CFC: Fastest STANDARD SETTINGS Deity Science Victory

[Casualty of war]

SV elimination thread lies Ranking Mapuche 37/46 is a joke. Lautaro is great leader for fast SV. Mountain bias + early culture benefitting from mountain bias + very easy classical era warfare with bonus against golden age.
And sincerely, every pre250 date is very solid

Yeah, a good early Chemamull or two can get you the Feudalism boost into Stirrups ridiculously early. Still working on that timing. Thanks for sharing the appreciation of Lautaro.

This was a random generated Pangaea with just 2 Scientific City-States, one found really early and one found extraordinarily late. No one cared about science early so I got Hypatia (and Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.) I'm tempted to pre-select the other Civs but that starts to make me wonder if it really counts as "Standard Settings." I'm getting real tired though of creating a game where I intend to conquer other Civs for their Campuses and Korea is my closest neighbor; they get to Crossbows by Turn 60 and their Campuses turn to garbage when you capture them!

 

[enKage]

Pre-select is against the rules, you must reroll until you get Mapuche / Scotland / Germany only a few other civs as the closest neighbour to get early campuses by conquest

 

[Bangau]

Pre-select is against the rules

That's correct. All AI opponents should be set to random in the 'standard settings' CFC. You can 'cheese' the settings all you want in the 'Fastest SV' CFC though!

 

[Casualty of war]

Pre-select is against the rules, you must reroll until you get Mapuche / Scotland / Germany only a few other civs as the closest neighbour to get early campuses by conquest

All those Civs with specific adjacency or placement bonuses! You capture their cities and cry to the heavens, "WHY!?!" And all their available slots are taken until you add 3 population!

That would be an interesting GotM, all your neighbors are conditional garbage Civs so Domination would actively not work.

 

[Casualty of war]

Well now, I guess there is hope for me yet. Matthias Turn 218 SV 1900-something score. It's just too easy to Levy your way to victory. Just one Cultural City-State and I think I could have gotten below turn 200.

If you reconstruct this from the seed, the starting position looks mediocre. Then you scout and things get ridiculous. Even if I did lose a +7 Campus site because I popped Iron before I placed the district. Religious Settlements was gone so I took Goddess of the Hunt, for a sizable boost in my starting cities.

Obligatory goofy Petra city included.

Spoiler :

 

[Bangau]

Obligatory goofy Petra city included.

Maybe we should do a separate 'SV with goofy Petra city' thread.

Well played @Casualty of war!

We're getting some momentum in here. Am playing an amazing SV at the moment, might finally break the 200 turn barrier... Will post soon.

Same turn as my last SV, same place? Yeah, let's do that.
__________

New ranking:

• 1st place: Civ Chemist - 177 - Japan/Hojo Tokimune
• 2nd place: Victoria - 191 - Maori/Kupe
• 3rd place: Casualty of war - 218 - Matthias Corvinus/Hungary
• 3rd place: Bangau - 218 - Inca/Pachacuti
• 5th place: enKage - 222 - Cree/Poundmaker
• 6th place: Casualty of war - 235 - Lautaro/Mapuche
• 7th place: Ceydezed - 236 SV - Rome/Trajan
• 8th place: Rittmeyer - 244 - Seondeok/Korea
• 9th place: enKage - 247 Poundmaker/Cree
• 10th place: ...

 

[Casualty of war]

Hey, Mali founded the city. I just improved it!

A mixed bag of other Civs in the game. Mali is nice to have nearby because they will build your Markets for you, and in this case they were severely hampered by a Jungle start. Aztecs started near Tundra Mountains and Grassland (double awful) then expanded toward Mali. Victoria went Tall and Religious and Wonder-spammed, and neglected Walls until it was too late. Debrecen is my only city on Teddy's continent; I just had the brief, pillaging skirmish with him when he and Gitarja declared a Joint Formal War against me (thanks for the Inspiration!) Kupe donated two cities as he settled right into -20 Loyalty pressure. I didn't meet Zulu until really late and they were never any threat, just a trading partner.

Readily available Iron into cheaply upgraded, Levied, 4-move Swordsmen. That's how Matthias does it. I included the Medieval save because I'm fairly sure someone could finesse that into a quicker win, let alone starting from Turn 0 and not squandering that glorious Campus site!

 

[Bangau]

Hurrah! My first sub 200 deity SV!

