Fastest Science Victory

[Notacop]

It sounds like you're losing some turns after education and during the post plastics bulbing.
What is your tech and social policy path after education? What techs are you using Oxford and rationalism finisher on? Are you spending any gs bulbs in between education and plastics? How many gs are you producing? Should be around 15-16 (8 or 9 natural gs, leaning tower, porcelain tower, hubble, 2 or 3 from faith).

I'm also curious how you generated great merchants. Are you putting citizens into your scientist specialist slots are soon as you have universities/public schools/labs? When are you putting citizens into the other specialist slots? You should always have the scientist specialist slots staffed as soon as their unlocked. With 2 slots from the university early on, your gs points should greatly outnumber any merchant or ge points you have for pretty much the entire game (at least on deity). I generally don't fill the merchant slots until I'm gearing up for the post plastics bulbing unless I have no other tiles to work.

Once your in the industrial era, you can predict how much faith per turn you need in order to buy 2 or 3 faith gs. Carrying over some faith into the industrial era and having reliquary will help lower your required faith per turn. The fastest games usually get 3 faith gs. Having a map that's favorable to generating enough faith is sometimes necessary to get sub 200 games.

 

[Olle Wernersson]

@Notacop

I got another PB attempt and tried to document some more:

GS: 15 (9 natural, 2 religion, 2 hubble, LtoP, PT)

edu - 113 (went workshops first, bought 0/4 unis)
LTOP - 139
Globe theatre - 143
Taj mahal - 154
lost Sistine chapel 154 would have gotten it 159
Scientific theory - 161 (1 bulb, bought 2/4)
PT - 163
Big ben - 183
Plastics - 190 (2 bulbs, bought 4/4)
world fair won 191
SoL - 193 (religious engineer)
Rationalism finished to get satilites - 220
apollo - 231
hubble - 233
all scientists gone with one tech left (fail) - 237 (would have finished 249)

Tech path after education:
Printing press -> Banking -> architecture -> Astronomy(to meet other civs and cultural CS) -> Scientific theory -> radio(oxford) -> industrialization -> plastics -> railroad -> satelites -> nanotech -> particle physics>

This time no great merchants were made and we got religious GS but somehow still didn't beat PB, maybe salt is just that good? I did put citizens into science specialist slots as soon as ready except unis where I waited some turns in some cities to get more growth. all specialist buildings are completed and all slots are worked in that turn 237 picture. One misstake that I know I did was not working the marble in the capitol when making NC and Oracle, otherwise I thought I played well and got a map with 4 city locations and Uluru. I didn't get religion is that something that you should get? I got the culture in pastures pantheon for some good early culture but then england and theodora converted my cities.

I only got RAs with england as theodora was far behind and I couldn't get friends with the other civs, maybe I should go diplomat spies to get more RAs?

Thanks for the help!

 

[cocls]

@Notacop

I got another PB attempt and tried to document some more:

GS: 15 (9 natural, 2 religion, 2 hubble, LtoP, PT)

edu - 113 (went workshops first, bought 0/4 unis)
LTOP - 139
Globe theatre - 143
Taj mahal - 154
lost Sistine chapel 154 would have gotten it 159
Scientific theory - 161 (1 bulb, bought 2/4)
PT - 163
Big ben - 183
Plastics - 190 (2 bulbs, bought 4/4)
world fair won 191
SoL - 193 (religious engineer)
Rationalism finished to get satilites - 220
apollo - 231
hubble - 233
all scientists gone with one tech left (fail) - 237 (would have finished 249)

Tech path after education:
Printing press -> Banking -> architecture -> Astronomy(to meet other civs and cultural CS) -> Scientific theory -> radio(oxford) -> industrialization -> plastics -> railroad -> satelites -> nanotech -> particle physics>

This time no great merchants were made and we got religious GS but somehow still didn't beat PB, maybe salt is just that good? I did put citizens into science specialist slots as soon as ready except unis where I waited some turns in some cities to get more growth. all specialist buildings are completed and all slots are worked in that turn 237 picture. One misstake that I know I did was not working the marble in the capitol when making NC and Oracle, otherwise I thought I played well and got a map with 4 city locations and Uluru. I didn't get religion is that something that you should get? I got the culture in pastures pantheon for some good early culture but then england and theodora converted my cities.

