Fastest Science Victory

[The_Black_Vegetable]

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

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

 

[Notacop]

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

 

[cocls]

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

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

 

[Olle Wernersson]

SV205 (PB) - (Sweden, Deity, Standard speed, Standard size, Continents)

GS: 13 ( 7 natural, 2 faith, 2 hubble, LtoP, PT)

Hanging Gardens - 80
AKKAD captured - 80
BABYLON capture - 92
6 city national collage - 100
Education - 109 (bought 0/6)
Secularism - 128 ( 1 GW )
Industrialization - 149
LtoP - 150
Freedom - 150
Scientific theory - 159 (bought 3/6)
Big Ben - 162
PT - 170
Won World Fair - 173
Plastics - 181 (2 bulbs, bought 6/6 immediatly)
SoL - 182 (Religious Engineer)
Apollo - 199
Hubble - 202


I got really good land with salt and uluru and mountains. Sadly the start got a little slower than last time, as this time I got no early trade route sent to me, didn't have enough money to upgrade many archers to composite bowmen early, and babylon built his special walls early which all contributed to slower captures. In the middle game Morocco and the Netherlands declared war and eventually I got a nice peace deal from them which got me enough gold to immideatly buy 3 factories. This game the AI took many wonders like Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, Hagia Sophia and Taj Mahal which made happiness and money a little harder, but It worked out well anyways as I got all luxuries wihtout having to pay 27gpt and got WLTKD for a long time, also got the +2 food religion and this time I actually got up to 140+ pop in the end,(144). With a slightly better start and no Arts Funding..., maybe sub 200 next

Mistakes:
Forgot working 1 food tile for one pop in capitol in the early game for some reason
War mistakes, losing units.


What I've learned:
- Always work all gold tiles and work gold when making peace deals
- Enemy knights are very scary, don't push until you are sure you can survive (lost some units from pushing too early)

 

[cocls]

SV205 (PB) - (Sweden, Deity, Standard speed, Standard size, Continents)

GS: 13 ( 7 natural, 2 faith, 2 hubble, LtoP, PT)

Hanging Gardens - 80
AKKAD captured - 80
BABYLON capture - 92
6 city national collage - 100
Education - 109 (bought 0/6)
Secularism - 128 ( 1 GW )
Industrialization - 149
LtoP - 150
Freedom - 150
Scientific theory - 159 (bought 3/6)
Big Ben - 162
PT - 170
Won World Fair - 173
Plastics - 181 (2 bulbs, bought 6/6 immediatly)
SoL - 182 (Religious Engineer)
Apollo - 199
Hubble - 202


I got really good land with salt and uluru and mountains. Sadly the start got a little slower than last time, as this time I got no early trade route sent to me, didn't have enough money to upgrade many archers to composite bowmen early, and babylon built his special walls early which all contributed to slower captures. In the middle game Morocco and the Netherlands declared war and eventually I got a nice peace deal from them which got me enough gold to immideatly buy 3 factories. This game the AI took many wonders like Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, Hagia Sophia and Taj Mahal which made happiness and money a little harder, but It worked out well anyways as I got all luxuries wihtout having to pay 27gpt and got WLTKD for a long time, also got the +2 food religion and this time I actually got up to 140+ pop in the end,(144). With a slightly better start and no Arts Funding..., maybe sub 200 next

Mistakes:
Forgot working 1 food tile for one pop in capitol in the early game for some reason
War mistakes, losing units.


What I've learned:
- Always work all gold tiles and work gold when making peace deals
- Enemy knights are very scary, don't push until you are sure you can survive (lost some units from pushing too early)

Excellent result. Based on my personal experience, achieving a science victory on a continents map is generally about 5-10 turns slower than on a Pangaea map, so I believe you've essentially achieved a 200T victory.

