CFC: Fastest STANDARD SETTINGS Deity Science Victory

[Casualty of war]

Kinda hard to muster up any motivation for a Science Victory speedrun after the Babylon news. I can't believe the people that are downplaying how tech-busted Babylon is.

 

[ATEX]

Kinda hard to muster up any motivation for a Science Victory speedrun after the Babylon news. I can't believe the people that are downplaying how tech-busted Babylon is.

Babylon seems fun. And should be very fast, although Im not sure if they will be way faster than everyone else

 

[Minou]

ATEX, are you still playing Norway? I am doing OK in my attempt, only at T91 though so hard to know how it will pan out in the end. The one thing I am struggling with is pillage and overflow. I was under the impression pillage cancels any overflow but I am not sure in fully understand it.

Case in point, I had Education like 99% finished at the end of a turn. Start of next turn, it completed and I had 13 turns left on Astronomy. I swapped to Military Tactics (1 turn from completion) and pillaged a mine to complete it in-turn. I thought I made a mistake, because this would cancel out my overflow from completing Education. But, when I swapped onto Astronomy it now said 9 turns, so apparently I not only kept the overflow from Education, but gained some from the overflow from pillaging to complete Military Tactics. But I next pillaged another mine to complete Castles and now Astronomy was back to 15 turns....

So, I am now totally confused. It seems that the safest way to make sure you don't lose overflow is wait till a turn when you have NOT completed a tech and then make sure pillage science goes into techs that need a lot of turns (e.g. pillage 80s into Castles, then swap techs and pillage 80s into Astronomy, etc) and use the last pillage to complete a tech in-turn (if possible). But maybe this is wrong... I guess it matters very little in the part of the game I am in now where a pillage is worth 86s and I only have 54s per turn naturally, but could make a huge difference later in the game when these amounts grow....

 

[ATEX]

ATEX, are you still playing Norway? I am doing OK in my attempt, only at T91 though so hard to know how it will pan out in the end. The one thing I am struggling with is pillage and overflow. I was under the impression pillage cancels any overflow but I am not sure in fully understand it.

Case in point, I had Education like 99% finished at the end of a turn. Start of next turn, it completed and I had 13 turns left on Astronomy. I swapped to Military Tactics (1 turn from completion) and pillaged a mine to complete it in-turn. I thought I made a mistake, because this would cancel out my overflow from completing Education. But, when I swapped onto Astronomy it now said 9 turns, so apparently I not only kept the overflow from Education, but gained some from the overflow from pillaging to complete Military Tactics. But I next pillaged another mine to complete Castles and now Astronomy was back to 15 turns....

So, I am now totally confused. It seems that the safest way to make sure you don't lose overflow is wait till a turn when you have NOT completed a tech and then make sure pillage science goes into techs that need a lot of turns (e.g. pillage 80s into Castles, then swap techs and pillage 80s into Astronomy, etc) and use the last pillage to complete a tech in-turn (if possible). But maybe this is wrong... I guess it matters very little in the part of the game I am in now where a pillage is worth 86s and I only have 54s per turn naturally, but could make a huge difference later in the game when these amounts grow....

Hmm I can't explain your case above , and I'm still not 100% sure how overflow works with pillage. As soon as I finish my viking game I can use it to test a bit. Hopefully I will sneak in some hours tomorrow or sunday to end it. I think it will finish around turn 155, and I suspect this can be improved by at least 10 turns in a proper game once we figure out the optimal approach. I dont think the lost overflow will matter that much. The number of mines to pillage seems to be the key. And how fast the cities can flip. What template are you using? Are you cheesing or conquering?

 

[ATEX]

• 1st place: ATEX 156 - Norway/ Harald
• 2st place: Minou 161 - USA/ Teddy (Bull Moose)
• 3rd place: whacker 165 - Russia/Peter

• 4th place: ATEX 167- Russia/Peter
• 5th place: Civ Chemist - 177 - Japan/Hojo Tokimune
• 6rd place: Victoria - 191 - Maori/Kupe
• 7th place: Bangau - 192 - Korea/Seondeok
• 8th place: Lotrmith - 200 Bolivar/GranColombia
  
• 9th place: The Highwayman - 201 - Dido/Phoenicia
• 10th place: The Highwayman - 210 - Trajan/Rome
• 11th place: monikernemo - 210 - Peter/Russia (How does one break ties?)
• 12th place: enKage - 210 - Cree/Poundmaker

