I've been playing on emperor for awhile now, and I have at least one of each type of victory: science, culture, diplomacy, and domination. But I'm finding that my victories are a little slower than others describe, and I suspect some of this may be due to my scientific output.
As a test, I decided to go all out for a science victory with the Inca. I got 6 pretty good cities going (including Egypt's capital), and I quickly amassed a huge tech lead over the AI. By the end of the game I was producing 1800 bpt, but I still didn't win until turn 328 (at turn 320 I had enough votes for a diplomatic victory but bypassed it for the sake of the experiment). Reading online it seems that others consider science victories on emperor below 300 turns to be rather routine, but I can't get anywhere near this. I have of course achieved science victories with Babylon and Korea as well, but 328 with the Inca is my fastest science victory to date.
I read as many threads on fast science victories as I could find to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Several people have proposed the following benchmarks:
Education: turn 110
Scientific Theory: turn 160
Plastics: turn 200
My initial suspicion is that these people are either lying or playing a different game. Only with a pretty lucky start can I get education below turn 120, I never get scientific theory much below turn 200, and plastics by turn 250 might be possible if nobody declares war on me in spite of the low tech military that one must maintain in order to follow the science beelines. In other words, my technological development is somewhere around 30% slower than optimal, which I don't understand.
I started a game as Babylon to see if I could get anywhere near these benchmarks. My starting position was pretty good: my capital had a river, two unique luxuries, lots of food, and some hills. I was also quite distant from the nearest AI and had plenty of room to settle two good cities (one by a river with hills, another on the coast with 3 fish). I sent two food caravans to the new cities and filled out tradition rather quickly thanks to the cultural ruin. I had to slow down growth for only a few turns while I got my luxuries up and finished some circuses. My tech order was AH - Pottery - Trapping - Writing - Philosophy beeline - Education beeline. Given how smoothly everything was going and given the nice science boost from the academy that I got after writing, I should have been ahead of the target. Instead I got Education on turn 116, i.e. 5% slower than the benchmark. I'm not going to continue until I can figure out what I'm doing wrong, but Scientific Theory at turn 200 looks optimistic, let alone turn 160.
So are the benchmarks above a load of crap, or am I missing something fundamental?
As a test, I decided to go all out for a science victory with the Inca. I got 6 pretty good cities going (including Egypt's capital), and I quickly amassed a huge tech lead over the AI. By the end of the game I was producing 1800 bpt, but I still didn't win until turn 328 (at turn 320 I had enough votes for a diplomatic victory but bypassed it for the sake of the experiment). Reading online it seems that others consider science victories on emperor below 300 turns to be rather routine, but I can't get anywhere near this. I have of course achieved science victories with Babylon and Korea as well, but 328 with the Inca is my fastest science victory to date.
I read as many threads on fast science victories as I could find to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Several people have proposed the following benchmarks:
Education: turn 110
Scientific Theory: turn 160
Plastics: turn 200
My initial suspicion is that these people are either lying or playing a different game. Only with a pretty lucky start can I get education below turn 120, I never get scientific theory much below turn 200, and plastics by turn 250 might be possible if nobody declares war on me in spite of the low tech military that one must maintain in order to follow the science beelines. In other words, my technological development is somewhere around 30% slower than optimal, which I don't understand.
I started a game as Babylon to see if I could get anywhere near these benchmarks. My starting position was pretty good: my capital had a river, two unique luxuries, lots of food, and some hills. I was also quite distant from the nearest AI and had plenty of room to settle two good cities (one by a river with hills, another on the coast with 3 fish). I sent two food caravans to the new cities and filled out tradition rather quickly thanks to the cultural ruin. I had to slow down growth for only a few turns while I got my luxuries up and finished some circuses. My tech order was AH - Pottery - Trapping - Writing - Philosophy beeline - Education beeline. Given how smoothly everything was going and given the nice science boost from the academy that I got after writing, I should have been ahead of the target. Instead I got Education on turn 116, i.e. 5% slower than the benchmark. I'm not going to continue until I can figure out what I'm doing wrong, but Scientific Theory at turn 200 looks optimistic, let alone turn 160.
So are the benchmarks above a load of crap, or am I missing something fundamental?