I mostly play space race/domination hybrids, mostly on Monarch, to keep it fun but fair.
I run a heavily modified DoC though (crusades, many more native cities spawns in africa, south america, siberia, manchuria, religions techs also spawn great prophets, a lot more food in china/india leading to packed but highly populous subcontinents, more production in europe and japan, more cities spawn in europe like warsaw, santiago or novgorod etc), and a 10%-ish decrease in spawn date (usa 1700, netherlands 1500), due excessive tech trading with the ai that makes the new spawns underpowered. All these changes are aimed at helping the AI and the overall historical flavor(better city placement, expansion, more historical population, etc)
Some dates (luck is required):
- early 1700s with rome (ignored much of western rome -> went hard at greece, anatolia, egypt, north africa -> refused the arab/moor flips -> steamrolled feudal europe). Monarch.
- 1800 space win for england/france on monarch.
- 1850 for heavily engineered japan games
- 1750 with weird china tactics (befriend mongols, scouts to india/greece, absolutely ignore historic goals, got lucky with a double shrine in patna, conquer jerusalem for dome of the rock after mongols attack middle east)
- 1850 russia (aggressive trading with byzantines and the chinese + great spy in france)
- Korea migration to Australia might be competitve, never tried it.
I'm not inclined to mechanical optimizations (SE economy aligned bulbs, cities swapping resource tiles, etc). A proficient user could cut these times even further down.
General ideas:
- you might need a couple of runs so things align properly.
- pick any large civ (China, Japan, England, France, Russia, Spain, Turks, Rome, Arabia, India etc) that has access to fast traders. Trade (both routes and trades) is essential.
- Rome and China are the only ancient civs that really translate well into tech games. Tamils are also doable but they are tricky and require a lot of luck for competitive space race times.
- eye shrines, they bring in a lot of money, stability be damned. Jerusalem with shrine of the rock can financially cover an obscene amount of blobbing (looking at France/England/Spain/Russia/Portugal/China).
- trade early and often. Trade at a deficit. Any trade that is not obscenely in your disfavor is a good trade.
- trade with a purpose, especially with belligerent civs that can slow down problematic war mongers ( e.g. turks against arabia, mongols against china, vikings against hre). You don't want decisive wars, just balance of power, albion-style.
- try to make good use of unstable but fast tech civs like greece / vikings / poland / netherlands.
- rush (bulb/trade/whatever) to renaissance for the many free buildings. The power spike is bonkers.
- using great people for rushing like this ensures you can keep golden ages for later, after you blobbed (whole empire benefits then).
- it also ensures that you use the golden ages when critical large empire wonders (- the +1 trade route per city wonder on metallurgy, statue of liberty, westminster) can be rushed.
- try to manipulate power blocs against one another. E.g Russia vs Turks needs little if any push. China vs Japan. England vs Vikings. Civ4 AI has quite a predictable behavior. This will make it easy to prioritize tech over units.
Island nations (england, japan, usa) can get away with murder here, i'm talking building militias just for the happiness bonus from monarchy.
- after reniassance, get big as fast as possible. Prioritize the best land (shrines, egypt, usa/canada, south africa, east australia, brazil, argentina, manchuria, mexico).
- rushing metallurgy can lead to a very early industrial era, but take care of stability as you'll be far behind in social techs and you'll get the anachronistic civics stability debuff.
- rush eiffel tower for the non-stop 3-man golden ages.
- industrial parks are great but watch out for the unhealthiness as it can cut pop (thus science) down.
- settlers come with additional buildings per era, use them after each era advance from renaissance going up.
- build buildings when civics give you a building% bonus. It compounds a lot over time.
- prioritize useful wonders, ignore fluff wonders (e.g. st thomas/ kremlin >>> notre dame, sistine chapel).
From the industrial era it's pretty much the same, with some exceptions (china great spy'ing france e.g).
Personal notes:
Inca/Congo/Australian Korea space race games are massively fun if you're into underdogs. Their modifiers are crazy good.