So I finished my Norway game @Minou. Sorry to knock you down so soon with a cheese game. The game started out because of a discussion around work ethics and tundra Norway. A concept I found funny. I played the game until turn 90 when I lost a settler and did some mistakes that made me just quit the game. After seeing the war driven @Minou game with Teddy, I picked the game back up and continued with setting up several outposts where I would get -20 loyalty and as many mines as possible. Every third turn the city would flip, I could pillage the tiles, retake the city and wait another 3 turns to pillage. It takes some planning to set it up, but once it gets going, it is quite fast. Also with huge amounts of gold and faith, planning gets a lot easier. You just buy what you need for boosts, and chop what you cant buy.

I will not make a detailed writethrough, because I dont know yet how to optimize this playstyle. I probably will make another attempt and give a writeup of that game instead. One thing that does not work is giving away a city that you founded in the middle of your empire like the picture below... It takes forever to flip and fix before you can give it away again... Learned that the hard way.

I think it is fun though that we have 3 different civs and playstyles as the top 3 science games now. Maybe with Babylon it will be 4 different at the top.

 

[Minou]

Congrats! I am glad I managed to finish my write-up before it was obsolete. I've been playing a hybrid Norway game myself and just hit T104 -started ten days ago but haven't had a ton of time to play this week. My strategy was to get a core of decent cities up before working on setting up the flippers. After a few games I found there is a balance between setting up the flipping cities too soon and ending up with too little infrastructure and setting them up too slow and thus not hitting the massive s/c/g/f influx from pillaging in time.

Not sure I will hit T156 but at least now I have a clear target!

Curious why the city in your photo didn't flip fast? It looks like it should have -20 loyalty from pop for sure?

 

[ATEX]

It gets -20 but since I have to gift it to an ai, it starts at 100 loyalty, instead of 50 for outposts that has flipped at least once. Also you have to wait until it gets healed back up to 100% before you can give it away again. Also the ai can put a governor there so it gets to be 10ish turns between the flips. So settle colonies or steal a city. That is much smarter.

 

[Minou]

Ah yes, makes sense. It will be interesting to try out Hammurabi. If you can also get full free techs from Great Scientists, Great Library, and Tribal Villages, he sounds pretty broken.Gotta think that Hammurabi has a shot at breaking the science records again, though we'll see if it ends being a huge drag to get through the final unboostable part of the tech tree at half science.

I feel like I could have completed my best Teddy game in the T150-155 range with a better final tech tree and slightly better play (e.g. if Offworld Mission was the second hidden tech, I would not have been able to shave the full 10 turns off since did not have had all my Laser ready at that point). So, Bull Moose Teddy may be able to compete with Norway. They are such different styles - the cheesy pillage seems mindless at face vale but it actually takes a lot of planning to get it going fast and efficiently. Overall the game goes a lot faster though with less cities to manage and the ability to just buy things like Workshops and Banks for boosts instead of having to plan more carefully.

 

[ATEX]

I agree that Teddy might compete, and maybe also Peter. But I would still think Norway is a bit faster. And although it is cheesy it is not all that easy to get it superfast. =) If Hammurabi is even faster I dont know yet, but maybe. Im thinking wide late war might work. Pillage campuses and industrial zones near the end of the tech tree. Should speed up the unboostable techs quite nicely.

 

[Minou]

Does the -50% science for Hammurabi apply to pillage too? Probably makes only a minor difference either way.

I am thinking the random end of the tech tree may matter even more for Hammurabi since it will be pretty hard to hit 1 tech per turn with that -50% penalty. Could make a 10+ turn difference based on luck.

Thinking of ways to get boosts for techs wit no natural boosts. Obviously the AI will be too far behind to steal them with Spies, but that "free additional boost when stealing a tech" makes me wonder about saving a bunch of older techs like Pottery and Military Tactics that you don't need anymore (assuming you can complete techs by boost without the pre-reqs) so you can try to get bonus boosts from Spy steals. However, I don't know how the "free" boost is chosen and I assume you may just end up getting the cheapest techs first, making this only really useful for one tech. Great Library obviously would also be good except the cost scales up so much that by the time you are in the end of the tech tree the AIs probably have no shot at getting more... I guess I'm definitely saving all the huts I can in hopes of late game tech boosts!

 

[ATEX]

Does the -50% science for Hammurabi apply to pillage too? Probably makes only a minor difference either way.

