[GS] Guide to fast Science Victory - Religious Russians

[KKirrin]

did two play throughs of the same game comparing work ethic v choral, these 2 games are super warped (I used both apoc and ss, amazing start, etc) and shouldn't be compared with Atex's original time, but I thought it still might be interesting for those using this guide and aiming for fast science wins

strategy is largely the same, great map, tundra peter, with 1 turning as the goal

choral music: t169 win, 23 cities

Spoiler Peter169 :

work ethic: t154 win, 25 cities

Spoiler Peter154 :

Tried to keep things mostly similar, with the wonders (pyramid, coli, kilwa, amund) all coming online around the same time (~40, 65, 85, and 130ish for amun iirc, but a blizzard screwed me in the 154 game). obviously the city placement is very different

i think most were already assuming that the work ethic change made it better than choral, and at least in SS mode, that definitely seems to be the case, because the extra lavra spam essentially picks you up enough early writers to compensate for the culture loss from choral music (so long as you have void singers/space for them).

there's a bit of tension as to whether it's better to grab the 100% holy site adjacency card before or after feudalism--i had great science thanks to yosemite, so i grabbed the adjacency card first which gave me time to hit the construction civic boost--and ended up with feudalism around t63 iirc. i'm not really sure what the better play is there, but i feel like ramping your faith/production is probably better than the builder charges, because with work ethic you're much less dependent on chops, at least early on where a 14 production lavra will power through anything

with better play (especially giving up on lavras and just chopping campuses a bit earlier, plus chopping a few extra cities to 10) I think this map could have probably been in the 140s. i didn't build oxford either (2 turns off in a perfect world), and the laser chop tech was dead last in the tech tree so that cost me a couple more.

i do think 130s is possible, but if you're playing HOF settings, that might have to look like a ton of tundra space with good luxuries (spices or something else that gives food), a long mountain range for adjacency, nan madol (i think an early suz here is probably king--being able to settle cities on tundra lakes and getting a free monument every time would easily make up the difference between choral/WE), anta, geneva and as many other scientific cities as possible (taruga seems especially promising). plus you'd need a good tech tree.

anyway, just some food for thought, and a wildly belated thanks for the guide! really good stuff!

 

[ATEX]

Interesting games! I do think the current meta changes does slow the game down a bit. Both the nerfing of CS, not getting gold for diplo favour, so Im unsure how fast we can get the Science Victories now. We just got a new record in HOF, that uses war much more than in my games. I think that could be key to speed up the games even more. Especially with diplo-gold out of the equation, you need another source of gold. Im testing Norway atm to see if they can get down in the 150-160s. I still think Russia is the strongest science civ, but we have other contenders that probably can as fast. The new hills map also is interesting to explore as the hills give insane production.

Are these games peacefull btw? Any thoughts on war speeding them up?

 

[Minou]

ATEX, I agree that Norway may be the best overall Civ for a HOF Science game, since they should be able to break the one tech per turn barrier by pillaging. Obviously that requires a violent game. I'm thinking of playing them myself - if I roll a map that looks likely to be HOF worthy I'll post it in case anyone else wants to try it too.

How "cheesy" you planning on playing with free cities? On the one end of the spectrum you could only pillage any city once, and on the other end you could let a few cities flip back and forth the entire game, repairing all their improvements and them pillaging and re-taking them. I tried this in a game a while back but I got bored halfway through and never finished it. But, I imagine doing this well (it is cheesy but it takes skill to max it out) would be the key to the fastest overall time.

I assume there is no rules against this in HOF?

 

[ATEX]

ATEX, I agree that Norway may be the best overall Civ for a HOF Science game, since they should be able to break the one tech per turn barrier by pillaging. Obviously that requires a violent game. I'm thinking of playing them myself - if I roll a map that looks likely to be HOF worthy I'll post it in case anyone else wants to try it too.