I only got RAs with england as theodora was far behind and I couldn't get friends with the other civs, maybe I should go diplomat spies to get more RAs?

Thanks for the help!

salt is very huge, especially if you only have 4 cities. if you want to win the game more consistently, you can try to get more than 4 cities.

Sweden's gameplay heavily relies on waging wars and gaining benefits from them, as you need to generate Great Generals and gift them to city-states. I wouldn’t recommend beginners to start with Sweden, It’s a very strong civilization, but it really requires mastery of both developing yourself and waging wars to fully utilize its potential.

The continents map isn’t very suitable for pursuing a fast science victory, especially for Sweden. Sweden needs to meet all city-states as early as possible to leverage its UA advantage.

 

[Olle Wernersson]

I wouldn’t recommend beginners to start with Sweden, It’s a very strong civilization, but it really requires mastery of both developing yourself and waging wars to fully utilize its potential.

It's exciting to hear that Sweden is strong I clearly have many things more to master and I hope I can do this while playing Sweden as it is my civ of choice, for now I'm trying to master the mastery of developing myself without wars but I am open to learning about wars too. interesting to hear that continents might not be optimal for fastest SV, I started playing continents as that seemed like the most "standard" choice and now it is what I am used too. I also like the idea of playing the most standard settings if there is such a thing.

Assuming continents, I have been thinking, maybe going astronomy right after education is suiteble to meet other civs and city states faster, I can direcly put a diplo spy to get friends and thereby faster great people and RAs, and gift the first Great Writer to a cultural city state I meet and continue to gift great musicians to other city states and gifting gold with a patroanage focus game. Perhaps this could be a way of making continents work for Sweden?

 

[Notacop]

Nice job Olle, gs generation and turn milestones looks better. It's unfortunate that didn't turn into a better finish, but that's how it goes sometimes. I think your losing some turns post scientific theory, my guess is this is due to only 4 cities. More cities helps speed up this part of the game, especially the post plastics bulbing. I'm very surprised you were able to get globe theatre and taj mahal. Those are tough to get on deity, nice job. With 4 cities, I probably wouldn't bulb scientific theory and spend Oxford and two bulbs for plastics. Instead I'd save the bulbs for post plastics, maybe spending Oxford and one bulb for plastics and none for scientific theory. RAs can be good if you have spare gold. I usually spend all my gold on tiles and city states (rightly or wrongly) so i can't comment too much on RAs.

I agree with cocls. I understand the appeal of playing with a civ you like on a map type you like, just know that you may not get sub turn 200. It's hard enough with a good science civ on a good map. In general, good science map types are great plains (most common and my personal preference), great plains plus, lakes, highlands, inland sea, and pangea (needs more luck but can generate great maps) with young world age for more hills and mountains. I like arid and hot settings for more desert for the desert folklore pantheon, but to each their own. If you are looking for a map with some breathing room, inland sea is a good one to try. Its great for growth, plenty of space, but early game might be a bit slower than great plains.

I don't have much experience with Sweden, so I'm not sure about the general strategy of gifting great people. I typically don't have any great people to spare, maybe one great artist if I get chichen itza. Another route you can take is to be friends with as many AI as possible to get extra great scientists, similar to Babylon.

