Fastest Science Victory

[vadalaz]

Time for the annual bump!

Just submitted a turn 200 SV as the Zulu. The key selling point here is that Impis are on the tech path to Education anyway, so you don't have to choose between Machinery/Chivalry and Education. Catapults (yes I actually used catapults) damage cities, Impis and CBs kill units, then after Education you upgrade to XBs and Trebuchets.

I missed that Arts Funding had been proposed and of course it got passed, which definitely cost me at least one turn, as in the end I was timing Hubble and PT with the final natural GS spawn. Another thing that hurt me was that William beelined Muskets and had Great Wall + Himeji + Defender of the Faith. This slowed me down and made capturing Amsterdam, the best AI city on the map, pretty difficult.

3 self-founded cities + 4 conquered capitals, standard Tradition / Commerce / Rationalism / Freedom. Couldn't make 5000 faith unfortunately so had to settle for 1 GE and 2 GSs.

I think it's evident that early dominant UUs can carry you to a sub-200 science victory, and this speaks volumes as to how balanced warlike and peaceful approaches to this game are, which to me is a thing of beauty.

 

[Mijzical]

Are there any videos of a quick warring SV? I would like to see how people manage their armies while still managing to upkeep everything else. It is about the only avenue I haven't gotten around to learning and the saves on HoF only show so much.

 

[vadalaz]

@cocls posted videos of his T196 SV for the Babylon Deity GOTM in August, he crushed 3 AIs in that game: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tsg-225-after-actions-thread.684635/#post-16495169

 

[copper.field]

I've managed to complete a 173-turn deity science victory with Spain on a truly exceptional small, lakes map. This option was inspired by the fastest HOF-style (T181) and absolute fastest (T149) wins on a similar standard-size map that comprised nice nearby natural wonders, many maritime city-states and the possibility of sea trade routes, all guaranteeing fast city growth. I've deliberately re-rolled this new map aiming even better conditions.

Although I reloaded sometimes to secure desired wonders or to avoid being attacked, other parts of the playthrough were not optimized. I played almost completely peacefully (except the first two city-states from whom I stole workers), played very basic espionage (diplomats only, no coups, etc.), and was usually short on gold and thus hard-built the majority of essential buildings and all but the last spaceship parts. To my opinion, more experienced top players could improve these aspects, and beat the long-standing fastest deity science victory records on this unparallelled map.

Highlights:

• Madrid founded in T2, two more cities in T10. Built Great Library in T27, National College in T44. Settled the 7th, last city in T49.
• T62: Education, T77: Astronomy, T78: Rationalism, T79: Oracle for Secularism
• Debated on how to unlock ideologies fast... finally it became a mixture. T107: Industrialization, T111-112 (2 bulbs): Scientific Theory, Electricity and Radio.
• T130: Plastics (bulb), T131: Statue of Liberty (GE), T147: Research Labs hard-built, T148: Rocketry (3 bulbs), T156: Apollo

My last, 10th natural great scientists popped in T172. The Porcelain Tower gave one and Hubble two more (which were never used) in the same turn. A great artist came from Pisa Tower earlier, as it would have delayed the natural scientists otherwise. With him, I had five golden ages, the last three continuously from T131.

I founded a pantheon in T4 and a religion in T13, and selected One with Nature, Initiation Rites, Pagodas, and later Mosques and Reliquary. My missionaries collected gold roughly before Renaissance, then I purchased Pagodas and Mosques, and great people after Renaissance. Had two Great Engineers, two Great Scientist and a prophet for late city-state quests, but other choices would have made also sense.

Compared to other timelines here, I'd expect that with enough gold, the mid-game might be improved by 5-10 turns, and the end-game by further 15-20 turns by veteran playes. (This was just my fourth overall deity science victory, and the second sub-200, after all )

The screenshot of the starting position and the initial save file are attached. So are the T10 and final screenshots that reveal almost everything, don't open them if you'd like to try a blind run.

 

[copper.field]

I've optimized the endgame of the previous post (less than 50 turns), and completed the game in only 165 turns. This is the third fastest deity science victory on standard speed to my knowledge after T149 and T159 ones.