How "cheesy" you planning on playing with free cities? On the one end of the spectrum you could only pillage any city once, and on the other end you could let a few cities flip back and forth the entire game, repairing all their improvements and them pillaging and re-taking them. I tried this in a game a while back but I got bored halfway through and never finished it. But, I imagine doing this well (it is cheesy but it takes skill to max it out) would be the key to the fastest overall time.

I assume there is no rules against this in HOF?

No rules against cheesing it completely from start to end, but I dont think that is the fastest way. I think building a core of at least 10 cities to use for getting your boosts and districts up is needed. Then use the satelite cities with good lands to use as flip cites or go on a rampage and conqure the world. Im working on a HOF-game on it now. Was an attempt I abandon earlier, but I picked it up again after figuring out how to play it. Im aiming for some war and some cheesing. Looks promising so far, but I cant say how fast it is yet. It still requires a lot of planning, but it is much more laid back when you have the cash to buy whatever you need for boosts. Cash gives flexibility! =)

 

[Minou]

Yes, in my abandoned game my plan was basically cheese to the max. I had three or four cities flipping regularly but since I neglected to build up my core I was missing so many boosts it was canceling out a lot of the science and culture from pillaging. The issue is despite all the gold in the world you can't buy districts (until Reyna at least) and I think it would have been smarted to geta few more good cities before shifting to flip-mode. I will join you in testing the Modified Norwegian Cheese strategy but I play so slowly I hope I can just get done before the next patch!

 

[ATEX]

Yes, in my abandoned game my plan was basically cheese to the max. I had three or four cities flipping regularly but since I neglected to build up my core I was missing so many boosts it was canceling out a lot of the science and culture from pillaging. The issue is despite all the gold in the world you can't buy districts (until Reyna at least) and I think it would have been smarted to geta few more good cities before shifting to flip-mode. I will join you in testing the Modified Norwegian Cheese strategy but I play so slowly I hope I can just get done before the next patch!

Hehe I think I play even slower than you. With quite limited time to play, all my games goes over several patches it seems! Just realized my Norway-game now has the work ethic bug still active. So 3 of my core cities are now useless after getting their HS pillaged... Maybe we should create a separate thread for fast Norway science strategy?

 

[KKirrin]

yeah the diplo loss really hit hard, I didn’t realize quite how hard my economies were crutching on that.

one interesting bit is that it goes both ways though—With how far they devalued diplo in The ancient era many of the ai place almost no value on it. So you can often buy 20 diplo off gilga for 5-10 gold and hold onto it for when the rates go up, or if you have Kristina or another diplo civ in game, immediately flip it to them for ~9g each (even in ancient).

still, buying 3 spaceports didn’t feel doable to me in time, so I just used moksha to faith buy them and used gold for inspirations/speeding up cities.

and yeah both of my games were totally peaceful. I can def see war speeding it up on the right map—you already end up building enough of an army for boosts anyway, and my units just end up fog busting before too long.

pillaging with Norway is super interesting—I doubt I’m good enough at that sorta playstyle to really contribute much to that but I‘ll def play around with it

 

[The Highwayman]

Thank you all for sharing these strategies. They inspired me to try a fast Russia science win and here are the results of my first try. I got a T182 peaceful science victory on what I consider a great Russian map. Lots of quality tundra with reasonable growth within city borders along with a Natural Wonder in the cap.

Game is all standard setting except I dropped 1 AI civ and enabled Secret Societies mode.
Standard Seven Seas map
Deity difficulty
6 AIs (dropped 1)

Russia seems to have all the ingredients to be a top tier science civ:

• Monster faith economy maximizes the required classical era Monumentality where the bulk of expansion occurs. The incredible faith gen also trivializes the purchasing of GPs for instant era score or to snipe a GE for Wonder production.
• Incredible early and mid game production at low opportunity cost with Work Ethic + Dance of the Aurora. Sure, anyone can build Holy Sites in tundra, but Russia builds them faster and reaps more rewards from the settles. Since settlers are strictly purchased with faith after the third or fourth settler, all production rolls into districts, buildings, and Wonders as needed.
• Extra land upon settling saves so much gold and expedites the acquisition of resources and chops.
• Somewhat easier to get Classical golden age on average with Lavra, recruited prophet + religion, and settling at least one city on a tundra tile (where a 2/2/1 city base is guaranteed).
• Less likely to spawn in the center of the map, although my results varied.

