Acken
Deity
Also gives a lot of gold.
Fastest Science Victory
- Thread starter Lightning5555
- Start date
That it does. Makes buying that last Research Lab all the easier, not to mention boosting your GPT so you can borrow more gold from the AI to buy your SS parts.
It's worth it to work merchant/engineer slots just for the +2 science. A TP is just a merchant slot with -1 science + its base yield.
Don't forget the recent Huns game of valadaz. Tied at t193 SV.
I don't think I'll have the time for a LP, sry.
Apparently there's no unrest time if you take back a city that you gifted to an AI. Getting it back in a peace deal would be perfect - no buildings or population lost and immediate yields, kind of like Austria's UA. I wonder if this can be used to avoid mid-game happiness problems and still end up with a nice wide late-game empire with properly placed cities. Deity AIs can probably develop a city faster than a human player.
I'm particularly interested in trying yung.carl's approach with fast industrialization and ideology, as ~T130 Foreign Legions with just a bit of ranged support would easily crush anything the AIs have at that point. So gift a city around T70-80, take an AI's capital with Foreign Legions and get your city back in a peace deal T140-150. Bonus points if you can do it with 2 AIs... I think it'd work best as Poland since you want to get a lot of policies in a very short time (Volunteer Army, Universal Suffrage, Free Thought).
I'm particularly interested in trying yung.carl's approach with fast industrialization and ideology, as ~T130 Foreign Legions with just a bit of ranged support would easily crush anything the AIs have at that point. So gift a city around T70-80, take an AI's capital with Foreign Legions and get your city back in a peace deal T140-150. Bonus points if you can do it with 2 AIs... I think it'd work best as Poland since you want to get a lot of policies in a very short time (Volunteer Army, Universal Suffrage, Free Thought).
I normally start working workshop/market/etc slots when I have 3 in Freedom, including the 2 that affect food and happiness for specialists AND there aren't any great tiles left.
I'm currently playing a Shoshone map with jungle (I discovered you can play the HoF games and compare! So cool!) and there is the added challenge of deciding when to work jungle tiles (post-University) and how many, when you're still trying to build. For ex. what do you choose between a 3 food, 2 food 1 production, or 2 food 2 science (jungle with no TP yet) tile? It depends on how your food and production are already doing.
I think I've written before that I used to just mindlessly select the higher yield food tiles, which was a mistake. I like Acken's answer: no ratio, check in regularly, balance growth/production, and adjust when it makes sense to.
I make trading posts for the Rationalism science (and gold), and have for a while, as I saw faster SV players switching tiles over to TP.
If border growth is good, you'll often have tiles you aren't using that you can turn into TP to work later; this won't reduce your growth, so long as that worker was 'free' and not needed for anything else.
I'm currently playing a Shoshone map with jungle (I discovered you can play the HoF games and compare! So cool!) and there is the added challenge of deciding when to work jungle tiles (post-University) and how many, when you're still trying to build. For ex. what do you choose between a 3 food, 2 food 1 production, or 2 food 2 science (jungle with no TP yet) tile? It depends on how your food and production are already doing.
I think I've written before that I used to just mindlessly select the higher yield food tiles, which was a mistake. I like Acken's answer: no ratio, check in regularly, balance growth/production, and adjust when it makes sense to.
I make trading posts for the Rationalism science (and gold), and have for a while, as I saw faster SV players switching tiles over to TP.
If border growth is good, you'll often have tiles you aren't using that you can turn into TP to work later; this won't reduce your growth, so long as that worker was 'free' and not needed for anything else.
consentient
Domination!
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Thanks for this. I'll have a look at this a lot more in my next SV attempt.
Can someone explain plastics to victory bulbing? Last game I played I got 5 city plastics at 167 combined with ~1500 BPT from scholasticism. I believe I had 10 great scientists generated, 2 from faith, 2 from hubble, and 1 from PT. After I realized I wasn't going to win until like 208 I just quit haha. That game was by far my best up to plastics. I got Borobodur, LToP, PT, SoL, Secularism on turn 115, Machu Picchu, Turn 70 4 city national college. I rush bought 3 schools and then rush bought 5 labs within 2 turns of researching plastics. I believe that game should have been the pre 200 I was searching for. I've won on 205 with that map with a significantly worse game up to plastics so I guess I don't understand proper bulbing.
