How fast can you take this civ to space?

[ABigCivFan]

Fun challenge, played at Immortal level:

I am a slow player...

150BC

Spoiler :

settled 1N for river access and cow.

chopped SH and Oracle early before Axe rushed Justine. This capital is amazing it has food, hammer and commerce

6 cities now, after Civil service, will prob take on HC for his stone. Will let the AIs develop the land a bit before taking over management.

empire:




Capital: Wonder central, 4 settled great specialists. also have Pathenon and SOZ in the HE city.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Does SP offer a great advantage? Is it a mandatory civic for earliest space race possible? I didn't use slavery in this game, and I've never used SP so far, but if it's required for early space race victories, I might go with the "it's just a game" thing for the SP civic.

Also, do you remember your tech path after democracy? Or do you have a log of the game you can copy here? I am particularly interested in how assembly line came into the picture, for the factories. I also teched railroads for the Mining Inc, but I guess it's no point asking you, since you were in SP.

The HoF space wins usually use corps rather than SP. However, by the time I got that deep into the game, I realized that I'd probably launch before the setup costs of corps could pay themselves back. That prompted me to ignore the hammer sink and just go SP.

I don't have a log, but after democracy I went astro ---> sci meth ---> communism ----> straight to superconductors through refridgeration. My towns were enough production to build the research infra so I ignored factories/power until later, when I simply kremlin $$$ bought three gorges dam. To that effect I do believe I went for plastics after refridgeration before turning back to rocketry. Ordinarily I'd go computers sooner but the AI would give me nothing of worth that way so I put it off. I still wound up getting it as it was cheaper to fiber optics/fusion that way.

 

[iggymnrr]

1804 AD. No HBR.

Spoiler :

Had a few stormy weather problems but made it to space on 1 astro bulb, 3 academies and 5 golden ages. At the end was running rep/FS/emanc/enviro/FR. Was briefly in US to rush buy 3-4 buildings in the third acedemy city all of which had been 1-turn de-queued prior to a golden age. Micro- blah! Got so I didn't care much about it near the end. Never could get all the jungle and forest cleared.

Carthage: Oxford/National Park. Two forest preserves otherwise cottages/windmills. 677.64 beakers at the end--no golden age or bureau.
Cuzco: HE and ironworks.
Constantinople: Wall street-- eventually because of sushi. Wasn't going to bother with it otherwise.

Washinton was going after the barbs on ice at the end with knights or better while a lone warrior stood in Carthage. Even Monty voted for me in the AP.

 

[iggymnrr]

So some people used SP and/or mining inc? Hmmm. Never considered them much. There were enough trees around which can get chopped into space parts. I went for the smaller AP bonus since I was looking for happiness anywhere I could get it. (Sushi.)

 

[CivilizedTiger]

I don't think they had both SP and corporations. I think it's impossible, although I'm not certain about it.

What does HBR mean?
And... could you please post your tech path post liberalism?
And another thing which might help would be how much land you had, because this is one of the points where a difference can be seen between me and those that posted so far. (they had more land)

 

[iggymnrr]

Horse back riding. I could still build chariots at the end-cheap garrison. Never used the UU. Three wars, all 1-move units: warriors/axes/mace&treb.

Edit: tech path post liberalism was somewhat guided by diplo concerns with washington and tech-speed/health concerns. Early on I said, "Nuts, I'm just going to take democracy from lib and run with it." I think the next techs were replaceable parts/corporation. With wonders still working there came gunpowder/chem/steam power. After that all roads went through sci-meth. Physics->Electro. On low levels I'm often careful to keep any early tech-speed going. Which means I REALLY have problems after electro. I mean I was blitzing off tech that my head was spinning. So: steel next before I forgot to build the ironworks, then medicine (sushi) -> refrigeration/superconductors then on to aluminum tech then straight to apollo. Iron works can do a lab before or after appollo (depends if you have labs or not) anything else can do labs while apollo is being built. Then ... it was like 3000+ beakers per turn. It went fast on back-to-back goldens ages. With health problems I think I just clicked on genetics then fusion/staellites/composites/ecology/future tech.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Horse back riding. I could still build chariots at the end-cheap garrison. Never used the UU. Three wars, all 1-move units: warriors/axes/mace&treb.

What speed/difficulty?

 

[iggymnrr]

The prince level noted. I figured if people can go without HBR on diety, why not prince? 1804 is not a great finish time on that map. But that was a sweet capitol.

Edit: as to amount of land, 22ish cities. Just washington and me left on the continent. Slightly culture pressed from him. He never went into war mode, but I had GP golden ages/rush buy up my sleeve if he ever did. I did culture press most of the ice/south. But a barb or two would spawn now and again. I never hooked up fur because ... I've had that late head ache before. Better to breakdown Monty so I could get TWO lux from him.

 

[iggymnrr]

The HoF space wins usually use corps rather than SP.