Fast science games on deity generally follow 2 strategies: 1. Peaceful 3-4 city national college with 1 or 2 expansions after, for a total of 5-6 cities (space, happiness, and diplomacy permitting) 2. 3-4 city NC and conquering a few cities around education for a total of 6-8+ cities (again depending on happiness and diplomacy). More cities generate gs faster, have bigger bulbs meaning they need less gs post plastics, and reach plastics from education faster. The key for both is to reach education as soon as possible to start generating gs points. Workshops before education is likely a mistake for 4 cities. After education, your next tech will depend on when your next policy comes. You'll want to time reaching Renaissance with your next policy. Sometimes that means being able to get guilds and engineering and then going to astronomy, other times it means getting acoustics asap. Getting secularism soon after education will help get scientific theory closer to turn 140-150.

 

[cocls]

It's exciting to hear that Sweden is strong I clearly have many things more to master and I hope I can do this while playing Sweden as it is my civ of choice, for now I'm trying to master the mastery of developing myself without wars but I am open to learning about wars too. interesting to hear that continents might not be optimal for fastest SV, I started playing continents as that seemed like the most "standard" choice and now it is what I am used too. I also like the idea of playing the most standard settings if there is such a thing.

Assuming continents, I have been thinking, maybe going astronomy right after education is suiteble to meet other civs and city states faster, I can direcly put a diplo spy to get friends and thereby faster great people and RAs, and gift the first Great Writer to a cultural city state I meet and continue to gift great musicians to other city states and gifting gold with a patroanage focus game. Perhaps this could be a way of making continents work for Sweden?

Many years ago, I achieved a science victory with Sweden on a Pangaea map in around 200 turns (maybe 203T?). It wasn’t even a particularly good map (I remember it didn’t even start with mining luxury). The basic strategy was to start with the Liberty left branch, rush to Construction, and begin wars with Composite Bowmen. I typically settled 5-6 cities myself and then captured some additional ones. The Great Generals and any Great Prophets captured from wars were gifted to city-states to secure alliances. If the city-state alliances were going well, I would skip the right side of Liberty and switch to the left side of Patronage. Before turn 100, the most important city-states were mercantile and maritime ones, especially the latter. The number of maritime city-states directly impacted the SV speed.

Generally, when playing Sweden for a science victory, the Great People worth gifting to city-states are Great Generals, Great Admirals, Great Prophets with only one use left (or captured ones), and Great Musicians. The value of other Great Person is almost always higher than the 90 influence, so they shouldn’t be gifted. You mentioned gifting Great Writers to city-states—that’s almost certainly a mistake.

I haven't played Sweden on Continent. I guess I would start with tradition 4 cities, then beeline Machinery after Education and use Crossbow to conquer a few cities, then meet other civs and city states, use the new luxury resources traded from them to support happiness for conquered cities.

 

[Olle Wernersson]

Thanks for the help and tips you people, I got another pb attempt done:

GS: 17 ( 10 natural, 3 faith, 2 hubble, LtoP, PT)

3 city NC - 84
5 cities (one captured, got one great general) - 94
Education - 108 (bought 0/5)
Lost Sistine chapel - 131 (would have gotten 135)
Secularism - 144 (1 GW bulb)
LtoP - 156
Scientific theory - 162 (1 bulb for LtoP, bought 1/5)
PT - 169
Freedom - 176
Lost world fair - 184 (was 100-200 hammers away from Arabia and Morocco)
Plastics - 196 (1 bulb, bought when I had money)
SoL - 218
Apollo - 236
Hubble - 238

fail turn 239 and still 4 more turns for last tech and not enough gold (only managed to buy 2/6 parts, played it out and won 252)

Mistakes:
- Forgetting to steal workers for CS early game
- Going Acoustics directly after education when I would have had time to go Astromony for rationalism opener (I didn't even get Sistine chapel)

So I tried a war against Austria and with moroccos help I actually managed to take Vienna with 3 Composite bowmen and some warriors/scouts. From the war I got a worker, Great General and 2gpt from peace deal. This led me to have 5 cities which might be how I got 10 natural GS in the end which is nice, but I had some happiness and growth problems. I tried to go education before workshops and I don't know how I feel about it, on one hand I still didn't have enough science and on the other hand I never got the time to build ironworks now and it felt like I had very low production and lost world fair.