I am thinking the random end of the tech tree may matter even more for Hammurabi since it will be pretty hard to hit 1 tech per turn with that -50% penalty. Could make a 10+ turn difference based on luck.

Thinking of ways to get boosts for techs wit no natural boosts. Obviously the AI will be too far behind to steal them with Spies, but that "free additional boost when stealing a tech" makes me wonder about saving a bunch of older techs like Pottery and Military Tactics that you don't need anymore (assuming you can complete techs by boost without the pre-reqs) so you can try to get bonus boosts from Spy steals. However, I don't know how the "free" boost is chosen and I assume you may just end up getting the cheapest techs first, making this only really useful for one tech. Great Library obviously would also be good except the cost scales up so much that by the time you are in the end of the tech tree the AIs probably have no shot at getting more... I guess I'm definitely saving all the huts I can in hopes of late game tech boosts!

I dont think pillages would be -50%, so they will be effective. I think they will be the only fast option. But we normally have 2000spt, so with 1000spt and some pillages he should be just fine. With a library and a uni a campus is worth 1000 science.

 

[Minou]

Fair enough, but I find a lot of variation in how many Campuses are available. Some AIs spam them and others basically ignore them. Plus, once you pillage a nice Campus/Library/University stack it will take them a long time to repair. That's why Norway is so nice, there are always mines and if there aren't you can make you own with cheesy flip cities.

ATEX I wonder if you ran into trouble keeping rapid flipping going as the game went on? I am on T120 now. At first I was actually struggling more with getting cities to flip in 3 turns since many of the AIs were not in Golden Age and some of the cities I set up or captured did not get close to -20 loyalty from population at first. As the game moved on this became less of a problem, but now the when they flip the Rebel cities spawn two Infantry and have 60 defensive strength. Before I was just whacking them each a Musket and a Knight to re-capture but now it takes a number of hits and my pillage-only units (mostly Heavy Chariots) are in danger of being actually killed if I don't flip quickly.

This makes me worry about Urban Defenses! I haven't teched Steel yet, but assuming free cities gain Urban Defenses when the player gets Steel (not sure if this is correct, but since they spawn my strongest unlocked melee unit I assume they do), my flipping game is going to come to a screeching hault unless I invest in Artillery/Bombers and I have not even unlocked Oil.

 

[ATEX]

True, but remember it will be both campuses and industrial zones. And if they are not available through the AI, we can gift away our own cities, declare war and pillage them. If you have a helicopter with Depredation, it should be able to give you more than 1000-1400 science in a turn. If you have a full IZ as well, 2 units can net close to 3000 science in a turn from one city. I have not tested this yet, but I see some potential here for all fast science games. Im thinking in the final stages as a one time boost. Kind of like a chop for a whole city. (Or chop the repairs if there are chops available and repeat)

When it comes to flipping cities, I used the loyalty lense, and made sure I was safe in -20 land, kept the cities at 1 or 2 pop(with starving), and kept my flip cities at a wide distance of each other, so no problems about flipping. An AI dark age might have caused issues for some of them. When the city rebels, I would feed the troops workers, and ignore the troops to go straght for the city. I bought many catapults, and upgraded with discounts. (Resources becomes a bottleneck!) Most pillage units will be warriors or chariots, but some strong units close to the city is needed. The best is cavalry that can pillage and attack the same turn.

Urban defences is a problem yes. First time they show up at least is problematic. And you need artillery or planes to take them down. With Urban defences it became clear that there are some advantages to stealing an AI city to use as a flip city instead of founding one. Because the strength of the city will reflect the original owner when it flips. However unless the AI founds perfect flip cities, Im not sure if you can get away from founding them yourself.

 

[Minou]

Just hit Steel and it has slowed me down. I actually found Akkad in the game and thought it was a miracle for this reason, but it turns out Akkad's ability is only for walls, not Urban Defenses. At some flip cities I just happened to have old Catapults from levies that I upgraded to Artillery but at others I am just chipping away with a bunch of Infantry.

Good observation about original owners of cities. This explains why overtime the city I captured from Egypt flipped I could take it back with a single Musket, whereas my own planted cities required 2-3 units to recapture (before Urban Defenses of course).

Never tried giving away my own cities in a non-Norway game but that's kind of a cool analogy - chopping a whole city! Might try a couple at the end of my next Teddy game, though with Babylon on the horizon I gotta reserve my next game time for them.

