Fastest (non-domination) victory?

[terraslayer]

Contact victory is very broken.

My first victory was a t219 Emancipation Victory, standard map, standard speed, with Franco-Iberia. Then I replayed the same map, to try a different strategy and go for a different victory. I ended up lucking out this time around on ruins, and ended up starting the build for signal at turn 86. By the end I won a Contact Victory at turn 156!!! This victory condition is definitely broken. Especially since there are techs that supposed to help with getting the signal. I haven't tested what those builds do if you don't yet have any of the pcs.

I think a good suggestion for devs would be to make it so that you can only find the pcs after you build an appropriate wonder/building from tech (there are 2 techs in the web related to contact victory).

 

[Toranth]

Contact victory is very broken.

My first victory was a t219 Emancipation Victory, standard map, standard speed, with Franco-Iberia. Then I replayed the same map, to try a different strategy and go for a different victory. I ended up lucking out this time around on ruins, and ended up starting the build for signal at turn 86. By the end I won a Contact Victory at turn 156!!! This victory condition is definitely broken. Especially since there are techs that supposed to help with getting the signal. I haven't tested what those builds do if you don't yet have any of the pcs.

I think a good suggestion for devs would be to make it so that you can only find the pcs after you build an appropriate wonder/building from tech (there are 2 techs in the web related to contact victory).

If you get both parts of the Signal from Progenitor Ruins, then the Victory becomes absurdly fast.

But on the other hand, if you get nothing from Ruins and try to do it the hard way, you need to build the Telescope and the Transcendental Equation.

Transcendental Math: 770 base
Transcendental Equation: 450

(Mechatronics): 1160 base (Maybe)
Astrodynamics: 2480 base
Orbital Automation: 3216 base (a Tier 3.5 tech)
Deep-Space Telescope: 200
Then you need to wait 10 turns for the Telescope to find the Signal.

Then you get the common part:
Decode Signal: 850
Beacon: 1650
Then pay 1000 energy, lose all energy income, and then wait 30 turns.

If you beeline, that's faster than getting to Affinity 13.
But the other endgame conditions:
Exodus Gate: 1750 , min 20, likely 25-30 turns.
Emancipation Gate: 1750 min 9 turns, likely 15-20 turns.
Mind Flower: 1900 min ???, likely 20-25 turns.

In summary: The Contact Victory requires by far the most hammers and time spent on it. But it can be done very quickly if you beeline, since you don't need any affinity.



Has anyone tried a no-Ruins Contact beeline?
Slavs with a Sat-launch to get Astrodynamics free, then the Institute quest to get Orbital Automation free might be the fastest... Of course, coming up with the 3350 production needed might take a while.

 

[Chaleb]

Currently have a game as PAC and got both signals from ruins around turn 25. Now the fun part is somehow getting enough production to decode the Signal and build the beacon.

 

[Toranth]

Currently have a game as PAC and got both signals from ruins around turn 25. Now the fun part is somehow getting enough production to decode the Signal and build the beacon.

If you have a size 10 Capital with 10 Manufactories, with 3 trade routes each giving +8 or +9 Production, plus a few other prod bonuses, it'll only take you 50 turns to build plus 30 turns to wait. You could win by turn 100!

If you had all that. I suspect you're still looking at a turn 150 victory. Just remember: 4 cities for 3 incoming trade routes, Manufactories, neutral health, screw science. Sell all your science for money to buy Colonists and Workers (and military).

 

[Chaleb]

New record! Turn 135 contact victory.

Spoiler :

If you have a size 10 Capital with 10 Manufactories, with 3 trade routes each giving +8 or +9 Production, plus a few other prod bonuses, it'll only take you 50 turns to build plus 30 turns to wait. You could win by turn 100!

If you had all that. I suspect you're still looking at a turn 150 victory. Just remember: 4 cities for 3 incoming trade routes, Manufactories, neutral health, screw science. Sell all your science for money to buy Colonists and Workers (and military).

Thanks for the advice mate, selling straight science was a great way to get cash.

I don't think a turn 100 victory is possible. With contact the best you might get to is sub 130 victory with perfect play and conditions.

 

[alpaca]

New record! Turn 135 contact victory.

This seems pretty broken. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to give a large part of a victory condition to progenitor ruins. Even just getting a free affinity is pretty broken in my estimation (because it means you can get Gunners so early).

Reporting turn 203 Emancipation victory with Hutama. Apollo, all standard, 25 cities wide game ignoring health in favor of going full knowledge. Gate was fed with an Angel every turn. Was hampered a little by having very weak production in the capital, but on the other hand got a few flood plain tiles and the AI was far away, so I can't complain too much. I also had to wait a long time for the fence quest, which was annoying. I built too few workers and lost a lot to miasma because I didn't really pay attention.

 

[Acken]

Got a 159 victory for my first try at Contact. Could have easily cut 20-30 turns out of it but I didn't really know how it worked so I delayed the beacon for no good reason, I thought I had to get more stuff like other victory conditions.