So I know overflow is capped at 5x your BPT, but I don't understand how this influences the way I should bulb in the late game. I read the thread that Acken posted a while ago where he didn't understand how sometimes the game doesn't allow you to research a tech even if you bulb it but that thread just confuses me even more. It seemed to imply that the only safe way to bulb in the late game is when a tech has 5 turns left to research, otherwise you will probably lose beakers especially if you bulb multiple techs starting from a <5 turn tech. If this is true I actually don't understand how to finish quickly.
I don't bulb for satellites until after I finish railroad and biology, this leaves me with several techs that are 3-4 turns to complete like refrigeration, penicillin, flight, electronics, ballistics, electronics, radar, and then all of my most hated techs in the game at the very bottom of the tree, combustion, combined arms, and computers.
Its my understanding, that at 1500 bpt, if I bulb these techs I would be wasting some beakers ( and drastically hurting my finishing time.) That being said, I was forced to bulb a ton of techs before satellites to get Hubble before turn 195 and overall I'm pretty sure I just wasted an exorbitant amount of beakers. I will say that this game I had no RAs that were going to pop between plastics and victory so that may be holding me back more than I thought, but I didn't think that this would be too big of an issue considering that most the civs in the games will give me crap science from an RA and possibly even all of them.
I could not possibly have generated significantly more great scientists, I went education before workshops and got a rush bought university with a garden on turn 94 and had all universities up before 110 with most of them having gardens. I had a turn 70 NC with my fifth city planted within 5 turns after the NC, I rush bought all science buildings besides a library including an observatory in my capital the turn I researched the tech. I had every single civ signed to an RA in the post education pre plastics phase. Even if I was able to speed up the pre LToP phase of the game, I actually don't think its physically possible to do it 10 turns faster than what I did no matter how lucky I could possibly get so I can acheive a sub 200. There is no way I could do a turn 84 education or a turn 157 plastics or a turn 60 NC, so I'm guessing that the culprit to my game was my post plastics bulbing considering I was at +1500 BPT on turn 167 and couldn't finish until 207+.
My early game went almost perfectly. I was able to rush buy a settler the earliest possible time that I sold my mining lux to the nearest opponent and I chopped 4-5 trees for my next two settlers. I had something like 7 workers before turn 100 while only building an extra worker with the spare time my capital had for quick connections before Machu Picchu. 5 of those workers came before turn 50 and 3 came before turn 35.
How am I supposed to bulb properly?
So I know overflow is capped at 5x your BPT, but I don't understand how this influences the way I should bulb in the late game. I read the thread that Acken posted a while ago where he didn't understand how sometimes the game doesn't allow you to research a tech even if you bulb it but that thread just confuses me even more. It seemed to imply that the only safe way to bulb in the late game is when a tech has 5 turns left to research, otherwise you will probably lose beakers especially if you bulb multiple techs starting from a <5 turn tech. If this is true I actually don't understand how to finish quickly.
I don't bulb for satellites until after I finish railroad and biology, this leaves me with several techs that are 3-4 turns to complete like refrigeration, penicillin, flight, electronics, ballistics, electronics, radar, and then all of my most hated techs in the game at the very bottom of the tree, combustion, combined arms, and computers.
Its my understanding, that at 1500 bpt, if I bulb these techs I would be wasting some beakers ( and drastically hurting my finishing time.) That being said, I was forced to bulb a ton of techs before satellites to get Hubble before turn 195 and overall I'm pretty sure I just wasted an exorbitant amount of beakers. I will say that this game I had no RAs that were going to pop between plastics and victory so that may be holding me back more than I thought, but I didn't think that this would be too big of an issue considering that most the civs in the games will give me crap science from an RA and possibly even all of them.
I could not possibly have generated significantly more great scientists, I went education before workshops and got a rush bought university with a garden on turn 94 and had all universities up before 110 with most of them having gardens. I had a turn 70 NC with my fifth city planted within 5 turns after the NC, I rush bought all science buildings besides a library including an observatory in my capital the turn I researched the tech. I had every single civ signed to an RA in the post education pre plastics phase. Even if I was able to speed up the pre LToP phase of the game, I actually don't think its physically possible to do it 10 turns faster than what I did no matter how lucky I could possibly get so I can acheive a sub 200. There is no way I could do a turn 84 education or a turn 157 plastics or a turn 60 NC, so I'm guessing that the culprit to my game was my post plastics bulbing considering I was at +1500 BPT on turn 167 and couldn't finish until 207+.