Questions for you people:
1. When you capture a city how do you know when to create puppet/annex?
2. Is international games the best to propose after world fair to get DoF?
3. does trading open borders increase chance of DoF?
4. Is the spy game like this: You go steal tech if you can, city state spy if you need money, diplo spy if you need DoF?
5. can you only sell one building in one city per turn?
6. For religion, when is Tithe+Swords into plowshares not the play? It just always seems like the right choice to me

For my next attempt I might just reroll to get salt or fountain of youth or something like that haha

 

[Notacop]

Nice Olle, looks like your progressing. I can provide some general tips and answer your questions. 1. If you want to keep the city, you can puppet until the resistance time is over and then annex it. If you don't want it, I recommended razing it, selling buildings each turn or selling it to the AI. If you select raze, you shouldn't get the tech and culture city penalty. 2. I typically finish the game before voting on the second proposal, so I just propose anything, usually world ideology with my ideology as the choice. 3. I'm not sure, I try not to give open borders to the AI because I don't want their units in my territory. 4. I usually send my first spies to AIs I know have techs that I don't. You can tell by the tech cost being lower than others in the same column, or if they built a wonder from that tech. Once I get closer to scientific theory I usually can't steal anymore, so I send spies to cultural cs that I'm not allies with. 5. Correct.

It looks like you only have 3 unique luxuries in your first cities, copper, marble, and orange, with Vienna getting spices. You need more luxuries to support 5 cities. This might be a continents map generation issue, usually you can get 5 luxuries or so with 3 cities. If you are conquering cities, you will probably have to make coliseums and circuses in your cities, and you'll want pagodas or the garden/Temple happiness from your religion. You'll most likely need to trade for the AIs spare luxuries, and try to ally any cs with a luxury you don't have. You might have to check the diplomacy screen every turn to catch when an AI gets a spare lux to trade, otherwise they'll trade it away.

You fell off the turn count after plastics. You should be able to finish the game 30 turns after plastics. From the screenshot and your past posts, I think the main reason your turn count slips is due to late workers and low growth. I think playing on a faster map type like great plains would solve some/all of your issues. Continents is just a slow map in general, I would recommend using a different map type. Slow growth means less science output which will lag your turn count. Getting your food tiles improved sooner can lead to an extra pop or two working more food to grow faster, and snowballs as the game goes on.

In your screenshot, you have 5 cities and are making 998 science per turn and 4 gold per turn. Did you sell your science buildings? Are you working trading posts? Maybe you sold all your gpt to the AI for loans? Did you build all the specialist buildings and are working all the specialist slots? Your science and gold are pretty low for 5 cities and a freedom game, which is why the end got away from you.

My suggestion would be to try out maps that have been posted here and compare your actions to others. Ones like the Babinski Poland map, Poxpower Spain map, and Vadalaz Spain map off the top of my head are good ones to try and experiment with. That way you know the maps are good enough for a fast science victory. Garmeth also made a video of the Babinski Poland map, you could check that out to see what he does and how you can improve.

 

[cocls]

Thanks for the help and tips you people, I got another pb attempt done:

GS: 17 ( 10 natural, 3 faith, 2 hubble, LtoP, PT)

3 city NC - 84
5 cities (one captured, got one great general) - 94
Education - 108 (bought 0/5)
Lost Sistine chapel - 131 (would have gotten 135)
Secularism - 144 (1 GW bulb)
LtoP - 156
Scientific theory - 162 (1 bulb for LtoP, bought 1/5)
PT - 169
Freedom - 176
Lost world fair - 184 (was 100-200 hammers away from Arabia and Morocco)
Plastics - 196 (1 bulb, bought when I had money)
SoL - 218
Apollo - 236
Hubble - 238

fail turn 239 and still 4 more turns for last tech and not enough gold (only managed to buy 2/6 parts, played it out and won 252)

Mistakes:
- Forgetting to steal workers for CS early game
- Going Acoustics directly after education when I would have had time to go Astromony for rationalism opener (I didn't even get Sistine chapel)

So I tried a war against Austria and with moroccos help I actually managed to take Vienna with 3 Composite bowmen and some warriors/scouts. From the war I got a worker, Great General and 2gpt from peace deal. This led me to have 5 cities which might be how I got 10 natural GS in the end which is nice, but I had some happiness and growth problems. I tried to go education before workshops and I don't know how I feel about it, on one hand I still didn't have enough science and on the other hand I never got the time to build ironworks now and it felt like I had very low production and lost world fair.