Wonders:
Hanging Gardens - for era score and TS adjacency. Not needed otherwise.
Temple of Artemis - for era score and TS adjacency and growth in tundra city. Decent wonder in its own right, as it really helps a tundra heavy Russian city, but not needed otherwise.
Oracle - it was there at T90 and I could build it quickly, but didn't help too much. Probably better for other civs that cannot purchase GPs at will.
Colosseum - went Games and Rec before Drama and Poetry so I could start on the EC. Touched 8 cities for a nice boost to culture and amenities. I will strongly consider this in every game.
Kilwa - big boost to science and faith, as I got multiple suzes of each type. Only 1 culture suze though. Womp.
Forbidden - I was able to two turn this with Magnus chops around T105. Offers nice policy flexibility since some are permanent fixtures in the government.
Amundsen Scott - wasn't needed to 1 turn the late techs in this particular game, but I also had Geneva. So situationally really good.

Religion:
Work Ethic for monster production, Religious Colonization (can't spare the faith on missionaries and such), Cross Culture Dialog for extra science, Pagoda to fill out religion and sell diplo

Other Notes:
Government Plaza + Ancenstral Hall ASAP in cap. All of my expands took advantage of the free builder excluding the first settler out of the cap.
Aligned with Voidsingers for the first two promos. Extra faith and slots for works buffed Russia's early game tremendously. The second promotion boosts science, culture, and gold with the scaling faith.
Used Moksha to buy spaceports. Easily purchased 3. Could have purchased 3 or 4 more if I wanted due to the massive faith output.
Pingala with first two gov promos for the early culture. Secret societies makes this very strong with the timing.
I followed a similar build order to posts above - Scout, warrior, settler, Lavra, monument in cap. Lavra, monument, settler in second city. Purchased first builder and built additional units with ease once Work Ethic was obtained.
Gold economy was nothing exceptional. Selling resources to the AI carried the economy. Just need to wait to the AI is in Medieval to sell Diplo now. Not the biggest deal.
I had 3 nuclear power plants touching 13 of my 18 cities, including 2 of the spaceport cities. I could rush the space project that increases the power requirement with impunity. Aluminum was scarce, but I had 4 uranium mines so power was plentiful.

Thanks to @ATEX and @KKirrin specifically for the detailed strategies above.

Spoiler Russia T182 Science :

 

[ATEX]

Thank you all for sharing these strategies. They inspired me to try a fast Russia science win and here are the results of my first try. I got a T182 peaceful science victory on what I consider a great Russian map. Lots of quality tundra with reasonable growth within city borders along with a Natural Wonder in the cap.

Game is all standard setting except I dropped 1 AI civ and enabled Secret Societies mode.
Standard Seven Seas map
Deity difficulty
6 AIs (dropped 1)

Russia seems to have all the ingredients to be a top tier science civ:

• Monster faith economy maximizes the required classical era Monumentality where the bulk of expansion occurs. The incredible faith gen also trivializes the purchasing of GPs for instant era score or to snipe a GE for Wonder production.
• Incredible early and mid game production at low opportunity cost with Work Ethic + Dance of the Aurora. Sure, anyone can build Holy Sites in tundra, but Russia builds them faster and reaps more rewards from the settles. Since settlers are strictly purchased with faith after the third or fourth settler, all production rolls into districts, buildings, and Wonders as needed.
• Extra land upon settling saves so much gold and expedites the acquisition of resources and chops.
• Somewhat easier to get Classical golden age on average with Lavra, recruited prophet + religion, and settling at least one city on a tundra tile (where a 2/2/1 city base is guaranteed).
• Less likely to spawn in the center of the map, although my results varied.