 

[Notacop]

Congrats Olle, 205 on continents is amazing. 24 turns from plastics to finish is pretty well optimized. If you can reach plastics a few turns sooner you'll break turn 200, which is a huge feat on continents. Well done

 

[Mijzical]

A 147 turn victory without demand abuse, obviously this isn't HoF as I have played this map previously/used reloads. It also has policy saving on, which I didn't use.

This map can go into the 130s, I made a policy decision (twice) based off of older runs which didn't pan out and I couldn't be bothered going back so many turns so often. I also didn't really bother managing faith and so there is 1 GS left there to get. My CS quest RNG was pretty tragic as well, this could be pretty easily improved with a bit of RNG manipulation which would lead to quicker policies and all round more gold.

I would attempt the sub 140 on this map, but between runs taking so much time and with playing the map a few times as well as GBR saving 5-10 turns alone I would like to do that on another map.

 

[copper.field]

What an achievement! This is the absolute fastest deity science victory in Civ5 ever, and used a remarkably different approach than the previous record (T149).

• You were at war with almost all civs, captured their cities, and didn't trade their lump sum for GPT. This latter had been a typical endgame trick.
• It seems that cities that you captured in the midgame outperformed others' self-settled cities in the second round (after National College).
• Although your map (Great Plains) was also smaller than typical standard size, you couldn't use the more effective sea trade routes of Lakes map. You didn't have salt luxury, which had been considered the best of all due to its food bonus. Natural Wonders were not perfect, either.
• Your culture output was huge, enough to complete three classic policy trees.
• You had so many workers, more than twice usually recommended!

Please explain how you found out these strategies. I'd like to hear also about the timing of few milestones (National College, Education, Secularism, Scientific Theory, Plastics, Great Scientist bulbs, etc.)

 

[Mijzical]

I can be a bit of a yapper, but feel free to ask away.

Truth be told, that wasn't my fastest ever attempt at the map, I've attached another file which could have very easily done a lot better, as you can see from the 151 victory file attached I had an entire extra tech researched. But that isn't all, it actually should have an extra GS as well from Liberty finisher which I couldn't take due to Brazil stealing Globe Theatre from me, but that is a story too long to tell and the short is I got salty over something (these runs take a long time) and couldn't be bothered putting in the work to fix it all when I saw the min-max I was doing wasn't even necessary to begin with.

My 147 is sloppy in a few departments, I didn't really attempt to bribe everyone else to war and could have exploited war profiteering a bit more, but I wanted to just make sure I got the run done in under 149 this time. My policy misplays were that I didn't take the happiness policies when they were available which meant that I couldn't peace deal cities earlier on/ missed out on some, it does cost me a bit in the end but it wasn't really necessary and gold peace deals are still good.


You'll notice I got 2 extra policies in the 151, my city states were a lot more conducive early and as a result I allied 4-5 culture CSs early which actually really helps get some early policies. In the 147 I could have RNG checked a few thing like CS quests, my first WLTKD in capital was wines, which I could have tried to force into something else, as they don't come online until the turn 90+ or something. In the 151 save I didn't realise until way late into the run how overpowered Landsknects were - the stealing gold from damaging cities is nice but they have no cost on pillaging so they work really well for bullying CSs. I also didn't realise until after the run that I never actually allied Melbourne and so I could have also been bullying them during the run.


I didn't peace deal Byzantine and The Netherlands for a long time as I had a scout or 2 plundering all their trade routes, I am unsure of how this affects future wars (keep this in mind), this map has an issue where the AI's produce quite a low amount of GPT apart from Arabia (Brazil comes online a bit later too) so the constant 100 gold far outweigh a small amount of GPT or getting a lux and golden aging too early.


