Fastest Science Victory

[vadalaz]

I got a T189 victory using the same settings (Huns/Deity/Lakes/5 bil/Large lakes). I didn't eliminate any AIs but I made 4 of them completely irrelevant.

Some key moments and observations:

- 4-city Tradition + 5 captured cities, but in the end my science still wasn't good enough to one-turn bulb a final tier tech
- Went Bronze Working first to get a pair of BRs to demand tribute and potentially 1-turn capture a capital or two. In the early game you can often position your rams in a way that both of them take a shot on the turn you declare war. This is a bit risky if the AI has enough firepower nearby to retake the city or kill both of your BRs, but it works often enough and puts you in a pretty good position. I only got Stockholm this way and lost one of the rams
- Had a ton of early culture from all the CS quests. Didn't risk delaying Oracle and got Mercantilism pre-Renaissance which delayed Rationalism's right side policies. That plus pretty low pop due to happiness issues and only one observatory led to a pretty slow mid-game
- Couldn't take Rio (which had HG, ND, a ton of faith from DF and a unique lux) and didn't want Amsterdam, so I got some very nice peace deals instead (300g and 60gpt from Brazil and 1000g and 115gpt from the Netherlands)
- Not the strongest faith game - I had Uluru in an expo so it was easy to found but I only managed to get 3500 faith for 2 GSs and 1 GE
- Didn't get any coastal cities and noone ever connected Crabs for my WLTKDs. A bit unfortunate but I think Large lakes is the right play, because it generates better land with higher density of bonus tiles and NWs

This is a 4-turn improvement of a similar game I had on Great Plains Plus and Lakes does feel like the stronger map. I might try this again but make 2 armies this time and go for the kill-all-but-1 approach.

 

[Blatc]

Well done vadalaz, I think you may break T180 and put this out of reach.
How did you balance building your early army and 3 Settlers?
I like the early Bronze Working idea, as that also solves whether or not to take Mining, if settling on a Mining luxury.

 

[vadalaz]

I went Scout x3 - Settler to get one expo quickly to work Uluru and avoid the unit supply penalty. Bought one BR as soon as I could with peace deal money and tried to go for CS tributes to get more gold. I bought a second settler after bullying the CSs and getting another peace deal. The AIs offer you gpt in peace deals if you have a good army score (2 BRs should put you in top 3 easily) and your own gpt is high. If you work your best gold tiles and specialist slots before you take a peace deal, the AIs will often make a better offer. 1 gpt they offer converts to 33 gold, unfortunately they won't offer anything if they have 0 or negative gpt.

After the first settler my BO was something like BR - 4 or 5 HAs - Settler and I rush-bought 2 or 3 HAs I believe. The rams weren't very effective at early conquest as I got delayed by barbs and Sweden refused to position their units properly (I think I only took Stockholm in late T40s which you can do with HAs anyway), but they brought me a ton of early gold, so I believe early BW works pretty well regardless of how successful you are at taking a capital before T40.

 

[Blatc]

Thanks for the info; CS tributes are something I don't normally think about.

 

[vadalaz]

Focusing on building/buying a lot of units early might be the strongest play as the Huns. I'm trying out Seas as bodies of water and I got 4 rams early. It's paying off nicely:


With 30gpt I should be able to get more good peace deals from other AIs now, no matter how much they hate me. I suppose I should just DoW everyone right away... This game could be interesting and I hope I don't mess it up. The only problem right now is faith but Stockholm just finished Stonehenge so I'll try to take that.

Update:

One round of bribes/DoWs and getting peace deals later... 6 HAs and 4 rams at the moment, will probably stop at 12 HAs and focus on infrastructure



Update 2:

Scrapped the game. Conquest was going well and I did have a ton of gold but I seem to have done all the wrong things with it. I would've been about 10 turns slower to Education and my cities weren't as good either, so it's not worth playing this further.

The peace deal cycling is really strong though and having 2 armies can speed things up. What I didn't like was having seas as bodies of water - overall it made the cities worse because ocean tiles suck, and you can't attack from the sea so it just slows you down and makes it harder to approach AI capitals. Large lakes it is.

 

[vadalaz]

Just quit another game that would've resulted in a low 190s victory.


