[GS] Guide to fast Science Victory - Religious Russians

Really interesting. Do you mind posting your turn 157 save file? I want to play this map and see where I end up compared to you.
 
Really interesting. Do you mind posting your turn 157 save file? I want to play this map and see where I end up compared to you.

Sure. No problem. I would love to see another playthrough. =)
 

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Thanks! Started up the game and will let you know how it goes. Some of the boosts seem hard to get. Masonry and Irrigation at the right time seems challenging. Do you remember how it went for you?
 
Thanks! Started up the game and will let you know how it goes. Some of the boosts seem hard to get. Masonry and Irrigation at the right time seems challenging. Do you remember how it went for you?

I got masonry boosted through a goody hut, and irrigation I did not get in time. But I dont think it matters too much in this stage on the game.
 
UI-Mods that give you info that exists in the game in a structured way is important! Maybe the most important is the one that shows you the gains from policies. This can be consulted every time you change policies.

Looks excellent. What mod is this, and what other mods do you use?
 
@ATEX thanks for making this post. Really informative.
I've taken a long break from Civ so its nice to know the current state of optimal play. I can see that most previous strategies are now patched in one way or another.

Seeing a victory done in 157 brings some hope back. What worries me though is having to settle 20 cities. Its exactly what frustrated me with nerfs after R&F - making it too rare to get a good map.
Are the previous strategies on deliberately hitting a dark age with Russia to get a +75% science boost still relevant? Right before that big R&F nerf Russia emerged as pretty much the only contended for a super fast SV. Any other civs that could have viable strategies now?

I'll have to familiarise with all the changes in the last few updates.
Thanks again for your post. Brings back memories.
 
Thanks @civtrader6. Your videos are bascially the reason I play civ6! =) Personally I think Russia is the strongest civ now, as combinations of earth godess/work ethics/dance of the aurora/Choral music is very strong. Feed the world also seems strong in some situation. (Fast growth means cheap districts). Also that extra territory of Russia gives you so much nice chopping.

Dark age is not viable, but 20 cities might be needed for the fastest times. At least 15. However I dont find it that tedious to have that number of cities as I thought I would. Getting a free builder when you settle makes it instantly usefull with one food chop. (AH is the most fun thing they ever introduced to the game). Also you dont have to build 80 different things and optimize all 20 cities. If they get their campus buildings up, they are pretty much good. If you check the HOF-game I just posted, I only had 13 cities at turn 100, but with very high yields. If they had better campuses I would not need 8 more. I would say 15-20 cities are needed. With perfect play that map should be down to the 140s.

When it comes to other civs that can get to the 150s, I think maybe Brazil, Korea or Greece. People are also saying Japan is fast. Currently Im testing Norway as they can consistently civumvent the 1 tech per turn problem. Strong military civs could possibly take the whole map and have 40 cities in the process, but I dont really know that playstyle good enough to know how fast it is. Other fun strats that should be explored is Persia with earth godess and Australia with work ethics.

Ofc with the new update today things might change, but there are definently lots of fun strats to explore to get the really fast SV. I hope you will give civ6 another chance, as your opinons would be a great addition to the forum.
 
@civtrader6 I think another reason why a religious science victory is so effective post-Vanilla Civ 6 is because of monumentality golden ages allowing you to faith buy settlers for cheap along with Ancestral Hall’s free builder. Combine that with Pyramids, well-timed Serfdom cards, and Magnus chopping tours and you can get a wonderful start.
 
@ATEX Now that I think about it, when doing a religious SV, what do you do with errant civs who spread their religion to your cities and won’t leave if asked to? Would you spend that precious faith to fight them off or would you let them take over and just keep your faith for monumentality and moksha rush buys? Or would you DoW them and use your military to pick off their apostles?
 
@ATEX Now that I think about it, when doing a religious SV, what do you do with errant civs who spread their religion to your cities and won’t leave if asked to? Would you spend that precious faith to fight them off or would you let them take over and just keep your faith for monumentality and moksha rush buys? Or would you DoW them and use your military to pick off their apostles?

I never had a problem with it. But I think I would just buy some missionaries. With 400fpt it is not a big deal.:)
 
How did you get that many cities in the classical era? I gave your map and strategy a shot and I was able to squeeze in about 15 cities IIRC, and 5 of those were built/chopped not bought.

Also, I was wondering if you only chop in universities when Magnus is there on tour, or do you chop even without him?

I’m not an amazing player, so I don’t know if these questions are pertinent to your strategy or are general, but I think those places (Cities and fast science growth) are where I think I had the most improvement to be desired in that game.