Due to the rampant warring on CS I employ it quickly becomes impossible to form any friendships as I have a maxed out warmonger penalty all game. An issue I often run into is the AI simply refuse to negotiate a peace deal, Gandhi only offered one at the end during the t147 save after like 40 turns. Sometimes warring them first seems to help, but due to the high warmongering score the AIs just launch an endless war, even with no army and an entire army sitting at a 0 hp capital. I would really like to know more on how to better approach this as sometimes like the attached save file here I somehow countered this well enough. I have tried looking into this and I have seen some talk about pertaining to Vox Populi about how they handle wars and it looks like the longest length of a war has an impact on how AIs view peace negotiations but have no clue if that is something that also exists in the base game. Being able to peace towards the end would be amazing.


Capturing cities though peace deals is a must, try to avoid a direct capture unless it's necessary, don't settle unless it's necessary. You start off with free population, which continues to grow while in resistance, any GP keeps generating, this can be useful for a quick Great Artist as many civs build the guild quite early on. There seems to be a set list of buildings that are removed on handover but otherwise you keep the vast majority of the useful ones. Puppeted cities don't have a cultural penalty and the science penalty really doesn't matter. The only real 'cut-off' is getting new cities to generate science basically a bit before research labs, provided you can afford it as they will pay off their science debt through GSs anyway.


The map has a bit of backstory but, really, it's just a random really lucky generation and not something I hunted. Lakes would naturally be better. For a 'conventional' strategy, Highlands (I think it's HoF) would be the best map for an ideal theoretical finish. I do have an outlandish strat that is far superior, but I want to get an actual HoF run with it.


The strategy of taking Liberty to farm pillage CS for gold was an idea I came up with on your map, it just didn't have the cultural CS to fully support it. I was just camping 2 CSs (was at war and it got allied) to level up units and kept stealing workers as more is always better (if you are under unit cap) and I thought what would happen if took the policy + Pyramids. Lo & behold 1 turn repairs and this map of mine certainly had the culture and the convenient placement CS to support such a strategy. To give some quick maths if I were to pillage 2500 tiles. If we assume a uniform distribution with a max gold of 35 we get a total of 43750 gold. Quite the score.


You can check and guess pretty well with the save analyser tool (when I buy the relevant buildings) as I have absolutely no idea what my timing on milestones are, the timings aren't really relevant outside of trying to line things up like keep culture in check so you can get a policy into Rationalism. As cheesy as it sounds you just want to be hitting each milestone as quick as you can, that includes usiing GSs earlier rather than later. Less GSs later just means you need more cities to generate more science to overcome that obstacle

All that being said there is 1 milestone that does have some relevancy and that is unlocking your ideology. In my 151 I did it through beelining radio, in the 147 however I did it earlier by grabbing factories before scientific theory. In my head it makes sense that unlocking industrial era earlier and getting that tiny amount of growth is better but generally my runs 'feel' better going radio first - I took the early ideology due to a desperate need of happiness.

 

[copper.field]

Ok, I can see that repair&pillaging was the essential strategy that I didn't use in my games. That's why you had so many workers. It almost doubled your official GPT income in the endgame! How much did it contribute to buy critical buildings like universities, factories, public schools, etc. earlier?

I played a bit with the save analyzer and compared the timing of science buildings in your T147, Blatc's T149 and my T165 runs. Not surprisingly, I was late by about 15 turns at least from Public Schools onwards, and by fewer already from out-of-capital universities. On the other hand, I completed my first university 10 turns earlier than you in my latest yet unfinished game, after a 4-city National College built in turn 41. If I could learn how to maintain the pace, a sub-140 might be possible based on naive extrapolation.

There seem to be some unnecessary elements in your game without which it could have been even faster. For example, I wonder whether all your captured cities really produced Great Scientists, or which wonders you would skip in a replay.

 

[Mijzical]

Pillage & repairing tiles is something that you make use of in any game, a really 'free' way to exploit it is to get a city razed as any improved tile will still give gold. Looking at my turn 80 I was pillaging 20 CS tiles a turn, including unit maintenance that's an extra 300+ gpt.

I like to compare my science per turn graphs to Blatc's 149 and despair as they do a very impressive job of having the gold necessary to buy the science buildings. I am excited to see what you can do with your current game.