Hopefully I will finish this game soon, it was definitely a learning experience. I have a much better idea of the optimal mix of units to pillage all improvements and retake a city in a single turn now. I was using faith Settler purchases effectively to get captured cities down to 1 pop but even late in the game I have many cities above -20 due to the AI being in a Dark Age. One 1 pop city is close to four different AI cities of 3 to 6 pop and out of range of all my own, and still only gets -14 loyalty! I missed out on a religion (was at 59/60 with two Great Prophets left but two different AIs bought them out from under me), so not having the extra -3 there was a drag. I almost wonder if this might be a rare situation where Audience Chamber would be useful? It would have flipped a number of cities earlier, especially early in the game.

At T130 now, will see if I can challenge that T156 time soon.

 

[Casualty of war]

Super annoying, Stockholm is stuck as non-productive even though Sweden is gone. I've swapped governors, reset the build queue, saved and reloaded the game, to no avail. It hurts to squander a Teddy-Granada game that's off to a good start. I would have all of Poland and Russia by Turn 100 then City Parks and Alcazars the continent.

Spoiler :

 

[Minou]

Casualty, I tried loading your save and ending the turn (almost all your units and cities "moved" already, so only had to make two choices - I set Jonkoping to repair the Monument and I just left the Builder alone). When the new turn started Stockholm gained a bunch of loyalty and had more production/growth. Here is the file if you want to pick up your game again - nice to roll Granada as Teddy!

 

[Minou]

Managed to steal back the 1st place slot with Norway, although I suspect this may be short-lived with Babylonia on the loose. Game was Deity all settings standard and Continents map. I definitely learned a lot about the pillaging economy this game! Sadly cost myself a bunch of turns with an amazing map by not optimizing flipping very well, ignoring my domestic economy a little too much, and doing a really poor job at the Lasers phase. I feel like a much, much time is possible with Norway now that I now what I am doing.

I will try to write the game up this weekend but may get too temped to take a stab at Babylon.

• 1st place: Minou 154 - Norway/ Harald
• 2nd place: ATEX 156 - Norway/ Harald
• 3rd place: Minou 161 - USA/ Teddy (Bull Moose)
• 4th place: whacker 165 - Russia/Peter

• 5th place: ATEX 167- Russia/Peter
• 6th place: Civ Chemist - 177 - Japan/Hojo Tokimune
• 7th place: Victoria - 191 - Maori/Kupe
• 8th place: Bangau - 192 - Korea/Seondeok
• 9th place: Lotrmith - 200 Bolivar/GranColombia
  
• 10th place: The Highwayman - 201 - Dido/Phoenicia

 

[Minou]

Part 1

Spoiler :

My basic strategy was to set up a strong core of cities to have enough production for units and boosts, and then start setting up cities that would quickly flip by loyalty for pillage spam.

This start was insane, I moved the Settler one tile to work the 3f/1h/2c/4g Fur right away. Started with a Scout. My starting Warrior quickly met Cardiff (meh) and got a Builder from a hut (yay!), then cleared a camp and right after died to a barb Horseman. Other nearby CS were Mexico City and Taruga though I did not meet either in time for a free envoy. Second City was up quick (T25) and placed on a 2c/3g Desert tile near an Oasis for fresh water. I had so much gold from the Païtiti that I actually bought the next Settler, who headed to the coast to start pumping out Longships. I had hoped to grab Religious Settlements and use the free Settler for my first flip city, but I missed out. However, Lady of the Reeds and Marshes was pretty sweet with this start, effecting 4 tiles in my first two cities and 3 more in the third city, which ended up being strong than RS over time. I founded one more city on the coast near the capital, and those four cities were it for my core region.

The first AI I met was Gilgamesh and I made friends with him. Next was Egypt, not thrilling since they have a strong UU, but luckily for me Gilgamesh attacked them so both ended up wasting a lot of units. Greece was third, up north near the ocean. There was only one Horse (outside the range of any city) and no Iron in my core area, so I decided to try a combined Longship+Warrior invasion of Greece. I got levied 5 Warriors from Taruga and sent two Longships slowly along the coast. They easily captured a coastal city with a Holy Site on T53. I decided rather than flipping that city I would conquer the rest of Greece, but I think this was probably a mistake and I might have been better off buying a few Monumentality Builders and making this my first flip city. I kept the city in part because I thought I would need the Holy Site to found my religion, but obnoxiously both Egypt and Sumerian purchased the last two Great Prophets immediately after I ended my turn at 59/60GP points!