Questions for you people:
1. When you capture a city how do you know when to create puppet/annex?
2. Is international games the best to propose after world fair to get DoF?
3. does trading open borders increase chance of DoF?
4. Is the spy game like this: You go steal tech if you can, city state spy if you need money, diplo spy if you need DoF?
5. can you only sell one building in one city per turn?
6. For religion, when is Tithe+Swords into plowshares not the play? It just always seems like the right choice to me

For my next attempt I might just reroll to get salt or fountain of youth or something like that haha

In Civilization V, the most important indicator of development level is total population. The majority of your resource output is directly tied to population size.
so generally speaking, the higher your total population, the stronger your nation.

From your screenshot, your total population in this game is far from sufficient for a fast Science Victory. Birka only has 10 population, which is really bad for a self-founded city.
What's your build order? (I see you didn’t even build a Lighthouse). Did you use internal trade routes for food?
Cities settled after the NC under Tradition should prioritize food and production infrastructure, and rely on internal trade routes to boost growth.

1. When you capture a city how do you know when to create puppet/annex?
Do not keep puppet in a science game. The total happiness you can get in a game is quite fixed.
Both puppeted cities and annexed cities (after building a Courthouse) consume the same amount of happiness, but puppeted cities have much weaker output. This makes them an inefficient use of happiness.
2. Is international games the best to propose after world fair to get DoF?
Just propose whatever other civilizations likes.
3. does trading open borders increase chance of DoF?
I don't think so. Be cautious with Open Borders—they can sometimes block the movement of your spaceship parts and delay your victory speed.
4. Is the spy game like this: You go steal tech if you can, city state spy if you need money, diplo spy if you need DoF?
My usual spy strategy is: First steal techs to get them to level 3, then keep staging coups in city-states until they're killed.
Lower-level spies who don't have chance to rank up would get assigned to rig city-state elections instead. I rarely bother using them as diplomats for diplomatic relations.
5. can you only sell one building in one city per turn?
Yes
6. For religion, when is Tithe+Swords into plowshares not the play? It just always seems like the right choice to me
Tithe is the default pick.
Swords into plowshares is very very weak, do not pick it. The standard of follower belief is +2 yield per city.
SiP add 15% excess food, not total food. it requires at least 13 excess surplus to have +2 food, which is much slower than other belief.
So even if you don't have war in your entire game, it's still not good enough as a follower belief.
Usually Pagodas > Mosques > Religious Center.

 

[Olle Wernersson]

New PB!

SV233 - (Sweden, Deity, Standard speed, Standard size, Continents)

GS: 15 ( 10 natural, 2 faith, 2 hubble, PT)

3 city NC - 86
5 cities - 91
Oracle - 102
Lost Chichen Itza 110 (would have gotten 113)
Education - 117 (Workshops first, bought 0/5)
Lost LtoP 149 (would have gotten 153)
Secularism - 153 (1 GW bulb)
Scientific Theory - 165 (0 bulbs, bought 0/5)
PT - 171
Freedom - 175
Won World Fair - 182
SoL - 195 (religious engineer)
Plastics - 195 (1 bulb, bought 5/5 but not immediately)
Won international games - 212
Apollo - 220
Hubble - 230
Last freedom policy to buy spaceship parts - 231