Wonders:
Hanging Gardens - for era score and TS adjacency. Not needed otherwise.
Temple of Artemis - for era score and TS adjacency and growth in tundra city. Decent wonder in its own right, as it really helps a tundra heavy Russian city, but not needed otherwise.
Oracle - it was there at T90 and I could build it quickly, but didn't help too much. Probably better for other civs that cannot purchase GPs at will.
Colosseum - went Games and Rec before Drama and Poetry so I could start on the EC. Touched 8 cities for a nice boost to culture and amenities. I will strongly consider this in every game.
Kilwa - big boost to science and faith, as I got multiple suzes of each type. Only 1 culture suze though. Womp.
Forbidden - I was able to two turn this with Magnus chops around T105. Offers nice policy flexibility since some are permanent fixtures in the government.
Amundsen Scott - wasn't needed to 1 turn the late techs in this particular game, but I also had Geneva. So situationally really good.

Religion:
Work Ethic for monster production, Religious Colonization (can't spare the faith on missionaries and such), Cross Culture Dialog for extra science, Pagoda to fill out religion and sell diplo

Other Notes:
Government Plaza + Ancenstral Hall ASAP in cap. All of my expands took advantage of the free builder excluding the first settler out of the cap.
Aligned with Voidsingers for the first two promos. Extra faith and slots for works buffed Russia's early game tremendously. The second promotion boosts science, culture, and gold with the scaling faith.
Used Moksha to buy spaceports. Easily purchased 3. Could have purchased 3 or 4 more if I wanted due to the massive faith output.
Pingala with first two gov promos for the early culture. Secret societies makes this very strong with the timing.
I followed a similar build order to posts above - Scout, warrior, settler, Lavra, monument in cap. Lavra, monument, settler in second city. Purchased first builder and built additional units with ease once Work Ethic was obtained.
Gold economy was nothing exceptional. Selling resources to the AI carried the economy. Just need to wait to the AI is in Medieval to sell Diplo now. Not the biggest deal.
I had 3 nuclear power plants touching 13 of my 18 cities, including 2 of the spaceport cities. I could rush the space project that increases the power requirement with impunity. Aluminum was scarce, but I had 4 uranium mines so power was plentiful.

Thanks to @ATEX and @KKirrin specifically for the detailed strategies above.

Spoiler Russia T182 Science :

View attachment 574043

Well done! Congrats on a very fast game. I was wondering about the map template. What made you pick this map?

 

[The Highwayman]

Thank you! You all have revitalized my Civ 6 fever. I chose seven seas for the expansion room potential. Not sure how it stacks up vs lakes, but it can allow for some nice isolated starts. I also enjoy the mix of islands and water so most bonuses and game mechanics can be leveraged.

 

[ATEX]

I did not try that template yet. But i agree that you want some lakes for the sea-boosts.

 

[EscapedGoat]

Thank you all for sharing these strategies. They inspired me to try a fast Russia science win and here are the results of my first try. I got a T182 peaceful science victory on what I consider a great Russian map. Lots of quality tundra with reasonable growth within city borders along with a Natural Wonder in the cap.

Game is all standard setting except I dropped 1 AI civ and enabled Secret Societies mode.
Standard Seven Seas map
Deity difficulty
6 AIs (dropped 1)

Russia seems to have all the ingredients to be a top tier science civ:

• Monster faith economy maximizes the required classical era Monumentality where the bulk of expansion occurs. The incredible faith gen also trivializes the purchasing of GPs for instant era score or to snipe a GE for Wonder production.
• Incredible early and mid game production at low opportunity cost with Work Ethic + Dance of the Aurora. Sure, anyone can build Holy Sites in tundra, but Russia builds them faster and reaps more rewards from the settles. Since settlers are strictly purchased with faith after the third or fourth settler, all production rolls into districts, buildings, and Wonders as needed.
• Extra land upon settling saves so much gold and expedites the acquisition of resources and chops.
• Somewhat easier to get Classical golden age on average with Lavra, recruited prophet + religion, and settling at least one city on a tundra tile (where a 2/2/1 city base is guaranteed).
• Less likely to spawn in the center of the map, although my results varied.

