Quick Science Victory

To get this more grounded to a mortal level of discussion, turn 100 universities with the Pop to immediately run them is probably impossible on an average start. As late as T 120 unis CAN still lead to sub-300 SV, and is less straining to your early happiness and growth.

There's been a lot of helpful advice on this thread, and I've been able to improve my education times a bit (with some caveats). I'd like to summarize some of the points others have made which were most helpful to me:

-Food caravans should go to your capital for two reasons: the capital gets lots of growth bonuses, so that the extra food is used more efficiently, and growth in your capital costs less happiness thanks to the monarchy social policy. This means you should generally build granary -> library in the second city, build library -> granary in the third city (else it will delay national college), and buy the library in the 4th city.

-For the first 100 turns, growth is most important in your capital and production is most important in your other cities. Work only your best food tiles in your capital (except possibly when you're building settlers), but don't be afraid to work production tiles in the other cities to get your granary and library up more quickly.

-Stealing workers from city states is required. To steal more than one without incurring diplomatic penalties, don't make peace between worker steals. There is a delicate issue of timing when it comes to stealing workers from other civs: if you wait too long then they will destroy your scout/warrior.

-Many of the grandiose claims made in guides only really apply to diety games, and you shouldn't necessarily try to replicate them on lower difficulties. For instance, you may not have enough gold to buy a library and a university while still defending yourself (via composite bowman upgrades and declaration-of-war bribes).

With all of this in mind I generally can achieve education before turn 110 with four cities given a good but not necessarily great start (meaning roughly that I'm not too close to an aggressive civ, the capital has some good food tiles and a luxury which doesn't require masonry, and the four cities together have about 4 unique luxuries). A cultural ruin within the first 15-20 turns seems to save 5+ turns.

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Now that I have a better understanding of the first 100 turns, I'd like to ask some questions of the next 100 turns:

-I have found it *much* easier to get education by turn 110 with only 3 cities instead of 4 cities. The 4th city is appealing because of the free culture building and aqueduct, but how important is it really? On an average start, can one hope to get a sub-300 emperor science victory with only 3 cities? Does it hurt your chances if you settle your 4th city after national college? After Oxford?

-How good do your non-capital cities need to be? Can you settle them in the desert or tundra? Is it OK if they overlap substantially with your capital? I can usually find a good spot for my second city, but the AI often snatches up the remaining good terrain not long after that.

-Suppose you find yourself with some extra gold lying around after you've built all of your universities, and you've unlocked scholasticism because you haven't hit the renaissance yet. All other things being equal, how should you decide whether to spend it on city state alliances or save it for public schools?

Thanks in advance for the help.

If somehow forum community will decide (by vote?) which map is average I will play this one and will try to achieve 100T education with universities (and really think it will be done).

Erneiz Hyde said:

turn 100 universities with the Pop to immediately run them is probably impossible on an average start..

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To run universities mostly eight pop in city is enough - nothing hard on 100T.

pwsiegel said:

-Suppose you find yourself with some extra gold lying around after you've built all of your universities, and you've unlocked scholasticism because you haven't hit the renaissance yet. All other things being equal, how should you decide whether to spend it on city state alliances or save it for public schools?

Thanks in advance for the help.

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RAs for me. This is one major factor in shaving at least 50 turns off your victory time. At least it is on Immortal up. I very rarely spend gold for CS.

IronfighterXXX said:

To run universities mostly eight pop in city is enough - nothing hard on 100T.

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But it will hamper your growth, like very bad. 8 is too low for me. I'm more comfortable with 10, usually 12 because I always build the Writer's Guild before as well. 10 pop in 100turns is actually doable in average starts, but I usually reach Education after that point so...

pwsiegel said:

-I have found it *much* easier to get education by turn 110 with only 3 cities instead of 4 cities. The 4th city is appealing because of the free culture building and aqueduct, but how important is it really? On an average start, can one hope to get a sub-300 emperor science victory with only 3 cities? Does it hurt your chances if you settle your 4th city after national college? After Oxford?

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3 cities are definitely enough to achieve good result, four is better but as you still learn it probably will be easier with three.
The most common strategy is 3 cities NC + 1 after, so it definitely doesn't hurt your chances if you settle your 4th city after national college.
After Oxford? Noooooo!!!

Erneiz Hyde said:

But it will hamper your growth, like very bad.

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No, if you have food caravan or ship to this city, what you really should have at that point (to be clear I'm not saying that all your cities should be eighth pop on 100t - obviously bigger, just eight pop is mostly enough to run university in one or two cities)

I don't really think the turn times would be much different on King/Emperor, I estimate at most a 5% difference

on Oxford: do not build this as soon as it comes up, you're just crippling yourself. it is best used on technologies that take a long time, I usually build mine when researching towards Radio or Plastics. You want to time it so that as soon as you start researching the core technology the free technology kicks in, otherwise you are wasting beakers. the Oxford free tech is essentially a better GS bulb if you think about it like this, but there is no overflow.

I have been looking into benchmarks myself. There are too many in-game screenshots showing them to be accurate for them to not be legit. Over the next few weeks I'm going to mix screwing around and trying seriously to correct anything blocking me from mimicking something near those timings.

Sure, and then get Dan, Mad and Makkie (sp?) to all join in the DCL

I'm a terrible SV player and I've had T100 Education before on a couple of good maps. I promise any doubters that these benchmarks ARE achievable.

consentient said:

I'm a terrible SV player and I've had T100 Education before on a couple of good maps. I promise any doubters that these benchmarks ARE achievable.

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Nothing is impossible on a good map.

