CFC: Fastest Deity Science Victory

[Bangau]

Civ Fanatics Competition: Fastest Deity Science Victory


Welcome to the Civ Fanatics Competition (CFC) where we will find out who can pull off the fastest deity science victory!


***


Start conditions


To participate, start and play a game that matches the following conditions:

• #players: Any
• Leader: Any
• AI Leaders: Any
  
• Ruleset: Gathering Storm
• Version : June update or higher
• Difficulty: Deity
• Start Era: Ancient Era
• Game Speed: Standard
• #City States: Any
• Disaster Intensity: Any
• Map: Any
• Map Size: Any
• Resources: Any
• World Age: Any
• Start Position Any
• Temperature: Any
• Rainfall: Any
• Sea Level: Any
• Victory Conditions: All enabled
• Advanced Options: All default
• Mods: UI (only) mods allowed, no other
• Special conditions: Any random seed / map can only enter the competition once. Any player can join the competition multiple times, but always with a different map seed.

***

Rules


To make sure it’s a fair competition, make sure to:

• Not cheat and/or use exploits (you know when you have, it’s that subtle feeling of shame when you post a score you did not earn fairly ). This off course includes using any in game cheat codes, restarting maps or playing maps you have seen others play, reloading previous saves after mistakes (not crashes, but even then you shouldn’t replay more than one turn).
• Follow the GOTM rules, especially the ‘what should we consider as exploits’ (see https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ6-game-of-the-month.545/)
• If you participate and anyone shows you accidentally or purposely violated the conditions or rules of the competition, your name will be crossed from the top 10.

***

Participate in the contest

To be eligible for a ‘top position’, post a reply to this thread where you:

• Mention the number of turns it took you to win a science victory.
• Claim your position in the ‘top 10’.
  • End your post with the new ‘top 10’ with you in it (see below).
• Add the first turn save game and the last turn save game (post victory).
• Mention the game seeds.
• For flavor: post screenshots of interesting parts of your game, or even make a video.
• Describe (the more flavor the better) what your strategy was and how the game went.

***

Current Top 10

Copy and paste, and enter yourself into the top 10 list if your score is worthy!

• 1st place: [player] - [number of turns] - [leader/country]
• 2nd place:
• 3rd place:
• 4th place:
• 5th place:
• 6th place:
• 7th place:
• 8th place:
• 9th place:
• 10th place:

Have fun!

 

[Ceydezed]

Science Victory turn 216

• #players: 11 (removed one to have a bit more place)
• Leader: Pericles
• Difficulty: Deity
• Start Era: Ancient Era
• Game Speed: Standard
• #City States: 20 (added 2)
• Disaster Intensity: 3, i think? or maybe 2
• Map: Primordial
• Map Size: Huge
• Resources: Normal
• World Age: New
• Start Position Normal
• Temperature: Normal
• Rainfall: Wet
• Sea Level: Normal
• Victory Conditions: All enabled
• Advanced Options: All default
• Map Seed = 1293510845

Standard victory, nothing really special. Played with Pericles, who i always manage to play more or less efficiently. Objective was to have excellent culture to speed up the different governments, and a lot of suzerain - that worked well. I missed Kilwa, though, who got taken at turn 95 (!) (it seems to be much more prioritzed by the AI now sadly...). Settled i think around 12 cities, including one in the north for the research station. Had a nice productive Petra - Ruhr city for the main spaceport - only constructed / purchased 2 spaceports but i think i didn't need more as these cities had good production.
No Geneva nor Bologna in the game, but all the other science city states, so this was okay.
I really like this Primordial map, a lot of space but still possibility to circumnavigate. Really enjoyable. Also it creates some sort of clusters - you can see below i was completely isolated from my (only) neighbour, so i could just build without caring about any kind of army (which is not super clever as i missed the eurekas for the armada, tanks, muskets, etc.).

That is my fastest science victory post GS, but could definitely be improved:
- Kilwa
- More eurekas (specifically military related)
- Geneva / Bologna
- Less Players (happy there was no Robert in there but still lost a couple of good early great people)
- Potentially get a religion for faster settler spam, but it was okay, had around 11 cities at turn 100. Pericles' hill biais is great.

Last turn save attached, i didn't save first turn, sorry.