This was a 2-army game and I had 11 cities in the end. A few things I noticed while playing:

- Start to Education was slower than the T189 game (103 vs 97), Education to ST was faster and then ST to Plastics was slower again. Secularism on turn 111 with Oracle sped up the mid-game, but further conquest must've slowed things down. I think you might want to stop killing things by Renaissance and just abuse peace deals instead
- World's Fair with no AI help is painful and it started later than I would've wanted it to, as I went Acoustics first for fast Secularism instead of beelining PP. I had to faith-buy a GE for Statue of Liberty to time things right, otherwise this would've probably been a 3 faith GS game
- Beakers are still too low to 1-turn bulb a final tier tech. Perhaps I need to stop conquering so much and try to grow 7-8 really good cities instead, or change the map settings to something like 4bil/hot/normal to spawn jungle and mountains
- Industrial-Modern era gold was on the low side (180-200 gpt in a golden age). I think building maintenance was hurting me a lot, plus 3 cities didn't have road connections and I had no peace deals anymore. So again, it might be better to have a couple of high gpt weak army AIs in the end instead of taking their capitals
- I don't remember the math on this but it feels like it's better to build LToP early than delay it

So the plan now is to go for a 7-8 city empire, no taking cities after turn 100 unless they're really worth it, abuse peace deals throughout the entire game.

 

[Blatc]

I'm also adjusting settings due to lack of mountains, as my last attempt had 0 cities that could build Machu! I already had it set to 'hot'. Barbs are more of an issue than on GP maps, as are city connections. Had a very unique game: settled my first 2 cities next to faith wonders, with a 3rd faith wonder by my first successful capture. I got both Pagodas and Mosques. I didn't realize until I quit that there were 0 Merc CS, but about 6 cultural CS. I was way too slow to Education and Astronomy; coupled with high culture, I had to open Patronage (Commerce not an option yet) and got a total of 10 policies before Rationalism!

I was also thinking 6-8 cities early and then be very selective for 1-2 further captures, primarily based on key wonders.

 

[T-hawk]

I tried the Huns a few times a while back, though on lower difficulty than Deity. I found it didn't really help, even gaining a capital on turn 10 isn't really any better than just playing Spain and finding a natural wonder to buy a settler. And yes, conquering anything later than even mid-medieval (Education) never caught up against the tech cost increase by spaceship time. Sounds like the serious payoff is more in peace concessions than in captured cities, and then you do need high difficulty for the AIs to have anything worth paying.

 

[vadalaz]

Got another T189 win on normal Great Plains. I don't think I have the sub-180 recipe for the Huns.

This was a single army game again, only 7 cities in the end and the last one was a really late t147 capture (Notre Dame and a unique lux). War didn't go very well and it took too long to get Logistics on the HAs. Culture was one of the biggest problems once again, I had two cultural allies, a good religion with Pagodas and Mosques (Uluru and Sri Pada start), but Rationalism policies still took forever to reach. I delayed Oracle and lost it to William which also didn't help.

It's a good finish time, but the game felt much like a repeat of the previous one with exactly the same result, so it's somewhat disappointing. I got 3 GS + 1 GE from faith this time, but the extra GS only allowed me to match the Lakes game victory turn. I actually wasn't planning on getting 3 GSs from faith, but around turn 175 I figured I would not break 190 without the third scientist. I might've bulbed a bit too liberally pre-Plastics.

I think Great Plains is the map to play as the Huns. The early production boost from pastures is really good and the AIs' cities are actually worth taking.

 

[Blatc]

Looks like we're following similar steps (except you are finishing faster!), as I've also gravitated back towards the GP maps - along with reducing the barb and city connection issues (on Lakes), they (GP) are able to produce stronger cities for the huns. If I can put together a game with enough mountain-side cities, I expect I'll approach your T189 finish.

Is it just a 2 luxury difference between GP and GP+, Salt and Copper?

 

[vadalaz]

Yes, just those two.

