Can't get below T315 SV

[Peter Belanger]

Heyoooo,

I have googled and googled sv strategies and what not for months. Unfortunately there really is not a lot of videos on sv. Mostly seems to be culture. I just CANNOT come close to getting a victory below 300. My ultimate goal is to be around 200. I play on standard everything on GS. I use Korea mostly just because I am new to civ from 2019 and they seem to be one of the best for SV. I know most of civ is situational but is there some sort of basic general guidelines too follow for build order and how much science and culture I should aim for by certain points in the game? Are these low level victories I see because there are custom game settings helping them such as adding more city states? Is T315 victory terrible or average?

If there are any links for this same question is be happy to check them out. Hopefully this isn't a repost but I haven't really found much yet. Like I said everything seems to be culture based.

 

[Janskey]

The best videos on youtube I've seen were by civtrader6, but those were before GS. Nevertheless, the same principles apply. Lots of cities early, campuses (+libraries & universities) everywhere and chop chop chop to speed up production. T315 victory might be enough to win on deity, which only 5.4% of steam users have achieved, so it depends on what you compare yourself to. The early game is most important - do it well and become lazy later on and you'll still manage a sub T250 win. There's a huge snowball effect the earlier you build your first (built) settler (or capture one, which is paradoxically easier on harder difficulties). You can also build multiple spaceports to speed things up in the end, as long as you have the required aluminum/power for the projects. Maybe post a couple of saves from, say, T50 and T100 to let people see what's going wrong if you need more specific advice? I've been playing since the first iteration, so it's kind of hard to see everything I take for granted.

 

[Drivingrevilo]

- Rush straight for Rocketry in the technology tree, even if it means hard researching techs you haven’t got the Eureka for yet. Then, sweep round to the other relevant techs afterwards.
- Immediately start building two spaceports in your highest production cities once you unlock them (or alternatively, max out Reyna’s promotions so you can buy the spaceport with gold).
- Immediately start every new mission (i.e. satellite, moon landing, mars, exoplanet) as soon as you unlock it.
- Build the Royal Society as your a Tier 3 government plaza building. This means you can have one city with Liang continuously make Builders, and feed those Builders into the spaceports to speed up the space missions.
- Regularly check the great people tab to see who’s coming up next. If you see anyone who powers up your libraries or universities (e.g. Hypatia, Newton) or anyone who gives production to space race projects (either Great Engineer or Great Scientists), spam the relevant district project to grab them.
- Make sure you secure at least two sources of aluminium. This will let you fire off the project which speeds up the exoplanet expedition.

 

[bengalryan9]

This will let you fire off the project which speeds up the exoplanet expedition.

Just pray that the RNG is kind enough to actually let you choose to research this in a timely manner. Seems like every time I play it's the very last thing to become available.

 

[Aurelesk]

- Build the Royal Society as your a Tier 3 government plaza building. This means you can have one city with Liang continuously make Builders, and feed those Builders into the spaceports to speed up the space missions.

Each builders will provide 2% production toward the project, times the number of remaining charge. They disappear in the process. You are limited to 1 per turn per project.

You want to max out the Builders charges (+2 from policy, +1 from Pyramids, +1 from Liang, +1 from China) to 7 charges (8 with China), going from 6% to 14%. You also want to increase the %Production toward space project. You can have +15% with a policy if a Seaport/Military Academy is there, +30% with Pingala or +30% with Technocracy. You end it to +75%, going from 14% to 24.5%. Basicly, you can do the project with 4 Builders.

It goes further with some Engineers (Robert Goddard +20%; Wernher von Braun +100%; Sergei Korolev +1500 Production) that can have 2 charges with the Mausoleum, and some Scientists (Carl Sagan +3000 Production; Stephanie Kwolek +100%).


Don't be shy on Culture and Theatre Square. There is a lot of endgame policy and government worth it. You might not have the Great Works to fill the building, but you still can go for Artifacts.

 

[Peter Belanger]

All great info! Thanks everyone so far.

Now what about culture? I feel like i am neglecting it. I used to never ever build any monuments or anything, now i started to implement them first in each city since i saw this from some videos. Is culture almost just as important as science?

 

[The Highwayman]

@Peter Belanger I recommend the Civ VI Strategy part of the forum, where many of us discuss strategies for sub 200 science victories. Some very good tips in that section.