Has to be fixed. Sadly it won't really feel very different than the other victories even if fixed, build a big stuff wait 30 turns after meeting tech requisites, win.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

First game I actually forced myself to finish was turn 210 Promised Land. I'm sure this can be done a good deal faster because I mostly focused on improving my early game so far and I simultaneously went after domination to see how that compares.

Apollo, Pangaea, Standard size and speed, all standard settings.

Just finished 224 Promised Land. Best non-cheese time is 214 Transcendence. Slower time was, i think, played well. The faster time was sloppy. The only difference is a coastal capital. It's huge.

I'm still on a mission to break 200. Debating two general approaches:
a) Polystralia going down the prosperity path
b) Franco-Iberia finishing the knowledge tree
How many turns are the free techs worth? How many turns are shaved from faster victory wonder from utopia status?

 

[Acken]

So in an attempt to see how broken the game is right now I got a turn 162 transcendence (harmony victory) on standard. No particular luck with the game.

And I'm fairly sure there's a lot of room for improvement. Wouldn't be surprised to see results going down to 140 for people really trying.

Spoiler :

 

[AlaskA]

So in an attempt to see how broken the game is right now I got a turn 162 transcendence (harmony victory) on standard. No particular luck with the game.

U play on massive, there 7% instead of 10% for culture penaty and 3% instead of 5% for science. It's like u play with 2 free virtues from "Knowledge" tree. And u have a lot of land around to play wide. And topicstarter post his result on standart \ standart \ appolo.

I think, turn 160-170 on massive is like turn 200 on standart.
Im really interesting, someone break turn 150 on standard size\speed and appolo diff with trans\emanc\purity wincon?

 

[Chaleb]

I just realized at the time I did that Contact Victory that I didn't know that one of the starting options was revealing Titanium early allowed it to be improved. If someone could find a game where you start with some Titanium and get the two Progenitor Ruins, you could really get the time I had down quite a bit.

 

[Acken]

U play on massive, there 7% instead of 10% for culture penaty and 3% instead of 5% for science. It's like u play with 2 free virtues from "Knowledge" tree. And u have a lot of land around to play wide. And topicstarter post his result on standart \ standart \ appolo.

I think, turn 160-170 on massive is like turn 200 on standart.
Im really interesting, someone break turn 150 on standard size\speed and appolo diff with trans\emanc\purity wincon?

This is standard size.

Please verify or ask before saying something like this. What the hell.

 

[Xenotitan]

Currently have a game as PAC and got both signals from ruins around turn 25. Now the fun part is somehow getting enough production to decode the Signal and build the beacon.

Wow. I've never even got one signal fragment from ruins. I'm jealous.

 

[metagross]

So in an attempt to see how broken the game is right now I got a turn 162 transcendence (harmony victory) on standard. No particular luck with the game.

And I'm fairly sure there's a lot of room for improvement. Wouldn't be surprised to see results going down to 140 for people really trying.

Spoiler :

Mind posting the T0 save?

 

[Acken]

Mind posting the T0 save?

You're lucky I did take a manual save on turn 1.

 

[Acken]

Im really interesting, someone break turn 150 on standard size\speed and appolo diff with trans\emanc\purity wincon?

Done.

A turn 145 harmony victory. Apollo, Standard everything (size, speed, resources).

Obligatory SS:

Spoiler :

Strategy is to rush buy colonists (and vessels at the start too). To do that I just abused the AI favors. A favor is 100gold and 3ept or 1spt gives you a favor. Since vessels give both ept and spt you can begin some sort of loop to expand like a madman. Get a good map like the one I played this on and you can get such crazy end times

Didn't even get a single free affinity so I guess with some luck there you may cut it down by a handful of turns.

Won't try again managing 21 cities and 60 trade routes is too much of a chore

 

[Xenotitan]

That's impressive.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Loaded and played the save. It's a genuine Apollo/standard/standard map, just with a divine set of parameters. I got turn 191 Transcendence.

I was talking about shooting for fast times using Franco-Iberia. This game gave me the idea that, if you're fast enough, you'll never hit 20 virtues. So it's almost completely inferior to Slavic Federation then? Thoughts?

To do that I just abused the AI favors. A favor is 100gold and 3ept or 1spt gives you a favor.

You're an amazing player but, alas, I draw the line here.
- Giving lots of GPT for a lump sum and then declaring war is OK.
- Selling open borders (lost art from older CIV games) is OK.
- Negative discount factor is a coding bug and is not OK.

 

[Acken]

- Negative discount factor is a coding bug and is not OK.

To be clear I did not use that for the T162 game. However I did like stated somewhere for the T145 one that I would use the whole panoply of possibility. However I never declared war after trading so maybe it balances out

I fully understand the concern and I'm of the opinion that this should be fixed. My point is only to illustrate all problems the game currently have and that kind of exploits are part of it.

 

[kingsbury]

Are you routinely getting sub 170 wins across all map types or just on maps with favorable terrain, AI placement, and AI behavior?