In the previous attempt, production of spaceship parts was the bottleneck, as I had two unused great scientists at the end. Now I stopped at the ninth natural scientist - one less - in T163 after some speedup, and used the other for more aggressive bulb to get Rocketry earlier in T143. Apollo was completed in T150 (6 turns earlier), and I hard-built only 3 spaceship parts and Hubble in top four production cities.

Due to the shorter timeframe, windmills were not built in most cities, somewhere not even factories. Hammers went into banks and stock exchanges wherever possible to make money, as it was needed for the last 3 spaceship parts. It turned out to be much more effective to buy them instead of hard building, but I didn't have Mercantilism policy to buy all six parts. That would have needed different approach starting from much earlier.

In this game, science and hammers/money were perfectly matched to have everything ready in T165. I checked that the generation of the great scientists could have been significantly improved further by completing universities, public schools and research labs earlier. Most of them were still hard built (except 3 labs with this new endgame, for example), as I was usually short on money. Espionage was also improved by managing few coups in city states, and I also started few wars for only strategic goals.

 

[fimbul]

Got a settler victory on T144 under hof conditions. Some notes:

- 7 cities, other than settler worker from ruins it was culture, upgrades, religion.

- Social Policy, liberty 4 -> trad 2-> lib ga -> comm 3-> finish rat, 6 freedom -> complete liberty for GE. Overflow of cuture with 2 additional policies. 3 GW + 1 Globe, 2 GA.

- WC: culture heritage sites. With 4x culture CS, maybe sci funding was better. Spent my excess luxuries to bribe it to pass.

- GL on edu for T69.

- Lucky with Sweden DOF. Else, would have declared war to steal worker -> feed to barb -> make peace and liberate worker.

- used gold for city state alliances after barb camp quests. Maritime, then culture after rein.

- got 3 faith scientists, built ltop as early as i could to maximise gpp.

- 1x bulb for ST and 2x into plastics. Had problems completing big ben before plastics so 3 labs with 25% and 4 with 40% in order to get scientist gpp

- originally aimed for T146 until I realised at T142 that i did not need the extra scientist. Perhaps could have finished 1/2 turns earlier but gold/faith as a bit limiting.

- Biggest area for improvement is from Edu -> ST. Went for astro due to culture, but didnt build obs until after aqueducts and workshops. Gold is also limiting, not sure what to spent it on early, hoarded a lot of monies until ST and bought 3/4 schools with merc discount. I dont see any other way of hitting plastics pre T120 which is needed for a sub T140 win.

- the worst thing about highlands is that not all city states can be found; I think that some spawn on mountains and hence cannot settle.

 

[Notacop]

Even though this thread is pretty dead, figured there might be some lurkers. Had a random hankering to play civ again, glad to see others are still at it. I especially enjoyed reading Vadalaz's posts using non-sciency civs. It's inspired me to try some civs that haven't been mentioned here. It's been a few years since I last played, so I turned it down to prince to shake off the rust. Wanted to see if I could get a good map with Spain using the west end of GP. Some notes:

-Got an early pop and culture ruin, but otherwise nothing of note
-Only found one natural wonder first, used the gold to buy a settler. It was around the time I was making settlers anyways though, helpful but not great
-Inspired by Vadalaz, I planned on going 4 city tradition and conquering a few cities. After early war to get a few workers and settling for peace, 5 AIs friended me in the few turns after. Ended up scraping the conquering plan and going 5 city tradition
-4 expos planted by ~t57. 5 city nc t89. Messed up on this, should have had it 12 turns sooner (I forgot one of the cities didn't have a library, oops)
-Education t101, built unis
-Scientific theory t146, no bulbs. bought 1 or 2 public schools and built the rest
-Went industrialization right after scientific theory. The idea was to make sure I could finish big ben before plastics. I liked how getting the factories early made a nice build order for the expos, going bank -> factory -> stock exchange. Will probably keep doing this
-Bulbed radio instead of using oxford. It got squeezed out with big ben in the cap and the expos making public schools. Used oxford for a last column tech instead. I kinda liked this route better, might make it my standard move
-Researched replaceable parts on t171 to unlock SoL, bulbed plastics same turn (one bulb). Rushed SoL with faith GE for mercantilism which finished t172. bought all labs t172
-Rushed hubble with second faith ge, messed up on setting citizens and still needed 3 turns to finish it
-Science peaked at ~1550/turn, more than enough to bulb last column tech. Unfortunately I had to take citizens off trading posts to build apollo in time, so it didn't end up bulbing the full value
-Finished tech tree t192 bulbing the 2 hubble gs and 3rd faith gs all at once. Had a lot of overflow, could have bulbed earlier to save at least 1 turn
-Finished apollo program t192, took 5 turns to build. Was 3 hammers/turn short of making it in 4 turns
-Bought 5 parts t192, 2 parts couldn't reach capital. Bought last part t193. Could have planted 3 cities closer to capital at the very end to buy all 6 parts on same turn and move them all to capital next turn to win 1 turn sooner
-Won t194. 23 turns from plastics to victory, and 22 from labs to victory, which could have been even closer without the rocket part shenanigans. Definitely the fastest plastics to victory I've ever had
-8 natural gs, 1 ltop, 1 pt, 2 hubble, 3 faith gs, 2 faith ge (SoL and hubble), total of 15 gs. Had one faith mountain in an expo, overall just a monster faith game
-I messed up on policies. I ended up taking the patronage opener as my seventh policy since I couldn't open commerce yet (was 1 or 2 turns off on the tech). I had to propose world's fair for the free policy, turns out prince AI don't put any hammers into it lol. I ended up building something like 90-95% of it towards the end of the game. The extra policy and culture let me get space procurements right on time, t191 or 192. Very close to messing this up ha.

The map wasn't a good Spain map but turned out to be a pretty strong fast science map in general with 5 good city spots next to mountains. I've won before turn 200 on the other maps posted in this thread, but I think this is the first time I've gotten under 200 on my own random map. It's on lowly prince but I haven't played in a few years, needed to get back into the swing of things. Time to go up to diety, will update with any good games I get.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Just noticed the post by @Notacop and since I just had my first ever sub-200 science victory this weekend (not counting Settler-difficulty Game of the Month 264), I thought I would mention it here too: Turn 198 Aztec on a huge inland sea.

First a little bit of context, though. A long time ago, around 2018 probably, I was inspired by T-Hawk's civilzation 5 site (I think I saw him post on this forum too, perhaps he still does) and his fast science runs. The general setup of many of his games: Huge inland sea, hot and arid climate to get lots of desert for desert folklore (either for Jesuit Education or just to buy scientists), and a big Petra capital. My favorite civ to try to reproduce his results at the time was the Shoshone, to grab all those ruins that the AI would leave (Prince difficulty, typically). I never got anywhere near his best ~T180 efforts, but produced many games in the 220 range. For this weekend's game, I did not take any notes, so I will just mention some interesting things. First, the start location:

