Fastest Science Victory

[T-hawk]

Nice! Yeah, I've been trying some more too, and I think Large map is the sweet spot that can fit the maximum city-states and still has enough space for your own cities and enough ruins. I also agree that 9 or 10 cities is the best count; the limiting factor is affording money to buy the schools and labs for all of them.

Several questions (I can't open the save, needs some DLC I don't have):

What was your social policy path?

What religious beliefs?

What was your tech order after Education - specifically what order did you get the techs for and build aqueducts and observatories?

Did you build/buy any settlers/workers, or take them all from ruins?

What did you spend money on early?

How many and how fast did you get maritime CS allies? Did you buy them?

 

[Blatc]

For the T120 7-city game, I went Tradition, along with Merc, Rationalism, Freedom. Although the capital was exceptional, this was overall a weaker map than my T125 finish on standard size, which helped highlight the advantage of a large map over a standard size map. For the 9-city T115 game, I went Liberty plus 2 in Tradition, along with Merc, Rationalism, and Freedom. In experimenting with partial play-throughs and comparing, I think for Settler games of this duration it's actually very close between Tradition and Liberty+, as long as you can reach 6,000 faith. Using large maps for the science discount favours founding more cities, which decreases the value of most Tradition policies relative to the Liberty policies I would take early game.

Religious beliefs were the same as my previous games, which are the same as your T122 game. I don't think there's any room for improvement there.

All my fastest games went Education, Astronomy, then aqueducts later, built after observatories. In my T120 Tradition game, I bought the 3 remaining aqueducts immediately. By contrast, I actually think that in my T115 Liberty game, I could have ignored aqueducts in a few cities (low production, next to mountain). At a certain point, the end-game from Plastics to finish cannot go any faster, so with sufficient pop/beakers, building something like aqueducts after observatory is only necessary if it gets you to Plastics faster.

All settlers from ruins; built 2 workers in 9-city game, 1 in 7-city game.

Early gold went to tiles, bought 1 pathfinder in 9-city game, bought granary in ToA city in 7-city game.

I did not put gold into CS except if necessary to get WLTKD. Not sure on number of maritime allies. I set myself up to get cultural friends/allies early in medieval era, looked for situations where I could get a maritime ally (not just friend), and when possible delayed fulfilling quests for religious CS until Industrial era. I also experimented with some Liberty-Consulates games; with such a tight timeline (T120 or faster target) these attempts were essentially successful, but not successful enough to delay deriving value from other policies.

In my opinion the ideal number of cities for fast Settler SV is somewhere between 7-9, depending on the individual map as well as map size. I prefer the highlands map on standard size, but the science discounts on large map size outweigh the benefits of the highland map and make the best maps (on large) tend to be smaller map types like inland sea and great plains.

 

[T-hawk]

Oh, now I realize what I'm missing: Temple of Artemis. I forgot about it, never bought that DLC. I couldn't figure out how you were getting the cities so big (over 15) without buying maritimes or early aqueducts or the Tradition finisher. That wonder is equivalent to 2-3 maritimes and city sizes by the end of the game.

What did you spend tribute and Initiation Rites money on, after the one granary? Did you just save it all until buying schools?

I think Inland Sea is best for consistently generating the most flood plains, since rivers extend a long way before reaching the sea. Highlands has shorter rivers that cover less land - unless there's a combination of map parameters that can get more? What settings do you use for Highlands, there's a lot of knobs to tweak there?

Yeah I also experimented with Liberty - Consulates. It's fun to get so many CS allies from just one camp clear each. But the problem is screwing up the early tech order - you have to beeline Mathematics for classical era entry which delays Writing/libraries and Masonry/Pyramids. Might work if you get lucky and pop those techs from ruins.

 

[Blatc]

Remaining gold was saved.
Highlands can give a lot of different options, including some neat coastal configurations, you should try playing around with the map - perhaps you'll like it.