After victory:

 

[Bangau]

@Ceydezed : thumbs up for starting up the competition! Pretty neat science win, and you didn't even cook all settings to get the odds there. Haven't played the Primordial map yet, but it looks great indeed. Bit overkill on the volcanoes maybe.

New (well, first...) rankings:

• 1st place: Ceydezed - 216 turns - Pericles of Greece
• 2nd place:
• 3rd place:
• 4th place:
• 5th place:
• 6th place:
• 7th place:
• 8th place:
• 9th place:
• 10th place:

Now who can beat this t216 score...?

 

[Ceydezed]

Ceydezes

Ceydezed*
Also, about volcanoes, Karl from Firaxis explained in The Game Mechanic stream that there will only be one disaster per turn. So the more volcanoes you have, the less likely you are to get hit by one actually!

 

[Bangau]

Since @Ceydezed has opened the scoring, I'd thought it about time I'd try one myself. So here it is...

***

t236 SV with Pachacuti of the Inca

I recently played an Inca game and found out how incredibly well they match with the Earth Goddess pantheon. I thought it be fun to build a science strategy around that:
1. Get early holy sites
2. Get the Earth Goddess pantheon
3. Get a religion with Choral Music (for extra culture) and Religious Colonization (to easily spread our own religion) (later on also Stweardship for a little extra science)
4. Get the important early wonders: at least Pyramids and Oracle
5. Get golden ages three in a row and use monumentality to rapidly spread and build your empire.
6. Befriend neighbours and make alliances
7. First focus on Faith, then on Science, then the rest.
8. Finish of with: some high production cities with spaceports (buy with Moksha if possible), speed up space projects with builders (Royal Society)

These are the settings I used:

Spoiler settings :

This is the seed:

Spoiler seed :

This strategy was a lot of fun to play, but it did not all go well:
1. Early holy sites worked like a charm, getting some nice early faith production.
2. The pantheon worked and immediately started giving me extra faith. I think the pantheon gave me between 25 and 50 percent of all the faith I had, which was a lot...
3. Was third I think to get a religion, so far so good. During the game though, Scythia and Indonesio kept pushing their religion on me, so it took some apostles and inquisitors all game long to keep my people 'in line'.
4. Totally failed there: China was in the game and snatched both from me. Both when I was already chopping them in and close to building them. Free tip: for a speed run, don't have China in your game. ;-)
5. Got the first golden age and got to use it on an extra settler and some 'free' builders. But dramatically failed the second one. Even by so much that I decided to go into a dark age (holding of some era points I could have gotten to get myself a normal age). Fortunately after that it was a heroic age, and got to make good use of that one. Build Taj Mahal to ensure all further ages were golden.
6. One of my neighbours, America, refused to play nice. They struggled though with loyalty and war with Indonesia. Still there were signs that they would declare war at some point. I decided to spent a few turns prebuilding scouts because I was going to unlock Warak'aq soon. I had seen in the GOTM that they can be used quite effectively to wage war, but found out against crossbowmen they are not that great (because they won't survive into their third upgrade). America declared war on me and had a pretty decent offense/defense with many crossbowmen. Unfortunately for them they had severe loyalty issues and some of their border cities flipped 'free'. They were ripe for the taking and soon mine. Peaced out with America and got three free cities in return. All the others were befriended and allied easily. Two of my direct neighbours got into dark ages later in the game and lost some cities to me because of loyalty, but that didn't impact the game much at that time.
7. Nearing the end I found that I had spend just too little on culture. Was working on space projects before I could boost them with builders because I couldn't build the Royal Society yet. Cost me at least 15 or 20 turns. Good lesson for next time...
8. Once the Royal Society was up and running I was good to go and went into space at 13 lightyears per turn!

Spoiler victory :

Wonder if some of the masterminds in here have ideas to improve upon this strategy. Feel like the Inca/Earth Goddess combo really has potential for super fast science victories. What do you think?

***

Current ranking:

• 1st place: Ceydezed - 216 turns - Pericles of Greece
• 2nd place: Bangau - 236 turns - Pachacuti of the Inca
• 3rd place:
• 4th place:
• 5th place:
• 6th place:
• 7th place:
• 8th place:
• 9th place:
• 10th place:

 

[Shader]

Did a game where I tilted all the settings in my favor as much as possible, cheated a bunch, a broke 200. It was a learning curve game and I definitely learned a lot. Deciding whether to take on another challenge in this thread, or to go to the standard settings thread! Either way, Pachacuti seems like the clear choice to break the records with.