I don't think I would give up any wonder that I built on those runs, maybe Sistine Chapel as I probably could have enough culture anyway. As for the cities, with the permanent wars I would lose out on spices (WLTKD) and would need to invest a few GGs into getting silver, taking the cities is pretty easy. Rotterdam turned out rather weak on the 147, but I don't think I would give up any cities, but rather focus on acquiring them sooner and making more gold sooner e.g. working trading posts sooner so I could get more specialist up and running sooner.

I don't particularly care about trying to generate extra GSs, (take the 151 save having ~2 'wasted' GS) but rather use the cities to gain more science and thus have stronger turns/GSs. This will become increasingly more important the lower the turn counter goes as we will have less and less time to accumulate endgame GSs.

 

[Notacop]

Nicely done Mijzical, very impressive finish time. The description of your game really intrigues me, especially where you say you are pillaging 20+ tiles per turn. I haven't had a chance to look at your save files, could you answer some of these questions about your game?

1. What are you spending your early natural wonder gold on? I'm assuming your buying 3-5 settlers. Are you buying any buildings/workers/military units?
2. How early are you building military units for conquering/pillaging cities? Are your cities going granary->library->military unit?
3. What are your military milestones? I.e. what turn do you have your first army, when are you getting military techs like construction and machinery?
4. From your description it sounds like you may have new random seed on, is this the case?

Getting all that extra gold from pillaging tiles sounds really strong. Any elaboration on your strategy and answers to my questions above is greatly appreciated.

Earlier this year I had a handful of attempts at a sub 140 science victory, though these were on settler and not deity. I had a few sub 150 games with my best being a turn 142 game (should have been 138 but I forgot to count the hubble gs), played in accordance with the CFC HoF rules and submitted to the HoF; unfortunately the site went down before they were approved :'(. Below are some adjusts I found for the sub 140 games compared to normal fast science games. You may know these already but I'll share just in case.

