Advice or Tutor for Science Victory

I don't like to brag but I consider myself an "okay civ player". I put in 500 hours into Civ so far and I've played around 20 games and only lost one. However there is one area I fail at; science. I can be the leader on science but I just feel like I'm behind science wise. Whenever I do spear-head science, my production is always really mediocre. Of course as you guys know, kinda hard to make Space-ship parts while your production is bad. I would love if someone with some free-time could do a civ game with me just to talk to me and see what I'm doing wrong or just some advice if you don't have the time. Feel free to add me on Steam, name is Bacon Bomb.

(Also really sorry if posted in wrong place, first poster, long-time stalker)

Which difficulty are you playing on?

There are two things that may help.

1) You can check out Let's Plays on Youtube and watch what others are doing. This is the primary way I made my jump from a weak immortal player winning rarely to winning almost all my deity games.

2) You can post up one of your saves from the games you are playing and I'm sure multiple people would be happy to inspect your game and critique.

I'm playing on King difficulty on a continent map. I guess I just upload my save via a drop-box and I link it right? One of the biggest set me backs for me was I waged a full-scale war against Rome and liberated some of my allies from them. Only war I gotten in so far so I guess I have done the turteling part right so far.

You can upload your save directly to CFC. When composing a post, click on Go Advanced and then the paperclip icon on the ribbon bar (pops up the Manage Attachments dialog box).

for many, a huge part of the science game is generating Great Scientists. By end-game, you generally want to have spawned 10 of them plus others from wonders or policies or bought with faith. to spawn so many means Great Scientist points or slots. If you make Oracle (valuable in every game) you get GS points. and then fill Universities/Schools/Research Labs slots. Grow your cities tall to have the population to fill those slots. nearing the victory requires some timing as all you have to do is build spaceship parts. all those GSs are used to bulb to speed through the later-game techs to reach those parts.

there are actually several guides here on how to do fast science wins but usually at higher difficulties. many of those tips still apply to the lower ones though. there are benchmarks to strive for, when to get Education, what policies to take, when to reach the later eras, etc. none of them are strictly defined as you can get there in any number of ways but it's a start to learning the Science Victory strats.

and Welcome to CFC. you can learn and improve your game here quite a bit.

Learning to pick good spots to settle is key, beginning with your starting settler. Ideally you want a river tile adjacent to a mountain, with good food tiles, unique luxes and good production tiles. I would prioritize settling next to a mountain (for the observatory) over settling next to a river if you have to choose between the two (given everything else equal about the 2 sites). You also want to consider the defensibility of the spot.

Next to consider is the general strategy. Tradition is probably the easiest strategy to learn. Settle 3 cities before turn 60 or so and then build the National College (read Tabarnak's guide in the War Academy). You can then settle settle more cities if there are good spots, but don't bother with suboptimal sites. Better to just grow your other cities more than settle a bad site. Even 8 cities is fine with Tradition, but they better be good cities to justify the increased tech and culture cost. You also need to consider how aggressive settling will affect your neighbors (i.e., don't forward settle Shaka!).

For teching you want to beeline important science buildings. An example would be to try to build the NC before turn 80ish, finish Education around turn 100 and staff university science slots by turn 120ish (requires having the population so you can still grow cities), public schools before turn 175 and research labs as close to turn 200 as possible (all standard speed numbers). This should get you to 600+ beakers/turn by turn 200. That should be enough for an easy science win before turn 275 or so (many ways to trim this down, but 275 is good enough for most games).

Social Policies would be to complete Tradition, Rationalism and some in an Ideology (Order or Freedom work best, but depend on what is happening in the game). Often you need to choose another policy or 2 before Rationalism is unlocked, usually in Patronage or Commerce.

Other things that will help would be to build the Porcelain Tower and Hubble Space Telescope, both of which should be possible even on Deity. All other wonders are optional. Playing a good diplo game and signing several waves of Research Agreements (the first wave to mature right after the PT is built) is also a great way to shave time off your finish.

There are other strategies of course (e.g., strategies that also include some warmongering if you need to clear space for your empire), but this peaceful strategy works well even on Deity and even if you only manage to have room for 3 large cities. If you want to try to increase your current difficulty level it's always easiest to start with a top tier civ like Poland or Babylon.

Have fun!

Okay here is my current save. Like I said, I've declare war on Rome and liberated The Celts and Netherlands from Rome
View attachment Pocatello_0082 BC-0825.Civ5Save

It's hard to tell with just one save so late in the game, but it looks like your are on the right track. What happens when you move up to Immortal? I would suggest moving up in difficulty, you are crushing everyone in science.

