Science Victory: midgame

pwsiegel · May 31, 2015

After my last post I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable with science-oriented openings, and I think I get the gist of the SV endgame. But I'm not doing so great in the mid game. Here are some specific questions (assume immortal or deity):

-How can you tell when to work a science specialist instead of a tile? The rule of thumb that I've been using is: work a tile unless the science specialist only costs you one turn until the next citizen. But I just made that up, so it may be wrong.

-How many internal trade routes are optimal? I've been using two to the capital and one to another city if needed.

-What is the best uses of money? The natural choices are: research agreements, buying science buildings, upgrading your military, bribes for imminent invaders, and city states. About what percent of your money should you be spending on each of these at various points in the game?

-Which is the higher priority: production buildings or money buildings?

-How important is the world congress? In my games I typically don't have a lot of city-state alliances until I have several upgraded spies, and consequently arts funding often gets passed. I can usually squeeze out enough GS's to bulb the necessary techs in 15 turns or so in the endgame, but maybe having control of the world congress is worth it in other ways.

-Freedom or Order? My bias is freedom because I can generally produce a lot of money but not very much faith or GE's, and the specialist buffs are a huge help. Are there any cool ways to use Order that I'm missing out on?

Answers to any other questions that I haven't thought of are certainly welcome. Some of the answers may depend on the civ (e.g. the questions involving specialists are certainly going to have different answers for Korea).

Finally, I uploaded a recent game of mine which may help provide more specific advice. I'm playing as Babylon on immortal, and I just got Education with 4 cities at turn 107. I think my capital should be a little bigger by now, but other than that it looks like a pretty good opening. However, in my game I didn't get Scientific Theory until around turn 190, and I launched the spaceship at turn 308. Any tips for improving those numbers would undoubtedly be helpful.

View attachment 394692

stormtrooper412 · Jun 1, 2015

Alright, here's my experiences:

1. Work ALL Sci Specs as soon as available. You should be growing well enough anyway.

2. Use ALL internal trade routes. Ideally, if you have 4 cities, three run to the cap and the rest runs across to patch any growth holes.

3. I save up for sci buildings and try to use the spare on CSs. It's a bit tricksy but that's what your friends are for, loan money from them and use it for stuff. I think RAs are not worth it past the Industrial era but someone can correct me on that.

4. If Freedom, then money, if Order, then Production

5. World Congress is *somewhat* important, but without many CSs you won't really make much of an impact. Generally, you can benefit from Sci funding, but one of the mistakes I kept making was the Scholars in Residence

6. Most people prefer Freedom, but I'd say either will work well depending on the map. If you have lots of hills, production, stuff, you can really have a high power space production like in good old Communism, not to mention the science boost from Factories and the lv3 tenet will get you a free sci and a free engi, if timed well that's just what you will need for a wrap up. Freedom works a bit differently, you need A LOT MORE money, and to make it better, both Big Ben and Mercantilism, ratio finished and lv3 tenet, and you *might* not pick up all of that in time. Either way, you must make sure to finish ratio, use the free tech on, say, nano, and then faith buy a pair of scis. Try to time Hubble and PT to pop AFTER a natural GS, otherwise it will be pushed back.

Certainly realistic benchmarks:

Education: 100-105
ST: 155-160
Plastics: 185-190

The "are you nuts" benchmarks (Salt starts, natural wonders, insane Petra+HG+ToA capital etc)

Education: 90-95
ST: 140-145
Plastics: 165-170

Babinski · Jun 1, 2015

This is how I do it usually.

1. Focus growth midgame, after plastics prio slots.
2. All trade routes internally, 3 first to cap. Important to have big cap for several reasons, one of beeing able to fill science slots and guild slots asap without growth loss.
3. I spend money on RA:s (prio 1 as my experience is you usually gain more from 3 RA:s than 1 science building even midgame).
Science buildings.
I dont have an army and usually don't have to bribe anyone off. If I must, that would be of high prio.
I spend money on CS if I can get a few quests rolling and it gets me allied with more than 1 CS or if its get me WLTK in multiple cities etc. Usually I dont have enough money after buying RA:s, science buildings, observatories, to be able to spend alot on CS:s.
4. money buildings for me. I go Freedom usually.
5. World Fair very important, Internatinal Games very good aswell after that if your low on culture midgame. If not, I dont care much about it.
6. Freedom for me but thats basically coz I started playing deity SV just after Acken wrote a guide about it and IronXXXFighter did well with that strategy. Havn't played civ long so got little experince with Order

.

