[BNW] ICS Piety Empire (multiplayer edition) guide

ScantilyCladLad said:

do you run specialists in the universities?

what other buildings do you run specialists in?

how much pop per city than has a university? or should you be rolling in happiness by then and not need to limit growth?

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I only work great scientist and great writer specialists. As for what pop, it's hard to give a concrete number, although generally you want to grow cities out as much as possible before slapping down a university specialist on them. Basically, if a city begins to work non food tiles, then its time to work specialists. And you are correct, once you get your idealogy policy its time to let cities grow how they please.

Magil said:

Testing this in a SP game with Maya, seems like you can get a deceptively large amount of science this way. It starts to seem slow around the Medieval period, but really comes into its own later. And I didn't even manage to land Jesuit Education because some AI grabbed it first (had to settle for Glory instead).

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Jesuit Education is what allows you to quickly stack up mass science. Basically this is the benchmark for science per turn
No universities: 60 sci a turn
Universities up, no specialists worked: 100 sci a turn
Universities up, specialists worked, 160 sci a turn
Universities up, specialists worked, +2 sci per specialist, rationalism opener, 250 sci a turn
Universities up, specialists worked, +2 sci per specialist, rationalism opener, public schools, 500 sci a turn
Universities up, specialists worked, +2 sci per specialist, rationalism opener, public schools, factories up, 700 sci a turn
Universities up, specialists worked, +2 sci per specialist, rationalism opener, public schools, factories up, rationalism 17 percent from universities, 800 sci a turn
Universities up, specialists worked, +2 sci per specialist, rationalism opener, public schools, factories up, rationalism 17 percent from universities, Research labs, 1200 sci a turn

By getting Jesuit education, you create a snowball effect in which getting quick universities up leads to getting to public schools faster, which results in getting to research labs faster, and so on and so forth. With jesuit education there is no production delay where you have to spend 5-15 turns building science buildings. That REALLY gives you a huge tech advantage. Not to mention that trying to build research labs, and sometimes public schools, in an ics empire is a waste of time. You simply don't have enough production in most of your cities to get them faster than 10 turns in.

That's the problem though.

With a Liberty start, you get to the reformation beliefs rather late and jesuit education is often taken by the AI.


This science penalty is just frustrating. For example, in one game, I tech rushed to Industrialization, bought 3 factories asap, had a great writer ready to boost my way to Order lvl2 tenets and chose 4pop in new cities.
I pumped out 7 settlers in 12 turns, settled some decent locations on little islands and again, bought basic infrastructure like lighthouses, workshops, libraries and aqueducts (with mercantilism and Order -33% costs for buildings). That's 84 more population than before ...

On paper, it was a very good strategy and I barely made any mistakes. However, it almost cost me the game. I went from 3 core cities to 10 cities and my research rate changed from good to awful.
I won science on turn 391. Can it get worse than this? Horrible!!! Immortal AIs were too slow to beat me though.

To be fair, I didn't use rationalism and tried to win cultural as well but still, my science per turn was well over 1000. In G+K that would have been an easy win. Punishing expansion like this isn't fun.

does anybody know how this 5% penalty is applied?
is it 5% of the base tech cost so having 21 cities (capital + 20) means techs cost 5*20=100% more (2x the base cost)
or is it a compounding interest so techs cost 1.05^21=2.65 times more?

Free Gold said:

Jesuit Education is what allows you to quickly stack up mass science. Basically this is the benchmark for science per turn ...

By getting Jesuit education, you create a snowball effect in which getting quick universities up leads to getting to public schools faster, which results in getting to research labs faster, and so on and so forth. With jesuit education there is no production delay where you have to spend 5-15 turns building science buildings. That REALLY gives you a huge tech advantage. Not to mention that trying to build research labs, and sometimes public schools, in an ics empire is a waste of time. You simply don't have enough production in most of your cities to get them faster than 10 turns in.

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I guess that'd work better in a MP game where no one goes full piety early on, but it seems like the higher level AI will often fill out the Piety tree very quickly, occasionally even landing a reformation belief before enhancing, so it's a little hard to count on if you plan on filling out liberty first in SP.

Not that this is a slam against your strategy at all, you did say it was primarily a MP strategy. I just thought I'd give it a whirl in SP and relate my thoughts. Even with having to hard-build universities (frankly I got to education before I got the reformation belief anyway, Maya with messenger of the gods + early settled scientist manages to keep the science rate up quite nicely) it's still doing pretty well for my purposes, though obviously it would've been better if I could've landed the right belief.