 

[T-hawk]

I made turn 113: http://dos486.com/civ5/bnwx4/

Got El Dorado on turn 2, though somehow it was worth only 250 gold, bought a pathfinder. Bought 2 other pathfinders and one worker early, then saved money to buy universities.

Went to 9 cities total, all close enough to connect by road, 5 on mountains.

Social policy path: Top half of Liberty, then save the next three policies into Mercantilism, to buy the universities. Then the usual Rationalism and Freedom, and the Liberty finisher late for a scientist.

Turn 51 Education, bought 6/9 universities and the 7th two turns later, built two.

Turn 84 Sci Theory (no bulbs), bought 7/9 schools, built two.

Turn 97 Plastics (2 bulbs), bought 9/9 labs.

Rationalism finisher for Rocketry, saved Oxford for the end for Nanotechnology (I don't think the ideology is important enough to burn Oxford on Radio).

Squeezed out one extra Great Scientist at 700 GPP compared to your game, made possible by getting the universities bought that much sooner. Same dates for Sci Theory and Plastics as you, but I didn't bulb before Sci Theory, so that plus the extra scientist saved 2 turns at the end.

Save file if anyone wants to try it: http://dos486.com/civ5/bnwx4/save.zip

 

[BlackWizard]

Got El Dorado on turn 2, though somehow it was worth only 250 gold, bought a pathfinder. Bought 2 other pathfinders and one worker early, then saved money to buy universities.

Do you perhaps play on quick speed? 113 turns is about 170-180turns on standard speed so not very impressive

Edit: You also use veruystrange settings overall.

 

[Equilin]

Got El Dorado on turn 2, though somehow it was worth only 250 gold.

This happened to me too.

 

[T-hawk]

Do you perhaps play on quick speed? 113 turns is about 170-180turns on standard speed so not very impressive

Edit: You also use veruystrange settings overall.

No, that was 113 turns on standard speed. 50 BC was the win date.

The settings deliberately aren't according to CFC HOF rules. I'm trying to go as fast as possible by any means. Settler difficulty Shoshone with an empty map full of ruins is the best way to go about that.

 

[BlackWizard]

Do you play inland sea because of sea food trade routes? Have you tried those great plains or gp+ maps for this? Or highland to have maximum number of observatory cities? They should also have more space for cities

 

[T-hawk]

I like Inland Sea because the rivers tend to be very long to get the most floodplains and farmable hills. I feel Highlands doesn't have enough food. (Most often I don't actually settle coastal on Inland Sea, though sometimes it happens.) Great Plains doesn't produce big chunks of desert to support Desert Folklore.

 

[Blatc]

See post 590 for an example of what the Highlands map can produce - what is possibly the fastest non-HoF Settler SV finish on a standard size map:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fastest-science-victory.563022/page-30#post-14830163
Highlands maps also account for the fastest HoF Settler SVs on standard size maps.

In moving to the large size map to benefit from the reduced tech cost and additional ruins, the drawback is that the Highlands maps are too large to spread religion (100 gold per city) and tribute city states as effectively as on other smaller map types.

 

[Equilin]

Any tips on tributing CSes? Like unit positioning, when to stop, when to tribute again etc. I cannot seem to do it effectively at all.

 

[beetle]

Any tips on tributing CSes? Like unit positioning, when to stop, when to tribute again etc. I cannot seem to do it effectively at all.

I also would love to hear from someone who makes this a routine part of their play. In my experience, it seems to take far more units than I can be bothered with. If have enough units for CS tributes, I want those units warring on an AI. Sometimes when swimming, I will detour my group a bit to ask CS for money, and that seems to work okay. But, again, it does not seem worth the bother for money it generates -- unless I have a bunch of units moving by a CS anyway.

As far as positioning, unless you are friendly with the CS, your units need to be touching CS borders, but not inside CS territory. That is because the angry modifier spoils the modifier to intimidate. The CS is only scoring your units that it can see, and your relative military strength as compared to all of the AI civs.

 

[T-hawk]

beetle, that is not correct. All units within a certain distance count. The distance is 8 tiles on a huge map, 6 on large, and I think 5 on standard size. The city-state doesn't need to see the units. Embarked units count, so do ships. (Don't know about aircraft.)