- Aztec: my favorite civ of all time. Once you get used to Aztec growth, all other civs feel slow/small by comparison.
- This is by no means the most fantastic Petra I've ever rolled, but on Prince, it does not have to be the capital that builds it (I actually prefer an expand to build it, so you can place the city just right, and have a second power house city in addition to the capital). Anyway, with two salt visible, I will always have a good look around to see if the map looks viable.
- I hand-picked my civs, which I believe is allowed under HoF rules: mostly somewhat aggressive civs that are less likely to spam wonders or go for a pantheon quickly (you don't want your game ruined by Celts picking desert folklore on turn 5), like France and Denmark, with the addition of Netherlands for good luxury deals, and Sweden for the great person bonus if you manage a friendship (I did, in this game, despite all the early-game war declarations with other civs for gold deals).
- To grab as many ruins as possible on the huge map, T-Hawk's recommendation was to start with four scouts, and that's what I did here. Moreover, the plan is to get desert folklore from a post turn-20 faith ruin, which is risky especially when not playing Shoshone, but it worked out for this game.
- My play was fairly standard: Tradition, Patronage opener, Commerce, Rationalism, Freedom. So no 'fancy' Liberty/Piety mix for Jesuit, just bulk up and try to race down the tech tree. I went Industrialization first in order to build Big Ben and factories (coal was improved!), and then to buy most public schools right away, and later of course all labs.
- I've read enough fast science game reports to know that opening Partonage (and consequently proposing World's Fair to cover the 'lost' policy) is not optimal play, but it makes happiness much more manageable.
- As for Freedom vs. Order, I've tried Order a couple of times but found the end game much harder. For Freedom, you just need to ensure you have enough cash (which I failed to do, btw).
- In the early game, I started with 4-city tradition, I knew 4 cities would not be enough for sufficient end-game beakers (especially with the higher tech cost on huge maps), so I consdered either taking over nearby Japan, or settling more cities later. In the end I settled two more cities (one of them generated a scientist still, the other did not). The reason I paused settler building was that there are two early-game wonders I care about: Temple of Artemis (foremost), and Great Library. Great Library is of course the most contested, and it's easy to lose even on Prince (of course on a huge map there are more AI that can try it), but also ToA can go if you leave it too late. I also like Mausoleum, but I won't pause settlers for it; the other wonders I don't care about, and all the later wonders are not contested, in my experience.
- Many of my games are characterized by me building things that are not required for the victory condition. In this particular game, although I cut down on the 'fluff', I did build Angkor Wat - I wonder whether any submission on this site included that wonder . Of course, Angkor Wat is not worth the hammer investment, although for this game there were two justifications: first of all, Aztec cities typically outpace border growth, even on tradition and with pagodas, as I had here. Second, an expand had built Petra, and I did not want to buy 10 tiles at 200 gold each (and rising, of course).
- As mentioned earlier, I did not quite have enough gold to buy all space ship parts, delaying the victory by I think two turns. With some planning and selling of building I could have cut that by at least one turn, but I don't really like to sell buildings in cities that I have spent the entire game building up.
- Although this is not my highest faith-per-turn game ever, I did just have enough to buy the 4000-cost scientist.
- The victory screen shot shows the Petra expand in all its glory, outstripping the capital both in terms of growth and production. To the east is one more 26-pop city, the one that failed to generate a scientist.

 

[Notacop]

@The_Black_Vegetable Nice one! Congrats on breaking turn 200. A few questions for you:
-That map looks pretty strong and I've never played as the Aztecs, you happen to have the turn 0 save?
-How did you grow your cities so big?? Were you growing your cities even when bulbing at the end?
-You said you were able to get the 4th faith gs, so 9000 faith total right? What were your religion picks, and did you build shrines and temples in all your cities?
-When you got public schools, did you have the mercantilism discount or just big ben? I've found its tough to get 4 policies in rationalism and then down to mercantilism by scientific theory on a non-Poland civ

I've made Angkor Wat a few times on lower difficulty games, usually to fulfill a city-state request. It's pretty good but the capital build order is pretty clogged when you unlock it, just hard to fit in. I buy a lot of tiles over the course of a game so it's pretty useful when I do get it.

On buying space ship parts: you probably already know this, but working trading posts in your cities really helps with getting enough gold to buy the parts right when apollo is finished. It looks like you only have a few tps in each city. I've found that with 5 cities, I can usually buy the research labs, and then a few stock exchanges (both with big ben+merc discount) and still get enough gold in time for the space ship parts without getting gold from the AI. This does mean that I sometimes need to sell buildings though, usually aqueducts and gardens and then labs and schools once the tech tree is finished. You can generate a lot of gold from selling buildings, as well as collecting tributes from city states and even declaring war on an AI and taking their gold in a peace deal. If you were able to buy all the ship parts you probably could have shaved a few turns off your win date. Still, any pre-200 turn win is a great game, good job!

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Thanks, @Notacop ,I was pretty happy with the game. I typically don't stop growing my cities, unless there is really only a few turns left and they won't be able to grow anymore. It kind of ties in with my lack of trading posts. I have read from other players how they convert farms to trading posts when hitting labs, and from there on just work maximum science and stagnate. It's a combination of laziness to not want to work out when and where to build trading posts, and a desire to grow my cities as big as possible, that means my end game play is not optimal. Having said that, I think my labs-to-space ship timing was pretty decent this game (although I forgot the exact turn of labs). For Aztecs, especially on this high growth map, it's easier to keep growing the cities. You can work all specialists and a decent amount of production and still grow every few turns.