 

[Victoria]

Peaceful standard settings SV with 11 cities on T191 - saves in the standard settings thread but hey may as well throw it here

Spoiler :

• 1st place: Victoria - 191 turns - Kupe of Aoteoroa
• 2nd place: Ceydezed - 216 turns - Pericles of Greece
• 3rd place: Bangau - 236 turns - Pachacuti of the Inca
• 4th place:
• 5th place:
• 6th place:
• 7th place:
• 8th place:
• 9th place:
• 10th place:

 

[Casualty of war]

Super annoyed at myself. I had a John Curtin game that was going swimmingly but I only finished with a Turn 239/240 SV. Korea was my neighbor, declared on me in the Ancient and I acquired all those lovely Campuses in a one-two war.

I play so many games to Turn 100, because I know then if I'm going to win, effortlessly win or have to grind more than I have the patience for. My late game needs serious work. No flow, no elegance, too much wasted effort.

Here's my first stopping point, and if I was good I should finished around Turn 200.

 

[Victoria]

You gotta play from the start, you posting coz you want help?

 

[Bangau]

Super annoyed at myself. I had a John Curtin game that was going swimmingly but I only finished with a Turn 239/240 SV. Korea was my neighbor, declared on me in the Ancient and I acquired all those lovely Campuses in a one-two war.

I play so many games to Turn 100, because I know then if I'm going to win, effortlessly win or have to grind more than I have the patience for. My late game needs serious work. No flow, no elegance, too much wasted effort.

Here's my first stopping point, and if I was good I should finished around Turn 200.

It's hard staying focused and having fun at the same time. ;-) The 'correct' endgame for a fast SV takes some practice and work. I'm still at the stage myself where I know almost all 'the pieces', but fail to combine them all correctly and get that sub 200 SV. Have been in more of a 'leisure' mode lately, so haven't been trying really as well. Had an incredible relics tourism game going with Canada earlier this week, was feeling like I would definitely hit sub 190, maybe even 180. But nah, England got up so much of a cultural defense that I had to get well over a 1000 tourism to finish it around turn 205. Still good of course, but not super good like I was aiming for. I do think aiming for certain goals like these keeps the game challenging and fun! You keep having fun as well!

 

[whacker]

Peaceful SV with China t173

I just have started to play Civ6 again, and thought this was a good oppotunity to hone my SV skills. Usually i play standard settings, but not this time.

Spoiler Settings :

I wanted lots of mountains and chops, less water and more city states. For the AI i chose some that i think are good for trading, although those were not the best choice. I love lakes for peaceful play because there is so much space.

This is what i got on first roll and i sticked with it:

Spoiler Turn 1 :

Not the best start, but still decent. I saw a lot of potential for ancient/classical wonders and a +3 campus. Settled the gypsum. In the end the start turned out to be amazing because i had 3 horse tiles in reach and some amazing wonder/districs opportunities.

Early game:
-double scout into builder into settler. Found a 3. scout from TV.
-met Kumasi and Cardiff 1.
-settled my 2. city on top of tea for some extra science and trade. Built the GP there to chop settlers.
-rushed towards political philosophy because i wanted the Apadana + wonder spam
-Governours:
1.Liang
2. Magnus+Provision
3. Pingala + science + double GP
-wonders:
1.Apadana
2.Pyramids
3.Oracle
4.Great Library
5.Petra
-two campus, one TD, one GP
-started chopping settlers around t60.
-Monumentality GA
-pasture pantheon.
-sold everything a had to the AI and kept my empire Happy with suzerains.