T192 SV with Seondeok of Korea

Settings and game seed:

Spoiler settings and seed :

The huge mountainous area would have been great for any civ to get a SV, unfortunately Korea is the only one who doesn't need the mountains. I decided beforehand to do a no-religion game, to compare with the previous religious science run I did with the Inca. I was tempted to go holy sites anyway, for all the +4 sites I found early on. I didn't and turned out I never needed them anyway: I conquered Poland and her HS early on and could use that faith to buy me some nice builders along the way.

The general strategy this time was:
1. No holy sites and religion, focus on science, production and war.
2. Build Seowons asap.
3. Conquer neighbours that are an easy opportunity and/or have decent culture or science output to 'assimilate'.
4. Get money and buy one or two spaceports with Reyna.
5. Create two 'chop' cities to chop most of the space projects.
6. All trade routes from the capital + ruhr valley to get a very high production city for later space projects.
7. Spaceports in one or two more production heavy cities.

Lots of these succeeded, but I could have done better on a few things:
- More cavalry for fast pillaging,less Hwacha.
- More pillaging (I often capture a city and then realize I could have pillaged two or three more hexes).
- Don't stop warring: after I captured Canada I parked my units, I should have pillaged the heck out of Rome and gain a few turns in doing so.
- Get slightly more culture in the early and mid game. A few times my progress was halted by lack of culture: e.g. the fourth promotion on Reyna was too late to buy my first Spcaeport, I only bought the second. Could have gone to the moon and get the culture super-boost sooner. I find this one very hard though,while building up science and units and some production, I find I have little time to build up culture. I tried to 'capture culture', but that wasn't enough.

Also, some bad luck: NO scientific City-States (!!!). I am curious how much faster this would have been with two good science CS, or three... Had one cultural CS, but not the most useful one.

Thinking of all of the discussion on Korea recently in the elimination thread I had to try and play her again after a long time. I was NOT disappointed. The early science is so easy and really helps you get an army superior to your opponents early on. You use that army to capture one AI after another and you snowball like there is no tomorrow.

Spoiler final screenshot :

__________

New ranking:

• 1st place: Civ Chemist - 177 - Japan/Hojo Tokimune
• 2nd place: Victoria - 191 - Maori/Kupe
• 3rd place: Bangau - 192 - Korea/Seondeok
• 4th place: Casualty of war - 218 - Matthias Corvinus/Hungary
• 4th place: Bangau - 218 - Inca/Pachacuti
• 6th place: enKage - 222 - Cree/Poundmaker
• 7th place: Casualty of war - 235 - Lautaro/Mapuche
• 8th place: Ceydezed - 236 SV - Rome/Trajan
• 9th place: Rittmeyer - 244 - Seondeok/Korea
• 10th place: enKage - 247 Poundmaker/Cree

 

[Casualty of war]

Alright, if I can't place with this start I'm going to go play Crusader Kings instead:

[EDIT] 2 horrible, extremely close neighbors turned this into a slog to victory, with Mapuche turning my Golden Ages to ashes and Cree forward settling the heck out of me. Got there, but not quickly. Sigh.

 

[Casualty of war]

Think I've got to try the "Buy the first Spaceport" techique. I'm losing too many turns between researching Rocketry and heading for the moon.

 

[Enfant_Sauvage]

Same for me. Buy the spaceport is a thing, if you can get Big Ben you can go to 15k gold and buy 2 spaceports. I can do that. The difficulty, for me, is to settle a specific city, buy the first spaceport and chop with Magnus all the trees and stones to get in a few turns the first two projets (sattelites and moon landing). I often forget to wait specific timers for chopping (some key wonders such as Big Ben, Oxford or Ruhr, and the first two spaceports projects).

Good luck ! Now that I have the theory, my goal is to get a peaceful sub 210 on SV. I have a question for expert players : Do you use faith to get a monumentality golden age and buy all the settlers and builders ? Or can you do a sub 210-200 SV without using faith ?

 

[Casualty of war]

I also struggle to get good usage out of Reyna until the point at which I'm buying Spaceports. I need to work on making my Gold-generating city to park her in until that time. Another flaw in my game is not making good specialized cities.

I like having that supplementary Faith economy quite a bit, one of the reasons why I keep trying to make Peter/Russia work. I tend to only spend Faith on Settlers if I've built Ancestral Hall, to get both a Settler and a Builder out of the expenditure.