Mistakes (more minor this game than previous games):
- Religion: Going Swords into plowshares instead of pagodas. It was costly to keep up with happiness as I had to ally 3 mercantile city-states. Instead I should have allied maritime/culture instead with the extra happiness from pagodas. I also have no idea how to play religion in general, this game I bought missionary as soon as I hit 200 faith and then generated two great prophets and didn't enhance my religion but gifted to city state instead. There is probably a better way to do this
- only stole 2 workers from city-state when I know it is possible to steal 4-5, for some reason this city-state decided to make composite bowman early.
- I bulbed into plastics even though I hadn't finished Big Ben yet, here I could probably go into industrialization right after scientific theory to have time to build Big Ben like Notacop did
- I got Scolasticism even though I probably didn't need it as what limited my endgame this time was getting the last policy to be able to buy spaceship parts. I had more than enough money(didn't even sell buildings) and almost got one tech too much
- I could have signed more RAs as money wasn't an issue this game, especially for the post plastics I could have gotten 3 more RAs

So I rerolled to get salt and it paid off. You people are definitely right about the importance of early growth and workers + 5+ cities, This time when I had the salt tiles and could place cities outside of tundra with good growth times it ended up with having way more science in the end game, this was the first time I broke the 1200 science per turn and got to 1400 this time! very cool to see. One funny thing was after all this time playing as Sweden this was the first game I learned that you can gift a great unit by using the diplomacy screen in a city-state and gift unit from there by teleporting it in 3 turns, this made it so much easier to get the far away culture city-states in time for world fair! I learned this as I couldn't gift my great prophet the normal way so I was forced to try the other way.

More questions for you people:
1. Can you really delay other AIs from building LtoP by making them declare war against each other?
2. do you buy missionary or make great prophet first when having gotten a religion?
3. Do you always enhance the religion and with what great prophet?
4. if you get pagodas how many do you buy and when do you stop buying them?

 

[Notacop]

Nice job Olle, congrats on breaking your pb. Looks you had a better game, glad you are improving. Overall a good game, some feedback:
-Birka is still too small, Helsinki and Uppsala could be bigger as well. Part of it is city placement as well as being founded in the 80-90s. I can't tell if Stockholm is on a river, if not you probably could have planted it along the coast for sea trade routes. Tough choice for Uppsala between coastal and mountain plant, I would have picked mountain as well. Birka is shoved in between city states, not a good placement.
-When did you get scholasticism? Before or after getting to renaissance? If it delayed rationalism it was likely a mistake. You got secularism turn 153, that is pretty late. Secularism should be your next policy after opening rationalism. Ideally rationalism would be your first policy after education, with secularism being the second.
-Re: religion: agree with cocls, you want your founding belief to be a happiness policy. Take pagodas if it is there, otherwise mosques or garden/temple happy is fine. For the enhancing belief, you can take whatever your game/cities need. I usually take religious community, but have also taken swords into plowshares or the +2 faith from wonders. As far as the math on +2 resource vs +15% resource, I don't know what the breakeven is (the +2 resource may even get modifiers on it making it more than +2, but not 100% sure). However after civil service it is pretty common to get 20-30+ surplus food if you have good city placement, and the +15% production is nice for the capitol when it needs to make wonders like pisa, big ben, apollo, hubble, SoL, etc.
-Your last cities are founded pretty late, because your national college is late. You might want to try replaying this map but instead go 4 city nc, 5 city nc, 2 city nc, etc. to compare education/renaissance/scientific theory timings. On a map like continents where you aren't getting the early science boost from meeting the AI, I actually think it might be faster to get more cities earlier, since more pop = more science. Your playstyle also might be better suited to a certain number of cities, experiment to find out what works best for you.
-It's hard to tell the reason for your low pop count. More screenshots at various breakpoints would help, such as at first city plant, last city plant, nc, education, scientific theory, etc. If you need more workers, build them early. I would probably build them in expos before granaries and in the cap before settlers. Get those civil service farms up fast, buy the good food tiles if you need to. Send food caravans to cities that are struggling to grow. You want each city to grow in 4-6 turns and be at least size 8-10 by the time they get a university.
-When are you getting metal casting for workshops, and how many turns does it take you to research up to it? Metal casting is 4 techs off the beeline to civil service and education. Civil service and education are far more important than workshops. You can do the math on how many turns getting metal casting delays getting civil service and/or education. If workshops don't save that many turns on building unis (and my guess is they don't, probably only shave off 1 maybe 2 turns), then you should have gone education first. It is ok to go full production in cities to build unis faster.