Mid game:
-settled 10 more cities for a total of 12, most of them with +2 builders card unlocked.
-found most of the city states, not the best ones, especially because i had 18. The good ones included: Geneva, Bologna, Fez, Nan Madol. Brussels was helpful. Would have loved Babylon, Ananatarivo and Hongkong. Auckland would also have been nice.
-built the mausoleum and got the +215 GE to rush Ruhr Valley in the cap. (i dont think it is important but i had i really nice spot for it and +2envois)
-i also built the Potala Palace and Big Ben in the Cap because i had 150 production and they gave envois as well.
-16 evois for 8 wonders. Apadana things
-chopped Kilwa and Forbidden city and also built the Colossos and Colloseum with builders.
- campus and commercial/harbor in all cities, theaters were i had lakes and good adjacency. (there was a lake were i had like 5 wonders for some crazy adjacency + Nan Madol theaters)
-2 IZ to power all cities.
-moved Magnus around to chop in universities and districts.
-still sold everything. (was a bit tedious)
-monumentality GA
-cultural alliance with Kupe (had one trade route from each city to him, the rest in the cap)

Late Game:
-Research labs in all cities
-2 coal powerplants
-Big Ben
-settled a tundra city with 13 chops (for laser projects)
-bought a spaceport in the cap and one in the chop city.
-built all projects with builders and chopped the laser
-monumentality GA


Sadly the laser projects were in the very last branch of the tech tee, i could have easily finished 5 turns sooner otherwhise. Still had lots of fun, will start a standard setting game soon.

Spoiler T174 overview :

• 1st place: Whacker - 173 turns - Qin Shi Huang of China

• 2nd place: Victoria - 191 turns - Kupe of Aoteoroa

• 3rd place: Ceydezed - 216 turns - Pericles of Greece

• 4th place: Bangau - 236 turns - Pachacuti of the Inca

• 5th place:

• 6th place:

• 7th place:

• 8th place:

• 9th place:

• 10th place:

Mapseed: 163162913
Gameseed: 163162912

Thanks a lot for setting this up!

 

[Bangau]

Amazing game @whacker ! Thanks for describing your strategy so thoroughly. This is why I started this, to see how different people reach incredible goals like a 173 turn SV.

 

[whacker]

Bangau told me that i had the free city walls mod active. I did not notice, because i have not been playing with the current patch a lot and the effect has been added to the game. I made new save files for t1 and t174 with the mod disabled and unsubscribed, but it still shows in the list when loading a game.
Could you tell me if you can load the game now and if not, tell me if there is another way to get rid of the mod in the save files?

 

[kirrrbbby]

Here's my entry. My earliest save is T61, but I included all the game setup info in screenshots (attached).

• 1st place: Whacker - 173 turns - Qin Shi Huang of China

• 2nd place: Victoria - 191 turns - Kupe of Aoteoroa
• 3nd place: kirrrbbby - 195 turns - Matthais Corvinus of Hungary
• 4rd place: Ceydezed - 216 turns - Pericles of Greece

• 5th place: Bangau - 236 turns - Pachacuti of the Inca

• 6th place:

• 7th place:

• 8th place:

• 9th place:

• 10th place:

Mapseed: -2121594786
Gameseed: -2121594785

Some highlights

Early game:
scout/settler/slinger/slinger
builder pantheon
settled three cities
magnus + provision
pingala + connoisseur
settled in areas with good campus locations
ancestral hall + colonization -> tons of cities (settled 14 total)
Campuses in most cities. Harbors in a few. ~4 IZ's for good adjacency or good AOE. Dams in a few cities for adj and sanity.
suz Palenque + Geneva
Targeted the top half of the tech tree, going for boosts whenever possible.
Heavily targeted Civics boosts.
Only chopped where I needed to place districts + some hills chops to build mines (probably a mistake)

Mid:
Pingala + Research + Grants
Magnus (in capital) + Surplus Logistics and sent all my trade routes from younger cities to capital.
found two kupe cities on my continent (he mostly inhabited a weird 3rd mini-continent). I levied and took his cities.
Ottomans (friendly) tried to kill Hattusa (suz by Kupe). I stepped in one the last turn and stole the city)
Build universities in most cities
suz and levy troops in Mexico City (<100 gold) and Hong Kong
Kupe/Victoria emergency war (re: Hattusa), lot of pillaging, took two of her cities which loyalty flipped. retook them and razed. Took Kupes last two cities.

Mid/Late:
Made two spies to protect Spaceports
Built Coal PPs
Build Kilwa (prob a bit late, tbh), Potala, Temple of Artemis (took like 3 turns *shrug*)
Transitioned to 100% Campus and Theater projects (thanks Kupe for the Theater Squares)
Max upgrades to Pingala, Reyna, and Magnus
Monumentality Golden Age for ~3 builders using faith from pillaging in previous wars.