 

[Bangau]

@Casualty of war : keep trying. In the Hall of Fame screen,does it always sort properly? I never get it to sort right...

Good luck ! Now that I have the theory, my goal is to get a peaceful sub 210 on SV. I have a question for expert players : Do you use faith to get a monumentality golden age and buy all the settlers and builders ? Or can you do a sub 210-200 SV without using faith ?

I'm convinced that faith into science can be done in less than 200, even less than 180 turns. I've read about one of the Chinese experts managing a turn 170 or so peaceful SV. With the right map and really focused play it should be doable. Have tried a few times to do the 'faith --> monumentality --> lots of settlers and builders --> focus on SV' strategy and haven't managed to get it under 210 yet. Hope to see more people join this game, I'm sure some players out here can show us how it's done!

 

[Casualty of war]

@Bangau, those are just all of my Science victories still recorded in my game's Hall of Fame. It seems stuff gets wiped when Firaxis releases a major patch. Occasionally that Steam Hours Played counter gets wiped too, which was a blessing because it was starting to look like an accusation. I also play many games just for two Eras or until Turn 100, and if they aren't interesting or promising I throw them out.

 

[Bangau]

@Casualty of war : in my Hall of Fame, whatever I do, I cannot get it to sort like it should. E.g. when I sort by victory type, the different victory types are still scrambled instead of sorted per type. So I cannot sort it to show all SV I've had like it looks like in your screenshot. Does the Hall of Fame work properly for you in most cases?

 

[The Highwayman]

Here is a 218 turn Science victory with Pericles. Seven Seas, all standard settings, Deity. Very disappointed. Kupe killed the only two science CSs Babylon and Palenque. Thanks a lot...science was the bottleneck. 12 cities totally peaceful isn't a good recipe for sub 200, especially with no science city states.

Some Notes:

Wonders:
Pyramids (sub T50)
Oracle in Cap w/ Pingala (~T55)
Jebel (~T65) - great for holy siteless faith gen
Mausoleum - Paired with Liang and fisheries this is such a boon. Check the save file if you wish. Lots of supplemental science, faith and culture.
Taj Mahal - Teddy beelines Forbidden. Better get it in the BCs on Deity standard speed or he'll snag it. I lost it, so rolled into Taj.
Big Ben - Made up for Forbidden loss and expanded my gold. Should've bought another spaceport though.

Dark into heroic from Classical to Medieval. Monumentality in Med-Ren, Heartbeat in Ind-Modern. Jebel, Trade routes/Religious alliance/Divine Inspiration (from Poland), and some random sources gave me decent faith without holy sites for Monumentality/GP purchasing.

Became Suze over 7 CSs, would've been 9 had not it been for Kupe's impulsive behavior. Australia was a non factor as was Teddy in stopping this.

Three IZs for power, 2 Nuclear power plants as uranium is more efficient.

4-6 more cities with 2 science CSs that survive and maybe the Amundsend-Scott and this would've been sub 200 I believe. ~1,000 science per turn just didn't cut it. So much waiting.

Overall not great, just came off a peaceful T210 science with England, but dropped an AI Civ so it doesn't qualify. Guess I'll resort to mopping the continent for the sub 200 or try for a better dice roll.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[The Highwayman]

@Casualty of war : keep trying. In the Hall of Fame screen,does it always sort properly? I never get it to sort right...


I'm convinced that faith into science can be done in less than 200, even less than 180 turns. I've read about one of the Chinese experts managing a turn 170 or so peaceful SV. With the right map and really focused play it should be doable. Have tried a few times to do the 'faith --> monumentality --> lots of settlers and builders --> focus on SV' strategy and haven't managed to get it under 210 yet. Hope to see more people join this game, I'm sure some players out here can show us how it's done!

My first attempt to do a religious science with Japan resulted in a T204 with mismanaged governor promotions that delayed me faith buying my first spaceport. That game wouldn't have qualified for the HOF (wet map, dropped 1 AI), but no question it's very doable. I believe Japan is a top tier civ for science with double production towards holy sites for faith buying civilians and spaceports/Choral Music for culture and Theater Squares for the culture boost. Meiji Restoration virtually guarantees +3 or more campuses anywhere on the map in addition to the great economy from all their districts.

 

[Bangau]

@The Highwayman : nice to see you join in! Very decent peaceful SV with good old Pericles.

