Fastest Science Victory

[The_Black_Vegetable]

For those of you who have captured cities early (even for other civs, like the huns), how are you able to keep the other AI off your back?

When I was trying some great plains on Immortal with the aim of doing early conquests for a science victory, I find that you need to be a little lucky with the AI's attitude toward you. You can sometimes get away with taking a capital or two - but not taking other cities and certainly not wiping any civs out. You can sometimes just keep going and ignoring 'public opinion', but only if you have a dominant position (less likely on Deity of course), and have a solid mercantile city state ally.

 

[Notacop]

Thanks Black Vegetable. That aligns with my experience as well. The bowmen rush is pretty funny, I think it coud turn out to work well. A few pages back on this thread Vadalaz and blatc were posting about games with the huns involving early conquest and finishing on turn 189, so there is some promise. I think I just have to settle less of my own cities, maybe 2 or 3 max. Maybe also using high expansion AI and even a different map script where they'll settle more than 2 cities, that way I don't get the reckless expansion penalty. I'll have to do some experimenting.

 

[cocls]

I have been trying out a strategy with Babylon using their bowmen to conquer cities very early in the game. It works pretty well. My fastest capitol capture has been turn 33 but usually around turn 40-45 is average. The problem is my happiness tanks and now everyone hates me. In my test game, I was able to capture Sweden's capitol around turn 40, went into unhappiness for a bit, but pulled it out and ended up getting education in the 90s. But I have been constantly at war with every neighbor I have. They keep taking turns declaring war on me, and they have been sending a ton of units each. Since I start conquering so early, I haven't been able to bribe any AI to attack my target. Even dozens of turns later, I am unable to bribe anyone to war, even Askia. I'm not sure how to adapt this strategy to keep the AI friendly long term. For those of you who have captured cities early (even for other civs, like the huns), how are you able to keep the other AI off your back? Or is this strategy better suited for domination games? I think I had the settling too many cities penalty with everyone, maybe I just need a bigger map than great plains?

You can try delaying exploration for a bit. The AIs you haven't met when capturing cities are not affected by warmonger penalties.