Answers to your questions:
1. In general yes, you can delay the AI on wonders by making them go to war with other AI. Luck is still involved in getting the wonders. With a good opening you should be able to get LtoP pretty consistently.
2. Depends on what the beliefs are. If I get pagodas or another faith happiness building, then I usually buy the pagoda since I'm most likely crunched on happy. If I can't get borobodur, then next I'll get a missionary if my religion hasn't spread to other cities yet (usually the case).
3. Yes, you want to enhance if you can. If it's a low faith game, you can try to get Hagia Sophia and use that prophet to enhance. Otherwise start building shrines and temples and the grand temple to get more faith.
4. Generally you want to buy one in every city. At 200 faith cost, they take 100 turns to pay back, so buy them early. Ideally you should get them all before renaissance. Again if you have a low faith game, build shrines and temples and grand temple, and try to ally with faith cs. Having low faith output can derail a good game. Sometimes this is just luck of the draw with map generation and AIs taking beliefs.

 

[Notacop]

I have been trying to incorporate more conquest into my science games. On lower difficulties it is pretty easy, however on deity I'm still inconsistent at it. Maybe @vadalaz or the other warmongers can give me some insight on how they go about conquest in a fast science game. Specifically my questions are below. Pretend we are using a generic civ that doesn't have a UU or any combat bonus and on deity difficulty, standard map size/speed:
1. When do you train troops? I may make an archer or two early for barb camps, but the majority of my army is made right before/during researching education. Then tech construction after education, usually in 1 turn, and upgrade all archers to comp bows. Is this right?
2. What is the composition of your army for each civ you plan to attack, and how many cities do you expect each army to take? Do you use chariot archers? How many melee units do you use? I have done anything from 8-12 comp bows to 4-6 comp bows and 4-6 catapults, with 2-3 spearmen for melee. I have no idea which is better/more efficient. In a science game, I usually just build 1 army and try to take 2-3, maybe 4 cities total. I have used chariot archers in domination games but never science games. Any thoughts/feedback?
3. What is the timing of your initial attack and taking of the first city? Is it right after education/construction with cbs? Or do you wait for xbows? How late do you keep taking cities, before or after scientific theory? About how many turns does it take you to capture a capitol?
4. Gearing up for the attack, I bribe the target to go to war with as many AI as possible. The timing for this should be about 10 turns before you plan on attacking correct? So bribing around teching theology/education? What do you do if the AI won't take a bribe?
5. When bribing the AI to declare war on others, say they require all your luxuries to make the deal work. You accept and now are say 8 or more unhappiness (meaning you can't easily fix your unhappiness while not declaring war). Do you declare war on them the same turn as bribing to get back your luxuries? Or do you want a turn to denounce or whatever? How does the diplo with other AI affect this decision?
6. Obviously you want to ally the city states around the target AI. Say you are crunched on gold and can't get any allies around the target. How does this affect your war plans, if at all?
7. It makes sense not to piss off all the other AIs in order to get loans later for labs, spaceship parts, etc. How does capturing cities affect the diplo in your games? What about wiping out a civ? Do you adjust your war plans for this? Do you do things to appease the AI to mitigate the diplo hit? If all the AIs hate the target civ, do they even care?
8. I realized I have no idea how a units attack strength and a city's defense determine the damage a city takes. Is there some kind of rule of thumb about up to what city defense number I can use cbs? Or when I need to upgrade to Xbows?
9. For those with some spare time, attached is a save file of a game I am currently playing. It is a blind playthru of fiddlesticks t187 Korea game. It is turn 101, I have just finished education and construction, and upgraded 8 archers to cbs, with 3 spearmen for melee. My targets are Bablyon, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam (Netherlands has great wall oof). Neb can be bribed to attack Gandhi (you have to manually add the luxuries to get it to work) and Netherlands can be bribed to attack Bablyon with an incense+10gpt. I can't get anyone else to attack Babylon or Netherlands. I have played this out a handful of turns, but I am having trouble breaking Bablyon, even when lucking into being allies with the Bablyon's neighboring cs Genoa (you can steal a worker from Dur-K that belongs to Genoa, return it and pay 250g to get alliance). I think I need more units, but the positioning of the cities makes it seem like more archers wouldn't help that much. Is it even possible to take Babylon, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam with cbs? Do I need to wait for xbows or even artillery? For anyone who was curious enough to play it, what did you do and were you able to take these cities?