Late:
Victoria suprised warred me. I levied city states, upgraded several Mech Infantries, and pillaged for Faith/Gold -> Builders.
Bought spaceports in two cities (Miskolc and Debrecen)
New golden age: Heartbeat of Steam
Build Ruhr Valley in in Debrecen while doing Sattelite/Moon in Miskolc. Probably could've chopped more here, this took ~20 turns total.
Finally got 3rd govt (Communism) and chopped Royal Society in two turns in capital (Buda).
Chopped/Builder Mars Colony/Exoplanet/Lagrange/Terrestrial
Final production: Debrecen (229.5), Miskolc (172.2)

Main policies that I used:
Rationalism
Colonial Taxes
Raj
Double Campus adj
Double IZ adj
Serfdom
Merchant Confederation

My biggest mistakes:
Chopping hills in early/midgame, particularly in my spaceport cities.
Lagging behind on culture a bit meant I couldn't get Royal Soc online until fairly after moon launch.
Waited too long to start Kilwa.
Too many Harbors (ended up with 15 trade routes).
Maybe could've gotten sub 190 without those mistakes.

edit:clarification

 

[Bangau]

Hey everyone, been a while since I've tried for a CFC game. With all the new content, the rapid changes of how the game works and less time on my hands I've not done a proper CFC game in ages. But now that the NFP is done and the game looks fairly stable, I've tried for a goofy SV I've wanted to try for a while. I present to you: totally cooked Russian religious SV! I've set all the settings in my favor (including the AI's, the wonders and the city states...) and got my personal all time best in 144 turns. Though I have mixed feelings about most of the modes released last year, I had a lot of fun this game.

I see in the 'standard settings SV' that Babylon and Herald were the best for SV last year. Some crazy finish times over there. Just read about the 'city flipping pillage strategy', with which I'm not yet familiar. Does that still work after all the changes last months? Still, I think for most people out there a 144 turns (without cheats or exploits) sounds crazy enough, so for all of you speed-run lovers I present to you my Peter game:

Turn one and post-win (turn 145) saves attached below for who wants to try for themselves.

The strategy was heavily inspired by many of the great players out here, and for some of you probably not very surprising. It's basically: Russia (extra land) + lots of faith + 3 times Monumentality golden age + super high early production (Lavra chopped out + Work Ethic belief) + Voidsingers + pillaging and conquering your neighbours + chopping out Campuses and Campus buildings to get to '1 tech per turn' asap + setting up multiple space cities that can chop in and builder buy the space projects super fast.

These are the settings I used:

Spoiler Settings :

I chose AI that like to build holy sites, to conquer them later on, since faith generation is the most important part of this strategy. Not sure if that was the best way to go, what do you think? Chose all the city states that have some benefit towards faith and a SV. There's actually a lot of those now, some of them work better than others. Getting 3 envoys in the science and faith ones is very important. Extra woods and extra tundra really makes this a lot easier.

Spoiler St. Petersburg :

Got make diner for the kids now... will continue this post later.

 

[Bangau]

... continued...

The image in the previous post shows the early game strategy:
- Beeline for Astrology, get Lavra asap. Get the tundra bonus for holy sites (dance of the aurora), get the work ethic belief for massive production boost.
- Choose one of your cities to get Ancestral Hall and Magnus with the promotion that prevents population loss when a settler is build (Provision).
- Spam settlers like there is no tomorrow!
- Also I like to befriend my neighbors to prevent surprises. Later on they will be surprised by me.
- I got the wonder start on my second roll. Went for it because the Astrology boost was in the pocket turn 1. It did cost me some population early on and about three times in total. I think a volcano for your first city isn't ideal, but the extra culture is great early game.