A lot of the HoF games use SP on the lower levels. It may be faster since it's possible to tech so fast that even demo power cottages become too slow. I decided on sushi mainly because the capitol had no levee and no power with the national park. I was also getting a little bored and I'm more of a trader by nature. Had to sushi power engineers to get my Rock'n'Roll. Gotta have my rock'n'roll.

 

[lymond]

1884AD (shoulda been much earlier)

Spoiler :

This game was definitely pretty easy, but I did some stupid things mid and late game that took a lot of time off the win. Actually, I learned a lot. I don't go for Space Wins often so this helped me fine tune that aspect of my game.

At one point I thought for sure I would get a very early space win. However, I lost some focus and overbuilt at times.

Incas and Byzantines went very early. Charlie was a bit tougher. I was about to take his cap (last city) when he popped a GG and attached it, which gave extra CG promos to his archers which are already tough. I just didn't have enough units to take him down so I made peace and waited a while. Took him down on the next shot with macemen. All the rival AIs were significantly behind tech wise for most of the game. Vassaled Washington.

A couple of things probably affected my game the most, besides the intricacies of civic switchs/corps, etc.. I used Cuzco to build just about every wonder in the game, but really could have done without a few and just build wealth/research. Also, at one point - I think after Biology or Democracy I was teching very well and just bee-lined Fusion. However, not having used that approach before, I did not realize that Rocketry was not automatically teched in the process. The result was not getting the Apollo Program up ASAP so that I could at least get some parts in process before finishing up the final space techs. Therefore, certain parts were active but could not be built into Apollo was in place. I won't make that mistake again. I think I could have finished a good 30 to 40 years earlier, if not more.

Anyway, this was a fun game. I felt for the most part I was more focused than usual by just having the given VC from the beginning.

 

[iggymnrr]

@lymond

Spoiler :

Looks like a decent game. But take out Charlie's capitol pronto. I waited to take on Charlie because I had early tech speed and wanted to give him some time to develop the jungle. My choice of maces and trebs was not original. Some of the Game of the Month's players claim that astro bulbing and maces is faster. (But I think they are playing for domination not space.) It does seem to work well here. Just have a small contigent guarding entrance to your kingdom and have a couple mace's wander around some of the jungle in the middle of Charlie's land. Otherwise march on his capitol right away using an eastern city to attack from. You probably would have to go through one city tops to get there.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

@lymond

Spoiler :

Cuzco was my GP farm, thanks to the wonders built by HC there. I added a few wonders of my own, and I was getting GP once every 9 turns, in the late game. I have never had such a great GP rate, not even with a philosophical leader. (I was in pacifism most of the game, including the end, however, and at some point I agree that GP were not so useful anymore)

About Apollo... you took it late due to an oversight, I actually was silly enough to take it lake on purpose in an earlier game, as Giglamesh, I think. I thought that it was useless to have if you don't have any parts you can build, and that I should go with more useful techs first. The advantage of the early Apollo is that you can build it in a mediocre production city, keeping all your industrial giants free for other builds.

 

[JammerUno]

look fun, might try this on this downcast sunday

 

[Amao]

Prince/Normal up to 100BC

Spoiler :

After a few tries, i figured that the axe rush would be the best for this opening. So I followed suite. And rushed Justinian and JC in order. After that I just relaxed and rex and went for the oracle gambit which worked fine and I got CS from that. So the pre-AD economy was pretty good under the Bureau capital with academy. So now I have 11 cities and a few turns away from Machinery so that I can Cat/Macemen rush (later Cat/Treb/Macemen rush) Charlie and Washington in order. I'm expecting the war to be finished by around 800AD with Charlie gone and Washington with a city or two left (mainly for tech peace treay). And completely focus on cottage from there. According to my experience with NC 10, i should be able to get a pre-1800AD landing considering this is a financial leader. But i'm a slow player. (Sorry TMIT) So, I'll just leave my save here. If i continue to play, I may just follow Edu -> PP -> Lib -> Chem -> (Astro?) -> SciMeth -> Bio line, and then may go for Comm and use SP workshop to push for the end.

 

[iggymnrr]

@Amao

Spoiler :

You got the dye site! and mids!! Charlie settled a little differently in my game. So I settled the phants East with a city North (gold?) Got IW late (didn't need iron and Charlie can work the jungle since he claimed it) and with the GW ended up ignoring the West clams in favor of wheat (and 1-off coast.) Pretty much ignored barbs. Otherwise it looks identical to my game. Could not bring myself to make Cuzco a GPF site when it had good production and GPs were looking more and more unnecessary. Had Parthenon and GL though so ended up putting the National Epic in Utica.

 

[lymond]

@lymond

Spoiler :

Cuzco was my GP farm, thanks to the wonders built by HC there. I added a few wonders of my own, and I was getting GP once every 9 turns, in the late game. I have never had such a great GP rate, not even with a philosophical leader. (I was in pacifism most of the game, including the end, however, and at some point I agree that GP were not so useful anymore)

About Apollo... you took it late due to an oversight, I actually was silly enough to take it lake on purpose in an earlier game, as Giglamesh, I think. I thought that it was useless to have if you don't have any parts you can build, and that I should go with more useful techs first. The advantage of the early Apollo is that you can build it in a mediocre production city, keeping all your industrial giants free for other builds.