For religion I picked tithe, religious community, and pagodas with itinirant preachers. On the higher difficulty levels I typically do reliquary or messiah, the latter in case I need to prophet spread to my other cities. On Prince, though, it's nice to have my religion take over half the map. I did build shrines and temples, and even the grand temple, although I only got around to it fairly late. Just in time for the final scientist, though. Indeed, that should be 9000 faith.

Now I wish I had made notes, because I'm not sure how many policies I had when buying schools. I think I burned a writer to get mercantilism, and I think I had all relevant rationalism policies as well, though I'm not 100% sure. The game settings help here: You can enter Renaissance and immediately get Secularism with Oracle, and the huge map means plenty of cultural city states to get the culture up.

For the space ship part purchasing, in some games I have just enough, here I was just a little short, and now the difficulty level worked against me. In the early game, the AI might be sitting on a few hundred gold plus some gpt that you can take in peace deals (that actually worked really well this game, pre-national college I had over a 1000 gold that allowed me to buy buildings in my expands), but from the middle game onwards the AIs were completely broke. I should have tried tributing more, I've read later that on this type of map, you can actually embark a bunch of units into the inland sea and 'tour' the coastal city states.

I did indeed save the turn 0 file, I hope you enjoy it

 

[Notacop]

@The_Black_Vegetable Awesome, thanks for the save! I'll check it out and see how crazy Aztecs can grow. That's probably my weakest area is being able to grow big cities.

For trading posts, I usually start by building them on 1f1h tiles since farms aren't that good on those tiles anyways. Even if I need to grow, there's usually better tiles to work than a 2f1h tile (in my opinion). Eventually when I start getting specialists, my cities won't be able to work all the farms I have, so I start converting the unused farms to trading posts. This is usually around scientific theory. In your case, since your cities were so big, you were probably able to work all specialists and all farms too. In that case it's tougher to judge when to start building tps, since growth is important as well.

Ah yes you're right about the culture. I was thinking about standard size maps. On huge it is easier to get enough policies because of more city states and the reduced culture penalty per city.

Do you usually play on prince or deity? For prince, do you end up building any workers? Prince is nice since there is less pressure from the AI on wonders and expo sites but I find the early game can be a slog without all the early worker steals you can get on deity. That said I do find my most fun games come on prince difficulty; there is something so satisfying about building a ton of wonders that I normally can never get on deity.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

I play mostly Deity, but I've done a few Prince games lately. I usually try to buy an early worker, but later in the game I do end up building a bunch more, and also buying more workers especially in new cities. In a sense the AI is still supplying workers through gold peace deals.

 

[Notacop]

I've been rolling a lot of GP deity, standard size maps. Had some really great starts but the maps have been horrid, like 0-1 good expo spots bad. On one of the maps, mountains cut through my whole area, leaving potential expo cities to have only 3 workable tiles in the first ring and maybe 6-8 workable tiles for the whole city. I took a break from rolling maps to play your Aztec map Black Vegetable. Its a strong map and the Aztecs seem fun, but I ended up quitting around education. I and all the AIs had negative gpt the entire game, eventually ballooning up to -40gpt. Without any sources of gold, the bankruptcy penalty plummeted my science and I didn't feel like finishing it. I'll probably try again but go tradition instead, it seems to suit the Aztecs better anyways. I did want to try a T-hawk style game, and never used the Jesuit belief so I rolled some huge size maps with Poland to try it out.

