quicker, in fact it'll slow you down.
On Emperor RA/trade routes yield very little science, but on Deity they will.
The transition from Education to Scientific Theory will be slower on Emperor than on Deity as by this point you'll be the tech leader and won't benefit from cheaper techs, and RAs.
If going from the Freedom route AI gold is a lot harder to come by than Deity gold.

True Deity is a lot harder, but if you can survive then a SV will come faster. Also in Acken's video above I doubt even he would have achieved a t89 Education on Emperor.

phillipwyllie said:

True Deity is a lot harder, but if you can survive then a SV will come faster. Also in Acken's video above I doubt even he would have achieved a t89 Education on Emperor.

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I tend to agree. When I moved up to attempting Deity, it seemed like a completely different game to me, necessitating a very different approach. If the OP hasn't been able to match the tech timings, I think a lot of that could be put down to playing on Emperor, not Deity.

I've also found that one of the worst situations is being isolated, so that you can't send caravans to a neighbour to get science. An extra 4 science per turn is a lot when you are only making 8 yourself. And I have been in situations where I get an extra 5 science per turn from a caravan. Moreover, I've sometimes even taken sailing just to get the extra trade route if I've found myself really behind.

PS: I wouldn't underestimate the power and value of worker stealing, either. It saves a lot of hammers in the early game. It can make a huge difference.

It's not possible to make a generalization.

If you look at a Deity game and say: well if you aren't attacked, can expand, have gold, can grab the wonders you need etc well then yes of course it will result in faster game.
There are bonus and negatives that come with deity, if the negatives do not play a role it's a given the pros will help. But then you may also have a difficult time getting squeezed, attacked by Shaka and missing all your wonders... in which case I'm pretty sure your Prince game will go faster.

Acken said:

in which case I'm pretty sure your Prince game will go faster.

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Indeed!!

Incidentally, I was once told that the English poet, William Blake, said "To generalise is to be an idiot!"

He was probably aware that he was making a generalisation at that moment ...

BTW, I enjoy your videos very much -- wish I could play like that.

phillipwyllie said:

Also in Acken's video above I doubt even he would have achieved a t89 Education on Emperor.

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It would still obviously be a sub-100. The only limiting factor realistically would be gold and slaves workers