A couple of things:

• Your population is a bit low in your capital. I would advise using early trade routes to bring food to your capital, especially as you went tradition. This will get you more base science. Early and mid-game should be all about growing as fast as you can.
• You still have quite a bit of the tech tree left, how many great scientists did you pop and when? Right now I see three settled academies, that is about right. I actually suggest just one or two. The rest of the scientists should have helped you get through the late game science.
• The Musician's Guild should have been built long ago for culture. Also, if you have the opera house's up, you should have finished Hermitage as soon as possible for more culture.
• You have no faith generation, which can be used to buy more great scientists or great engineers. I would suggest getting a few faith buildings. As you have a lot of the patronage tree done, you could ally some religious city states and at least shoot for 1 faith bought great person.
• You don't seem to be building Hubble, which should be a priority. It gives two free great scientists and a spaceship factory to finish parts in the capital. Right now you are building them in your satellite cities and they will probably finish before you are done with the science. Ideally though, you'd be able to get through the late game science faster with great people and use freedom to purchase the last couple of spaceship parts.
• You only have 5 workers and from what I can tell you had a 5 city empire before going after Rome. You would probably want at least 7, I still see some unworked tiles in your empire and some with fresh water access. You could have farmed those for more growth.

Overall, I don't see any glaring mistakes. I think you are pretty much ready to move up in difficulty.

BruinBound said:

It's hard to tell with just one save so late in the game, but it looks like your are on the right track. What happens when you move up to Immortal? I would suggest moving up in difficulty, you are crushing everyone in science.

A couple of things:

• Your population is a bit low in your capital. I would advise using early trade routes to bring food to your capital, especially as you went tradition. This will get you more base science. Early and mid-game should be all about growing as fast as you can.
  Yes definitely, I usually have 30 pop capitals but this game has not been a good food game
• You still have quite a bit of the tech tree left, how many great scientists did you pop and when? Right now I see three settled academies, that is about right. I actually suggest just one or two. The rest of the scientists should have helped you get through the late game science.
  I go by the theory that once you reach Atomic Era you should just rush them after eight turns of max science, is that wrong
• The Musician's Guild should have been built long ago for culture. Also, if you have the opera house's up, you should have finished Hermitage as soon as possible for more culture.
  I didn't want too many specialist and I was having trouble deciding what city to build it in along with a good-time build it (Trust me, in all other games I go for that right once I get access to it as I play a pretty heavy culture/tourism game usually
• You have no faith generation, which can be used to buy more great scientists or great engineers. I would suggest getting a few faith buildings. As you have a lot of the patronage tree done, you could ally some religious city states and at least shoot for 1 faith bought great person.
  I never built faith buildings as I knew I would've been over-ran by the Celt's religion which I already was, but you're right, should've done it just for the great people
• You don't seem to be building Hubble, which should be a priority. It gives two free great scientists and a spaceship factory to finish parts in the capital. Right now you are building them in your satellite cities and they will probably finish before you are done with the science. Ideally though, you'd be able to get through the late game science faster with great people and use freedom to purchase the last couple of spaceship parts.
  I was getting a Great Engi in 10 turns so my theory was just building research now and let me rush it once the Engi spawns in the capital. Not that anyone else was close to reaching it so I could be lenient with it.
• You only have 5 workers and from what I can tell you had a 5 city empire before going after Rome. You would probably want at least 7, I still see some unworked tiles in your empire and some with fresh water access. You could have farmed those for more growth.
  I think that I was expecting more GPI's so that's why I didn't improve.

Overall, I don't see any glaring mistakes. I think you are pretty much ready to move up in difficulty.

Click to expand...

Anyways, thanks for your tips and your kind words! Never tried Immortal as of yet, maybe my next game I'll try it, you really think I'm good enough to skip Emperor? I'll probably go Morocco as they're one civ I've never played before and I usually never double down on civs (Except for Portugal, played as them one time in a SP game, one in a friends MP game and random'd them in a online game, I love them for some odd reason)

Most of your comments make sense. For popping the great scientists, just make sure you have research labs in all cities and science maxed (including building science) for the last 8 turns. For food, usually 3 of my first 4 trade routes are sending food to my capitals. Most games all my trade routes are internal until very late where the growth wont make much of a difference and the gold can help for buying things.

Overall, I think you are ready to move up in difficulties. You will only get better by challenging yourself, and it will probably be easier to find out what you need to improve. When I first went to deity I think I was only winning like 20% of the time on Immortal. However, I improved really fast from there after a few failed games and studying some Let's Plays.