The first part of the modifier "overall military strength" ranks your military compared to all major civs in the game, by the demographics "Soldiers" value. You get +75 multiplied by your rank. Let's say an 8-player game: if you're ranked first it's 75 * 8/8, ranked second is 75 * 7/8, ranked last is 75 * 1/8. Note that the demographics don't always update immediately, particularly upon buying a unit.

The second part "military in range": Add up the melee strength of all your units in range (modified downward if damaged.) Compare that to the total of the city-state itself plus the melee strength of all its units. You get a modifier on this scale:

More than 0.5x the city-state's strength: +25
1x: +50
1.5x: +75
2x: +100
2.5x or more: +125 (this might be 3x, I'm not sure)

Sometimes that's not followed exactly. I don't know the details of why, maybe some rounding error, but here are the two most common cases: Two Shoshone pathfinders at 16 strength total aren't enough to get +50 against a city on a hill at 15 strength. A single spearman at 11 (common from a ruins upgrade) does get +50 against a city at 11 strength.

The default tribute resistance is -110, modified by -10 for militaristic and -10 for hostile personality. Because the maximum for overall-military is +75, you always need at least +50 from units in range. A hostile militaristic requires at least +75 from units in range which is usually too much to bother with.

To enslave a worker is another -40 to their resistance, so you need at least +75 from units in range and at least +100 if either hostile or militaristic.

The ease of getting tribute varies sharply with difficulty: very easy on Settler where you'll be ranked first among AI civs and the CS take forever to build any of their own units; very difficult on Emperor-plus.

 

[Blatc]

Thanks for explaining that T-hawk, I never bothered with CS tributes (on Deity) and have only started doing so in playing around with the super-OP Settler SV games. Also, thanks for posting the save file with the El Dorado, I haven't been able to roll a map with that wonder to jump-start the game. Your 9-city by T20 start is phenomenal, I was not able to match that despite several attempts at the early game.

 

[cbucks]

I'm gonna post an interesting map, can someone link me a video in return showing from scientific method until space completion?

 

[cbucks]

this one is even better, isabella again. south west ...

i really think someone can do this in sub 182. probably not hall of fame, but go southwest

 

[beetle]

Thanks for all that detail @T-hawk! Where do units within a certain distance (say, a melee unit within 5 hexes) but not within range figure into the calculations?

 

[t10000]

Don't want to take away from the expirments to get those crazy finishing times, it is cool to see how far some of you can get down the number of turns to fire of to space.
As you don't follow the HoF rules for rolling the maps, do you reload and replay in order to try out different paths or do you play each attempt in one go?

For someone who picked up the game again after servaral years of hibernation I am just curious but what would will you be able to produce in terms of finishing turn for a good, but not amazing start (Deity, Standard, Pangea)?
I guess the HoF sumbission could give me some indication but I assume those are sort of selected based on getting a legendary start.

 

[T-hawk]

Your 9-city by T20 start is phenomenal, I was not able to match that despite several attempts at the early game.

To do that, you've gotta pop a lot of ruins by settling cities, to cycle back around to settlers faster. I popped 4 with my first four cities.

Thanks for all that detail @T-hawk! Where do units within a certain distance (say, a melee unit within 5 hexes) but not within range figure into the calculations?

There's no such thing. Within range means within the stated distance per map size. If your unit is within that number of tiles, it counts.

As you don't follow the HoF rules for rolling the maps, do you reload and replay in order to try out different paths or do you play each attempt in one go?

Blatc will replay a map from the start. I mostly don't go back more than a few turns, and usually only if I made some serious mistake like research order.

For someone who picked up the game again after servaral years of hibernation I am just curious but what would will you be able to produce in terms of finishing turn for a good, but not amazing start (Deity, Standard, Pangea)?

Well, any win on Deity is a good one. I've never tried for speed above Emperor. I do know one key is to use spies to steal as many techs as you can.