Early spaceship

[Rhymes]

Even though i dont know if its that good, I achieved spaceship victory in 1886 AD, and I hardly see how I could have done better.

Playing as Mali, standard map, continents, noble.

-I started with a worler chop/ skirmisher rush to wipe out Russia and take their incredible starting liocation along with 2 other cities at around 1000BC

- This is where I might have done better to save a couple of turns: from that moment I started aiming at early spaceship victory since I had no other opponents on the continent, meaning that I could almost drop all military/unit improvements. But I didn't really know what was the best balance between building libraries and improvements and founding new cities.

- When i got to around liberalism and democracy, i beelined to the Tech that allows the Appolo programm, and built it at around 1700AD. Second beeline to democarcy so I could buy improvements such as factories/labs/ etc. And then I only researched techs that lead me to spaceship parts. With my fiancial empire, I researched every sciences from the renaissance to the end at a pace of about 3turns/science average, and had enough money surplus to buy every improvement in my 5 spacehip producing cities, I made about 500 gp/turn.

-Finally, my production leading center, Djenne, completed the space elevator at the exact same turn I discovered Fusion and I only had the SS engine left to build.


So i wondered what was the best sapceship victory date you guys made, and what other strategy i may have missed.

 

[Shillen]

Funny you should ask this since I just played a noble game today aiming for fast spaceship victory. Not to one up you but since you asked I launched in 1868AD.

I played it a bit differently from you. For one I chose random civ, which landed me with Bismarck (philosophical and cultural). I founded about 4-5 cities and researched construction for war elephants/cats (I had no copper or horses) before taking Louis XIV off my continent and claiming it for myself. I had a great great person city so I used caste system/representation/pacifism most of the game. My city was generating 136 gpp per turn at its peak. It had lots of flood plains and cows/rice. I had like 6 great scientists merged into one city, a couple academies built, and used many others to discover techs.

I did not get a religion until very late in the game. Even after astronomy and meeting all the civs it still took like 25+ turns before spreading. I aimed for astronomy early because there were only 3 happy resources on my entire continent. Add that to the no religion and happiness was a huge concern early which kept my city sizes very small. The good thing about having no religion is when you meet the other AI's you can get good trade deals going without the heathen religion modifier. There was one civ (Egypt) that most of the other AI's didn't like while the rest liked each other. So I just did not trade with Egypt and did all my dealing with the others. Unfortunately Egypt was the tech leader of the AI's so that limited my deals a bit.

I pretty much skipped a lot of techs not needed for space victory - divine right, medecine, etc. But my biggest problem was a complete lack of production in my cities. By the end of the game my techs were going by so fast I really didn't have time to build some of the better wonders. I really didn't have time to get all the railroads built and factories/power everywhere. I ended up discovering 2-3 future techs before finishing the building of my spaceship. Overall it was pretty good but I think I could do better.

edit: One strategy that worked awesome in civ3 was giving the AI's all the techs you have so they will do some research for you instead of researching the same techs you already have. I didn't try that in this game. I just left them all in the dust. But next time I will try that and see if it works in civ4 as well. It's a little more iffy because a lot of the times they won't trade with you, etc. And if they decide to attack you after you gift them with equal military techs to yourself that could be troublesome. Probably not a concern if you have the continent to yourself, though.

 

[Rhymes]

I basically did the exact same thing, skipped techs. etc. (I also got mali on random civ)

Though I decided to adopt free religion for the science bonus and to make sure I was at peace with everyone so I didn't have to build any military.

The bad luck i had is that my great people always chose to hurry science that I didn't need for spaceship, like mass media, etc. I was kinda unlucky on that, even though I had a 60% chance of great scientist, they kept giving me great artists and priests, who are the one to research the unwanted techs.

I'm very surprise that you managed to keep up the extreme research pace with a non-financial civ though, you must have had way more cities then I did.

 

[Redbad]

The good thing about having no religion is when you meet the other AI's you can get good trade deals going without the heathen religion modifier.

It is not necessary to have no religion to prevent "heathen religion" annoyance. You just should not found a state religion. Having religion without choosing a state-religion enables you to build temples and thus increase happiness.

 

[Shillen]

Well that's what's great about caste system. You can hire all of one specialist type and get an almost guaranteed chance of getting that specialist. The only wonder I had in the city was national epic for great leader generation. The weird thing that I didn't understand is that the national epic was only generating 1GPP while my scientists were generating a base of 30GPP, yet my chance of generating a science/artist was 90/10. It should have been like 97/3. But anyway I only got one great artist in the entire game. I used him (with a scientist) for a golden age which wasn't too helpful. I also had trouble with them wanting to discover techs I didn't need, or trying to discover techs that were extremely cheap and a waste of a great person. Towards the end of the game they only wanted to help me with Medicine. So I ended up merging most of them which is a waste at the end of the game, but oh well.