On T50 I met Lahore! That was great news as those Nihang are really cost effective, basically one super-strong upkeep free unit for every 4 or so faith pillages. On T57, my friendship with Gilgamesh expired and I could not resist the temptation to declare war because he left an unguarded Settler in range of my units and I could pillage a bunch of Ziggurats for needed gold to buy some badly needed Builders. Normally Gilgamesh would be a tough nut to crack with War carts, but all of them were either killed y Egypt or tied up fighting to the west so I was able to capture their capital with a bunch of Archers and Warriors. It had a nice Campus+Library. Around 30 turns later I actually sold the city back to Gilgamesh for 571g just to help with negative loyalty of one of my flip cities. Poor gullible Gilgamesh signed an Alliance later (T99) and then got eliminated near the end of the game when I needed his forests and Aluminum.

The lucky break of the game came on T71. Egypt has attacked Mexico City and battered it down to 20HP. I was able to snipe the city by declaring and sliding in with one Warrior! That was amazing, and I ended up making Mexico City my first dedicated flip city. Annoyingly Egypt was in a Dark Age so their cities put almost no loyalty pressure on the city, but by starving for -4 loyalty and selling off all my luxuries for another -3 loyalty I was able to flip it eventually. I set up a second dedicated flip city with the stolen Settler on T74. I captured one Egyptian city as well for flipping, it had 6 pop but I was able to drive it into disloyalty by peeling off pop with Monumentality Settlers, who sailed west and set up three cities that would later chop space stuff. Annoyingly at this stage despite selling all my amenities I was unable to dip into unhappiness in some cities because I has several luxuries from City States where I was Suzerain.

Shipbuilding completed T59 so another set of Longships reached the new continent very early. They quickly met Bandar (lame), Anshan, and much more excitingly Nan Mandol, which was great over the coarse of the game since I had several coastal districts of my own and conquered more from Greece. By sending Amani to Nan Mandol, I gained Suzerain status, revealing Ethiopia nearby, and set about levying their units for a quick strike at a small outlying city to use as a flipper on T75, popping out a bunch of Nihang while I waited for it to revolt.

Another Longship heading west (the southern passage was luckily ice-free) was blocked by Kabul’s borders, but I just declared, pillaged their coastal mine, and sailed happily onwards. By T70 I met the final CS, which were Akkad, Kandy, Muscat, and Kumasi. Overall a pretty decent set, especially Lahore. Over the course of the game I had 3-4 Longships (or their upgrades) sailing back and forth along the coasts pillaging whenever the opportunity arose. At one point I tried taking a walled coastal city with Pyramids off of Indonesia using three Longships (two could attack each turn) but after making good initial progress, they were driven off when a Crossbow arrived. I was able to capture a smaller coastal city from Indonesia but failed to get enough military up to retake it after it flipped.

 

[Minou]

Part 2

Spoiler :

As the game rounded T100 I had 7 cities set up to flip every 2 (best case, with -20 loyalty from pop plus some from grievances) to 6 turns (two few cases where the cities were not perfectly placed). I was only at about 75spt at T100 but was pulling in between 100 and 400s from pillaging. I got tripped up a couple times.

One of my far-off flip cites was completely ruined because I was pillaging it with 5 units levied from Kabul and while I wasn’t paying attention Russia took the City State, killing the whole army instantly. I also hit a brick wall when I teched Steel and Urban Defenses boosted the strength of the cities I founded through the roof. I was caught flat footed without Bombers and even after bringing up some upgraded Artillery it was a pain to grind those cities down, adding several turns to each flip cycle. I thought Akkad would solve my problems but apparently they do not help against Urban Defense “walls”.

I didn’t bother much with wonders except for ToA in capital, Kilwa, Oxford (got Advanced Ballistics and Combustion), and Casa. Not investing in a task force to capture the Pyramids was a mistake. In fact I was way too lazy with infrastructure in general, basically building a few needed districts and buying all the buildings with gold but not planning anywhere near as carefully as I would in a normal game since I was lazily using pillage gold/faith to cover up my sloppy core development.