I gave this strategy a go last night with a random civ, continents, emperor. I end up with Greece. However, when my next policy came up after collective rule I took a chance with takign citizenship instead of the piety opener mainly so my few workers would build the improvements faster. Things were going well. I was on the west coast, Arabia on the east coast with Egypt south of Arabia and Mongolia west of Egypt. The southern part of the continent was narrower (less west).

There were drawbacks and some benefits to taking Citizenship instead of going into Piety after Collective Rule. Harun founded, enhanced and reformed his before me. Since I had cities all along the north coast, except where 2 CS's near me were, his religion quickly spread thru my entire empire and was putting significant pressure on my capital when I finally got to enhance.

He grabbed monasteries, which while I didn't have the wine/incense, it still adds 2 culture and faith per city and is cheaper then the other buildings. He also grabbed Jesuit. So before converting all my cities to my religion I was able to buy the monasteries and universities. Not thinking about it, I converted a couple of my before doing this.

When I founded the only building left was Mosques. However, when I picked my reformation I was able to grab the 2 tourism per faith bought building. Unfortunately it doesn't count the science buildings bought with faith. However, that gave me an instant 4 tourism per city with my massive empire.

At this point I've wiped out the Arabs and Egypt wiped out the Mongols. That leaves me as the only religion on my continent. On the other continent is India and Mayans as religious founders and the Danes who didn't found one. The Celts found a religion but were eaten by the Danes before I met them.

Danes were the first to pick an ideology and went Autocracy. Egypt was send with Order and thanks to their wonder spamming, almost immediately forced the Danes to switch to Order. So when I was 3rd to pick I went Freedom and within a few turns The old Celtic capital revolted against the Danes and joined my empire.

This game was probably the most fun I've had. I'm currently 2nd in military and 2nd-3rd in literacy, but thanks to my UA I was able to take over the congress.

Monthar said:

I gave this strategy a go last night with a random civ, continents, emperor. I end up with Greece. However, when my next policy came up after collective rule I took a chance with takign citizenship instead of the piety opener mainly so my few workers would build the improvements faster. Things were going well. I was on the west coast, Arabia on the east coast with Egypt south of Arabia and Mongolia west of Egypt. The southern part of the continent was narrower (less west).

There were drawbacks and some benefits to taking Citizenship instead of going into Piety after Collective Rule. Harun founded, enhanced and reformed his before me. Since I had cities all along the north coast, except where 2 CS's near me were, his religion quickly spread thru my entire empire and was putting significant pressure on my capital when I finally got to enhance.

He grabbed monasteries, which while I didn't have the wine/incense, it still adds 2 culture and faith per city and is cheaper then the other buildings. He also grabbed Jesuit. So before converting all my cities to my religion I was able to buy the monasteries and universities. Not thinking about it, I converted a couple of my before doing this.

When I founded the only building left was Mosques. However, when I picked my reformation I was able to grab the 2 tourism per faith bought building. Unfortunately it doesn't count the science buildings bought with faith. However, that gave me an instant 4 tourism per city with my massive empire.

At this point I've wiped out the Arabs and Egypt wiped out the Mongols. That leaves me as the only religion on my continent. On the other continent is India and Mayans as religious founders and the Danes who didn't found one. The Celts found a religion but were eaten by the Danes before I met them.

Danes were the first to pick an ideology and went Autocracy. Egypt was send with Order and thanks to their wonder spamming, almost immediately forced the Danes to switch to Order. So when I was 3rd to pick I went Freedom and within a few turns The old Celtic capital revolted against the Danes and joined my empire.

This game was probably the most fun I've had. I'm currently 2nd in military and 2nd-3rd in literacy, but thanks to my UA I was able to take over the congress.

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Yes; one of the problems with you delaying for a free worker/worker production is if you want somebody's religion taking over your cities. Only reason you'd ever want that is if you intended to abuse interfaith dialogs with your 100 pressure 10 pop city states, or AIs with a 20 pop capital. With a great mosque of djane and a 10 pop 100 pressure city, you can get 300 science per missionary. That's alot, especially in the early game. Still; even if you go this route for early science, you want to pick up beliefs such as +2 happiness from temples as opposed to padogas or mosques. The reason being is that you still want to convert your cities to your own religion once and for all once farming 100 science a turn (usually during the industrial era) becomes insignificant compared to your next best alternative; which is the benefits you can get from your own religion. As for why not get mosques or padogas? Well, the faith cost per padoga in industrial becomes too high compared to its benefits. You'd be better off buying great persons in that era for only 3 times the cost.

