[BERT] Speed win theorycrafting

[thegenk]

So I just finished a game of turn 153, my fastest to date (PAC, Apollo, Primordial, Terran, Massive, Emancipation Gate), and started thinking about just how fast it might be possible to finish a non-domination game with optimal settings and play plus some good luck.

I definitely could have shaved 5 turns off of that game with cleaner play, and the settings could be tuned too. For one thing, to go slightly off-topic, there didn't seem to be nearly enough Meteor Craters to compensate for the added size of the map (also, I'd bumped it to 10 sponsors, which has a very real artifact cost).

In any case, I'm thinking something like PAC, Apollo, Primordial (Fungal?), Atlantean, Standard played really tightly plus some good artifact luck could yield something like a turn 135 or 140 Supremacy win. Also, Hutama probably needs to be in the game. Thoughts?

 

[oneproduct]

In the spirit of theorycrafting, I'd be curious to hear why you chose certain settings.

Like why Primordial (Fungal?)
Why PAC?
Why Terran/Atlantean

Would give me some food for thought. I'll take a stab at this at some point.

I'd like to hear your strategy/tech choices to see if I could improve on it. Unless you prefer it to be a competition where the strategy is a secret.

I feel that Al Falah's city developments are quite strong when you have good conditions to just sit around and churn out science.

 

[Olodune]

Primordial and Fungal biomes have marvel quests that act as significant economic accelerators. Fungal quest gives +15% food carryover + massive growth tiles next to the giant fungus. Primordial gives +25% Production. A perfect map likely favours fungal.

135 is still achievable (post patch) on standard speed with a really nice map, I think. I'd bet on ARC, or Polystralia with ARC in the game.

 

[thegenk]

Agreed re Fungal. I like that Primordial is more predictable, but if you're really trying to push the envelope is probably Fungal.

My early game strategy revolves around the trait that gives science for each agreement you initiate, so it relies on a critical mass of capital asap. I think PAC has a slight edge on INTEGR to this end, but that could definitely be wrong (the wonder effects themselves are marginal at best). The capital generation is almost certainly a bit better, but PAC does constrain your early tech path a fair amount.

Anything but Protean just so you don't have to worry about large land armies, since we definitely want Apollo (again to maximize opportunities to generate capital).

I'm tempted to try ARC, hadn't considered using covert ops as the science engine...

Also, re AF, I've yet to really master integrating city developments into my games. That also could definitely be the way to go, but I feel like trying to optimize that would hurt my brain.

 

[MAMoob]

Science for agreements is a good way to boost your earlygame science but it costs a ton of capital (spent both on trait and on agreements) and prevents you from using other stuff like ambitious (which is also pretty great with anyone) or even subtle in its place so i'm not sure if it's optimal.

With Machine Assisted Free Will nerf I'd give the edge to ARC as they would be able to tech faster than pretty much anyone. My best time with them is 138 turns so far, but that was pre patch, with both QP and MAFW built. It surely can be beaten even in the new patch though as my play was far from optimal (and MAFW nerf does not affect ARC top speed that much).

 

[Olodune]

but I feel like trying to optimize that would hurt my brain.

I think the turn order processing has a trade route recalculation before the growth -> production steps. This means that to really micro correctly in the mid game would cause some brain pain.

How the trade routes work with developments is also a little strange -> a city with low food, high hammers often doesn't benefit as much as it should from agri developments after the trade route rebalancing (which will reduce food once agri dev is in progress).

 

[thegenk]

Ok, I'm convinced. Going to fire up an ARC game and see how it feels!

Also, virtues haven't been discussed yet. I tend to go settler>finish prosperity first tier>open industry>10 in prosperity (explorer bonus+basic resource health)>Knowledge. I gather that going so heavily into Prosperity isn't standard. Is there something to be said for hitting positive health bonuses earlier, or am I just costing myself hammers and science over the course of the game?

 

[BroOfTheSun]

Ok, I'm convinced. Going to fire up an ARC game and see how it feels!

Also, virtues haven't been discussed yet. I tend to go settler>finish prosperity first tier>open industry>10 in prosperity (explorer bonus+basic resource health)>Knowledge. I gather that going so heavily into Prosperity isn't standard. Is there something to be said for hitting positive health bonuses earlier, or am I just costing myself hammers and science over the course of the game?

There may be some benefit to go deep in prosperity for the health benefits, so that you can get the % bonus to science for high positive health. This definitely sounds like a legit strat (I've tested it before with some success), but I'm not good enough to know if this is better than going Industry. I think the trade-offs are using Prosperity to get the % bonus to science and slightly taller cities vs. finishing buildings faster with Industry and switching to science city development sooner for the flat bonus. By belief is that prosperity is better for more population to work academies, and combine that with the % bonus from high health to get loads of BPT.

Anyways, the only reason I play BERT now is to get faster win times. So I am very interested in this topic. I'm struggling just to get below 200 on a standard map, standard speed (average about 210-220 win times), and I'm curious how anyone does it. How do you get such fast win times, even with optimal conditions? With academy spam, it seems like there's something other players are doing to get to academies faster, or build them faster than I can think of. My current fastest win time is with Brasilia, Contact Victory at 203 turns, where I specifically looked for progenitor ruins to get the first piece of the puzzle. That game was just to test out the Contact Victory, since I haven't won from that VC yet.