(Ended up finishing T218, I also messed up in not settling my Amundsen Scott city quick enough, running out of chops for lasers, missing Kilwa, and spending about 20 turns and a lot of faith trying to retrieve it from Matthias, losing the Geneva Bonus)

Would love any additional advice on what you did to finish so quickly.
 
@Mbccsvb I bought with faith mainly, but also with gold. Trading with the AI for gold is important. preferably lump sum gold so you can buy settlers. I chop Unis and a lot of other things also without Magnus.

It is hard to give general advice about how you can speed up your game, because the boring answer is that you do thousands of assessments during a civ-game, and to be able to do the correct assessments you need to understand the game.

I can however give you some pointers about how you should think.

The first parts of the game are the hardest to master, and you should spend most time mastering that. I would reccomend playing the same map several times up to turn 100, and see how different strats work. Thats how I did it at least. Analyzing where to place cities and districts, and what districts to build, when and what to chop, what policies to slot in requires experience to understand. However the underlying thought should always be: How does this help me speed up things? You should not build anything that does not speed up your game, meaning you have to analyze what you do a lot.

As filthy robot said in his videoes, Civ is all about oportunity cost. If I do this, I cant do that. If you build Ruhr Valley for example you gain production, but you have to assess how will that extra prod helps you. Is it worth the cost both in invested hammers, but also in oportunity cost. What could you have build in that city those 20 turns? Maybe 3 privateers? That is 800 science or equivalent of having a university with rationalism for 100 turns... Understanding what is efficient and what is not is key.

The endgame on the other hand is surprisingly easy. From rationalism and onwards you should only focus on getting boosts and keeping the science high enough to almost 1-turn every tech, and ofc planning out how you will chop the projects and Amundsen.

Some other tips that helps a lot is to use the mods that allows you to see how much you gain from policies, use map pins a lot for planning city, districts and wonders. I also keep a notepad open to help me remember what boosts needs to be remembered for the next part of the game.

Hope this can help you a bit.
 
@ATEX What about starting Reyna to Forestry Management to better take advantage of Earth Goddess and the +1 Appeal to Unimproved tiles? Or is Pingala first, then Magnus, then Reyna the power play here?
 
@cylenalag I think Reyna is not good enough, but Im testing out Liangs city parks now as an alternative to Pingala for an American playthrough. That will give a lot of tiles breathtaking appeal, but Im very doubtfull if it is worth it with Russia. Most russia games now I think work ethics and aurora will just be better. The extra hammers you get just makes everything easier. The exception would maybe be if you have a start like I had in this game where you can work several breathtaking tiles of the bat.

As to pingala or magnus first, I think it might be situational what is better. If your culture output is weak, that extra culture from Pingala is very helpful, but losing pop is also problematic. If you have a map where your capital is not well placed to spam settlers, pingala should be better, but if your cap will be a settler factory then magnus.
 
I got masonry boosted through a goody hut, and irrigation I did not get in time. But I dont think it matters too much in this stage on the game.
Right. Unless you really need that tech/civic because of a specific need, not getting any specific early eureka/inspiration shouldn't really matter. Losing 40% of the tech needed for irrigation feels terrible early (it's 3 more turns!), but in the context of hundreds of science/turn generation later, it's a really minor blip. The long-term effect is 0 or 1 turns, particularly for irrigation since it's not a pre-req for anything. Delaying political philosophy for 2 turns is slightly more painful because it might mean getting ancestral hall 2 turns later and settling multiple cities 2 turns later, but it won't mean you win the game 2 turns later.
 
Wonderful thread. I saw this about two weeks ago and have now been using it myself, to pretty similar results, though on average 10 turns slower. I’ve always used an early Culture powered strategy for fast SV, as I too am one of the players who discovered the power of this thanks to CivTrader6’s videos (praise be to CivTrader6, haha). However, I never really thought of using Choral Music. I was a fan of Jesuit Education and using TS and GWs to provide your core Culture yields.

I personally prefer fast CV due to the variety of strategies, but I’ll admit, going this route has made SV a little less boring. Though there is a core concept, there is some flexibility in exactly what Pantheon and Religion combo you can pick. I also think that it solidly puts this on par with fast CV in terms of the number of turns you need to win. Also, unlike CV which can be slowed down by a runaway civ’s Culture yields (or Russia), SV is more independent of how other civs are doing.

So far, I’ve used Earth Goddess + Choral Music as well as the Dance of the Aurora + Work Ethic variation. Work Ethic is just too tempting, and I’ve always built a lot of TS in my old strategies that the production can now go towards. My experience so far has been the faster production towards TS and Amphitheaters to place all those GWoW earlier, as well as build Monuments faster, essentially makes up for the Culture from Choral Music.