Wonders:
Hanging Gardens - for era score and TS adjacency. Not needed otherwise.
Temple of Artemis - for era score and TS adjacency and growth in tundra city. Decent wonder in its own right, as it really helps a tundra heavy Russian city, but not needed otherwise.
Oracle - it was there at T90 and I could build it quickly, but didn't help too much. Probably better for other civs that cannot purchase GPs at will.
Colosseum - went Games and Rec before Drama and Poetry so I could start on the EC. Touched 8 cities for a nice boost to culture and amenities. I will strongly consider this in every game.
Kilwa - big boost to science and faith, as I got multiple suzes of each type. Only 1 culture suze though. Womp.
Forbidden - I was able to two turn this with Magnus chops around T105. Offers nice policy flexibility since some are permanent fixtures in the government.
Amundsen Scott - wasn't needed to 1 turn the late techs in this particular game, but I also had Geneva. So situationally really good.

Religion:
Work Ethic for monster production, Religious Colonization (can't spare the faith on missionaries and such), Cross Culture Dialog for extra science, Pagoda to fill out religion and sell diplo

Other Notes:
Government Plaza + Ancenstral Hall ASAP in cap. All of my expands took advantage of the free builder excluding the first settler out of the cap.
Aligned with Voidsingers for the first two promos. Extra faith and slots for works buffed Russia's early game tremendously. The second promotion boosts science, culture, and gold with the scaling faith.
Used Moksha to buy spaceports. Easily purchased 3. Could have purchased 3 or 4 more if I wanted due to the massive faith output.
Pingala with first two gov promos for the early culture. Secret societies makes this very strong with the timing.
I followed a similar build order to posts above - Scout, warrior, settler, Lavra, monument in cap. Lavra, monument, settler in second city. Purchased first builder and built additional units with ease once Work Ethic was obtained.
Gold economy was nothing exceptional. Selling resources to the AI carried the economy. Just need to wait to the AI is in Medieval to sell Diplo now. Not the biggest deal.
I had 3 nuclear power plants touching 13 of my 18 cities, including 2 of the spaceport cities. I could rush the space project that increases the power requirement with impunity. Aluminum was scarce, but I had 4 uranium mines so power was plentiful.

Thanks to @ATEX and @KKirrin specifically for the detailed strategies above.

Spoiler Russia T182 Science :

View attachment 574043

I finished a similar game, work ethic + religious colonization based, around 20 cities, mid 180s, could have been vastly faster by optimizing the space projects, I even went for Reyna instead of Moksha (mistake cause I had around 1000 faith/turn and lacked the gold to buy spaceports) and hard built all space projects. I also "wasted" a lot of great writers, artists and musicians since I had nowhere to put them. Better planning could have changed that.

If in the expansion phase upon founding a city you immediately chop in the Lavra with the worker, you get fantastic production right off the go (obviously you go straight for +100% adjacency bonus). Then you go monument-shrine-temple in every newbuilt city, extremely powerful since it gets the snowball rolling on faith. Reach size 4 asap for campus. Food is a bit tough in tundra, try to settle with some decent food tiles in range or use caravans + possibly guardwas for food. You can reach size 10 this way.

Personally i prefer to get the government plaza in city nr2, as I want a second district in the capital most of the times IMO and I'm just hung up on Pingala+Oracle combo for the ridiculous levels of GPP early on....probably sub-optimal, but fun to grab some early scientists+great merchants. Should have plenty of time to get the AH up before expansion wave anyway.