 

[Blatc]

I've finally put together a great start for a Huns Deity SV, reaching T93 Education and T105 Astronomy. I expanded to 6 cities, with 2 self-founded and 4 captured; 3 observatory cities. Later, captured a 7th city that had built Notre Dame. Culture timing was okay but not great, ~T112 to open Rationalism and Secularism ~T128-129. Will reach Plastics T169 next session I play, with 1 GS bulb and enough gold to purchase 7/7 labs.
I opted to include Shaka and the Aztec in this game, and have been liberating captured cities to restore and improve relations, with considerable success. I will probably replace Shaka next game, as I forgot how good their special barracks were.
I imagine this will end up mid-T190s. I'm seeing the potential for T180-185 Deity SV with the Huns with more observatory cities and a well-executed war + liberation + selling captured cities strategy that enables you to have 2-3 friends late-game as well as gold income from war/peace deals vs. 2-3 others. The 'kill them all, but one' strategy runs into issues with World's Fair and drastically reduces opportunities for your spies to steal techs This game has been a bit better for WF, but only 1 tech (Steel) steal. I think having a civ like Korea and helping them do relatively well, ideally getting 2+ tech steals from them, could make a considerable difference.

 

[Blatc]

I'm happy to report a T193 Huns Deity SV finished and submitted to HoF. Here are my thoughts on the factors that could help close the gap to a T180-T185 finish, based on my own games:
*more observatory cities; I had 3 of 7. It's definitely possible to get 5+ good observatory cities on a GP map if you reduce or eliminate the AI that spawns in the West. I typically head East with starting warrior on GP map, and as in this game captured a city to the East with a ram ruin. It may be better to head North/South within the mountainous region once you have a ram. The ideal would be to wipe out Venice before meeting anyone else, as I did in this game, but that's not a requirement.
*I made the mistake of delaying PT, only keeping an eye on Persia, but the Aztec ended up building it. I had my 8th natural GS before T190 and was not waiting on one to spawn, so building PT definitely would have sped up the finish time.
*open Rationalism ASAP. I have never attempted to delay Oracle, as vadalaz has done. Here, I'm only suggesting to pay close attention to culture, save gold if possible for Cultural CS, consider building Writers Guild earlier than normal, and aim to open Rationalism with or immediately after reaching Astronomy. Typically, this would mean getting a social policy very shortly before reaching Education, as Education to Astronomy is going to be ~11-14 turns on Deity and your 7th or 8th policy (sans Oracle) will likely take ~14-18 turns.
*have at least one AI you can steal tech from, ex. Korea. You want them to do well - keep that in mind when you make decisions regarding war, bribes, etc.
*while mostly a luck factor, all luxuries (ex. Pearls) connected helps with WLTKD. Often enough, you can get Pearls through a CS. Hard to say how much impact this has on a given game.

Playing the Huns - and a few partial Assyrian attempts - has helped introduce me to a much broader game dynamic than any of the previous Deity SV attempts, making for very interesting and challenging game play, opportunity for new strategy and play-style; I highly encourage other players to try out the Huns and Assyria in warmongery Deity SV. I hope to improve on vadalaz's T189 finish, but even if I don't, it's helped keep this game fun!

 

[ATEX]

Does anyone still play Civ 5? I just realized that I find it a lot more fun than civ 6 and fast science victory always was the most enjoyable part. I started playing again after seeing Garmeth¨s video of Babinskis map.

. Three attempts went from 208 turns to 194 to 182. I still think this could be improved a lot. This is not HoF rules btw, but still a lot of fun. I changed the city placement and went crazy borrowing heavily the whole game since the gold access is so good. Also did dessert faith for more late game faith.

 

[vadalaz]

I feel like there has to be an Austria strategy that could result in a very fast win on Deity. I tried them on Great Plains and while my game didn't go smoothly (at all), it intrigued me enough to keep trying this civ. Here are some thoughts:

- Selling a CS to a friendly AI can net a large profit. Great Plains is a tight map so there will always be buyers. Unfortunately it takes a bit long for the AIs to become truly rich
- Ideally I think you want to sell the CSs to an idiot AI that just razes them. The AI doesn't become stronger then and you get a bunch of tiles for your new army to pillage for a bit of cash
- The diplomacy is pretty funny: you sell a CS, now everyone hates the AI that bought it because they're "expanding aggressively." Bribing even normally peaceful AIs becomes trivial
- The only military units I ever built were 5-6 archers which I gave away to a CS for upgrades. The CSs keep upgrading your units and produce a ton of their own, so I had the top army score in industrial-modern. You can do some real damage with all the units you receive and get very nice peace deals. The upkeep cost can be quite painful though
- The map is so small that you can just move the army to the next CS and gift them the units - this gives you a ton of easy influence, especially if the CS is requesting units. You should try to be friendly with the CS though so that you don't get the negative influence for trespassing. Units do increase the marriage cost, but that wasn't ever really relevant in my game
- With Universal Suffrage you can tank the happiness hits from marrying CSs fairly easily. I think going Industrialization before Sci Theory for a very quick ideology could potentially be a pretty strong play

I'm imagining a game where there are no CSs left on the map by the time you win, even the culture ones after you've gotten all your policies. Either you've sold them or they're now your cities. I think that's the way I want my next game as Austria to end. I can definitely see this leading to a sub-200 victory.

