How viable is space race victory in BNW?

[eewallace]

After winning a good number of culture and diplomacy victories, I've been trying for a science victory, but so far no luck--even my current game as Babylon looks like it probably won't last long enough for me to build my space ship.

Playing on king, continents, standard. I've got plenty of gold from trade and no problem with military strength (fought 2 defensive wars early but they didn't slow me down). I've got research agreements going, planted my early GS, using later ones to tech...4 cities...rationalism...but it looks like Alexander will probably get a diplo victory (or possibly Pedro will get a culture victory) before I can launch.

Any suggestions?

 

[quantum42]

When setting game options, enable space victory only.

 

[Feindbild]

I actually achieved this last night but it happened in multiplayer. For regular games it doesn't seem possible, at least for me, because a) I win by culture/tourism before or b) I win by diplomacy. Another option would be domination but I hardly go to war, especially late game.

 

[chazzycat]

I haven't had a problem with it, when I aim for it from the beginning. When are your games ending? With RAs, rationalism, Porcelain Tower, etc, you should be able to get under 300 turns. I've found 6 cities to be a good number for tech, so maybe try building a couple more cities.

You can also buy spaceship parts with gold now, which can speed up the end game considerably if you plan ahead. The whole spaceship only costs ~11,000 gold or so.

 

[Aramis604]

I finished one science game so far (as The Shoshone), and found that I had to actively avoid a Diplomacy victory in order to get the tech and spaceship parts built. Before the first World Leader vote came up I could have easily afforded to buy out enough city-states to win.

Seems to me that this will end up being the case in the vast majority of games... ie, by the time you're reaching the last bits of tech needed for spaceship parts your economy should be strong enough to win World Leader with little/no effort. Maybe with a Civ that gets a good science bonus (Korea, Babylon come to mind), this is less likely.

 

[DerCivMeister]

Easiest science victory ever: Babylon or Korea (I chose Korea), look up tabernak's three city tradition opener. In my game, I didn't get education until turn 125 on standard speed, which ideally is pretty late, but trust me, follow his guide and you'll have some smooth sailing. Did I mention even after turn 125 education that I also got a turn 190 modern era?

 

[Zednaught]

To the OP: try buying or couping whatever city states needed to prevent Alexander from winning before the vote, ideally ones farther away from him. Then, go to war to lock him out from buying them. If you have a solid military and tech lead, you can stop others from winning by force.



I got a science victory with Korea the other night on Immortal difficulty. 3 of my 4 cities had mountains, but happiness, gold, and food weren't terrific. My capital only had 22 pop at the end, the others were around 15. Still, I launched at 275, and I'd actually overshot by a bit, so I could easily shave 10 turns off that with a reload.

Russia was a runaway civ, so it's worth noting that I actually couldn't achieve a diplo win easily, with her owning most civs with hundreds of influence.

Normally, I'd expect to be able to buy out every city state, but that just wasn't an option here. As it was, the first UN vote only took place a turn before I launched anyways.

I think Science probably is the longest victory to win, but at least most of it is in your hands, whereas it's easier to block an enemy from winning diplomatically or culturally.

 

[eewallace]

I think my last game was won on about turn 320 and I still had a couple of spaceship parts to build.

I'll look for tabernak's guide. I did open with tradition, then did some piety until I could open rationalism. LOL and Korea and Babylon are the 2 civs I have tried.

The problem in my Babylon game could be that I took a couple of early tech diversions to (1) get the techs I needed to get my income reasonably high and (2) to keep my military upgraded (Japan and Carthage both wanted to fight in medieval times).

 

[eewallace]

To the OP: try buying or couping whatever city states needed to prevent Alexander from winning before the vote, ideally ones farther away from him. Then, go to war to lock him out from buying them. If you have a solid military and tech lead, you can stop others from winning by force.

I have a solid tech lead but I don't have the military lead so I am hesitant to go to war. Possibly rigging some city-state elections would do it. I've found that gold doesn't help much for world leader--nobody seems susceptible to bribes, the way they do for the various other proposals.

 

[Vuffster]

Since the techs you need for spaceship parts are Information Era techs, and World Leader votes start once any civ reaches the Information Era, a player going for a space/science victory is nearly always going to have to keep an eye on other civs going for a diplomatic victory. It can definitely be done, but there's a good chance you'll have to screw with Alexander once or twice beforehand. In general, there's a lot to be said for saving late-game Great Scientists until you research Satellites (starting the Info Era and thus triggering World Leader votes), and then rushing through the remaining techs you need, but you still have ~20 turns at most to do everything before the first World Leader vote comes up.

 

[adwcta]

won a turn 272 deity game 4 turns before the first UN vote. spaceship. korea. 4-city tradition. I screwed up the timing in the last 30 turns and had a pretty awful starting location (no river/lake/mountain/desert), could have been turn 250s and way before first UN vote. also, went Order for the North Korea flavor, not sure if Freedom would be faster (Order is much more tricky in the end with GEs required for parts, but you do get there much faster).

quick how-to:
so, the World Leader vote triggers AFTER your current vote finishes. this means you should be planning your end game to get as much of the other techs as possible (you're in tech lead, so you'll trigger the UN creation as soon as you enter satellites). then, you pop satellites right after a vote, so you'll get something like 30 turns before the World Leader vote. start burning up your saved GSs, you'll get two more from hubble. this 30-turn buffer also ensures that your RAs will all pop during this period, which give you a massive boost (since you should have 6-7 of them running, w/ PT and Rationalism). blow all your faith. You should be able to blow through the rest of that tech tree in under 15 turns. If going order, buy spaceship factories ASAP, and stop everything for production, faith buy GE. If going freedom, start saving some $$$ a dozen turns before this, ignore production buildings (no need for nuclear/solar/spaceship), faith buy GS.

not that it matters. if you're on pace to win a science victory, it just means you're on a quicker pace to win a broken diplo victory since you can purposefully trigger the UN vote by beelining one info era tech much faster than completing all/most of the atomic techs. there are only a small% chance that enough CSs have been taken out to where you'd actually need something else (like globalization) to win. and even globalization requires only 1 other info era tech (the tech you enter the info era with), so you'll likely get it finished before the vote if you want it. it's just very broken, so no real point to compare other victory conditions to diplo.

