Fastest Deity Science Victory?

mph3

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Of course, this won't matter once the patch comes out, but I just finished playing a Small, Pangaea Deity Standard Settings (Standard Speed) map as Arabia, with a Science Victory on Turn 216 (1530 AD). Was wondering if anyone had beaten that time and what the details were.

If you're wondering, I lucked out in a few ways:

Gandhi as an immediate neighbor, who decided that 2 cities was enough, and made Friends with a bunch of civs, so it was mostly a love-fest until mid-late game.

All the other civs behind a wall of City States, mostly.

Settled my 2nd city near Fountain of Youth (which with my aggressive City State buying and Bazaar trading meant that I didn't actually finish a Colloseum until Modern Era, I think). Though this was great, it wasn't essential to the strategy. Probably meant that I got the science victory atleast a few turns earlier than I otherwise would have, as I had to settle that city in a place that I normally wouldn't settle until NC was done and my second wave of settlers were heading out. But still, FOY was pretty sweet.

On the negative side, the available luxuries weren't great, I had a monopoly on cotton, which was nice (selling to all 5 civs), but not many others, so I couldn't use bazaars to really dominate luxuries. Also, no marble, so I essentially gave up on wonders, except Pyramids early, and then I managed Sistine with an engy and built Taj.

My strategy was not to build any monuments until I had an RA pop Civil Service. So my second, third, fourth and fifth policy went into Patronage and I pretty quickly got those City States researching for me, which gave me the tech lead quite early, I'm guessing just before Turn 100, and then I didn't look back. I had five techs in Modern Era before anyone else got there, even though a couple of the other civs were ICSing aggressively. I had 8 City States throughout the game (3 maritime, 3 cultural, 2 military), and had a big enough military throughout that I could have fended off an attack, though it would have meant spending money on units instead of RA's and City-States.

I'd attach a screenshot, but to be honest, I don't know how to take one. If anyone would like to see one, just let me know how to do it, and I could attach it.
 
Figured out screenshots....
 

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nice job but i'm sure it could be completed sooner, mainly because small size limited the number of RAs you could have significantly. RAs are the easiest way to get techs, and tech speed is the main limiting factor.
 
Actually, except for the early game, I had RA's with everyone, and always had the money to renew them, even though with atleast a third of the RA's, I had to pay the 100 penalty of being an era ahead.

I considered going to war around mid-game (even though I knew I was going for a fast Science Victory), but the gain from puppet research and gold, I didn't think would make up for the gold spent on Units and Happiness buildings. Plus, with almost everyone being Friendly, going to war might mean that my trading partners could have dried up. Also, I needed Gold to keep those City States researching for me.

But I'd be curious to know how early anyone had gotten a Science Victory, and whether it came from war-mongering and puppets or the kind of game that I played (RA's, City State Research and early Science Techs).

Edit: - Oops, you meant Small Map size (not that I kept my empire small), and I'm sure you're right. I'd love to try this on a Huge Map for the extra RA's, but my computer can't even handle late-game standard size.
 
Hi mph - Being a fairly average player, I was curious as to how you could win any game so quickly (let alone a Deity game where presumably research costs are much higher?)

I mean RA's don't come into effect until approximately turn 50-80 depending on AI - therefore in the whole game you could only have got a max of 20 techs (120 turns approx therefore 4 techs x 5 opponents) So by my calculations (after the initial 36 turns or so to get 5 techs) you would have 180 turns to have researched 65 or so techs - even with a few SP's and science GP's that may get lowered to say 55 - meaning you researched a tech every 3.3 turns - I'd like to know how this is achieved, cos it bugs me to see people managing to do this - On King I did a 12 player in 285 turns mostly with RA & The Patronage SP (Science one - which you wouldn't get much before turn 100 at best) - but I cant conceive how you get such rapid research so quickly.

Can you give me a little advice? Thanks!
 
Hi mph - Being a fairly average player, I was curious as to how you could win any game so quickly (let alone a Deity game where presumably research costs are much higher?)

I mean RA's don't come into effect until approximately turn 50-80 depending on AI - therefore in the whole game you could only have got a max of 20 techs (120 turns approx therefore 4 techs x 5 opponents) So by my calculations (after the initial 36 turns or so to get 5 techs) you would have 180 turns to have researched 65 or so techs - even with a few SP's and science GP's that may get lowered to say 55 - meaning you researched a tech every 3.3 turns - I'd like to know how this is achieved, cos it bugs me to see people managing to do this - On King I did a 12 player in 285 turns mostly with RA & The Patronage SP (Science one - which you wouldn't get much before turn 100 at best) - but I cant conceive how you get such rapid research so quickly.

Can you give me a little advice? Thanks!


On deity the city states give more science, which actually makes research quicker. The AIs get more gold, which makes signing research agreements easier. The player merely has to get as many luxury as possible as efficiently as possible while maintaining good relations, then sell em all to AIs for profit, buy maritime, etc.

Secondly, he is Arabia, so he can use RA to get the building that doubles luxury and increases gold income. He can buy this with all the gold, then sell it for more gold, repeat, etc.

Early game, he can use the gold to buy worker to get luxury to buy worker.

Also, Arabia gets more gold from trade routes.

Overall, this is a good example of an optimized gold economy, exploiting the absurd deity AI gold bonus for incredible production, and using CS's/RAs to convert that gold into incredible research.

Also, he had FoY, which means he does not have to worry about halting growth ever. He can settle 3 cities on luxuries, SELL all 3, and still be happy with fountain of youth. He probably took liberty and founded about 7-8 immediately.

