Fastest Science Victory Post Patch?

[GhostSalsa]

No. More cities is better. If you're generating 1000 beakers per turn, an additional city only needs to generate 50 science to break even with the 5% increase, which isn't that hard, just grow it a bit and staff specialists like your other cities. All bpt over 50 is faster science for you. Later if you're generating 2000 beakers per turn you want 100 per city, and even that's not crazy.

By going wide you might have some cities that are not pulling their weight but on balance you will still have more science.

The 5% penalty is only against shortness - low-population low-output cities, especially puppets - not wideness. Meaning if you are both wide and tall then you will have more science. The penalty-calculated theoretical desirable city output scales with era - a puppet isn't going to kill you much in early game when that puppet's 10 bpt is still 5% of 200 - but then that puppet is more concerning when you're total bpt is 500 - you need to annex and grow that city now. In practice just avoid pre-BNW-style puppet empires generally and you won't have to worry about the ideal city count, more is better.

This thread was resurrected from 2011. Those early posts are not referring to BNW at all.

 

[joshua43214]

6 cities on standard size/speed seems to be the sweet spot for SV. You can hit 1600ish bpt with 6 cities fairly early. I am pretty sure all of my wins about T250ish or less where 6 city empires. 5 cities gets a slightly slower win, 7 is about the same as 5.

The problem is that too many early delays getting important techs, and they don't grow fast enough late to overcome the penalty even when you rush everything from hospitals up

 

[Erelich]

How do you manage to settle 6 cities? I've found that if you settle too many cities too early then happiness starts to become an issue, but if you don't do it fast enough then the AI will take all the good spots. I like to keep all my cities close together so that they're easier to defend and usually I can only settle 3-4 before I run out of space.

 

[joshua43214]

How do you manage to settle 6 cities? I've found that if you settle too many cities too early then happiness starts to become an issue, but if you don't do it fast enough then the AI will take all the good spots. I like to keep all my cities close together so that they're easier to defend and usually I can only settle 3-4 before I run out of space.

sadly, you pretty much have to capture the extra cities on Emperor or above. On king and down you can easily settle 6 or more.

Alternately, you can use tommynt's tradition/liberty thing, but you almost have to be tommy to make it work lol

 

[georgie]

Pardon me, but I don't understand what the new patch has changed in regard to this.

I believe they made the Space Shuttle parts more costly in terms of production.

 

[YourHarry]

No. More cities is better. If you're generating 1000 beakers per turn, an additional city only needs to generate 50 science to break even with the 5% increase, which isn't that hard, just grow it a bit and staff specialists like your other cities. All bpt over 50 is faster science for you. Later if you're generating 2000 beakers per turn you want 100 per city, and even that's not crazy.

By going wide you might have some cities that are not pulling their weight but on balance you will still have more science.

The 5% penalty is only against shortness - low-population low-output cities, especially puppets - not wideness. Meaning if you are both wide and tall then you will have more science. The penalty-calculated theoretical desirable city output scales with era - a puppet isn't going to kill you much in early game when that puppet's 10 bpt is still 5% of 200 - but then that puppet is more concerning when you're total bpt is 500 - you need to annex and grow that city now. In practice just avoid pre-BNW-style puppet empires generally and you won't have to worry about the ideal city count, more is better.

This thread was resurrected from 2011. Those early posts are not referring to BNW at all.

Additional cities come at the cost, though, of happiness and the resources required to generate the settler (or the worker(s) to work the tiles, as you don't always have worker surplus). And I often spend the gold to purchase key buildings in new cities. Also, 10% policy penalty can't be ignored. There are some key policies that boost your science output. As price of the next social policy increases significantly, so do the penalties associated with additional cities.

Also, your "weakest" city may be generating 5% of toward the end of the game. But the question is: did the city generate 5% of total science output since the city was initially founded. Before significant population growth and purchase/building of science buildings, new cities generate little science.

And even though additional cities do generate extra gold, I often pay most of it on building maintenance.

As always, it always depends how many cities will be optimal. In my experience, 4 cities founded early (before turn 100) seems to be a good number. I am currently doing a personal challenge where I am trying to achieve a science victory with Babylon before turn 180 (deity, standard, pangea). I am playing with reloads though.

 

[joshua43214]

Check out the Assyria HoF (G-Minor LXVI) that just ended if you really want to learn how to optimize your game. It was a chieftain, arboreal challenge, and it was like playing in a vacuum, every shred of science in your game has to be generated by your empire since the AI is useless at that level. I tried just about every different combination of things I could think of including the Order tenet that starts cities at 3 pop. What I found was late settling slows the game down even when you can drop 3 pop cities and rush buy everything in one turn, and going very wide early slows the game down even more.

 

[reddishrecue]

This is sort of what I've been itching to talk about since I recently came out of 2 science victory attempt losses from multiplayer. It seems that it is easier and faster for players to achieve a diplomatic victory online than it is to achieve a science victory since I still needed to research Particle Physics on both losses. Anyways, the fastest science victory I've had took me 260 turns, on deity, small, large islands, shoshone and quick speed.

