How do you win a science victory?

Hi all, I'm pretty new to civ 5 and I struggle to win against the AI. I like to go for a peaceful science victory but every time I get attacked and which ends up with them knocked out the game. And I know, i know, more cities is awesome! Not when ur Gandhi. That's y I'm wondering if there's a strategy to stop there attack without knocking them out the game. Even if I cripple them by taking 1 or 2 cities but they still attack. Plz, is there a special tatic or do I hav to hope not to be by a civ in a game?

Well it IS very simple if that's all you want. Build enough units for defense and once you repel an attack, the AI will retreat and all you need to do is accept the peace offering and not go after then in retribution

I think the thread title is misleading.

Here's a way to embrace an attack: https://youtu.be/rgG4BoUqkGo

More cities IS better even when you're India. But you only need 3.

You can take it easy and lower the difficulty to see how to get a win and familiarize yourself with the way the turns go.
Getting a science victory requires science so make science buildings and tech technologies that will get you more science such as education.
Get citizens into science buildings and make more science that way so that your civilization can have great scientists that get you more science from their academies.
Get the rationalism social policy and make more science with it. Build scientific wonders such as great library or porcelain tower which can make you way more science in the future.
Make research agreements with other civilizations and youll make way more science that way. However, be careful with science victories because other civilizations could steal your technologies so make sure you have good police stations and constabularies with spies in your capital particularly if you make embassies.

Just remember, you don't have to capture enemy cities to be victorious. Sometimes all you gotta do is have a big enough Army to keep em off your back. Lots of Archer's in the early game, Cannons and Artillery later on. I like to keep a couple of Cav units away from my city, when the attack comes I send the Cav units in behind them and pillage as many resources as I can. If you can hold off an attack on your city while trashing everything they have they'll come begging for peace. You can even catch a really nice ransom if you're brutal enough.

You can only play as peacefully as the AI will let you play though, really. Some civ's like war more than others, and sometimes they'll declare war at the dumbest times. I just had Monty attack one of my cities with a naval attack. It had zero chance of success, and he couldn't even get any melee units near me. I just sunk all of his ships then made him pay me 30 turns worth of Spices, and I wasn't even going after any of his land.

Learn to bribe and you can do any peaceful victory with no combat units. IMO it doesn't matter if you have 4 CB or not, they're just so outdated later in the game and I keep them for donation to CS quests. I usually only make units up to CB for my peaceful games since at that point it's enough to defend early rushes. I never need to upgrade them anymore. Some leaders such as Shaka are extremely easy to bribe although very dangerous if you don't. I've gotten him to go to war for 2gpt before. If you're aiming for peaceful victory don't take AI cities or you'll get warmonger hate which affects your friendship status making you lose RA or DoF.

The game has an interesting balance in that if you are not struggling to keep up then it causes you to struggle in other ways!

flipjonah said:

...every time I get attacked and which ends up with them knocked out the game.

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Why do you feel obligated to knock them out of the game? Understanding diplomacy and warmonger hate is a pretty big aspect of the game. If you kill a civ, the other civs hate you --> which will cause them to attack --> which in turn obligates you to conquer more --> etc.

But how are you losing these games? Does an AI actually beat you to an SV? Or are you not finishing them?

I like to go for a peaceful science victory...

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I like peaceful SV myself. I think you want to bump up the difficulty level so that you are barely surviving the early DOW -- rather than going on a counter offensive.

I'm wondering if there's a strategy to stop there attack without knocking them out the game.

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Sure, kill all their units and pillage their lands. The only city you should be taking -- and it is optional -- is their cap. Other cities are a net loss for you.

War is inevitable in this game and no real way of preventing it, only delaying with bribes to DOW someone else. Well except having a very large army(pointy sticks score) but the AI sometimes will DOW you regardless even if it thinks it will loose.

flipjonah said:

Hi all, I'm pretty new to civ 5 and I struggle to win against the AI. I like to go for a peaceful science victory but every time I get attacked and which ends up with them knocked out the game. And I know, i know, more cities is awesome! Not when ur Gandhi. That's y I'm wondering if there's a strategy to stop there attack without knocking them out the game. Even if I cripple them by taking 1 or 2 cities but they still attack. Plz, is there a special tatic or do I hav to hope not to be by a civ in a game?

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Get walls and castles in your cities. Try to build great wall and have some army available for sudden wars. Like others said eventually someone will attack you. Sometimes it might even be common war against you.
What you have to care during your plays is your military score and your diplomacy (not taking CS by force, staying away from other`s ally CS's until you have large enough army to scare the rest). Like suggested try to bribe your neighbors to attack each other or someone else so they dont send army toward you

Many of the best tactics are the most counter-intuitive, which is why casual players who don't come here to study really struggle.
Even worse, the in game help leads you to play in certain ways that are not ideal play.

For example, the in game help should be explaining to the new player how vastly underpowered melee units and catapults are, and that going to war means "bring 6 CBs and a horse", because that army mix is certainly the opposite of intuitive. The new player should rightly ask, "then why did they put iron and swords and catapults in the game?"

We don't know. We don't know.

The in game help should be explaining how to pay gold to warmongers so they attack someone else.

And on and on... You shouldn't have to go to a website. You should be able to use intuition to make semi-wise (or at least logically consistent) tactical choices based on the in game information, but sadly with civ you often are led astray. Civ4 had the same issue.

The real problem is if you wanted to play with longswords and trebuchets in addition to XB, it requires too many tech and by the time you get all the tech, the higher difficultly AI would've moved on to another era and it becomes much harder to kill. So the optimal thing is to only get XB tech and attack, even with obsolete melee units whose only purpose is to capture cities or bait city attacks. It's common to run into this problem especially when playing civs that have strong UU on the melee line such as ottomans/america/france/denmark.

Lay_Lay said:

Many of the best tactics are the most counter-intuitive, which is why casual players who don't come here to study really struggle.
Even worse, the in game help leads you to play in certain ways that are not ideal play.

For example, the in game help should be explaining to the new player how vastly underpowered melee units and catapults are, and that going to war means "bring 6 CBs and a horse", because that army mix is certainly the opposite of intuitive. The new player should rightly ask, "then why did they put iron and swords and catapults in the game?"

We don't know. We don't know.

The in game help should be explaining how to pay gold to warmongers so they attack someone else.

And on and on... You shouldn't have to go to a website. You should be able to use intuition to make semi-wise (or at least logically consistent) tactical choices based on the in game information, but sadly with civ you often are led astray. Civ4 had the same issue.

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well yeah, though I'd still like to think it's not that bad.

stormtrooper412 said:

Well it IS very simple if that's all you want. Build enough units for defense and once you repel an attack, the AI will retreat and all you need to do is accept the peace offering and not go after then in retribution

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Note that if all you did was kill their invading armies and kept your forces at home, chances are the AI won't accept peace without you paying them.

So if you don't have enough units to go after one of their cities but can defend yourself, you may be better off ignoring the war than anything else.