__________

New ranking:

• 1st place: Civ Chemist - 177 - Japan/Hojo Tokimune
• 2nd place: Victoria - 191 - Maori/Kupe
• 3rd place: Bangau - 192 - Korea/Seondeok
• 4th place: The Highwayman - 218 - Greece/Pericles
• 4th place: Casualty of war - 218 - Matthias Corvinus/Hungary
• 4th place: Bangau - 218 - Inca/Pachacuti
• 7th place: enKage - 222 - Cree/Poundmaker
• 8th place: Casualty of war - 235 - Lautaro/Mapuche
• 9th place: Ceydezed - 236 SV - Rome/Trajan
• 10th place: Rittmeyer - 244 - Seondeok/Korea

 

[enKage]

Hello hello, Cree again in my quest for standard settings pre200.
maybe I would be really close if missions weren't the very last tech, but who cares, still improving.

I know I would get pre200 SV with Korea, but I played Seondok circa 3 months ago, so she has to wait for another try. I don't like Australia, so not playing them and so on with every other top science civ.

But I promise I would switch to Persia for some time, I miss Cyrus so much <3

7seas mapscript

Basically, not a great capital, so I had to build sth useful in conquered land, so it delayed proper setup of trading net (only Birmingham very very north had 5 camps+pastures)
Palenque and Bologna in game. Also cahokia, so no problems with ammenities this time. Cultural Kumasi, Antaanarivo. At least I could use some Kumasi, because Bologna had 4 pastures
Wonders: Artemis, Colloseum, Mids, Forbidden Palace, Potala, Bigben, Amundsen, Mausoleum, Oxford, pretty sure that's all

Comparing to my previous runs, one huge change I test in Cree games: cartography beeline, before education, for more gold to buy stuff (for not Cree familiar: it adds +2 gold to mekewap for every adj luxury). And you know... it works. Even though I had very little luxury clusters this game.

I posted also t100 here https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...e-your-t100-stats.657592/page-2#post-15755183

• 1st place: Civ Chemist - 177 - Japan/Hojo Tokimune
• 2nd place: Victoria - 191 - Maori/Kupe
• 3rd place: Bangau - 192 - Korea/Seondeok
• 4th place: enKage - 210 - Cree/Poundmaker
• 5th place: The Highwayman - 218 - Greece/Pericles
• 5th place: Casualty of war - 218 - Matthias Corvinus/Hungary
• 5th place: Bangau - 218 - Inca/Pachacuti
• 8th place: enKage - 222 - Cree/Poundmaker
• 9th place: Casualty of war - 235 - Lautaro/Mapuche
• 10th place: Ceydezed - 236 SV - Rome/Trajan

 

[The Highwayman]

Here is a T201 with Dido...so close to sub 200!!!! My fastest science victory post Goddess of the Harvest nerf. Culture was terrible throughout, which likely cost me sub 200.

Deity
All standard settings - I thought I had a wet map, as mentioned in another thread, but that was on my pre rolls on splintered fractal, which I scrapped due to atrocious seeds.
Seven Seas

Religious Settlements pantheon
Wonders
Oracle, Kilwa, Mause, Forbidden City, Potala Palace, Big Ben, Ruhr, Amundsen-Scott. Got all 3 wonder production engineers with 3 charges apiece. Very convenient for the later wonders.

CSs
Bologna and Hattusa were the only two science CSs. Bologna was under siege most of the game by Russia. I slipped up and exposed 1 hex next to the city late game when forming an army for the eureka and his Curraiser snuck in and almost took the city. Had to declare (right after our friendship expired). Got a betrayal emergency against me where my science ally Genghis declared, as well as a befriended Qin. All over an AI's 100+ turn obsession with conquering 1 city state. Russia was of no consequence, as I built 3 tanks for the eureka - smart move following the eurekas. But terrible design overall. Attack the CS at all cost for the entire game. Laughable. Had 2 other suzes at game's end. Overall a bad pull of CSs, with more competition for suzes than usual.

Notes
Didn't conquer any cities, but loyalty flipped one of Russia's. Ended up with 17 cities but a few of them were settled very late for aluminum and uranium.
2 spaceports - the cap and a chop city to the northwest courtesy of a Reyna purchase.
They've definitely made the late science game interesting IMO. There are a lot of decisions that go into shaving every turn off your game.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :