Fast science victories ?

[garmeth]

Picked up vanilla civ 5 last week and am currently playing on emperor . I haven't been able to achieve a tech victory before turn 270. What is a fast SV in vanilla civ and how can I go about achieving it?

I play France , get the fast settler in liberty , finish tradition then rationalism . Despite building almost no army and spamming RAs, I can't get a pre 250 SV if my life depended on it .


- thanks in advance for your time

 

[danaphanous]

I wouldn't feel bad. that's pretty good if you've truly only been playing a week. t270 is often a deity-level SV victory, though on that level you have a lot more to worry about. Like aggressive early rushes and inability to get a decent religion, all the CS being stolen, etc. But, potentially, playing high levels can lower your times.

there's a thread about this, and I'm trying to improve on the same thing from the discussions there:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=530550

In short:

1. Play higher levels, AI keep up better and thus give you better science from RA's. The RA is calculated as 5 average turns of the worst guys beakers over the last 30 turns. AI also has more gold to give you loans and buy your stuff. More loans = bought science buildings.

2. Play huge map as science penalties are less and expansion is punished less. AI will grow bigger and make RA's even better.

3. Optimum tech order (you probably already figured this out). Beeline science techs, bribe AI to fight each other if you have to to keep them off your back. Get to points like education, scientific theory, plastics, etc. early. Also get to growth techs early. If you can, having gold to immediately buy some of these buildings can shave some turns off.

4. Open and finish rationalism as soon as possible.

5. Run many, many specialists, especially science ones for as many Great Scientists as possible.

6. get hubble and porcelain tower. If you can (difficult on deity) leaning tower gives another free GS and +25% boost to GP generation. That's at least 2 more scientists including the free one.

7. Ally CS to keep yourself happy, many top tier players tend to take patronage next for this while they wait for rationalism to be available.

8. Grow, Grow, Grow. Anything that makes you grow faster or better will get you done faster. This is limited by happiness though. Having a capital on the coast can be great as you can feed it with food trade ships which supply double food.

9. You prob. already know this but: NC asap, and obversatories/jungle cities where possible unless the spot would be really crappy.

10. plant academies until your scientist have a beaker yield of around 1500+ as between multiplication and all those academies will yield far more beakers for your buck. A rule of thumb I've is stop planting when you get public schools.

11. scientists appreciate in value as they are calculated as a running average of your science. If you expect your science to get phenomenally better quite soon saving them can be useful. End-game saving them can save some turns, I've found a good trick is to go freedom, stockpile loads of cash, maybe with commerce discounts, and just keep them around. Once I see by calculation that burning them all will finish me in a turn or two I do it and buy the last part. This often reduces my finish time by a few turns as saving them netted me maybe 250-500 extra science apiece. The saving trick can be especially powerful if you have a large empire growing rapidly. You can easily see your scientists get 25% stronger over the next few decades as science ramps up. But this is a balance with using them earlier to quickly get into good science techs. For instance? Don't have plastics yet? Probably worth it to bulb and get it, then quick-build those labs as they are so powerful. Everything after plastics though is a good time for saving, especially with a freedom empire. You can just stockpile your cash and buy the parts in your capital, so waiting a few turns longer to get those first information techs and letting your scientists grow more powerful is worth it and actually SAVES time. I've had games where between the time I entered the atomic era and won via SV I only spent 40 turn or so. That's like an era and a half. I did it by smart timing of RA's and GS's so I only was working on techs for 1/3 of the actual time and the rest was boosts.

if you have a slowing end-game ISS can really help. Beeline satellites timed to coincide with a proposition. Propose ISS. 1st tier is a free RA boost. 2nd tier a free scientist. First tier is amazing. You get the wonder which boosts all your scientist strength by 25%. And buffs the science on other specialists empire-wide. shame it's not sooner in the tree, otherwise I'd save more scientists to use it with, but usually due to the slow time between proposing and building I'm just about finished by the time the project is done. So I only get to use the first 2 tier boosts. I have never been able to time ISS perfectly though and usually have at least 15 turns waiting to propose it.

 

[Acken]

He's playing vanilla some of this don't apply.

 

[danaphanous]

Ah, good catch Acken, however, I have not played vanilla on GK and BNW. feel free to correct what is different.

 

[joncnunn]

Vanilla is mostly about:

1. Don't sign DOF with anyone, there was nothing requiring a DOF in Vanilla and it was much easier to keep friendly relations with everyone if you didn't sign any. (All AIs in vanilla had strong land envy of their neighbors [no embassy to offset], and so any DOF made their nearest neighbor(s) mad)

2. Instead, sign lots and lots of RAs, but not with your neighbor who might DOW or denouce you. In Vanilla, a denouement negated the RA.
I can't remember if it was G&K or a late patch in Vanilla that switched RAs from a random free tech that you had less than about 25% to your last X turns of beakers.
If it was still that random tech with less than 25% then there was micro management of getting cheap techs past that cutoff point.
[The sign lots of RAs still applies in G&K, but got limited to only those you have a DOF with and was median beakers of last X turns]

3. Great Scientist bulbing was a full tech of your choice instead of last 8 turns of beakers. So there was careful timing of them. (In addition Academies produced a lot less science per turn in Vanilla and were skipped entirely unless you were Babylon, and in this case you would form the free one from Writing into an academy and still bulb the rest)

4. Tradition tree finisher didn't include Aqueducts, free buildings still cost maintenance, and if picking Legalism at all you had to ensure that you already had the tech for a cultural building you hadn't yet built.

5. Settlers cost 500 gold and any luxury could be sold to anyone for 240 gold, and so most settlers were bought with cash. [This was also the case in G&K]

6. Don't DOW anyone in Vanilla since it ruined relationships with your enemy's friends. But if declared upon you might as well take their cities, but be sure to leave them one city. War mongler penalty was only for DOWing and taking the very last city. [This was also the case in G&K]

 

[garmeth]

Thanks everyone , instead of trying to improve my time on emperor , I have moved to immortal. The first game I played , I was peacefully trying to build my cities up until DoW from Egypt at around turn 75. I had to reload because I've always avoided war but immortal came as a rude awakening .. Managed to defend with losing 2 scouts on the reload and forged on until England DoW . I slaughtered England but she never agreed to peace , meanwhile since my units were all on the left vs England , Egypt re DoW on the right and it was too much to handle. Somehow when I reloaded and moved a few units to the right , Egypt remained at peace , killed off more of England's armies and managed to establish peace. I was selling all excess lux , had 4 GS stored to bulb to plastics , RAs with everyone but Egypt and England , 1.5k saved in anticipation of research labs to try to bolster the science of my 3 cities when England re DoW at turn 170ish. I had 4 crossbows and all of a sudden England ( who also previously took a beating from Egypt ) had literally 15 bow units and 4 swordsman. No matter how much I reloaded it was too much. Played another game and Washington DoW after turn 30, with these games under my belt I have a few questions.



1. How can I avoid war ? In the first game the map was standard size , extremely cramped and literally no option but to forward settle on Egypt. I felt like I was far from England but eventually her borders got extremely close to mine . I did have a lot of DoFs , so maybe that was a reason ? The second game vs turn 30 DoW from Washington perplexes me , no DoF and his 5 warriors were at my boarder before my first settler was even done.

2. Just recently figured out that map size effects research time , I previously played on huge and since then have moved to standard . What is the most common map size that people use to benchmark fast SV? Does map size effect anything else ?

3. When and how should I ally CS? I find that it's extremely expensive to ally a CS and would rather spend on military , RA, or buildings . I usually just buy one maritime CS at like turn 140, should I focus on allying a specific type of CS and are they an integral part of fast SV?

4. How the hell can I make AI surrender? They won't give up even if I kill 8 units and they kill my scout unless I give them like 600 gold.

 

[Uzael36]

1) Build some military and/or ally military CS so they give you units. The best way to win a war is to show enough strength that they do not want to war with you.

2) Standard/Standard is probably the most common. They all should result in similar win times.

3) Allying CS is all about doing the quests they give. Always pay attention to the quests. You don't want to spend gold on CS's, though you might spend a little, most should come from quests, or a mix. Paying gold out right is hugely wasteful. (I'm not sure vanilla has quests, please let me know).

4) To make a civ surrender, you need to show a big army or start taking down one of their cities. Some times you just have to wait.

 

[joncnunn]

1. How can I avoid war ? In the first game the map was standard size , extremely cramped and literally no option but to forward settle on Egypt. I felt like I was far from England but eventually her borders got extremely close to mine . I did have a lot of DoFs , so maybe that was a reason ? The second game vs turn 30 DoW from Washington perplexes me , no DoF and his 5 warriors were at my boarder before my first settler was even done.

2. Just recently figured out that map size effects research time , I previously played on huge and since then have moved to standard . What is the most common map size that people use to benchmark fast SV? Does map size effect anything else ?

3. When and how should I ally CS? I find that it's extremely expensive to ally a CS and would rather spend on military , RA, or buildings . I usually just buy one maritime CS at like turn 140, should I focus on allying a specific type of CS and are they an integral part of fast SV?

4. How the hell can I make AI surrender? They won't give up even if I kill 8 units and they kill my scout unless I give them like 600 gold.

#1 With civs you are immediate neighbors with: You DON'T. There's no embassies in Vanilla and so your neighbors will have strong land envy. Instead you don't sign RAs with them (since you'll just lose the gold you spent) and instead of doing luxury for luxury trades with them you only sell your luxaries for cash upfront. (Saving luxury for luxury with non-neighbors)
And you build enough of an army to be able to hold the line.

Against non-neighbors, in Vanilla, never ever sign a DOF with anyone since it makes all their neighbors also mad at you.
Also don't DOW city states, don't kill city states, don't take last city belonging to anyone.
Also don't sign open borders in Vanilla either unless you need them yourself for exploration, their units get in the way of your movement orders and it's not until BNW that open borders has any benefits.

#2 The increased science costs on standard and higher maps tend to be more than offset by increased RAs in Vanilla unless you have very few contacts.

#3 Actually the gold cost to ally a city state in Vanilla is less than in later versions, it's similar to having the G&K/BNW city state quest of them building a monument over the next 30 turns. There aren't spies and you're also limited to only one quest and they'll quickly get locked to one that it's a really bad idea to fulfill in vanilla though.
Basically, in Vanilla for fastest time for science, ignore the city states entirely until late game so that you'll have funding for RAs. In fact even for fastest time for diplomatic victory just save the cash up and buy them in mass the turn before the vote.

#4 This is little changed in future versions. AI doesn't care much at all about how many units of theirs you killed even if they haven't killed a single one of your units. It maxes out at less than rating from military adviser. What it cares about is economic damage, you if you really want the war over without paying the AI then conquer one of their cities. Otherwise you may be able to ignore the war.