This is how he gets so accelerated.
 
the research costs are the same, the AI just gets massive bonuses, which actually allows the player to do much better.
some AI will have philosophy well before turn 50, player can easily get it by turn 50.
there are only 65ish techs needed total for science victory, the bottom part of the tree can be blocked completely at metallurgy
 
I'm pretty sure I had a research agreement before Turn 50, but I'm not really certain when it was. I do know that I got to Education very fast through RA's. And you're right, probably in the low 20's for total RA's, plus a couple of Great Scientists. I kept the lower part of the tree blocked off when I could, particularly late game, when I didn't get Combustion until I had all the top part of the tree done. I think I did research up to Artillery before, as things were heating up a bit on the map.

Rarely did a tech take longer than 5 turns to research, and often there were ones that only took 3 turns.

But I didn't take Liberty at all or spam cities, that wouldn't have given me the Patronage policies that I needed. That was the key. My capitol probably went scout, worker, (buy worker), Settler, (buy Settler), Settler, and somewhere in there I lucked out and got a free worker from a Barb Hut. Then those 3 new cities all built Libraries right away for the NC. Of course, you really need a nice neighbour for this strategy. After that, I may have added one city before getting the Patronage policy that gives you City State Research, which was huge. Then I slowly added a few more cities. But in general, I was making sure that my capitol was always upgraded for science buildings, the other cities usually lagged behind, I wasn't a real stickler for having them build universities right away, after NC I was still concerned that Gandhi might get pissed, so I spent some time building a little military.

And yes, doing this on Deity does make it easier, you rarely have to wait for an AI to have enough funds for RA's, and they always have cash to buy luxuries (though I didn't know that City State benefits are higher on Deity?). And I think Research costs the same amount, no matter what difficulty. If someone could get lucky with neighbours and Fountain of Youth (or alot of luxuries to maximize the Bazaar benefit) on a Huge Map, I'm sure it would be possibly to shave alot of turns off this.
 
Took a look and I had an earlier save at Turn 148, if anyone's interested.

At this point, the only university was in the capitol, which had it and public school. Probably a mistake there, I should have prioritized universities in other cities.

I had 2 island cities out on the right. Both were one tile islands with a luxury that I didn't have, so I settled them, thinking that I could buy a bazaar for them and sell the luxury. Otherwise, I almost always ignore those spots. Only it turns out that if you settle on a luxury, you don't get the extra copy with the Bazaar. That was 960 gold down the drain.

Looking back at the notification log, I hit Industrial Era around Turn 130, and at 148, noone else was in Industrial Era. At this point, all the coming techs were 8 turns of research, but my cities were about to go on a Factory and University spree, so my research went up quite fast, it was around 650 beakers near the end.

You can see FOY at the top left, I settled my city one tile away from the coast (where there were 3 fishes) because I was worried that the City State would get FOY, and I wasn't sure if it would cost me 55 or 60 gold to buy FOY (being 3 tiles out from the city) or if it would cost me 200 to get it. That city could have been great with a Seaport, but I didn't want to risk not being able to afford to buy the tile and have the City State expand to take it.
 

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On deity the city states give more science, which actually makes research quicker. The AIs get more gold, which makes signing research agreements easier. The player merely has to get as many luxury as possible as efficiently as possible while maintaining good relations, then sell em all to AIs for profit, buy maritime, etc.

Secondly, he is Arabia, so he can use RA to get the building that doubles luxury and increases gold income. He can buy this with all the gold, then sell it for more gold, repeat, etc.

Early game, he can use the gold to buy worker to get luxury to buy worker.

Also, Arabia gets more gold from trade routes.

Overall, this is a good example of an optimized gold economy, exploiting the absurd deity AI gold bonus for incredible production, and using CS's/RAs to convert that gold into incredible research.

Also, he had FoY, which means he does not have to worry about halting growth ever. He can settle 3 cities on luxuries, SELL all 3, and still be happy with fountain of youth. He probably took liberty and founded about 7-8 immediately.

This is how he gets so accelerated.

This is exactly how I got a market place in all my cities in one turn as arabia. I started off with about 30 gold, sold 2 lux>bought bazzar, sold 2 lux>bought bazzar, etc, etc.
 
I had so much cotton, that after the bazaar in the capitol (2 cotton, 1 gold), I had enough cotton for all the other civs. plus extra. Other than that, there were 2 gold and one pearls, so bazaars were effective, but limited. With a more diversified spread of luxuries, bazaars would have been ridiculously effective, as Deity AI almost always has the gold to buy them.
 
Correct. I find bazzars lacking on smaller maps like standard where there are only a few civs to trade with. I like haveing the full 22 civs so Im not stuck in that position with a ton of extra resources that just go to waste.
 
Wow, nicely done. I clearly was underestimating the power of specialists, with my slow building of universities. Did you continue down the Freedom tree later?
 
No, I went for Scientific Revolution. In hindsight, I might have been better off dropping a couple of cities to keep SP costs down and collecting Humanism first (I got it way too late to matter). Or it might have been better to stay at around 9-10 and try to collect Democracy as well as Humanism and Scientific Revolution.
 
Just won on a large map TSL as byzantium standard speed turn 231 on deity thanks to 18 decent sized cities, jesuit edu and lots of luck.
 
Moderator Action: Vanilla tag added to thread title
 
Did you really just necro a 5 year old thread to boast of something entirely unimpressive? :)
 
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