RealHuhn said:

That's the problem though.

With a Liberty start, you get to the reformation beliefs rather late and jesuit education is often taken by the AI.


This science penalty is just frustrating. For example, in one game, I tech rushed to Industrialization, bought 3 factories asap, had a great writer ready to boost my way to Order lvl2 tenets and chose 4pop in new cities.
I pumped out 7 settlers in 12 turns, settled some decent locations on little islands and again, bought basic infrastructure like lighthouses, workshops, libraries and aqueducts (with mercantilism and Order -33% costs for buildings). That's 84 more population than before ...

On paper, it was a very good strategy and I barely made any mistakes. However, it almost cost me the game. I went from 3 core cities to 10 cities and my research rate changed from good to awful.
I won science on turn 391. Can it get worse than this? Horrible!!! Immortal AIs were too slow to beat me though.

To be fair, I didn't use rationalism and tried to win cultural as well but still, my science per turn was well over 1000. In G+K that would have been an easy win. Punishing expansion like this isn't fun.

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I'll just post a huge flaw; you settling cities past turn 100. That's a big no no. It was not something you should have been doing before in Gods and Kings, and it is even worse now. The reason you get order is for Factories 25 percent science per city which is only 1 social policy in assuming you're the first to get order. That's compared to 17 percent science per university. I'll admit, resettlment LOOKS good on paper, but honestly though, unless you've gone Jesuit Education (for buying all science buildings), have a TON of land you could settle, have excess global happiness, you should never get resettlement or settle cities past turn 100. Like you saw, new cities quickly diminish your science per turn from your core cities. Problem in that game was that you ONLY had 3 core cities and decided to found 10 more. If you had 13 core cities from the get go, you wouldn't have been faced with such delay since your cities would have had over 100 turns to develop.

As for not getting Jesuit education vs AI? Well, I can't comment on that. I don't play single player (at all) so I don't know how the AI build their empires. I do know for a fact that very rarely do people go piety in multiplayer games, since it requires ALOT of infrastructure to be effective (shrine + temple spam). Still; if you miss Jesuit Education, your next best option is Sacred relics and aim for a culture victory, or spamming those Industrial era great persons.

If you choose a culture victory: spam your usual double faith building, get +2 tourism per city. Settle up to C, since you want as many cities are your empire can physically support, even at the cost of a tech lead. (If you remember back before BNW, to win culturally usually involved being far behind in tech - so in this regard nothing has changed except you now build wide for culture vic) Then once you hit industrial era, save up all your faith until after you complete all of Aethetics and get Autocracy futurism policy (100 tourism with all civs for every great artist, writer, etc etc, born)

Now you proceed to buy rush buy great artists, writers, and musicians. Each buy generates 100 tourism, which might not be alot if not for one thing. The fact you had gotten tourism early on resulted in your empire getting very close to being influential with most civs. So 100 tourism per great person quickly "nukes" your tourism output past those last remaining civs. Not to mention that you can use a great musician to tourism nuke, even further.

As for the great persons generation - just use it to wonder whore, spam scientists, and get free culture from great writers. You can also focus all your faith per turn into simply great scientists for a late game bulb. These scientists don't add to your great person counter - so assuming you manage to hard build all your science buildings, you'd be on par with Jesuit education in terms of teching.

One last thing; a note about great scientists. These things are monsterous when it comes to teching. Before industrial era, one great scientist settled boosts your tech rate anywhere between 5-25 percent. After industrial era, assuming you save up your scientists till you have the highest level of tech you think you'll be able to achieve in this game (i.e, if you didn't go Jesuit education, ignore research labs. Therefore public schools are going to be your highest level of tech), each scientist generates 8 turns of tech. So if you have 10 of them saved up and you use them all at once, you're suddenly ahead in tech by 80 turns. Now add a late game oxford build for a free lateeee game tech, or a rationalism finisher for another late game tech + faith bought great scientists. Suddenly you're going from atomic era to having most of the tech tree filled up. That's how strong scientists are, and why you prioritize great scientist specialists above all else.

I have not tested this yet since I didn't pick it as a reformation belief but when my empire got unhappy at one point from testing this out I noticed the Rebel units that spawned were called Barbarians, with a tech level equal to my own (around 8 Nuke Robots spawned in my empire) so I was wondering - would they be converted with Heathen Conversion? If the answer is yes could this strategy be adapted to use the unhappy you get from Annexing cities to become your military production? Tech to a certain level, attack and use the unhappy converted troops as reinforcements?

