Hello strangers,
I would like to ask a question if I may?
I'm interested to see that you guys are using the maximum science research combined with building science buildings. I wonder why you guys favour this over the 0% research strategy where once you have that many cities, you can set all scientists and still be able to achieve 4 turn research. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?
Also I've never understood the Spaceship victory type, is just for a bit of variation over the conquest/domination type?
Speaking for myself, and taking the last question first -- the Spaceship Vic has
always been the one I go for in my games (although admittedly not nearly as systematically and singlemindedly as we pursued it here)! Partly this is a holdover from playing CivDOS for years, where Spaceship, 100% Conquest, or 'Histo' were the only possible VCs. I usually played on the Earth-Map, and I always found the Conquest VC to be self-limiting, or at least 'unfun', due to the various limitations/bugs. So I usually aimed for Space instead.
But this preference is also personal: I've always loved science fiction, and always preferred building to destroying. (I 'graduated' to playing CivDOS after several years of playing SimCity2000 -- having also played the original SimCity for several years after it first came out). And I have always considered the Space VC to be the 'canonical good ending' for any Civ game -- it is after all the only one for which the devs bothered to put together victory-movies (in the versions I've played, anyway).
So for me, aiming for Space has never been just for a bit of variety, it's the be-all and end-all -- anything else is a let-down.
Regarding the 0% research gambit:
As I understand it, that's generally for really high-level play, where the AI's research/production advantages mean you have little to no hope of researching anything first (or building
any Wonders); and/or all-out war games (e.g. on Pangaea-Maps), where no-one will sell you anything because everyone hates you. In those situations, you keep up with the AI by banking your gold, building lots of mil-units, and then buying, brokering and/or extorting techs ('pointy-stick research'
) instead of researching yourself. And you aim to win your games as early as possible, to minimise the risk of runaway AIs, which usually means going for Dom/Conquest.
But to win a Space-Vic, you have to be committed to playing a long game, because you will need to go nearly all the way through the entire tech-tree -- which means that the AICivs will be going a long way through it too. So you can't afford to be a tech-follower: you
must aim to become the tech-leader, and as early as possible, or you are going to lose (whether by Conquest, Domination, a UN-vote, or -- horrors -- an AICiv launching their Ship first). And you simply cannot become a tech-leader by farming alone, because the number of farms that you'd need, and the size that you'd need them, would almost certainly be enough to trigger a Domination VC before you even got to the Modern-Age.
Case in point: This game, an Emperor-level Space-race on a 70% Standard-size Continents map.
Modern-Age techs are costing us between 7500 and 9500 beakers as the tech-leader (first to research). Averaging that at 8500 beakers, to make that in 4T, we'd need 8500/(3*4) =~ 708 Scientists, i.e. 236 Pop5-6 farms, each supporting a minimum 3 Scientists (not widely possible until after Steam/rails -- until then, only 2 Scientists sustainable per Pop5-6 town). Just in terms of the Settlers needed (30s, 20f), building those farms would cost the equivalent of 236*30 = 7080s and 236*20 = 4720f
at minimum.
And if all those farms are ICS'd, that's 236*4 = 944 land-tiles' worth of farms
at minimum. On a Standard-size 70%-water map, you have around 5500*0.7 = 1650 land tiles, some of which (Tundra, Desert) will only support Pop1 farms, and some of which (Mountains, Volcanoes) you won't be able to build on at all; 944 / 1650 = 57% of the land tiles already, leaving only 145 spare land-tiles for your core (i.e. ~12 cities working 12 tiles each) before you'd hit the 66%-territory mark (1089 / 1650 land-tiles). (With >1200 Pop-points just in your farms, you'd probably be well over the 66%-Pop mark already).
Sure, you could disable the Dom-VC, but I think that's kind of cheating, since warfare/expansion is probably what the Civ3 AI does best (it doesn't make long-term plans a-tall). We enabled all the standard single-player VCs in this game. For a Space-without-triggering-Dom VC, you therefore need to maximise your core science output, which means
- Choosing a Scientific Civ (cheap Libs+Unis, free tech every new era)
- Researching at 100%Sci as much as possible, along the less-favoured tech-paths (for monopolistic tech-trading and/or Wonder-prebuilding), e.g.
- Ancient Age: Alphabet --> Republic
- Middle Age: Monotheism --> Astro
- Industrial Age: Steam+Med --> Electronics
- Ignoring all optional techs (except where absolutely essential, e.g. Republic to maximise commerce while still allowing some free military)
- Building Courthouses to minimise corruption/waste, Libs+Unis to maximise research output, and Markets for happiness
- Fighting short wars (to minimise war-weariness and riots) with minimal forces (to minimise unit-costs)
- Trying to build trade/ science/ production-boosting Wonders (e.g. Colossus, CopsObs, ToE, Hoover, SETI, Internet)
And that's what we did.
You can read all about it in the turnlogs/discussion, but the long and short is that by leveraging all our advantages, and even with a few seriously bad mistakes in the early turns (the worst probably being the cocked-up Republic-slingshot which became a 'CodeofLaws-slingshot' instead), the game is now effectively won: we can expect to launch our Ship in about 1630AD-ish, with no AICiv even close to being able to stop us. Admittedly, that's not as early a date as Lanzelot would have liked, but it's
much earlier than I ever would have thought possible -- before I started playing this SG.
And this was at Emperor level, so I am now fairly well convinced that winning a Space-Race at DG, with a comparable date, should also be eminently possible, provided that the game is played a little(!) cleaner than we did.
but the turn itself shouldn't consist of more than placing some more new farms, and maybe joining some Slaves to some of the established farms and turning them into Scientists. And my last turn should be more of the same ... so long as no-one else DoWs us!
Now I have to MM half the farms again! 
What can I say, it was after 1am... Sorry Lanzelot. Edited.
)
All techs done in 4, right? So whose turn is it now? If neither MrRandomGuy nor CommandoBob want to take it, it's me again?!
Unless there's anyone on the team who hasn't yet been rewarded with the Spaceship-victory movie at the end of a game (seeing it on YouTube doesn't count!) 