 

[bengalryan9]

All great info! Thanks everyone so far.

Now what about culture? I feel like i am neglecting it. I used to never ever build any monuments or anything, now i started to implement them first in each city since i saw this from some videos. Is culture almost just as important as science?

I used to do the same thing. Remember, culture helps you get to some of those nice policy cards that can help you get through expensive later techs.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Each builders will provide 2% production toward the project, times the number of remaining charge. They disappear in the process. You are limited to 1 per turn per project.

You want to max out the Builders charges (+2 from policy, +1 from Pyramids, +1 from Liang, +1 from China) to 7 charges (8 with China), going from 6% to 14%. You also want to increase the %Production toward space project. You can have +15% with a policy if a Seaport/Military Academy is there, +30% with Pingala or +30% with Technocracy. You end it to +75%, going from 14% to 24.5%. Basicly, you can do the project with 4 Builders.

It goes further with some Engineers (Robert Goddard +20%; Wernher von Braun +100%; Sergei Korolev +1500 Production) that can have 2 charges with the Mausoleum, and some Scientists (Carl Sagan +3000 Production; Stephanie Kwolek +100%).


Don't be shy on Culture and Theatre Square. There is a lot of endgame policy and government worth it. You might not have the Great Works to fill the building, but you still can go for Artifacts.

Don't forget the 20% from Hong Kong. Hong Kong is important for SV.

 

[lotrmith]

A couple tips that have helped me improve:

There's almost no comparison between a peaceful and a war SV. With the Raid policy card, pillaging gold, faith, culture, science is nuts. You can take the cities after you pillage, or let them flip if they're bad. Bring a builder along or buy one on the spot to repair tiles before it flips and you can pillage again!

Important wonders include Colosseum (culture), Pyramids, Mausoleum (2x engineer charges and you want to get to the 20% space project guy), and Kilwa (suzerain 2x science states).

Moon landing gives you a one-time culture bonus equal to your science output on the turn it launches... ergo flip every city to campus project, pillage campus districts, & active darwin and galileo on that turn. Not sure if it still applies but inspirations activated in the ensuing turns would cancel out any culture overflow, so avoid these for a couple turns (ie activating a t3 government).

Forgot to mention, as you close in around t150 or so, pretty much every city should be running engineering projects until you get Goddard out, then science projects to pump out your techs. Anything else at that point, with few exceptions, is a waste.

 

[Futumch]

Every little bit helps. The suzerain bonuses from Science city-states have a cumulative effect as soon as you can get them into play.
There's some religion based bonuses which can net you a nice bit of science with every city you convert, and Stupas to grant more science.
Pingala in a decent city with the +Sci promotion, and Oxford University / Sankore wonder depending on location.
The reef bonus can be amazing if you find a little peninsula with 3 or more reefs around it, bang your Science district there and collect free light bulbs.
If you can manage to site a city for it, Amundsen-Scott station is a colossal boost. It's quite a pain to get if you're in the temperate parts of whatever map you're on though.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Not sure if it still applies but inspirations activated in the ensuing turns would cancel out any culture overflow, so avoid these for a couple turns (ie activating a t3 government).

that seems so incredibly dumb I cannot wrap my head around it. must be unintentional, right? pls?.. I never noticed this in my games so thanks a bunch.

is there a general ressource for overflow? I have no idea how it works in 6.

 

[Casualty of war]

I'm a mid-range, B- Science Victory player, usually getting in the 225-260 Turn range on Deity.

Do what you can to get the free Science and Culture that is available in Eurekas and Inspirations as that represents real and substantial turns of progress. That means you probably want at least a bare bones army of 3 Warriors and 3 Slingers, to upgrade through the years and get your boosts for Archery, Machinery and so on. You want to build or conquer at least 2 Commercial Hubs for the 2 Markets to get that boost, 2 Campuses with strong adjacency bonuses early for that Recorded History boost, an Aqueduct for the Military Engineering boost and so on.

There's a couple of spots of Cultural progress where your Science per Turn will skyrocket, so you want to put some effort into getting there as quickly as you can. Recorded History for the Natural Philosophy economic card (which doesn't work with Korea since their Seowon bonus isn't adjacency-based.) The Enlightenment for the Rationalism card (again Korea doesn't get full potential value.) Globalization for International Space Agency card. If you neglect your Culture you will attain these beaker force multipliers exceptionally late. A famous video of CivTrader6's had him focusing on Culture to get to Globalization as soon as possible before he slotted ISS and just scorched through the techs.