- I found the most important part of the game is the pre civil service phase. Getting your core gs producing cities settled early and getting enough early workers to improve tiles were good indicators of a fast game. Really the goal is to compress the pre-education turn count, since post education game is already close to being compressed as much as possible
- I treated early cities as capitals in regards to build order. They would build scouts (if I still needed them), workers, wonders, and even settlers, whatever was needed at the time. Granary and library are fit in as needed. You don't need a granary for the first few growths (capitals are commonly grown to size 4 without them) and library timing isn't as important when spamming a lot of cities
- I started taking liberty over tradition. I found the extra growth of tradition didn't really help. The front loading of Liberty is really good for getting cities set up fast, and you can finish Liberty at the end for a great person. Could be a gs, ge, merchant, or writer depending on what you need. I found that to be stronger than tradition, even considering traditions faith ge. You'll probably need to find a few culture ruins or a culture great wonder to get the front loaded policies early enough. I would dip into tradition to aristocracy for the production bonus on wonders and the tile expansion, this may be more difficult on deity without settlers cheaper policies
- I built settlers after the initial free ones. This is the right move, at least on settler. For deity the diplomacy matters much more. I have settled 5-7 early cities on deity as Spain before so it is possible, though this is probably very map dependent. Also dependent on if you plan to conquer or get cities in peace deals
- Tech path jumped around to get the early wonders. Archery for ToA, masonry for pyramids. I would delay great library for education, though that's likely not possible on deity so writing might need to be taken early as well. On vadalaz's Spain map, I was able to get ToA and pyramids, while I believe another user (I think Manpanzee?) got ToA and great library. I think these 3 wonders are worthwhile to go for. I ended up liking an early Stonehenge as well, though on deity you may need to conquer it. Same for museum of halicarnassis. For deity you'll probably have to mix in the lux techs as well
- I wouldn't bother trying to get a super early national college. That's more important for a typical 4 city tradition game. I had one sub 150 game where I didn't get it until way late, like after plastics or something. It costs too much to be worthwhile with a lot of cities. The cities science from population makes up for the later national college. Focusing on getting out a lot of cities and getting the early city growths quickly is more important
- Rationalism should probably be finished earlier than normal. I think the finisher should be used to take plastics instead of the normal satellites. You need the faith gs earlier than usual for bulbing up to satellites since you don't produce as many city gs. This puts a large crunch on policies in a short amount of time, since you want rationalism finisher and mercantilism by plastics, and probably universal suffrage shortly before plastics as well. Using a faith ge to get SoL helps if you went tradition. Sometimes mercantilism would get pushed out until after plastics. It looks like you didn't have an issue with culture though at 700 per turn!!!
- I would typically build the musicians guild. The extra culture and science is nice, plus you can use the musicians for extra faith and gold if you have reliquary and MoH
- I prioritized gold specialist buildings over production ones. I could never get all the specialist buildings in time like I could in a normal game. Usually I had to give up on factory, sometimes stock exchange, and even workshop. Your game had no problem with gold though so you might be able to buy them all
- On settler, worlds fair is not an option (the AI don't contribute to it) so I would always go science funding. Some games would finish a few turns after or even before it could go into effect. Something to keep in mind if you are banking on a boost from your proposal
- For map generation, I found the most important aspects were 1. mountains at most/all city sites and 2. Enough faith production. Growth and production aren't as important as they normally are, you can usually make due with the terrain you have. I had a game that had terrible terrain, very little civil service farms and only a few hills each city. But every city was next to a mountain. I was still on track to finish around t139-142, though I eventually scraped the game when my faith production was too low going into the modern era. You need more fpt than normal to get the faith gs on the accelerated timeline and this needs to be considered during map generation
- All map types have their pros and cons, I never found the best one. Great plains is probably the most consistent for mountains and scouting, and there are usually at least one or two faith natural wonders in the West area. Highlands has plenty of mountains but terrible terrain and slow scouting, but can have decent dessert areas for dessert folklore. Lakes is a good mix between the two but also can be meh. Inland sea has the best terrain and some good dessert but scouting is incredibly slow. For what it's worth, I usually play deity games on great plains and settler on Highlands or inland sea (huge map size)
- Switching to a huge map size makes finding a good enough map "easier". On a huge map, the early game is slower but the additional cs and the lower science penalty per city make the end game much faster. On a huge map, you can get a fast game with a good/great map, whereas on standard size you would need an amazing map to match. Basically less rerolling on a huge map size, though the strategy is slightly different (you need many more cities on huge map size). For huge map size, inland sea is very consistent on getting good terrain, some mountains, and a lot of dessert, though it's more suited to settler Shoshone than deity Spain as the natural wonders can be pretty spread out
- I never found an optimal number of cities for standard map size. I had games with anywhere from 6 to 12+ cities with similar finish times. I believe Blatc had a similar experience. More cities seems like the obvious answer but I didn't find it to work that way in practice, at least if you're producing them. Getting an AI developed city through peace deals probably negates this though, one advantage of playing on deity
- I believe it's better to save LtoP for the end once you start getting into sub 150 or so. I don't think the 25% boost makes up for the spent 100gpp in time. Might be tough to save it for the end on deity though, maybe if you bribe all the AI to fight each other it could work. Remember that the great person spawns at your capital, so you can build it in a side city without worrying about it getting to the capital in time to use
- For religion, I like the production beliefs, reliquary, and the 100 gold per city. For deity, you might still need a happy belief, and I'm not sure about tithe vs 100 gold belief. I found the production beliefs to be more impactful than the food ones, though this is really personal preference

 

[Mijzical]

I have set seed on, with save/loading I have the advantage of choosing what order I use my RNG rolls, or I can do things like skip attacking on a turn. This is one of the reasons why I mentioned no demand abuse, as demands count as an RNG roll and you can manufacture any outcome you want - want a 202 faith roll GP, simply make a demand 34 times the previous turn.