I learned that if possible, it is much better to pick off a small border city from an AI than to found your own when setting up a flip-city. This is because the defensive strength of the city itself is based on the original owner. In my game, I could still recapture the city I poached from Ethiopia with a single hit from an AT Crew after each round of pillaging, meaning even when they spawned Mechanized Infantry rebel units they would just vanish before they could actually attack. The cities I founded myself, like Skien shown above, were super strong once I hit Steal and often took several turns of chipping away with Artillery and Tanks, during which the rebel Mechanized Infantry sometimes stole Builders or killed units.

The Space Race part of the game was very unusual given the small number of cities I held and the pillage economy. Hit Rocketry on T131 and bought a Spaceport with Reyna in a city I founded late near Torres del Paine with 8 forests. At this stage I could pillage 10+ mines many turns and was hitting 1 tech per turn despite a paltry 200spt domestic output. Since 90% of my science was from pillage, there was no real pressure to get Globalization and so I hard-built the Satellites with only one chop to help, finishing it on T144. I also hard-built the Moon Landing in the capital until I revealed Smart Materials (lucked out and only needed to tech Cybernetics to get it), at which stage I chopped the rest of the Moon Landing in the capital with Pingula and chopped all of Exoplanet in the Torres city with 6 Magnus chops and one Royal Society Builder.

The rocket was flying on T147. I was able to get two Lasers chopped that turn, then two more on T148, two more on T149, one more on T150. Finally on T151 Moksha arrived at Mexico City, which had a ton of trees and I had stopped flipping to use for the final set of Lasers. I was able to buy a faith Spaceport and Encampment, and the Barracks/Armory/Military Academy with gold before chopping 3 Lasers more on T151, at which point I could have completed a few more but it wouldn’t affect the victory time. Since I did not have enough Aluminum, it was a mad dash to throw up Windmills and Solar Farms in several cities near the time I was chopping Lasers.

I saved a ton of Tribal Villages for near the end of the game in part because five were on an isolated landmass with only Bandar on it. Ended up getting Divine Right boost, Ranger, 20DF, Suffrage boost, 100f, Guidance System, Telecommunications, and Stealth boost (none actually needed, but the most expensive boosts I ever got from huts), 120g, and 40g. Still waiting for the day I hit a free late game tech from a hut.

 

[Minou]

Summary:

As this chart shows, its all about the pillaging! The vast bulk of science came from pillaging, I tallied 48,158s from pillage which is more than the 14,511s from domestic sources and 21,138 from boosts combined. My best single turn of science pillaging was 2,904, so it is easy to get complete one or more full late game techs in a single turn.

Culture was less lopsided, I pillaged only 13,421c, about the same as I produced domestically (not counting boosts).This is because it is generally easier to set up flip cities with lots of mines than ones with lots of plantations/pastures/quarries.

Pillaging also handles most boosts since you can buy building and even GP from the proceeds. I only had 1,596 faith domestically, but pillaged in 27,703. The most outrageous was gold. I actually ended up with -212g from domestic sources (ran ~100gpt deficit for most of the late game) but pillaged over 166,000g! Makes Big Ben seem like a tiny bedside alarm clock.

Overall I feel like this was a learning experience and better play could shave off a dozen turns easy.

My biggest strategic mistake was not working hard enough on setting up flip cities. By the end of the game I had 3 on the home continent and 3 on the other continent, but with a little more focus I could have had twice as many! It took some getting used to looking for spots with negative loyalty pressure and hills instead of spots with positive loyalty pressure, trees, and fresh water. I especially failed by not grabbing some coastal flip cities with Frigates/Ironclads. Kicking myself over the lack of planning there.

My biggest tactical mistake was not planning well for the Lasers. I only had three cities with >3 forests left once the Exoplanet Mission was flying, but three of the cities I was using for flipping had 6 or more. I should have stopped flipping two of these five turns ahead of Exoplanet so I could establish Reyna/Moshka, but I didn’t do so until the turn Offworld Mission was completed. I should have had 8 Lasers instead of 2 on the first turn the ship launched, which would have cut 1 or 2 turns depending on how well I managed the remaining chops.

Overall the game was really fun because of all the excess gold and the dopamine from seeing all the little blue and gold numbers go up every time a mine got pillaged, but tedious near the end controlling all those dozens of units and builders for the pillage/flip/recapture process (they all alert even if fortified, so annoying!). I'm pretty sure Norway is the clear #1 for fast Science of pre-existing Civs after this test. Eager to try out Babylonia now and see if they can compete.