As promised, here are some benchmarks for this build. This is more or less what you're going to be doing; isolating yourself off (in this case by a coast and a mountain range), and turtling until you're ready to win.

At first this game is a bit of a rough start; I have somebody to my south and very little settling spot to the north. I proceed to comp bow rush the person to the south, taking all his land and settling to 11 cities.



Because of the early war, I started building shrines and temples late and my religion didn't spread fast enough. Thus im behind in tech by alot. I get education on turn 113 and mass buy universities (I don't work the specialists just yet, I have alot of happiness that I need to expend on growth before I start working them.



I beeline to public schools, mass buy those, then beline to research lab, mass buy those. The screenshot below is when I have all public schools, factories, research labs, and everything science related maxed out in all but one of my cities.



I then proceed to bulb my 9 great scientists I had saved up (had another one almost ready to spawn, too). Each scientist gave me 9500 beakers. With 9 of them I researched most techs and then some.



Game was over by turn 210.

Chronicle said:

I have not tested this yet since I didn't pick it as a reformation belief but when my empire got unhappy at one point from testing this out I noticed the Rebel units that spawned were called Barbarians, with a tech level equal to my own (around 8 Nuke Robots spawned in my empire) so I was wondering - would they be converted with Heathen Conversion? If the answer is yes could this strategy be adapted to use the unhappy you get from Annexing cities to become your military production? Tech to a certain level, attack and use the unhappy converted troops as reinforcements?

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I did not think of that..i'll have to test it out. Although i'm pretty sure it only converts units from a barb camp, not the actual units themselves.

great guide man, i think you could probably make it a bit easier to read and follow layout-wise but thats my only note

i play SP not MP, and i had a perfect start for this. playing as maya i had space and lux to build 10 cities, surrounded by coast and one AI at a chokepoint to the rest of the pangea map.

I hit religion first, enhanced it first, had messenger of gods and everything was working well, UNTIL

i couldnt get Jesuit education. Am i correct in saying i am supposed to go Lib opener, republic, collective rule, piety opener, organised religion, mandate of heaven, citizenship, meritocracy, representation and then finish off piety?

Because by the time i got the reformation believe 2 or 3 other civs had already got there and jesuit education was long gone. I still could have won the game (easily) but i wanted to try the massbuying science buildings

If i followed the social policy order correctly, do you have any advice in how to hit reformation beliefs faster? i had monuments up fast and had massbought pagodas and mosques in every city. Is it a case of maybe having to delay finishing liberty in order to finish piety first? I even had 2 great writers which i spent on culture bomb to try and get there faster but to no avail

Just tried this out in SP (I know this is better suited to MP, but needed to get the basics down first). Played as Byzantium, Standard/Standard Pangaea on Emperor difficulty. Opening went pretty well - was able to plop down 9 cities with what I had, was nicely walled off from the AI with mountain ranges etc. Religion spread like wildfire and I had half the world worshipping it in now time. It was great fun, so thanks for the guide! Ran into a few issues at various points though, just wondering how you get around them:

- You talk about trying to grow your capital tall to have at least one city in the early going. But the constant churning out of settlers really seems to stunt this. I was considering setting up a trade route to deliver food to my capital but decided against it because it seemed like most of it would be wasted. How do you balance getting your capital city big with getting all the settlers you need out?

- The Tech Order you suggested implied that you should be aiming to get the Liberty finisher at about the same time you research Physics so you can rush build Notre Dame. I found that I got to the end of the Liberty tree far too late for that - by the time I got there I had researched Physics a while ago, but so had the AI and it was already gone . It felt like the Culture was very slow to build - is there something I should be doing to speed that up? Was tempted to try Writer-bombing but I wanted the GWs for the Tourism (was considering a Cultural Victory).

- Ran into similar issues that ScantilyCladLad did above regarding Jesuit Education, but I suspect that in MP it's less likely to be a problem. If there is another player prioritizing religion though, might have to finish off the Piety tree straight up before heading over to Liberty. So is there something later in the tech tree you would recommend beelining for in order to get the most out of the Liberty finisher GP if it pops later?

- I got Pagodas and Mosques, so I was building those plus Coliseums and Circuses wherever possible. By my reckoning, that meant I needed to grow the cities out to about size 6-7 in order to make use of all the happy faces. But I noticed you were talking about limiting to size 3-4. Am I doing that right?

Cheers,

ST

Sir Thursday said:

How do you balance getting your capital city big with getting all the settlers you need out?