My early game went almost perfectly. I was able to rush buy a settler the earliest possible time that I sold my mining lux to the nearest opponent and I chopped 4-5 trees for my next two settlers. I had something like 7 workers before turn 100 while only building an extra worker with the spare time my capital had for quick connections before Machu Picchu. 5 of those workers came before turn 50 and 3 came before turn 35.
How am I supposed to bulb properly?
@garmeth
I'm curious how you got T115 Secularism - as Poland?
I believe the overflow cap of 5x your BPT means the tech you're using it on should be 3+ turns. You can use it on the 3-4 turn techs you listed without wasting beakers, but you may not be able to bulb every single turn. Some of the overflow carries over, especially on smaller techs, so keep an eye on it and factor in the 'natural' science you'll produce that turn as well, when planning things out. I'd ballpark needing 20 turns of bulbing for 10-12 GS. Probably closer to 25 if you really target the Apollo/Hubble techs with a break after, perhaps needing to build both due to no GE.
Unless I'm playing around with growing super-tall, I leave the top techs (penicillin, etc.) until later, unless the numbers warrant. Ex. if 2 techs, including 1 from up top, total 12,000 beakers and your bulb is worth 10,600 and you're producing 1,450 (10,600 + 1,450 = 12,050) this turn, that is GREAT use of a bulb as you'll complete 2 techs and have close to 0 overflow going into your next turn, so you'll be able to bulb on consecutive turns.
Check when your next GS is due before finishing Hubble.
Education before Workshops - my current thoughts are:
6+ cities, low gpt, Liberty - favours Workshops first
5-6 cities, medium gpt, Tradition - unsure which is fastest
<6 cities, high gpt - favours Education
1500 BPT on T167 sounds like you can finish in <30. What were your city populations?
I'm curious how you got T115 Secularism - as Poland?
I believe the overflow cap of 5x your BPT means the tech you're using it on should be 3+ turns. You can use it on the 3-4 turn techs you listed without wasting beakers, but you may not be able to bulb every single turn. Some of the overflow carries over, especially on smaller techs, so keep an eye on it and factor in the 'natural' science you'll produce that turn as well, when planning things out. I'd ballpark needing 20 turns of bulbing for 10-12 GS. Probably closer to 25 if you really target the Apollo/Hubble techs with a break after, perhaps needing to build both due to no GE.
Unless I'm playing around with growing super-tall, I leave the top techs (penicillin, etc.) until later, unless the numbers warrant. Ex. if 2 techs, including 1 from up top, total 12,000 beakers and your bulb is worth 10,600 and you're producing 1,450 (10,600 + 1,450 = 12,050) this turn, that is GREAT use of a bulb as you'll complete 2 techs and have close to 0 overflow going into your next turn, so you'll be able to bulb on consecutive turns.
Check when your next GS is due before finishing Hubble.
Education before Workshops - my current thoughts are:
6+ cities, low gpt, Liberty - favours Workshops first
5-6 cities, medium gpt, Tradition - unsure which is fastest
<6 cities, high gpt - favours Education
1500 BPT on T167 sounds like you can finish in <30. What were your city populations?
I'm playing around with HoF games, currently the Manpanzee T214 Shoshone SV game. Manpanzee went 7-city Liberty, which I sucked at and am instead doing 5-city Tradition (all before NC, nothing after). Some interesting tidbits I've stumbled upon in my replays/comparisons:
1) making peace ASAP with immediate neighbours led to DOWs. It created opportunities for them to complain about my expansion/purchasing tiles and the decision to ignore or not, knowing I was going to plant 1 more city nearby
2) continuing war until AFTER I'd settled all cities (consider this as settling all pre-NC cities) and purchased tiles (yes, even as Shoshone, I purchases 1 tile each in 2 cities that I saw as priority) made for a more stable peace
3) trimming down immediate neighbours units through offense and defense, if done effectively, had some impact on worker actions but led to two decent ~T60ish peace deals that will net over 1,000 gold
4) I really, really like the ability to move onto a hill and fire in the same turn, using ScArchers or in this case Shoshone SComposites, especially when effectively setting up scenarios where they cannot return fire (from flat terrain)
1) making peace ASAP with immediate neighbours led to DOWs. It created opportunities for them to complain about my expansion/purchasing tiles and the decision to ignore or not, knowing I was going to plant 1 more city nearby
2) continuing war until AFTER I'd settled all cities (consider this as settling all pre-NC cities) and purchased tiles (yes, even as Shoshone, I purchases 1 tile each in 2 cities that I saw as priority) made for a more stable peace
3) trimming down immediate neighbours units through offense and defense, if done effectively, had some impact on worker actions but led to two decent ~T60ish peace deals that will net over 1,000 gold
4) I really, really like the ability to move onto a hill and fire in the same turn, using ScArchers or in this case Shoshone SComposites, especially when effectively setting up scenarios where they cannot return fire (from flat terrain)
consentient
Domination!