 

[joshua43214]

This is sort of what I've been itching to talk about since I recently came out of 2 science victory attempt losses from multiplayer. It seems that it is easier and faster for players to achieve a diplomatic victory online than it is to achieve a science victory since I still needed to research Particle Physics on both losses. Anyways, the fastest science victory I've had took me 260 turns, on deity, small, large islands, shoshone and quick speed.

hmmmm, something is wrong for sure, you should have been done with particle physics on standard speed by T260 if you are trying to play Deity. No idea what the benchmark would be on quick.
Dig through the first several pages of the Strategy and Tips section and look for any threads that might talk about science strategies. Your rough tech path should be Lux tech, phylo, education, scientific theory, radio, bio, plastics, sats, atomic theory, particle physics, nano tech. You bulb the top part of the tree and hit "next turn" through the bottom. Detour from this path for military tech as little as possible.

 

[Zaimejs]

I don't have the tech tree in front of my, but don't you need quite a few military techs to get to rocketry? That isn't on your list, but is necessary for a science victory.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll try the six city play... I have 5 in my current game. Oh, and you do need aluminum and uranium to win a science victory right?

 

[GhostSalsa]

Additional cities come at the cost, though, of happiness and the resources required to generate the settler (or the worker(s) to work the tiles, as you don't always have worker surplus). And I often spend the gold to purchase key buildings in new cities. Also, 10% policy penalty can't be ignored. There are some key policies that boost your science output. As price of the next social policy increases significantly, so do the penalties associated with additional cities.

This is obviously true - even I have created threads about how over-penalized expansion is in the current game balance. I hate hate hate hate the fact that without a lot of luck, expanding new cities basically stalls your entire empire for 50 turns due to those accumulated opportunity costs and the long turnaround time before the new city is profitable, which makes settling in the window before you are about to enter Industrial and adopt super-powered Ideology tenants ludicrously out of the question. Also true is the next poster's comment that too much early expansion is detrimental to a Deity speedrun.

But science isn't just a tool for speed-runs. It's a tool for all types of games. The fear people have over the per-city tech cost is way out of place for most games, which will go over 250 turns - it's after 250 turns that n+4 settled cities start to pay off on gold and science.

 

[Zaimejs]

Here is what I noticed more than anything while trying to rush a science victory... when you are ahead in science, you can get wonders at will... that's the problem with linking all the wonders to the tech tree. Once you are ahead, you just pile on and there is no catching up.

I just wish they would make it so that other victory types weren't so reliant on science. If I want to go cultural, I still need to rush science to make sure to get the needed culture wonders. You know what I mean?

That's been talked about though.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Thanks for all the advice. I'll try the six city play... I have 5 in my current game. Oh, and you do need aluminum and uranium to win a science victory right?

Aluminum for spaceship factories and parts (aluminum used for parts is freed back up after you add to ship - somehow that aluminum returns to soil, via the majestic Aluminum Cycle). Uranium only if you have no desert / want Nuclear Plants - not very essential, though I still think there should be a version of the Recycling Center that creates more uranium for my eco-conscious communities.

 

[Zaimejs]

Okay, so here is my science victory save. If anyone wants to look at it to give me some suggestions on what I can do better, I'd love to hear it. I mean, I won on emperor very easily... never was even challenged, so that was nice. I'm still scared to move up to the next level, but maybe it's time.

I just want to know what I can do better to get a faster victory.

 

[reddishrecue]

Dig through the first several pages of the Strategy and Tips section and look for any threads that might talk about science strategies. Your rough tech path should be Lux tech, phylo, education, scientific theory, radio, bio, plastics, sats, atomic theory, particle physics, nano tech. You bulb the top part of the tree and hit "next turn" through the bottom. Detour from this path for military tech as little as possible.

My tech path is similar to the one you showed. Cool tips though, appreciate it.

 

[Loucypher]

One thing of note is that things might be a bit easier on a Huge map. I tend to play Huge with 17 AI's. There's usually enough settling space and the science penalty is only 2% instead of 5. Furthermore there are more potentional trading allies available helping you manage your happiness/gold issues.

 

[Zaimejs]

I was wondering about map size. I play on small because I am on my laptop and it is weak. I wonder how much of a difference that makes in the long run? I bet on a large map you get more city states and more research agreements, right?

 

[SemperFi2382]

I was wondering about map size. I play on small because I am on my laptop and it is weak. I wonder how much of a difference that makes in the long run? I bet on a large map you get more city states and more research agreements, right?

What I love about huge maps is that aside from more world to explore, you can expand a bit more freely before bumping into another civ. With a lower penalty to tech and policy costs, your empire also feels more filled out.

Late game, I've found that it also makes for some interesting politics. With so many civs and city states around, generally there's always plenty of conflict to join if you want, but enough space to avoid being in the thick of it.

It does make some civs like Greece and Austria much more problematic if they are the runaway civ, but overall I almost always play Huge Maps.

 

[Zaimejs]

Sadly, I started a huge map and I'm surrounded on all sides without much room for more than 3-4 cities. Weird.

 

[SemperFi2382]

Sadly, I started a huge map and I'm surrounded on all sides without much room for more than 3-4 cities. Weird.

Yeah, that happened to me on the game I just started too. I started right next to The Inca. We shared the continent with Poland, Greece, and Spain who also started next to each other. Everyone else got their own continent/island...

The hilarious part though is that 1/3 the continent was on the other side of me, making it impossible for everyone else to go past me to settle without open borders.

Needless to say, this turned into a Domination game real fast. By Medieval, Poland had taken Greece, Inca had already taken Spain.