As Chessplaya has guessed, I also went for a space victory. I will post a full report later, but first I will address the current discussion.
Billybgame finished in 1880, and the discussion is how to move up this time to the 1800 range. At normal speed, 1700 to 1800 is 5 year per turn, so 20 turns. 1800 to 1920 is 2 turns per year, so there are 40 turns from 1880 to 1800. In order words, to be competitive for a fast spaceship, Billygame would need to knock off some 55 turns.
With this context, first a couple specific comments on the current discussion:
-Golden ages are not that big a deal. In vanilla civ, each properly used golden age saves about 2 turns. In BTS, it can be 3 or 4 (The extra turns in BTS comes from the gpp bonus and the elimination of anarchy.) This would only be a small fraction of the 55 turns.
-Cottage vs specialist economy does not change the number of GP generated that significantly. Even in a pure cottage economy, one selected city (often referred to as GP-Farm) is not cottaged, but farmed, and used to generate great people. In the present game, I used a city settled on the stone and which had two great food sources for this purpose. It generated 11 great people (I think 9 or 10 scientist from memory, but not certain). This was combined with 4 from being first to specific techs for a total of 15. I used those for 2 Golden Ages, and settled the rest.
Now, for some more general comments… First, it is essential to understand that a fast spaceship launch is generated by powering through the research tree. How quickly you can do this is pretty much all that is important. Correct technique in actually building the ship can save a handful of turns at the end, but we are talking about 5 or so turns in general. The big item is the research time.
The second essential point to understand is that it is not a “very strong empire” which powers research, but rather very strong cities. To emphasis this distinction, I have rechecked a save from late in my game, but before I was in Golden ages. I had an 18 city empire that researching 2625 beakers per turn at that time. Beijing was contributing 1022 of these, of 39% or the empire total. My top 9 cities (top half) was generating 2220 beakers, or 85% of my empire total. The 9 other cites thus contributed only the last 15%.
The above is just a specific example of city specialization. To make clear why this is important, let’s take a specific example, focused on the statement: “I made many....built 4 academies and settled another 6, in shield poor cities”
So you and I both made about 10 GS. Lets assume exactly 10 for simplicity. I used my 10 as follows. One academy in the capital, and then 9 settled GS. I will assume you also put one of the academies in the capital, so these cancel out. Each of my 9 settled scientist generates 6gpp. In the capital, I then get an extra 75% for library, university and laboratory, 100% from Oxford, and 50% for the academy. 9*6*3.25=175 beakers. I also get the same hammers you do, so I will ignore those for now.
In contrast, you spread your scientist around… Your 6 scientist is hammer poor cities are probably benefiting from only a library, so generate 7 points each. Your hammer poor cities likely have a raw beaker production of say 20 on average, and thus each academy gets you 10. You are thus getting some 70 beakers from your scientists or 100 less than I am.
That is only one small aspect of city specialization… When my capital was generating 1022 beakers per turn, my second best city was at 216, and this was also a research focused city. If all cities would be like this second one, I would have some 800 bpt less. Removing those 800 bpt would have added some 40 turns to my time.
BTW, in answer to matthew9890 query from above, according to the game log, I played just over 15 hours. Part of that is the occasional lag on a very slow lap top, and some of it includes leaving it on during lunch or similar. I would guess about 8 hours of actual playing time.
Edited to include a summary of my game:
A builders dream… I played for space from the beginning along the following plan.
-No need for a military, so no wasted hammers there.
-Rush to oxford. Expand only to about the needed 6 cities first. (I had 9 cities at 0AD, and was working on oxford at the time.)
-From the start, as many cottages as possible.
-With Oxford in, expand to fill the continent.
-Research as fast as possible to build the ship.
Wonders I built:
-Oracle -> CS-sling
-Oxford
-Hanging Garden (health and population, fairly early.)
-Globe in capital.
-National Epic in GP-Farm (city founded on stone.)
-Taj
-Very late because of spare production: Statue of liberty, rock and roll (or Broadway, I forget which.)
Cities:
18 in total. Not quite enough to fill the continent, and the AI ended up getting two cites I probably should have claimed, but a comfortable number for a rush to space.
Mistakes?
Overall, I think I played a pretty good game, and I am not sure I could have save many turns at all, but there were certainly imperfections from which I can learn:
-Too few workers in the mid game. At some point around 1000 AD, I was working some un-improved squares, which is of course bad. On the other hand, it was not many squares, and I saved on the production costs, so I am not sure more would have helped that much.
-I forgot to open borders when I met some of the civs. This hurt my trade income a bit. It might have cost a turn or two, but certainly no more.
-I miss-timed my last GPs from the farm (I forget that in vanilla, you do not get +100% gpp for Golden age.), and I had to use the fusion engineer for my last golden age. This delayed the space elevator which I would otherwise have rushed. This probably did not cost any turns, since in the end I finished 1 production of all 13 parts simultaneously 2 turns after researching the last tech.
-Expansion was a bit too slow, and I let the AI’s get a foothold on the continent. This could have hurt if someone AI went WHEOOHRN, but since that never happened, it did not matter.
Result:
Launched the ship in 1675. This really was an ideal set-up for a builder… The option of not building any military at all really does speed things up significantly.
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Thank you for the detailed write-up. I learned a lot from reading it. One thing in particular is that just because you can build almost all the wonders doesn't mean you should. I don't even see the Great Library listed!