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I'm convinced (purely as a spectator) that the secret to even faster SVs lies in conquest. That Vadalaz has equalled the fastest time for a SV making heavy use of conquest is one clue. He also talked about various things that could have been done a bit better. I'm no expert, but if this strategy was trialled again a number of times by a few different players, I suspect T170-180 might feasibly be possible. If more cities means higher value bulbs and in some of these games Plastics is coming T160ish, then who knows what is possible with the perfect conquest?
I'm not sure about that. SV with conquering is rather reliant on the map being GP meaning no Cargo Ships, which I think the fastest possible SVs would involve.
T170-180 is insanely fast though. I don't think I have ever seen a subT180 (diety) SV, much less one that is up to HoF standards.
T170-180 is insanely fast though. I don't think I have ever seen a subT180 (diety) SV, much less one that is up to HoF standards.
I'm convinced (purely as a spectator) that the secret to even faster SVs lies in conquest. That Vadalaz has equalled the fastest time for a SV making heavy use of conquest is one clue. He also talked about various things that could have been done a bit better. I'm no expert, but if this strategy was trialled again a number of times by a few different players, I suspect T170-180 might feasibly be possible. If more cities means higher value bulbs and in some of these games Plastics is coming T160ish, then who knows what is possible with the perfect conquest?
I'd say there is room for even faster SVs either aided by conquest or through the peaceful accumulation of cities, which essentially just means Austria (as Ironfighter has said previously, on his DCL map). That said, any improvement on the top HoF times would require extremely good maps - which I hope people post here
Conquest can help SV both with conquering cities and in picking up gold. With the Shoshone game I'm currently messing around with, in the current run I was able to grab enough 'extra' gold from peace deals to purchase 2 Universities I otherwise wouldn't have had, leading to T102 or T103 Astronomy (heavily replayed, don't be overly impressed). This was done without building/purchasing any additional units, just 3 SComposites and a Pathfinder. I've added 3 more units (3 turns of production on archers + gold to upgrade) and am looking to see how much I can make in a 3rd peace deal, post-T125.
I'm very curious to see what can be done on strong maps mixing warfare with fast SV goal. Babylon and Shoshone seem top tier civs suited to this; perhaps China and Arabia as well. Overall, I'd suggest a civ that can give you a strong unit early to mid-game without going out of your tech path PLUS having other benefits that help towards SV or overall game play (i.e. Shoshone stronger start, Poland free policies but unit comes later).
Would a peaceful game with peace deal gold be possible? Play against civs that don't really build troops, build a bit of troops, DoW them (maybe in combination with free WLTKD) and get a significant amount of peace deal gold. I'm not too sure how the peace deals are calculated, though. Are they mostly dependent on relative army strength or a hidden war score?
DoWing them isn't a peaceful game imo. I'm pretty sure you will actually have to destroy their troops on deity as they get rebuilt quickly. You might be able to avoid taking any cities as I've tested that in the past and they will offer peace deals without taking cities, as long as their army score is low enough compared to yours. I have no idea how their calculation is but I'm sure relative army strength is a factor in it.
The more civs an AI is fighting, the higher is your chance to get a very good deal. Ally all the CSs around them and yourself, bribe the victim to attack as many of their neighbours as you can, then DoW. Great Plains is particularly good for this, it's a small map so the AIs will always suicide into each other and the CSs, keeping their army score low. Then just before you sign the peace deal, lock all your gold tiles and specialists, because for some reason your gpt affects how much they're willing to offer.
consentient
Domination!
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That's an interesting observation. Thanks! I'll try to put that to use in my next game
Can someone please link to the diplo details affecting warmongering and peace deals?
I'd like to figure out how, in 1 game, I got gold in a peace deal with Venice, while in another I hit them harder (left them with 0 units and 100% tiles pillaged) and they won't give any gold.
I'd like to figure out how, in 1 game, I got gold in a peace deal with Venice, while in another I hit them harder (left them with 0 units and 100% tiles pillaged) and they won't give any gold.
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