Spoiler :

I'm a little confused. Are you referring to Apollo or the Space Elevator, as you can't build parts without Apollo? Or you just forgot about that.

My biggest problem is losing focus on VCs. With basically 3 to 4 caps at one point, I think I didn't even need to worry about Washington much. He DOWd on me once but like a gnat. With the land I had, I should have just hunkered down early and built wealth/research to speed things up. Cuzco was a great city and popped a lot of GPs for me but I wouldn't call it my GP farm. I used Constantinople for that as I built the GL there and was able to lay a lot of farms around that lake. Regardless, I built too many useless wonders in Cuzco that the AI would never get to anyway.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

I think I didn't quite express myself well enough... it's a known bug with my software.

Spoiler :

I know that Apollo is required if you are to build any spaceship parts. But I was very wrongly going with the idea that it's useless to have Apollo early, considering that you don't have the required techs to build any spaceship parts for quite some time, and other techs might be more important, such as assembly line. But I hadn't thought things through then, and I did find myself in the stupid situation of having the techs needed for 3 spaceship parts while the Apollo project was still being built. Furthermore, I was building it in a production rich city, which knocked other important builds off of that city's queue. No surprise, then, that that game as Gilgamesh had my latest space race victory, in the 1930s.

~~~Note: I wasn't misguided enough to tech the spaceship techs before starting Apollo, but it just took too many turns to complete the project, turns in which I teched so much that all of my cities were busy spaceship building and I still had buildable parts.

Of course, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to build any spaceship parts until Apollo, but I just never considered the benefits of being free to build the project in a mediocre city.

In this Hannibal game, I had learnt my lesson and had Apollo complete in 1670ish, with one of the southern cities, a second-rate production city, but, nevertheless, a production city. I wasn't going to build the first spaceship part for quite some time after, but I was able to build some important wonders in the industrial giant cities, most notably the Ironworks.

 

[lymond]

I think I didn't quite express myself well enough... it's a known bug with my software.

Spoiler :

I know that Apollo is required if you are to build any spaceship parts. But I was very wrongly going with the idea that it's useless to have Apollo early, considering that you don't have the required techs to build any spaceship parts for quite some time, and other techs might be more important, such as assembly line. But I hadn't thought things through then, and I did find myself in the stupid situation of having the techs needed for 3 spaceship parts while the Apollo project was still being built. Furthermore, I was building it in a production rich city, which knocked other important builds off of that city's queue. No surprise, then, that that game as Gilgamesh had my latest space race victory, in the 1930s.

~~~Note: I wasn't misguided enough to tech the spaceship techs before starting Apollo, but it just took too many turns to complete the project, turns in which I teched so much that all of my cities were busy spaceship building and I still had buildable parts.

Of course, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to build any spaceship parts until Apollo, but I just never considered the benefits of being free to build the project in a mediocre city.

In this Hannibal game, I had learnt my lesson and had Apollo complete in 1670ish, with one of the southern cities, a second-rate production city, but, nevertheless, a production city. I wasn't going to build the first spaceship part for quite some time after, but I was able to build some important wonders in the industrial giant cities, most notably the Ironworks.

ah...i get ya. i learned a few things in this game that should help with future space wins.

 

[kolokol]

This was kinda fun... I think everyone beat so far. 1670 for a score of 75595

Wasn't planning to do a write up so only screens from launch turn

Settle in place and all that little point discussing opening techs here

Settled one city near gold towards Justinian then chopped all forrests in capital for axe rush of J and HC (5 cities no wonders) remaining axes took barb cities in jungle

Settled best cottage citites first and fast then grew cottages as much as possible. Tmit is right cottage spammers needs to be very sparce on infra pre US. Granary, library and a market in the biggest cottage cites only (needed the since I didn't bother with HR or temples)

Tech path
Currency -> CS-> Music (for artist) -> Nat (for first golden age) -> Lib democracy and switch to US,FS,EM,FR (using Taj golden) -> Econ+corp -> Rail + Assembly for Prod (don't want to obsolete Glib too early) -> SuperC -> Comm (for state prop 2nd golden age)-> Indust -> Rocektry (third golden)-> fusion(should have been 4th golden age but burned artist on 3rd by mistake -> Composites -> Ecology

On the SP vs Mining debate. I think Mining is great on this map but the engineer takes some effort. A point in favour of SP. It allows you to skip most courthouses which is important in that 'grow cottage phase'

Question: Why do people bother killing Charly and Washington? Justinian and HC + the jungle land is plenty land for space

This game was rediculously easy so one can truely take to optimal tech path for the space race.
I couldn't help laughing when I noticed Monty teching MC while I was teching Superconductors and UoS was built same time I started Apollo.

Spoiler :

 

[Amao]

@kolokol

Very, very impressive work. Could you find some 1AD time picture for me for comparison? Thanks!