Fast forward to turn 88:

Spoiler turn 88 :

Once the settlers spamming began I:
- Kept spamming settlers obviously.
- Start planning a few 'chop cities' to chop out spaceport project in the endgame.
- Directly after building a city, start the Lavra (only if it has a good spot) and chop it out with the free builder from Ancestral Hall.
- Next in line was the Old God Obelisk for most cities because of the culture and faith. With a good Lavra those are only a few turns to build anyway.
- Once a city gets to 4 pop, it's time to build and/or chop in the campus and its buildings.
- A few heroes are amazing: Hercules and Himiko. Free districts (especially late game free spaceports...) and extra envoys for early suzerainty and more bonuses are a big help.
- Most wonders are optional, Kilwa of course is a must for the bonuses to science and everything else. Because you are so fast and have such high production early on, you get to pick the wonders you want. I got Oracle, Mahabodhi (nice to complete your religion with), Jebel and Artemis in this stage. Some get chopped, some build, depends on what use the city is to me at that stage of the game.
- Faster game typically require war, and I planned for that: in my earlier cities after getting the Lavra and Campus and the occasional wonder I build a few units. Also recruited a few extra fighting heroes and the wars went smoothly. I you play friendly at first, and even ally a few AI's that are further away, you can warmonger without to much people getting upset at you.
- Had a very lucky world congress:


Turn 100:

Spoiler screens turn 100 :

Starting to 'one turn research' most techs:

Spoiler tech tree :

- Getting a science of 335, a culture of 242 and 313 faith at turn 100 was very promising.

Policies and beliefs:

Spoiler policies and beliefs :

 

[Bangau]

...continued...
Make sure to start working towards 'Divine architect' with Moksha to faith buy some more Spaceport in the endgame. Combined with Hercules you can get five spaceports up and running in five turns. Not that you really need that: even when 'one turning' techs there's some time before you need multiple spaceports to boost the Exoplanet Expedition. But when getting the spaceports without chops in five or six cities, you can use all of their chops for space projects, which is a big deal.

Spoiler governors :

The Voidsingers Chorus promotion gives so much science and culture (plus gold) in a game like this, it's like an extra Kilwa. The Olf Gold Obelisks can hold all the works of art you'll be getting from your Lavra's. So that's a great synergy as well.

A chop city in planning:

Spoiler chop city :

And 26 turns later it's time to do what it's made for:

Spoiler into space :

Getting the massive culture boost from the space project (moon landing) asap is key, once you get that, you can get the +5% science per suzerainty card (international space agency, globalization civic) and continue one turning those techs till the end. I chopped out Admussen Scott as well for the 20% boost, but in hindsight didn't even need to. Science went to a whopping 5K at the end.

Getting the Oxford University very late game takes 2 turns of your victory time. Managed to chop it in one of the cities I conquered. At a certain point I found out that science and culture were not needed anymore. Changed most cities to faith or gold. Faith buying builders to chop and 'throw into' your space projects (Royal Society) using Monumentality is just crazy good. Every single turn I had huge amounts of faith and still more to spend. You can never have enough faith in a game like this.

At turn 139 I launched the exoplanet expedition. Next turn I researched Offworld Mission started the boosts: turn 144 (+1):

Spoiler after win screen :

 

[Bangau]

Previously, I would never have thought it possible to achieve a victory time like this, but learning from all you great people on here made me challenge myself more and more. I've realized a number of improvements that can be made to this game and I'm certain a number of you could get this strategy to finish times under 140, maybe even under 130... Now that the game (probably) won't be changing all the time anymore I'm hoping to see how you all think even better times can be achieved with all the modes and settings we can now adjust. Seeing the 'standard settings' thread getting sub 140 times I'm curious what can be achieved in a 'cooked' setting!

Don't like to place myself in first place, but hoping it will challenge some of you to go beyond this:

• 1st place: Bangau - 144 turns - Peter of Russia
• 2nd place: whacker - 173 turns - Qin Shi Huang of China
• 3rd place: Victoria - 191 turns - Kupe of Aoteoroa
• 4th place: kirrbbb - 195 turns - Matthais Corvinus of Hungary
• 5th place: Ceydezed - 216 turns - Pericles of Greece
• 6th place: Bangau - 236 turns - Pachacuti of the Inca
• 7th place:
• 8th place:
• 9th place:
• 10th place:

 

[Victoria]

I'm curious what can be achieved in a 'cooked' setting!

Kupe 191 was not even a serious attempt, a bit busy ATM but will try a cooked Kupe but not sure if it can get below Russia.

 

[ATEX]

Thanks for the writeup @Bangau . I have been out of Civ for a while, but am considering taking it up again after NFP is finished now. I never played any of the extra game modes, but I do like the aspect of having more combos. Not sure yet what I think is the strongest. Need to read up a bit more on how the game modes works. Anyways interesting to read about your game.