Is there a recording out there that shows someone getting to a good finish time? I just want to see how it's done. Don't care about commentary or anything like that either.

 

[Olodune]

Acken recorded a t175 Harmony victory here very shortly after BERT release. I think a ~t160 Emancipation is doable on nearly any map. Of course much faster is possible

 

[BroOfTheSun]

Acken recorded a t175 Harmony victory here very shortly after BERT release. I think a ~t160 Emancipation is doable on nearly any map. Of course much faster is possible

Thanks! I will check this out.

 

[thegenk]

For the record, I also more or less ignore academies now - the build time just seems prohibitive. I feel like the turns you cut off by skipping the tech more than make up for the science you lose. You're definitely right that deep Prosperity would benefit more from them than Industry, though. I may need to try an Industry game too!

 

[BroOfTheSun]

From watching half of Acken's playthru, what I picked up (and what I am not doing in my games), is getting most of 1st tier prosperity, and his choices in Traits. That game had great conditions in it too, where he had Hutama in game for the extra trade routes, and got the pre-patched, OP 33% science wonder from artifacts. Other than that, I feel like I follow a similar play style in my games.

Anyways, I'm going to try games now with getting 1st tier Prosperity to help with quicker starts, and hopefully faster snowballing for better win times.

 

[oneproduct]

I just tried playing as ARC and it seems that science through spying is pretty unbeatable. At one point I was making 3 x 600 science every 2 turns with a... 70% success rate is it? So that's like 630 science per turn via stealing on average if the spies don't get forced out of the city or killed. If you use the generate random seed option and save scum you can make that 900ish with 3 spies. (what's the formula for the science reward from spying? Sometimes I got 600ish sometimes around half that)

That was with ARC's trait, subtlety and the artifact that reduces spy operation time by 25%. I feel that getting extra spies via virtues is probably a top tier strategy that will far surpass any health bonuses or the like you'd get from the lower end of virtue trees.

Virtue strategy was:
prosperity to free colonist
industry to internal trade routes
might to extra affinity

Tech strategy was:
get labs
get networks
get academies
get +1 science on academy
get affinity techs + lasercom

I also happened to have the 50% worked speed increase artifact, so that coupled with a few quest rewards had academies being built in 7 turns. Most of my cities were just developing science rather than building anything.

For traits:
internal trade routes to max
1 subtlety (one point wonder)
ARC's trait to max
subtlety to max
(at some point I got Hutama's trade routes thing)

After you get all the tech you need, the spies can steal economy while the emancipation gate is building and you can buy angels for it.

I actually messed up a lot (forgot lasercom, forgot to get petroleum for it notably, spent virtues in silly places before I realized how powerful spy agents are) so I'm going to replay it. I was probably headed towards a turn 160ish win as I got supremacy 15 at around turn 125 and it would take about 20 turns to build + 15 turns to activate or so.

 

[MAMoob]

You can get 3 extra spies from building upgrades (CEL cradle, feedside hub and command center) and you can usually get one on top of it via quest. Two if you're lucky with quests.

 

[oneproduct]

Thanks. I thought I remembered that being the case, but couldn't remember where it unlocked.

 

[CountAccountant]

Does anyone else spend their first three policies for science from alien-killing before going into prosperity? Or is that usually suboptimal?

 

[Ryika]

Does anyone else spend their first three policies for science from alien-killing before going into prosperity? Or is that usually suboptimal?

Suboptimal for peaceful strategies as it doesn't get you anywhere. You unlock a lot of stuff but your empire won't be developed enough to make use of the stuff that you unlock.

Starting with the Free Settler and followed by Alien (aka mainly Hydracoral) Farming (while also using the +Culture Diplo Trait) works relatively good for water-based empires though.

But nothing really beats explorer spam early on. Get like... 5-7 explorers, the +3 Charges Virtue from Prosperity, don't touch aliens at all and you can gather up a ton of stuff without much of a problem, sometimes pushing you to Affinity 5, while also unlocking some of the really strong artifact-bonuses.

 

[CountAccountant]

Suboptimal for peaceful strategies as it doesn't get you anywhere. You unlock a lot of stuff but your empire won't be developed enough to make use of the stuff that you unlock.

Starting with the Free Settler and followed by Alien (aka mainly Hydracoral) Farming (while also using the +Culture Diplo Trait) works relatively good for water-based empires though.

But nothing really beats explorer spam early on. Get like... 5-7 explorers, the +3 Charges Virtue from Prosperity, don't touch aliens at all and you can gather up a ton of stuff without much of a problem, sometimes pushing you to Affinity 5, while also unlocking some of the really strong artifact-bonuses.

This was really helpful to me, thanks for posting.

 

[Azedenkae]

With virtues (and science, and actually many other things), it can be very important to ensure that you manually select your explorer and have it initiate the last turn of an expedition, as that will make sure that you deal with the results BEFORE the next turn. If you're 10 culture away from that next virtue, and your explorer nets you 20 culture or whatever, you'll be able to select the virtue right away. If you just click 'next', then the selection is in the next turn.

 

[oneproduct]

I noticed that, Azedenkae, and wish they would interrupt the next turn process when you get a popup during it.