The map allows you to find all 5 wonders first, I did overspend a little on the 147 run delaying my 3rd settler, but I brought 2 settlers and normally buy my 3rd one once one of my later cities hits 2 pop. The map is very conducive for an early granary in the cap, a chunk of gold on tile purchases.

I do spend a bit of gold on military early, buying 1 scout, 3 warriors and a spearman, on that run I prioritised ruins and I think I got 21/33 ruins. I usually get 15-19. The early military might can recoup some gold via CS and with a bit of luck peace deals.

I hold off pillaging CS until around the time I get 1 turn repairs as they need to improve their tiles, the hit from wary CS is pretty strong, the diplo penalty of warmongering can hit too soon and something quite unexpected - unit supply.
For military I prioritise spear -> pikes and chariot archers. CAs are on the tech path for Civil Service have almost the same stats and are worth more military might (I'm pretty sure) than compbows. Though they are limited in number and don't have an upgrade path like archers do.

I don't build too many military units early as they are more gold-efficient to buy than buildings and with some early promotions you can keep a high military might with a smaller army.


The 'optimal' way to play is very dependant on the map and it's settings itself. Unfortunately the ICS way of playing on settler just isn't possible on deity due to the 2.5x increase in unhappiness. 8 cities with 10 pop each is 41.6 unhappiness on settler, on deity 4 cities with 8 pop each is 44 unhappiness. Science wise and culturally you don't gain anything from settling more cities until university/secularism as each pop is worth exactly the same (well more in library/NC cities). Without Fountain of Youth and with strong food early cities it should be more beneficial to maximise a few cities to make the most use of your happiness and to setup your early wonders as soon as possible. With Civil Service freshwater tiles and with a bit of gold you can quickly 'catch up' the later gained cities.

Personally I'm most interested in standard size/standard speed gameplay. I feel like the gameplay becomes a little too 'degenerate' from the advantages of a huge map, if I were to try settler runs it does seem like a very fun way of going about it though.


The early game is, as you have said, the place where we have the most time to save. Tech path should ideally be as direct as possible, though there are a lot of early techs that are extremely useful or necessary. Copper.field has the right idea with I presume building both ToA and Great Library to unlock Philosophy and a really early NC. This in combination with GBR would push though all the early game techs well fast allowing you to pick up possible extras like Construction or Bronze Working with minimal sacrifice.

 

[copper.field]

Noticed in the log that you repeatedly declared war and made peace with the city states you pillaged every turn. This must have greatly damaged your reputation! I wonder if constant war with these city states or with selected few civs that you pillage&repair could work to keep others friendlier with you.

You proposed to seize foreign cities through peace deals. How about Lisbon in your T147 run, did it already damage your relations irreversibly? (Blatc also conquered one capital relatively early in his T149 game and maintained friendly relations later.)

I'm just theorycrafting, but the combination of selling GPT to friends and pillaging others might work to have even more gold. Nevertheless, it'd take me long time to try this, as first I'd have to completely revamp my midgame approach. So don't expect anything useful in near future.

 

[Mijzical]

I have heard that warmongering diplo penalty is uncapped, so with so many wars I will forever irredeemable, that being said I believe if a civ is 'at war' with the party you declare war on it doesn't add to the penalty, hopefully someone knows for certain.

You can stay constant war other civs pretty reasonably, their military and workers are somewhat easy to manage once you conquer their army and with culture growth they may have improved some far out tiles. On your map I remember having 3 chariot archers and like 5-6 workers in Ethiopia's capital (with 2 turn repairs). In my 151t run I stole a worker with a scout and pillaged a tile on Gandhi's third ring on turn ~60 and he left them alone until turn 120-130.

You can also use force some cities to be razed for pillaging, either by a fortunate CS capture, razing it yourself or by selling to Attila, as I think someone in this thread mentioned he always razes cities past 3. Then you are free to pillage the tiles without conflict, or until someone wants to settle nearby.