I got a map with a good capital site and amazing ruins (3 pop and 3 culture to get size 6 cap and collective rule ~t27), but there wasn't enough desert for Jesuit (about half my cities were not on desert) so ended up doing his "polymath" approach, going into consulates and aristocracy. I finished the game earlier today and submitted it to the HOF, ended up getting the win on turn 188. I really screwed up the early game but saw I could win under 200 so decided to play it out. I went out to 10 cities. The luxuries and resources were spread pretty far out, so it took a while to settle all the cities (you can see on the mini-map I built 2 cities past 2 AIs lol). Barbs were a constant pain, over the course of the game I had 12-15 barb camps spawn inside the gaps of my cities. They kept delaying settlers and workers, and delayed all of my scouts. I didn't meet all the city states until late in the game, probably around turn 150 (all because of the stupid barbs). Gold was again an issue the whole game, as was happiness. I was at 0 to 1 happy until the ideology, around turn 158. Gold didn't start to ramp up until just before plastics. I couldn't get to the renaissance in time for my 8th policy (tech was slower by 2 turns, with no way to speed it up). I would have had secularism and humanism on turn 115 or so, but since the policy came early I ended up getting secularism t133. This made for a very slow mid game. The cities were so slow to grow and build anything, I barely finished building markets/workshops before plastics. They felt so anemic. I was also short on worker labor the whole game, was slow to make trading posts so gold and science lagged.

Halfway to plastics I saw I could get below t190 even with everything going so badly, so I buckled down and starting to micromanage every city, citizen, worker, etc. every turn, just trying to squeeze out buildings or growth or a tile improvement 1 turn sooner. My goal was to break 190, figured I would win on turn 189. Got plastics on turn 167, but could only buy 2 or 3 labs, and had to buy the rest over the next 6-7 turns or so. With a late plastics, I was nervous about the finish date. But the high city count finally started to pay off with a high science per turn. After plastics, I only had 3 or 4 techs that took 2 turns to research, everything else I either bulbed directly or researched with overflow in 1 turn. I actually ended up having an extra gs, I could have starting bulbing sooner or taken a ge with the liberty finisher to build hubble. My capital built hubble in 5 turns, side city built apollo in 6 turns (capital could have built apollo in 3 turns, so that plus 1 turn of hubble would have finished both faster). Apollo program almost took 7 turns, so I had to take off a bunch of specialists (including science ones) to work hills. On the fifth turn, I sent a new production caravan to the city, which was the margin to get it built in that last turn, whew. I finished the tech tree the turn before (turn 185), finished apollo turn 186, settled a new city next to the capital to buy a part closer, and sent all the parts to the capital win on t187. Except one part could only get to the capital and couldn't "build" the spaceship ugh. I could have made roads on a more direct path to fix it, but oh well. So next turn I sent the part to space on won on turn 188, 21 turns after plastics.

Looking at the HOF, my game is the only science win under turn 200. Pretty cool to have first place, even though I hated the playing this particular game lol. Wide is just not that fun to me, the cities feel so under developed and small compared to tradition. I'm always at the happy cap and broke. It just feels like I'm fighting against the game. I should also probably micro everything more like I did in this game but it sucks up so much time. I would play for an hour and get through as little as 5 turns! I think the huge map size did a lot of the work for me, it seems to be much more forgiving than standard size with the lower tech and culture per city penalty. I think with better play, this map could get a sub-t180 science victory, but there's no way in hell I'm going to replay it ha. Well, back to rolling more deity, standard size maps. Hopefully I'll have a map worth sharing soon.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Pretty impressive stuff, @Notacop . Interesting how you feel the game went badly and you still managed such a fast time.

Wide is just not that fun to me, the cities feel so under developed and small compared to tradition. I'm always at the happy cap and broke.

I feel the same. I have this weakness in my play where I want to finish all cities: hydro plants, stock exchanges, water mills (obviously if you are Aztec), they all need to be built, otherwise the game just feels less satisfying. In a serious science attempt I can just about avoid going for hermitage and wonders like Broadway.

The huge maps are interesting. Clearly there is space, and a little less of a penalty of settling more cities, but the luxuries are also very far apart (you may get only 4 uniques in an area where you would normally plant 8 cities), and the barbarians are a right pain in the backside. I seriously considered opening honor to get notified of camps and for the combat bonus such that low-level units like archers and scouts can deal with them, but if you can get away with picking that extra policy it probably means your game is too slow, in the sense that you've had too many turns to get all the needed social policies, unless you invest in World's Fair (which also has to be suboptimal).