The question I've got is - what is happening on the Chinese forums when it comes to fast non-peaceful science victories?
Are there any good records? Or strategies?
Here are some histories I currently collected~ hope these can help.
At first, people in Chinese forum were wild about aggressive play. They developed many useful skills (most of them are based on the early researched formulas from civfanatics, and we appreciate it), such as: how to locate AI & CS by using the settler lens, chop/harvest overflow (agoge+god of the forge, limes wall, etc), chariot-knight rush, avoid the eureka clearing the science overflow, neighborhood gold from Eiffel Tower, change one-time policies through changing government, Big-Ben gold rush.... (Here I attach a very famous video link for a fast SV on T126 in aggressive play, using Aztec, winter 2016 version. Nearly all the skills above are mentioned:
http://www.bilibili.com/video/av8669179/ , Deity-All-Standard, Pangea, Feb 17, 2017)
Peaceful play was considered to be very hard at that time. In January after the 2016 winter update, a post showed that peaceful SV is possible on deity, said that Germany can achieve peaceful SV in about 240 turns (
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/4956517360 ). In that very simple game report, the author turned the barbarian off, and kept zero army with very carefully diplomacy controlling, to make all AIs be allies. Someone doubt about the universality, for the barbarians are often a big problem in standard option games, also the AIs are not always friendly to player in some other games.
Later, another detail game report was posted, which was economy focused (Cleopatra T215 SV,
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/4969296340 , Deity-All-Standard, Continents, Feb 3, 2017), and all cities are built by player himself. Comparing to last report, it is not that peaceful, player was declared war by AI again and again, from beginning to the end. The author built 8 armies at the beginning, only for defense usage, and trying to make peace ASAP. The leading role of this report was Great Zimbabwe, which was built very early by Great Engineer on a different continent from capital, and get colony taxes (which is +35% at that version) ASAP. Also, he built dozens of settlers and used a lot of methods to keep +3 amenities in all cities, like: control the population to 6,8,10, maximum the Colosseum cities, buy luxuries, etc, to keep the +10% bonus. Finally, it was the Big-Ben GP rush via 1500+ GPT, using the great scientist’s rocket prod overflow to finish Oxford, successfully bet to unlock the last unfinished techs (the science output was very low during the whole game: before the last 2 turns the author even didn’t enter information era).
After the spring 2016 patch, more and more people thought that the victories based on conquest are quite boring, why not a faster DV? In April, there is a new game report using Germany (T224 SV
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5066011569 , Deity-All-Standard, Pangea, April 10, 2017). The key wonder is Mausoleum, the author used it to double the 1500 Great Engineer and other engineers who provide prod to wonders, and carefully use the overflow. This report mentions some very important skills for scout explore: use settler lens to found nearby cities (CS or AI), use scouts’ ZOC to avoid barbarians (calculate barbarian scout’s next move), calculate AI’s settle position and block them...etc. The author used this skill to get a lot of advance at the beginning, and after this report, the scout beginning was considered very reasonable, which is at very low risk and brings massive advantages.
A few days later, another record appeared (Catherine T210 SV
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5072038751 , Deity-All-Standard, Pangea, April 14, 2017), which is totally peace (means no looting) for very carefully diplomacy control (Catherine’s trait helps). He figured out that Great Zimbabwe is not necessary, because in the new version AI will pay a lot of money for strategy resources. The main thought is using the strategy/luxury resources and GPT to bleed all AIs cash, which can significantly decrease the War intention of AI (they have no money to build/upgrade their armies). He did it every turn, with a Big-Ben rush end.
Production focus report was done by the same author (Barbarossa T179 SV,
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5090133402 , Deity-All-Standard, Pangea, April 24, 2017), and in a long time Germany was considered the best Civ for it. A diff was that he chose God of the Open Sky instead of Divine Spark (all other peaceful plays are based on Divine Spark), made the culture output more than science until very late. Another important point of the beginning was that the first settler should be purchased by money, and it will speed up a lot. The core of this report was the production focus and district planning: his science output was very low at the first 100 turns, and built mass of mines and mills, for each city the first district is IZ, that you couldn't even tell it was a science game. But after turn 100, the hard work on infrastructure construction was paid off by an explosive growth: GPT/Science/Culture output doubled in every 5~10 turns! Unfortunately a bug appeared on turn 126, after a strange joint war against him. Then no major civs can make deal with him, even peace. But he still launched the spaceship on 179. After this report, many other players learned this strategy, and got many better results among T165~180 using Germany, while for other Civs the turn is T180~195.
Then the globalization style came, also by the same author (Pericles T190 SV
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5130293802 , Deity-All-Standard, Pangea, May 24, 2017) and it’s also totally peace by diplomacy control. He tried to maximum the culture output, buying AI’s great works, and used all he could afford to bleed AI’s money. Once Globalization is finished, sell all the great works back to AI, then the Big-Ben rush. According this report they noticed culture focusing is very powerful for SV.
The theater strategy appeared on June (Pedro T181 SV
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5179370628 , Deity-All-Standard, Pangea, June 23, 2017), and that author figures out that in the early and middle game, culture is much more efficient than science, since the key tech often needs production (i.e. university, factory), but the key civics are mostly instant (i.e. exploration, suffrage), and the campus need not to be finished first. In this report, the author use Brazil’s UA to gain a lot of cultures from theaters in jungles, and Aesthetics doubled it. The second resource he chose was gold, for the GP’s price reduced by Pedro’s LA.
(Actually after June, I was addicted to another strategy game called Stellaris (and many console games) till the R&F expansion info released. So the details after June I did not know very well, but still I can find a few of them)
According to these reports above, you shall see that although we want science victory, science is definitely very important, but it does not need to maximum at the early game, focusing on other resources may be better, for that science is not the bottleneck in most cases. So, what about religion? It also works for some special Civs, a report posted by Rogue-star shows that (Saladin T175 SV
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5300160705 , Deity-All-Standard, Pangea, Aug 31, 2017), even no science CS. (A big changes came on July 28, rising of settler cost is negative, monarchy wall 50% overflow and reducing of district cost are positive) It mentioned the ghost city theory, and many other good points. Because this guy is also on this forum, if you want to know the details, please PM him~
Finally it was the discovery of 60% district. They found that 3 theaters beginning and blocking other district’s tech can get more discount districts, and this is the origin link of that report (Pericles T170 SV
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5407456858 , Deity-All-Standard, Pangea, Nov 3, 2017). The author figured out that Pericles is too powerful after a new patch buff for peaceful SV. And after several days, the formula is finally be founded by them. The save file that Rogue-star attached above is the same map of this report, and he got a better result.
Thank you~
). So early reports in Chinese forum will make the statement that not using this bug, and then it was considered not to use by default later. In the videos I posted you will see that it was forbidden already.