I would like your thoughts on the viability of Rome for this strategy, as well as other civs (I know you’ve mentioned Brazil, Greece, Korea, and Japan ... I already tried Japan, and they do well). Rome is my main civ, and I’ve had great success at fast SVs with them going the TS route.

I tried one successful game with them so far, using the Earth Goddess + Choral Music build (they really aren’t viable with Work Ethic). It was was comparable but slower, coming in at turn 172. This is in the same range as my TS strategy with them. I also had to re-roll, as I lost out on getting Choral Music twice. Their lack of bonuses to generating Great Prophet points is definitely their key weakness in this strategy (this is why I preferred Jesuit Education previously, the AI doesn’t prioritize this as much). In addition, even with Earth Goddess, Faith generation was an issue during the early game. I couldn’t Faith buy nearly as many settlers and instead had to rely on the typical Rome strategy of the 1-2 settler advantage you get by having Colonization so early, taking cities from neighbors, and Magnus chops to keep up.

On the bright side, I think their Culture and Gold yields were great. Free Monuments as always got me to the early and mid game Civics super fast, faster than Russia or Japan. I also had no issues with Culture later in the game, as the Free Monuments gave me a lead to use the Policy cards, Pingala, and governments earlier and for longer, compounding Choral Music and my TS. The same concept applied to Gold.
 
Wonderful thread. I saw this about two weeks ago and have now been using it myself, to pretty similar results, though on average 10 turns slower. I’ve always used an early Culture powered strategy for fast SV, as I too am one of the players who discovered the power of this thanks to CivTrader6’s videos (praise be to CivTrader6, haha). However, I never really thought of using Choral Music. I was a fan of Jesuit Education and using TS and GWs to provide your core Culture yields.

I personally prefer fast CV due to the variety of strategies, but I’ll admit, going this route has made SV a little less boring. Though there is a core concept, there is some flexibility in exactly what Pantheon and Religion combo you can pick. I also think that it solidly puts this on par with fast CV in terms of the number of turns you need to win. Also, unlike CV which can be slowed down by a runaway civ’s Culture yields (or Russia), SV is more independent of how other civs are doing.

So far, I’ve used Earth Goddess + Choral Music as well as the Dance of the Aurora + Work Ethic variation. Work Ethic is just too tempting, and I’ve always built a lot of TS in my old strategies that the production can now go towards. My experience so far has been the faster production towards TS and Amphitheaters to place all those GWoW earlier, as well as build Monuments faster, essentially makes up for the Culture from Choral Music.

I would like your thoughts on the viability of Rome for this strategy, as well as other civs (I know you’ve mentioned Brazil, Greece, Korea, and Japan ... I already tried Japan, and they do well). Rome is my main civ, and I’ve had great success at fast SVs with them going the TS route.

I tried one successful game with them so far, using the Earth Goddess + Choral Music build (they really aren’t viable with Work Ethic). It was was comparable but slower, coming in at turn 172. This is in the same range as my TS strategy with them. I also had to re-roll, as I lost out on getting Choral Music twice. Their lack of bonuses to generating Great Prophet points is definitely their key weakness in this strategy (this is why I preferred Jesuit Education previously, the AI doesn’t prioritize this as much). In addition, even with Earth Goddess, Faith generation was an issue during the early game. I couldn’t Faith buy nearly as many settlers and instead had to rely on the typical Rome strategy of the 1-2 settler advantage you get by having Colonization so early, taking cities from neighbors, and Magnus chops to keep up.

On the bright side, I think their Culture and Gold yields were great. Free Monuments as always got me to the early and mid game Civics super fast, faster than Russia or Japan. I also had no issues with Culture later in the game, as the Free Monuments gave me a lead to use the Policy cards, Pingala, and governments earlier and for longer, compounding Choral Music and my TS. The same concept applied to Gold.

Glad you like the thread. I must say I never thought about Rome as a top candidate for this strategy. I will give them a try. But I would think that the new Teddy is a stronger alternative. I have not had time to finish any more games after my last russian playthrough, but I think several civs could finish in the 160s. I have tested a bit with Australia, Korea and bull moose teddy. All of them are fast, but not as fast as Russia. Also I think the nerf on city state bonuses will slow the game down a bit. I still think there is a lot of things to test out before it is clear who is the fastest besides Russia.
 
@ATEX nice to see another FilthyRobot fan, does he do any Civ related stuff anymore? Last time I checked he ditched Civ 6.

@civtrader6 It's very nice to see you back on the forum, your posts and videos really helped me with my Vanilla Civ strategies! I think we both posted our science records for a while when the game just came out :)
 
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