Any help or insight is appreciated, thank you.

 

[cocls]

I play Liberty much more often than Tradition, so I’m not entirely familiar with Tradition’s war tempo. Generally speaking, turn 100 is probably too late for Composite Bowmen. Composite Bowmen can handle cities with around 25 defense, but by turn 100, most AIs likely already have Chivalry and can build Castles, pushing city defenses to 30 or higher. At that point, Composite Bowmen won’t be able to take cities. If you’re playing Tradition and want to use Composite Bowmen, you should probably go straight for Construction after Philosophy. Also, eight Composite Bowmen is a bit too many for a single front—five should be enough. You should add more melee units and build a few siege units.

For a Science Victory, reducing war costs is still important. Generally, the lowest-cost strategy is to settle a forward city in a defensible position early on (within your first four cities) and declare war on a neighbor as soon as possible. This will lure the AI into attacking your city, allowing you to whittle down their forces through defensive battles. When counterattacking, you’ll only need a modest army to achieve results.

Regarding diplomacy, the key is minimizing warmonger penalties. Generally, declaring war itself doesn’t incur heavy penalties—most warmonger penalties come from capturing cities, and the penalty depends on how many cities the AI has left. Taking cities from an AI with only two or fewer remaining cities will result in a high penalty, so try to target AIs with more cities. Additionally, fighting a war together not only provides diplomatic bonuses but also halves the warmonger penalty for capturing cities. A common tactic is to bribe your target AI into declaring war on as many others as possible, then immediately declaring war yourself to avoid actually paying the cost. For Science Victory, extorting cities through peace treaties is highly efficient, it avoids warmonger penalties from capturing cities and preserves the population and buildings.

Cities you capture that ends its resistance more than 20-30 turns before Plastics will have enough time to develop itself. Big city obtained through a peace treaty don't need to develop so keep it if it ends its resistance before Plastics, it can contribute positively to your science. After that, you can usually sell off additional cities for gold.

 

[Notacop]

Thanks for the detailed reply cocls. Construction after philosophy would put comp bows around turn 60. Do you start capturing cities around then, turn 60-80 or so? I guess it also depends on how the game goes. If happiness or gold aren't doing well, maybe it makes more sense to wait until xbows when they shouldn't be an issue anymore.

The diplomacy explanation was very helpful, thank you. I guess I should try to not eliminate an AI then if I can help it to minimize the diplo hit.

I did a few experiments in the Korea game. I attacked Portugal instead, her cities were 18-20 def. The cbs easily ripped through her cities. I got xbows and attacked Babylon, they did well against his 30 def or so cities. I reloaded an earlier save and Babylon and Netherlands had fairly high city def early on, so I may just wait for xbows to attack them (the other neighboring AIs' cities weren't all that great). Alternatively I could just play peacefully, as in one of my experiments I ended getting scientific theory on turn 136. Go figure.

I'll probably play around with some of the better war civs, like Arabia, Egypt, Huns, maybe even Babylon. Is there a particular civ you would recommend for practicing?