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Very simple. After your first city or two stop building settlers at your capital and instead use a city you want to prevent from growing to produce the settlers.

Is it now possible to have both Piety and Rationalism active at the same time?

With the increased tech cost of building cities, I don't see how ICS is more effective than ever before in BNW, as stated in the parent post. Jesuit Education aside (universities are only 240 faith!).

Free Gold said:

I'll just post a huge flaw; you settling cities past turn 100. That's a big no no.

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It's the game's fault that it isn't useful. When it gives me the option and I build a very good strategy around it, it should work.
I was testing new strategies and it was enough prove for me that the 5% penalty was a wrong design decision or at least needs to scale up by era, or should be lowered.

Free Gold said:

One last thing; a note about great scientists. These things are monsterous when it comes to teching.

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With 10+ cities every tech costs 50% more beakers or, compared to a 4 city empire, 30% more.
When you reach 1000 beakers per turn in a tall empire, your GS are 30% more effective than in a 10 city empire with 1000 bpt.

So to break even, you need 30% more science output, here 1300 bpt. In my game, a GS couldn't bulb a full late game tech. Another reason why the penalty is too high.

Late game expansion is fun and it should be beneficial when you settle at a good spot. Unfortunately, it isn't, unless you rushbuy 4 science buildings immediately.

RealHuhn said:

It's the game's fault that it isn't useful. When it gives me the option and I build a very good strategy around it, it should work.
I was testing new strategies and it was enough prove for me that the 5% penalty was a wrong design decision or at least needs to scale up by era, or should be lowered.



With 10+ cities every tech costs 50% more beakers or, compared to a 4 city empire, 30% more.
When you reach 1000 beakers per turn in a tall empire, your GS are 30% more effective than in a 10 city empire with 1000 bpt.

So to break even, you need 30% more science output, here 1300 bpt. In my game, a GS couldn't bulb a full late game tech. Another reason why the penalty is too high.

Late game expansion is fun and it should be beneficial when you settle at a good spot. Unfortunately, it isn't, unless you rushbuy 4 science buildings immediately.

By the way, are your screenshots on quickspeed?

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Yeah, I have to agree with you on that, everything you say is correct. The 5 percent tech cost modifier really screws you up when you're going wide, especially if you settle after turn 100. But that is not to say it makes ICS a non viable strategy; i'd argue that if you're going for a science victory, Jesuit Education more than offsets your tech cost, so while ICS is a bit weaker early game than it was before, it is much much stronger mid-late game.

One thing you need to consider is the relative great scientist generation rates between Tall and Wide empires. Assuming you have a university and public school in each city, a 4 city empire with gardens in every city generates about 5 great scientists. A wide empire with no gardens generates about 10 great scientists in that same amount of time. This is simply because the only modifier you have in a tall empire that you wouldn't in a wide empire is gardens (25 percent). Likewise once a city spawns a great scientist, its great scientist generation counter goes to 0 while the amount of points for the next scientist goes up. So lets imagine this scenario:

Cities A, B, C, D are in a tall empire
Cities 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 are in a wide empire.

City A generates a scientist, counter resets for city A.
City B generates a scientist, counter resets for B, cost goes up for A and B.
City C generates a scientist, counter resets for C, cost goes up for A, B, C.
City D generates a scientist, counter resets, cost goes up for A, B, C, D.

Now you're left with 4 cities that are nowhere near to generating great scientists and have to wait another 20 turns before repeating the above cycle.

With a wide empire; you have this scenario

City 1 generates a scientist, counter reset for 1, cost goes up.
City 2 generates...
City 3 generates...
All the way to city 10.

So while the cost goes up, the fact you have more cities means that you're popping scientists in quick succession of one another, so there no 20 turns of nothing happening as with the wide empire. Assuming you start working your scientist specialists the moment they come up, you end up getting a stream of scientist.

From another perspective:
4 cities with gardens and maxed buildings has 4 scientist specialist slots, for a total of 13 points towards great scientist generation. With gardens, that becomes 16.25 x4 =
65 points per turn towards great scientist generation.

10 cities with 13 points has 130 points towards great scientist generation per turn.

As you can see, all things constant aside from gardens, a wide empire WILL have twice as many scientists at their disposal.

As for resettlement; I suppose it COULD work, but only on a huge map. To my knowledge, tech cost modifier is much less on a huge map.