This seems like one of the most powerful peaceful strategies you could do honestly.

 

[History_Guy]

@ATEX thanks for making this post. Really informative.
I've taken a long break from Civ so its nice to know the current state of optimal play. I can see that most previous strategies are now patched in one way or another.

Seeing a victory done in 157 brings some hope back. What worries me though is having to settle 20 cities. Its exactly what frustrated me with nerfs after R&F - making it too rare to get a good map.
Are the previous strategies on deliberately hitting a dark age with Russia to get a +75% science boost still relevant? Right before that big R&F nerf Russia emerged as pretty much the only contended for a super fast SV. Any other civs that could have viable strategies now?

I'll have to familiarise with all the changes in the last few updates.
Thanks again for your post. Brings back memories.

@civtrader6 any chance of you making some more A+ Tier videos? Also I’ve seen a Chinese strategy of using Japan/Faith/culture 150 something SV. You should check it out.

thanks,
History

 

[Victoria]

@civtrader6 any chance of you making some more A+ Tier videos? Also I’ve seen a Chinese strategy of using Japan/Faith/culture 150 something SV. You should check it out.

thanks,
History

He has been out of action for a long time, little hope there.
These SV’s do depend on specific game setups, I played a game last night with no science CS which pretty much screwed things. Even using a scout to steal a builder at the start helps so much.
Is what you want to see a cheesy 150 regardless of setup?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

He has been out of action for a long time, little hope there.
These SV’s do depend on specific game setups, I played a game last night with no science CS which pretty much screwed things. Even using a scout to steal a builder at the start helps so much.
Is what you want to see a cheesy 150 regardless of setup?

Does a sub T150 standard science win (with all 3 expansions ofc, CivTrader6s vids do not count) even exist on YouTube? There is only 1 recent video, but all settings are cooked:

 

[Victoria]

but all settings are cooked:

 

[ATEX]

Does a sub T150 standard science win (with all 3 expansions ofc, CivTrader6s vids do not count) even exist on YouTube? There is only 1 recent video, but all settings are cooked:

Well a sub 150 all standard science win is pretty hard to achieve at all! I think you will have to go Chineese if you want this fast speeds. But I do think it is strange that no one took the ball that Civtrader6 dropped with his videos focused on speed and efficiency. Btw potato made a video based on this tread, but his focus is not really on optimizing.

 

[The Highwayman]

Well a sub 150 all standard science win is pretty hard to achieve at all! I think you will have to go Chineese if you want this fast speeds. But I do think it is strange that no one took the ball that Civtrader6 dropped with his videos focused on speed and efficiency. Btw potato made a video based on this tread, but his focus is not really on optimizing.

Have you tried the new Khmer in a fast science victory? I'm wondering how close they are to Russia now with their added juice. I recently scored a personal best with them - a T179 science on Deity which bested my Russia game by 3 turns. I think they have the ingredients with their mass faith and the potential big gains from work ethic and intrinsic culture from the Prasat. It would be interesting to see what top players such as yourself could do.

 

[Bangau]

Have you tried the new Khmer in a fast science victory? I'm wondering how close they are to Russia now with their added juice. I recently scored a personal best with them - a T179 science on Deity which bested my Russia game by 3 turns. I think they have the ingredients with their mass faith and the potential big gains from work ethic and intrinsic culture from the Prasat. It would be interesting to see what top players such as yourself could do.

What strategy did you use for the Khmer? Would be interested to see if they can challenge Peter in the faith science game.

 

[The Highwayman]

What strategy did you use for the Khmer? Would be interested to see if they can challenge Peter in the faith science game.

I will reload my game later to refresh my memory and do a write up on it this weekend. I think the Khmer are with Russia in the S tier when it comes to fast, peaceful science victory. Both civs are invited to the meta party.