With CSs you can manage for a bit but there are 4 issues I have come across, ignoring CS wariness.

1. Warring a CS 'late' can be costly as they will typically have built 3 or so units, and in my experience gain spearmen and comp bows pretty early on.
2. Though sometimes they will send the worker out to improve tiles will you have units around their city, most of the time it will stay inside the city reducing the amount of workers you can steal.
3. Their border growth is poor and so you are usually stuck on ring 1 and maybe a couple of ring 2 tiles.
4. In my experience they hate sending their ranged unit to cap a worker, even if you have no other units in vision (I probably have a screenshot of all 8 plots having a worker on them with no military in sight,) this can be overcome using a Great person, but I can't say that would be worth the loss.
   

I took Lisbon as Maria loves sending out settlers to the south of her city / south of my capital. This prevents roads from being built and generally she likes to declare war meaning she would have an army surrounding my capital. It's an alright city to take, a few freshwater tiles and with double worker speed, the trees help push through the immediate production queue reasonably quickly. As a bonus she usually builds Stonehenge. In my 147t run I did cheese the city capture a little as the gold you gain and buildings that are saved are RNG rolls.


To me gold is the biggest gate to quicker runs, ideally I would have civs that are way more gold focused as I feel like warring will have better gold potential over being friendly, and if you manage diplo correctly, you could properly make use of demands to make an absolute fortune. Only downside is I don't think this is as applicable to non Spain/HoF runs.


I feel I have 1 last hurrah in me for that map for when you do manage to beat my time, talking out these has really solidified some understandings, though as to how much I will remember while playing is another thing.

 

[copper.field]

Thank you for detailed explanation, this info was really useful for me. I agree that lack of gold tends to be the primary bottleneck, for which you've truly mastered this pillage & repair approach . I believe your record finish time would stand for quite a while unless you improve it yourself in near future.

 

[Notacop]

In the 147 I could have RNG checked a few thing like CS quests, my first WLTKD in capital was wines, which I could have tried to force into something else

I have set seed on, with save/loading I have the advantage of choosing what order I use my RNG rolls, or I can do things like skip attacking on a turn. This is one of the reasons why I mentioned no demand abuse, as demands count as an RNG roll and you can manufacture any outcome you want - want a 202 faith roll GP, simply make a demand 34 times the previous turn.

I'm not sure I understand this. How are you manipulating RNG rolls? What do you mean by choosing the order of the RNG rolls? What is the significance of skipping an attack on a turn? For something like a CS quest and a WLTKD that are issued on the same turn, are those results linked or can you control them independently? Can you control what turn a CS quest or WLTKD is issued, or are you just manipulating the quest/lux chosen? Maybe I am reading too much into your replies, but it sounds like you are directly controling what results you want. Unless your method is to brute force it by saving, reloading, then changing tiny things until you get what your looking for? I also haven't heard of the demand abuse before, very interesting that it can affect RNG outside of diplomacy.

 

[Mijzical]

Yeah, I am attempting to bruteforce favourable RNG rolls e.g. Take a ruin and it reveals barb camps, reload. Attack a scout with city, take the ruin for 60 gold. Reload the previous turn and skipping attacking the scout with the city, now repeat the process. Pick up the ruins it's culture, reload attack with city, tech.

WLTKD and CS quests are just RNG rolls so it's the same scenario, reload the previous turns and try different things.


On the topic of demands I should ask, are they even kosher for HoF runs? Even on set seed a demand's outcome is random - meaning if you save, make a demand and it fails, you can reload and have it roll a success without doing anything else. Obviously you aren't reloading during a HoF run but it's an action that can't be validated as the result is always random.

To me that sort of goes against the purist approach HoF takes, but I am curious what others think about it, particularly any old heads if they are still lurking. It's been a while since I read fully through this thread but I don't recall anyone really talking about making demands prior.