Sir Thursday said:

Just tried this out in SP (I know this is better suited to MP, but needed to get the basics down first). Played as Byzantium, Standard/Standard Pangaea on Emperor difficulty. Opening went pretty well - was able to plop down 9 cities with what I had, was nicely walled off from the AI with mountain ranges etc. Religion spread like wildfire and I had half the world worshipping it in now time. It was great fun, so thanks for the guide! Ran into a few issues at various points though, just wondering how you get around them:

- You talk about trying to grow your capital tall to have at least one city in the early going. But the constant churning out of settlers really seems to stunt this. I was considering setting up a trade route to deliver food to my capital but decided against it because it seemed like most of it would be wasted. How do you balance getting your capital city big with getting all the settlers you need out?

- The Tech Order you suggested implied that you should be aiming to get the Liberty finisher at about the same time you research Physics so you can rush build Notre Dame. I found that I got to the end of the Liberty tree far too late for that - by the time I got there I had researched Physics a while ago, but so had the AI and it was already gone . It felt like the Culture was very slow to build - is there something I should be doing to speed that up? Was tempted to try Writer-bombing but I wanted the GWs for the Tourism (was considering a Cultural Victory).

- Ran into similar issues that ScantilyCladLad did above regarding Jesuit Education, but I suspect that in MP it's less likely to be a problem. If there is another player prioritizing religion though, might have to finish off the Piety tree straight up before heading over to Liberty. So is there something later in the tech tree you would recommend beelining for in order to get the most out of the Liberty finisher GP if it pops later?

- I got Pagodas and Mosques, so I was building those plus Coliseums and Circuses wherever possible. By my reckoning, that meant I needed to grow the cities out to about size 6-7 in order to make use of all the happy faces. But I noticed you were talking about limiting to size 3-4. Am I doing that right?

Cheers,

ST

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1) Your capital isn't going to be growing early. It's going to be a 3 size city with the rest of your cities being size 1. Only after you start getting excess happiness should you start aiming to grow your capital marginally higher pop than every other city. You achieve this by ferrying all your caravans/cargo ships from your others cities to your capital.

2) Time you liberty finisher for either Notre dame, Machu Pichu, or Tower of Pisa. Machu Pichu really helps your empire stay afloat in positive gold per turn, so it's a really good choice if your other two wonders are taken.

3) User great writers to get free policies, no exceptions. Would you build the oracle if it only gave 2 tourism and 2 culture per turn? I know I wouldn't.

4) If you wish to expand this build towards single player, then your only choice is to skip right side of liberty and instead beeline towards your reformation beliefs. This is more or less what you should be doing if you're aiming for a culture victory, and it's not that bad of a build to be honest. As for what you should tech? Just beeline to education and skip mosques. Instead use your leftover faith after padogas to buy universities.

5) Grow your cities up to their happiness limit. so if you have 9 local happiness from zoos, mosques, padgoas, circus, coliseum, then grow that city to 9 pop and work specialists. Try not to have that city grow too far over 9 pop until you get way more happiness than you could use towards growing your capital out.

Morningcalm said:

Is it now possible to have both Piety and Rationalism active at the same time?

With the increased tech cost of building cities, I don't see how ICS is more effective than ever before in BNW, as stated in the parent post. Jesuit Education aside (universities are only 240 faith!).

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Yes, you can have peity and rationalism active at the same time. And on quick setting, universities are only 100 faith in medieval era. public schools 240, research labs 330. Likewise can you win a culture victory turn 120 in or use your massive influence to screw everybody over industrial era, making their cities flip. Or mass buy any great person you want. You couldn't do that with ICS before. In a sense, ICS is alot more versitile now than it was before, but a bit less powerful.

Thanks for the answers FG! I'll have another go at some point and try to put them into practice .

ST

Here's another upload, fresh from the press. Basically this is the theoretical upper limit of the build in terms of beakers per turn. This game, I managed to clear out my continent of two people, and I also had quite a few luxuries and CS allies. I also prepared frigs fairly early on, so I did not have to worry about getting invaded. I reached education about turn 90, one of the earliest times.


Max science output per turn: 2200
Beakers per great scientist: 13000 (had 10 of them)



Notes about the space victory: I had way too much science so I overshot way into future tech. I also slow built the spaceparts a bit late, and didn't bother buying spaceship factories despite having the gold for it. Also for one reason or another, I delayed victory by 4 turns since I was missing a spaceship part. I later recovered it swimming in the pacific ocean, partying with my frigs.



Note that this is without a single research agreement - had I abused the AIs for research agreements I could have finished everything way earlier.

In both posted MP games, you reported executing a CB rush against your neighbors. At what point in your usual build/settling order did you switch to building archers/CBs?