It should be interesting to try Austria for a fast DomV as well. Full Liberty with a Great Merchant finisher perhaps?

 

[vadalaz]

I got a good start on Inland Sea that illustrates the power of Austria pretty well:



4-city NC, immediately married a 12-pop Manila after NC. The city had upgraded my archers into composites by then, and I attacked Morocco to take their capital and liberate Jerusalem. I took Fes in a peace deal and sold it to Indonesia for some gold. Having a sizeable army allowed me to take a peace deal city from Theodora without ever fighting her as well. I sold the city to Suleiman for 50+ gpt and a lux. It's a bit unfortunate Marrakech had no wonders, I think Ahmad just spammed units for the most part.

The two generals I got from the Moroccan war are a nice bonus as well, I've already connected Marble with one and now about to connect Silk with the other. There used to be a city-state there, but I sold that one to Suleiman as well, and he was kind enough to raze it. I believe the AIs are more likely to raze CSs if they have a ton of cities of their own already, maybe it's an unhappiness thing? Though I really wonder how they manage to ever go unhappy with all the bonuses they get.

The gpt comes mostly from city deals with AIs, and I've been at 80+ since about turn 75 when I sold the first CS. I'm hoping it snowballs to 200+ soon. Didn't buy any unis, but signed 3 RAs which is something I never do normally. I'll probably have to buy the university in Marrakech.

The plan now is to marry Zurich and Singapore, ally all the cultural CSs and try to sell most of the others. Maybe punch another AI in the face while I'm at it. I have a ton of units I could gift to Zurich for influence (and to have the CBs and horsemen upgraded). I hope my spy in Mecca doesn't die, having a level 3 can be really, really good for Austria if you get lucky with the coups.

It's a real shame I won't be able to submit this to HoF, because for whatever reason I had all victory conditions except Science disabled. I don't remember doing this, I always play with the same settings... Otherwise I've been playing in full accordance with HoF rules though, and I'll still finish the game and just attach the saves here to document the game properly.

The only thing that went a bit wrong was culture - I mistimed getting into Medieval and had to take Piety opener instead of Commerce. Still, I've made use of Piety by using the overflow production for universities, plus I have +1 food from shrines and temples, which sort of offsets not having food from maritime CSs.

I'll try to get a better game for HoF later - with an observatory capital at least, and hopefully a nicer AI capital to capture as well. In the meantime I highly recommend everyone to try playing an aggressive Austria SV, it's the most fun I've had in this game in a while. Inland sea corner start might be easier than Great Plains, I've had trouble finding a good GP start that allows 3-4 self-founded cities, and I think there's less happiness available on GP, and the CSs don't have the greatest locations normally.

I think it's beneficial to have some friendly(-ish) AIs with a pretty high expansion bias, so that they settle next to CSs. Otherwise they won't really offer you much for a CS, I think the city value to them is based mostly (or solely) on proximity to their borders. Kinda makes me wonder if building a few settlers mid-game to sell newly founded cities is a good investment.

 

[fimbul]

Vadalaz - looking forward to seeing the HOF attempt!

Did some code diving (might not have gotten every detail correct):

City needs to be within 5 tiles of their city for max purchase. else its at least a 50% discount (uses 1/(x-4) from what i can see).

Cost formula approximately (440+200(pop)) + (lux owned by city)(960) + (strategics owned by city)(90) +(tiles owned in 2 and 3 ring)(60). Lux and tiles owned may vary a bit; i couldnt quite understand all the variables and looping.

AI will also only raze cities if unhappy or if Attila (provided he owns 3 cities)

 

[vadalaz]

Thanks for that fimbul! So in theory, a newly founded city on a lux sells for 1600 gold or 47-48 gpt, and it gets better if you're playing the Shoshone with all the extra tiles and resources it's likely to connect. And I assume that the cost is affected by your relationships with the AI, just like any other trade. This sort of devalues Austria's ability a bit, since even a super crappy city sells for that much. The units you get and the cities you actually keep are still very strong though.