I had 11 main cities. Towards mid-late game I founded 3-4 poor cities on my continent (tundra fishing villages pretty much). I also had 3 cities overseas as I was the first to astronomy. I didn't fight any wars other than the one on my continent against Louis XIV. I did have a couple fake wars with Egypt when the AI's asked me to declare war on her. I never fought a single unit of hers, though.

It is not necessary to have no religion to prevent "heathen religion" annoyance. You just should not found a state religion. Having religion without choosing a state-religion enables you to build temples and thus increase happiness.

I know that. I would never not found a religion just to get good relations with the AI's. I didn't found a religion because I had more important things to research (and I was hoping Louis would get one for me, but alas he didn't). The relations boost is just a side benefit of it. If you have a religion you're probably better off not switching to no-state religion just to please the AI's overseas because then you lose the benefit from civics and a happy face, etc. Maybe if you're spiritual you can convert to no-state for a few turns when you first meet the other AI's to make a good impression, but other than that I wouldn't.

 

[Shillen]

Well I tried this again to improve my date. I chose China this time for the financial boost. I also gifted/sold every tech I learned to all the AI's.

I started on a continent with 1 other civ again (Japan). I didn't take over my continent early on this time though. I declared war on Japan very early in the game to steal their initial worker, pillage their sheep and gold mine by their capital. Then I settled two cities on choke points which held them in a small part of the continent with a lot of ice. So I claimed about 2/3 of the continent and left it at that for a while. I got optics and astronomy extremely early (before alphabet even) and made contact with everyone. My early tech pace was very good because I had 3 gold hills in my capital's borders. I didn't wipe Japan out until around 1400AD.

I thought I was flying through the techs. Selling all my techs to the AI's was netting me a decent amount of gold allowing to me to keep my research slider higher. Unfortunately they weren't great at getting techs for me. But they did get some later in the game. They researched plastics and combustion for me for instance. I'm not sure what happened. I had much better production in my cities this time around but I only beat my last game by 10 turns, launching in 1845AD. I'm not sure how I can improve on that. Maybe if I start on a bigger continent and take control of it sooner.

I also didn't get nearly as many great scientists as I did with Bismarck. I kept getting artists even though the artist chance was only 20%.
I built stonehenge early and used the first prophet to found christianity. So I didn't have any happiness problems all game and benefitted from organized religion. Unfortunately I could not get another prophet all game and missed angkor wat by a few turns. So I never did get the shrine built.

 

[alexti2]

I'm pretty sure you can do better than that if you play on deity. If you can win space race you'd probably do it in 1700s. The main difficulty there is not to win early, but just to win. AI will probably get all required tech researched by that time and if you've beelined to the Internet you can catch them and then it just matter of constructing the last few modules first.

 

[Shillen]

I'm not so sure about that. In civ3 it's true if you play a higher difficulty you can launch significantly sooner. But in civ4 techs are not traded around as easily. In fact I was playing an emperor fast tech game and civs were absolutely refusing to trade techs to me stating I was starting to get too technologicall advanced. This was when those civs had about a 4-5 tech lead on me (I never had more than 1 tech that they didn't have). I imagine on deity the AI's will keep you 10 or more techs behind and won't trade you up to date ones ever. Not to mention you absolutely have to keep a strong military in those games. In these noble games I could pretty much completely neglect my military without fear.

 

[tempuraki]

That's why the beeline to internet, to get all the techs from 2 other civs. Hmm, so that's what that wonder is for, being there so late in the game. I am gonna have to try that.

 

[Gufnork]

Oooh, a challenge!

 

[Gufnork]

Wow, I suck. I launched the spaceship in 1926. I'll chalk it up to a failure and try something more fun. The standard settings for civ suck, the research in the end game really, really go by fast.

 

[alexti2]

In fact I was playing an emperor fast tech game and civs were absolutely refusing to trade techs to me stating I was starting to get too technologicall advanced. This was when those civs had about a 4-5 tech lead on me (I never had more than 1 tech that they didn't have). I imagine on deity the AI's will keep you 10 or more techs behind and won't trade you up to date ones ever.

Good thing about the Internet is that AI is not asked if they want to share their technologies or not

 

[ÆnigmÆffect]

Damn, I didn't do too hot either. I launched with like 93 turns left.

This is after having a ginormous empire (I played a "terran" world, and pretty much took 2 continents to myself).

On question: How do people get so much gold per turn??? By the end, I'm teching at about 4 turns/tech for future tech, and am making like +100 gold (this is with cities on "wealth"). I just don't get it...

 

[Shillen]

They don't research future tech and just turn the slider to 0 when they're done researching the techs they need.