If you take a look at the Game of the Month section of the forums, occasionally there is a science victory game and several of the players write up extensive and informative playthroughs. You can even play the same map to see how you compare or would have done differently.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

that seems so incredibly dumb I cannot wrap my head around it. must be unintentional, right? pls?

All part of the dumb game my friend... all part of the dumb game

 

[yung.carl.jung]

All part of the dumb game my friend... all part of the dumb game

I think some mechanics are very clever, like for example district cost scaling (means you always have to calculate in your head), district discount (opportunity cost vs. gain) and Eurekah/Inspo. also Chops are a very well done mechanic and have lots of strategic depth, as per my thread Not everything went wrong with Civ 6, just some things.

I'm a mid-range, B- Science Victory player, usually getting in the 225-260 Turn range on Deity.

I think you are underestimating yourself, finishing in the mid 200s is already very respectable. Probably in the top 1% of SV players in the entire world if I had to take a wild guess. The kind of people that regularly finish sub200 are probably a negligible minority. We're talking like 1/1000 players or something, if even.

Friendly reminder that there is only a single post-Gs sub200 SV on YouTube. One.

I remember fondly back in WoW times I played Arena and I always thought I was pretty bad. I tend to compare myself to people who excel, so I compared myself to eSports players. but then one day they introduced the feature to compare between realms and servers.

it turned out only half the players even had a character at maximum level. of that 50% only 10% of them even played Arena, so 5% of the total players. of these 5%, very few played seriously, most did not play regularly, so about 1% of all total WoW players actually played Arena competitively. And among those we had an above average rating. So my team was performing better in PvP than about 99.5% of all players on my server, meaning I was likely in the top 500 of over 50,000 players.

 

[ATEX]

I think the best way if you want to improve is to watch the @civtrader6 videos like Janskey suggests. The end-game has changed a lot, but you get a good understanding of the mechanics of the game from those videos. That guy was a genius. Probably still is, but busy doing something else than playing Civ! =) Funny that he could make 15 videos on youtube and get 100k views on each one without even trying.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I think the best way if you want to improve is to watch the @civtrader6 videos like Janskey suggests. The end-game has changed a lot, but you get a good understanding of the mechanics of the game from those videos. That guy was a genius. Probably still is, but busy doing something else than playing Civ! =) Funny that he could make 15 videos on youtube and get 100k views on each one without even trying.

Not to take anything away from his videos but I think he re-rolled and scouted the map out before he replayed and recorded?
He does claim "First playthrough - no reloading - no exploits" on some videos.
He is using some seriously OP Civs as well.
Playing as Rome with Kumasi next door seems a little too perfect.
That game has open land and he is surrounded by at least 6 City States.
I'm more impressed when he and others use the worst Civs in the game.
I could be wrong though if anyone has better information on the subject.
Kind of a big deal playing blind compared to replaying.
I'm sure he and I know others, finish lightning fast, playing blind as well.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I think watching vanilla Civ 6 videos is not very helpful for your gameplay. The game has changed way too much, and it might even result in a couple of bad habits. Some strategies are strictly not viable anymore, others are viable now. GamerGrampz has a sub200 post GS with very, very elaborate commentary. I would suggest to watch that.

 

[ATEX]

Well actually going from 300 to 200 I can agree With you that it is easier to just watch current streamers. But going from 200 to 180 I think there is still a lot to learn from these videoes about what considerations you have to make along the way.
And With regards to validity of the games, I have no doubt that he is playing blind. Although a tip from him and others is to replay the same game to try different strategies and figure out what works well and what doesnt. I think that is a good tip that I have used a lot at least. Chosing OP civs when going for speed playthroughs you cant really hold against him, but I agree that it would be fun to watch a speed game With some of the more obscure civs With alternative strats.

 

[lotrmith]

I think watching vanilla Civ 6 videos is not very helpful for your gameplay. The game has changed way too much, and it might even result in a couple of bad habits. Some strategies are strictly not viable anymore, others are viable now. GamerGrampz has a sub200 post GS with very, very elaborate commentary. I would suggest to watch that.

Which one? So many vids.