That said I usually get education with Babylon t90-95, Scientific Theory 135-140 and plastics 160-165 with ok starts.

pwsiegel · Jun 1, 2015

Thanks for the replies. I noticed neither of you spend money on your military or on bribing invaders; how do you pull that off? In the Babylon game that I uploaded I had to spend a decent amount of money making sure Suleiman was permanently at war with somebody because he would mass at my borders and invade after just 2 or 3 turns of peace. As the game went on he and his neighbors were very angry at each other so the bribes got cheaper, but I still had to pay from time to time.

cazaderonus · Jun 1, 2015

Something i learned from a Acken LP (among many other stuff) is to use the diplo modifiers to avoid conflict with a civ. Instead of maybe paying him to DOW someone else

Like, building a landmark with an archeologist on its terrain. Gifting him a lux or the gold equivalent (9GPT) to get the "we traded recently" green modifiers. Helping him get elected at the world congress, or supportone of its proposotion. It may avoid him warring you and choose to attack someone else by himself and even avoid him denouncing you. The perk is that those gift can be a lot cheaper than paying for war and snowball in him being more interested in picking on someone else forever.

but that's the ideal scenario, sometimes i guess you dont have a choice.

But for science, yeah i'd got with science spec slots always filled (that's true for a cultural victory as well, if not for every victory condition anyway as it's the one place you will outplay AIs on a constant basis). Reaching the most advanced era possible by beelining. That's something i m still tip toeing at tbh but the reduced tech cost for "old" eras you get makes it worth it. And it obviously allows to rush science buildings quite fast. Watch Acken LP with brazil and see how fast he gets to >200 BPT. Dude is insane and starts 8 turns late searching for a likeable capitol spot.

Even though he goes for a CV, he reaches as much beakers as anyone who d go for a scientific victory until very late game where the path starts to really differ.

stormtrooper412 · Jun 1, 2015

pwsiegel said:
Thanks for the replies. I noticed neither of you spend money on your military or on bribing invaders; how do you pull that off? In the Babylon game that I uploaded I had to spend a decent amount of money making sure Suleiman was permanently at war with somebody because he would mass at my borders and invade after just 2 or 3 turns of peace. As the game went on he and his neighbors were very angry at each other so the bribes got cheaper, but I still had to pay from time to time.

Eh, that's thin ice territory. Usually I keep a decent garrison if s*** his the fan and yes, you can fit 5-6 pikes in the medieval build order without issues, and that's usually enough to hold off an invasion. Most of the time, you can whittle down the invading army and accept white peace with only a few turns of setback. More often you can see a weaker neighbor and participate in the dog pile, the warmongers will like you and by the time they turn on you, it might be too late and you will have snowballed away.

Of course, there are times when the panic button is just too big and too obvious, then it's bribes away and buckle down

consentient · Jun 1, 2015

My approach to playing without bribes and maintaining decent diplo is the opposite of cazaderonus. I build units to defend myself, and upgrade them, to stay above average for military strength, where possible. Clearly if the world ends up dominated by 3 big warmongers, then you will need less than if there are 5 or 6 smaller ones.

Bleidraner · Jun 1, 2015

pwsiegel said:
After my last post I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable with science-oriented openings, and I think I get the gist of the SV endgame. But I'm not doing so great in the mid game. Here are some specific questions (assume immortal or deity):

-How can you tell when to work a science specialist instead of a tile? The rule of thumb that I've been using is: work a tile unless the science specialist only costs you one turn until the next citizen. But I just made that up, so it may be wrong.

-How many internal trade routes are optimal? I've been using two to the capital and one to another city if needed.

-What is the best uses of money? The natural choices are: research agreements, buying science buildings, upgrading your military, bribes for imminent invaders, and city states. About what percent of your money should you be spending on each of these at various points in the game?

-Which is the higher priority: production buildings or money buildings?

-How important is the world congress? In my games I typically don't have a lot of city-state alliances until I have several upgraded spies, and consequently arts funding often gets passed. I can usually squeeze out enough GS's to bulb the necessary techs in 15 turns or so in the endgame, but maybe having control of the world congress is worth it in other ways.

-Freedom or Order? My bias is freedom because I can generally produce a lot of money but not very much faith or GE's, and the specialist buffs are a huge help. Are there any cool ways to use Order that I'm missing out on?

Answers to any other questions that I haven't thought of are certainly welcome. Some of the answers may depend on the civ (e.g. the questions involving specialists are certainly going to have different answers for Korea).

Finally, I uploaded a recent game of mine which may help provide more specific advice. I'm playing as Babylon on immortal, and I just got Education with 4 cities at turn 107. I think my capital should be a little bigger by now, but other than that it looks like a pretty good opening. However, in my game I didn't get Scientific Theory until around turn 190, and I launched the spaceship at turn 308. Any tips for improving those numbers would undoubtedly be helpful.

View attachment 394692

@pwsiegel, cannot download your attachment, I get an Invalid Attachment message from CivFanatics.

Science Victory: midgame

pwsiegel

Chieftain

stormtrooper412

Peacemongering Turtlesaur

Babinski

Chieftain

pwsiegel

Chieftain

cazaderonus

Actual Dad.

stormtrooper412

Peacemongering Turtlesaur

consentient

Domination!

Bleidraner

King

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