I won the Inland Sea game on turn 193, and there's definitely room for improvement there. I had no observatories, didn't manage faith very well, missed Porcelain Tower and of course had the Piety opener. It's a good policy, but culture's really tight in these games, especially on Tradition.

Another mistake is that I should've been buying buildings much more aggressively. I had enough gold for 8 labs at Plastics, then to marry 3 more CSs after the World's Fair ended and buy labs in them as well, various buildings for production or boosts to GP generation, plus all the spaceship parts, and still had 350 gpt I could've traded for lump sums, as well as a ton of units and buildings I could sell if I needed to.

Going to make sure I get a HOF-eligible game now. I still have no idea how my settings got changed, but at least I have a general idea of how to approach the next game now.

----
After thinking some more about selling 1-pop cities to AIs, Venice as an opponent seems perfect for this. He can't expand himself, so there's going to be plenty of space to settle around him, and he has the double trade routes for really good gpt. Bonus points if he sends those trade routes to you for even more gold and some science.

 

[vadalaz]

Got a T196 HOF-eligible SV with the same setup and a very similar game overall: Tradition 4-city NC, then married a CS, took an AI capital, went on a marriage spree in the end and got 11 cities. I executed the endgame better, but had a rather slow Renaissance-Industrial period, as it took me too long to get Secularism and I had no RAs this time.

~T96 Education - T142 Sci Theory no bulb - T148 Radio 2x bulb - T168 Plastics 2x bulb. High post-Plastics bpt and the UB allows to bulb liberally in Modern era.

A few things went wrong: no religion, missed Oracle, got only one faith GS and one GE, my first level 3 spy died instantly, and I messed up the diplomacy in Medieval-Renaissance and got backstab-denounced by Persia. I married Buenos Aires, took Jakarta with CBs and received the stupid reckless expander penalty with Darius, so I had to invest quite a bit of gold into bribes to keep Persia busy. At that point I remembered about selling AIs 1-pop cities and built a few settlers to test it. The gpt was nice, but more important was raising the global average city number to lose the diplo debuff. I also settled on Copper to connect it for WLTKDs and sold that city to William so that I'd keep getting the luxury from him.

I recovered by Modern era and secured 3 DoFs, which solved all the problems I had. Fought uneventful wars with Byzantium and Arabia for some good peace deals and to prevent them from buying out my cultural CS allies. You get massive gpt and bpt as Austria in the last 30 turns of the game, but you have few tricks before that. With a strong start and good mid-game culture sub-190 should be very doable.

 

[vadalaz]

Arabia on GP/GPP is a lot of fun. Just submitted a T199 game as Arabia on Great Plains Plus to HOF.

Tradition 3-city NC ~turn 73, Chivalry 93, Education 103 stolen from Sejong. Made sure everyone hated my direct neighbour Askia, then killed him with Camels and went south to take Korean cities. If anyone is looking to try a warlike science game on Deity, Arabia should be the easiest and most consistent civ for it. You don't even need that many Camel Archers - I think I upgraded 7 initially and then built one more at some point.

William was doing very well and actually attacked me after he went Autocracy, which also put me at 10 unhappiness as I didn't have Universal Suffrage at the time. I was struggling with happiness quite a lot this game, and was forced to go for Bank happiness in Freedom first instead of +1 food specialists. Anyhow, with Logistics Camels plus a few Landsknechts I defended without too much trouble and got 4000 gold and 150 gpt from William in a peace deal. That was really helpful, because I ended up spending a lot of gold to buy two Broadcast Towers and all the prerequisite culture buildings. There were only two cultural CSs on the map, and it feels like that's not enough for wide Tradition on a standard map.

Sejong had a really strong religion with Desert Folklore, Mosques, Jesuit Education and two Holy Sites in his capital, so I got three public schools, a few mosques, a GE and two GSs with faith despite never even getting my own pantheon. Sejong didn't bother to improve enough tiles in his cities though and I didn't get that many buildings in those cities either, so getting them up to speed took quite a long time. Thankfully you also have Bazaars and seemingly unlimited gold with Arabia as long as you can keep a few DoFs going, so I could buy aqueducts and courthouses pretty quickly.

Pretty happy with how this game went despite all the issues I had. I think it's really nice when a new civ enters the sub-200 HOF Deity SV club.