Only on a really terrible map can you get Education after 115. My best time was 95 or something with a Salt start and a top tier Civ (Babylon or Poland, I don't know), and I hover between 100 and 110 fairly consistently, regardless of the map

stormtrooper412 said:

Sure, and then get Dan, Mad and Makkie (sp?) to all join in the DCL

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I couldn't coax any Polycast regular to join forum games even back when I hosted similar series in Civ IV (I was a map creator for a long time, for a while of multiple series). It's just "Maki" for short.

Mad is all over the place doing various games now, doubt he'll turn up for DCL but maybe he'll prove me wrong. For now I think I'm all you're getting from the panel, too bad I suck right now <3. Once I win reliably on immortal again I might start turning up in DCL, not sure yet if I'm going to put enough time in for that.

I'm hard pressed to want to go standard tradition opener, I find myself gravitating towards honor, AI abuse, and xp farming, but I'm still doing derps like being weak in money but using internal trade routes and only recognizing that later . I have a little ways to go. I've long studied the general theory of post-expansion gameplay of course, which is why I can basically just hop back into high-ish difficulties, but it's one thing to understand theory versus consistently make the right decisions.

Even so, the education timing seems reasonable with tradition opener. I'm getting ~t90-95national college with honor in many cases, but I've done tradition openers too this week and foodstacking cap with aqueduct + managing happy leads to a lot of beakers and production fast (with stolen workers + chops, very fast). I noticed I'm overbuilding units too early though, that's a pretty heavy drain on finances, though with honor you want to xp farm fast. Maybe I'll use a few external routes there if I don't have good money tiles. It's hard to pay for 2-3 scouts, 4-5 workers (all stolen!), 3 archers and a warrior so early so I'll want to reel that in a bit in favor of more culture at first too I think.

If you like straight tradition, KB27877 does a great job at the tall game. Of course, tommynt always did a trad/lib mix which is probably stronger. TBH these days I open trad then fill liberty, then finish trad as soon as I can.

stormtrooper412 said:

only on a really terrible map can you get education after 115. My best time was 95 or something with a salt start and a top tier civ (babylon or poland, i don't know), and i hover between 100 and 110 fairly consistently, regardless of the map

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stormtrooper412 said:

alright, since we're doing this Here's a 104 education, with a 3 city nc and petra in capital. I also fended off an invasion, which is why the economy is a bit wonky, but markets and the 3rd caravan is soon up so no worries. I can attach a save if anyone wants, some really nasty neighbors around.

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I'm taking your words with a grain of salt because even with Babylon, Petra and salts(lol) you still only managed T104 education, and with no money you would probably have your uni a little after T110. Not being Babylon, not having salt and no Petra even if you're not invaded would set you back at least 10 turns, and that's already around the turn what you consider only possible on a really terrible map.

T110 education and T120 uni is still the normal benchmark.

Alright then, go see my Poland and Ethiopia DCL writeups, fairly normal starts there.

I still managed "only" 104 Education is a bit of a delay since I built Petra just before NC and also, because I'm not Acken, duh I'm pretty sure schools would be up around 160 at the latest because I've only just started to snowball like crazy. But since there's no way to convince you that you're wrong, I'm obviously not going to bother with this topic anymore

stormtrooper412 said:

because I'm not Acken, duh

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Exactly. You can't reasonably expect everyone to be at Acken's or even your level. This thread exists in the first place because not many can achieve even the standard T110 Education, and here you are trying to raise the bar even higher.

T110 Education, T160 ST, T200 Plastics are all reasonable benchmarks for those aiming for a subT300 SV, which should be achievable by everyone fairly consistently. Those benchmarks really shouldn't go any higher? lower, and people can measure their skill by how they fare compared to that benchmark. but of course people are free to set a separate goal to achieve, like sub-T250 SV, but I believe that is outside the scope of this thread.

Wait a tick.. I wasn't arguing that. I keep saying my Education usually comes between 105 and 115 and this was in response to the person who claimed those numbers are impossible

This. Thread. Is. AWESOME!

Acken, thanks for your video, you definitely showed a few things that I haven't seen or at least haven't been using. For other noobs like me, not sure if you noticed these:

1. Building roads to within 1 turn of completion, and then going back and finishing them. That saves the GPT cost of each finished road segment
2. Chopping forests to within 1 turn of completion, to go back later and use them to boost a building quickly
3. Using the move command with a worker and hovering over tiles in fog of war to see if there are any barbs there. I've heard about this but I didn't realize how powerful it was until seeing it in action.

I'm a total nerd for these little optimizations so it's great to see some new ones to add to my arsenal.

10000hours said:

This. Thread. Is. AWESOME!

Acken, thanks for your video, you definitely showed a few things that I haven't seen or at least haven't been using. For other noobs like me, not sure if you noticed these:

1. Building roads to within 1 turn of completion, and then going back and finishing them. That saves the GPT cost of each finished road segment
2. Chopping forests to within 1 turn of completion, to go back later and use them to boost a building quickly
3. Using the move command with a worker and hovering over tiles in fog of war to see if there are any barbs there. I've heard about this but I didn't realize how powerful it was until seeing it in action.

I'm a total nerd for these little optimizations so it's great to see some new ones to add to my arsenal.

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#3 has been used (and banned in SGOTM) in Civ IV to map terrain. #1 and #2...well...those pre-date even IV . They're very handy though, same thing with "use one of worker's movements, start improvement, cancel, continue to destination 2 hexes away you actually want to improve", because it gives you a turn of improvement on a hex you'd have otherwise put nothing into improving without slowing down your intended improvement build at all.

V still has some micro hell, it's just not as bad as previous games.