 

[joncnunn]

No need to turn off the other victory conditions to go for Science Victory.
In fact, best not to as AIs may try to go for a condition that's been disabled.
And it's nice to have a backup plan.

As to avoiding the other victory conditions: Quite easy to avoid an accidental Diplomatic victory, just abstain from the vote. (All the AIs are voting for themselves again.)

And chances are on standard map that one or two of the AIs will roll a high culture flavor, so since your not building every single great work wonder your unlikely to accidentally win via culture if you target space race techs in Information era. But you might want to skip the National Vistor Center national wonder if you're that close.

 

[Wolvenheart]

Absolutely can be done. I have 3 Deity SV on BNW (one each with Poland, Babylon and Mongolia), and in all three cases I launched before the world leader vote was to be held.

Since the advancement of eras triggers the world leader vote, the important thing of course is to accelerate through the last part of the game as quickly as possible. There are a lot of tricks to this, including but not necessarily limited to:

- Set cities to research if nothing they can be build will make a meaningful difference to the end game.
- Time RAs to give the boost when you need them.
- Save Oxford U and/or the Rationalism finisher for the free tech.
- Use Freedom tier 3, Order tier 3 (not so good as Freedom) or very high hammer cities with spaceship factories (bought if necessary) to churn out the parts asap.
- Most importantly, pop as many GS as you can. I'll typically pop 6 or 7 in the last 10 or so turns: 2 or so from specialists, 2 more from Hubble, and 2 or 3 from faith. Saving a couple from earlier can sometimes be effective to get the most beakers possible, unless doing so would delay key techs such as accessing recycling centres if you need them.

 

[Mesix]

I find that a Tradition starter followed by Piety to be the strongest road to a Science Victory in BNW. Rationalism should (obviously) be the third policy tree. If you time it right, the Rationalism finisher can finish Plastics, you can use to rush buy 4 Research Labs in your core cities. 10 turns later you can bulb your way past Satellites (using your remaining to purchase GS) and use the two free GS from Hubble to finish the necessary techs for SS components.

 

[eewallace]

Thanks, all. I think I need to replay it, and hoard some GS before the information era to boost me through the final techs I need. And maybe save up faith for GS purchases--no more inquisitors and pagodas!

 

[Greasy Dave]

...10 turns later you can bulb your way past Satellites (using your remaining to purchase GS) and use the two free GS from Hubble to finish the necessary techs for SS components.

This is a little misleading, it depends highly on your bpt rate.

I'm no regular Deity player, but I'm not a slouch. I know many of the good play strats. However, on my current immortal playthrough (which admittedly is my first full game), I thought I was set for a 270 turn launch, - by Gand K standards I would have been - I was making 1000 bpt and after getting hubble I started my magic bulb to victory, only to discover that the 7 or 8 odd Gs's I'd saved were no way going to get me there.

I used five to get me the left side of the tree. Now I'm hoarding the last 3 to get the right side after I've hard-teched a bit further.

I see now I'm going to need to grow my cities larger - 5 cities at 20 pop with full science buildings and specialists etc, plus one at 13 and a puppet, isn't enough.

So, the 2 GS's from hubble to pop the SS parts bit, isn't quite that simple.

This game is actually turning into one of the best civ games I've ever had, tbh. I naively fell into the diplo runaway trap and have just had to DOW Alex to keep him from winning and will be like that until I launch...muchos fun

 

[Mesix]

It will vary a bit at different difficulties, but in general the approach can be the same. In G&K, I used to rush Hubble with a GE and bulb immediately with the 2 GS from Hubble. In G&K I hard build Hubble in parallel with Apollo in my two highest cities. This allows me to research about two more techs while it is being built and also top off my (I generally end up between 1.5K to 2K) a bit before the final push. If it is timed right I might also get another GS either naturally from one of my cities or by generating enough while building Hubble to get one more GS.

I my most recent Science vicotory, I had 4 GS resting and 4 more purchased with plus 2 free from Hubble for 10 GS to bulb. That is 80 turns of equivalent . Using the reformation belief I rushed 4 Research Labs right after Plastics and let my cities generate about 1,500 per turn for 10 turns before beginning the bulb fest. I was running Freedom so I was able to rush buy SS components with (good thing the Research Labs were purchased with ) so I spent 3-4 turns building SS components in my 3 best cities and purchased the rest.

Until recently, I had never seen the ISS wonder become available in voting because I launched my space ship before it became available in all 3 Science victories I have won since BNW. Considering that standard speed has 10 turns between votes with alternating votes for Diplomatic Victory and new resolutions, that means that until I purposely slowed down my end game to make sure the ISS would show up, I had routinely finished a Science victory in less then 20 turns after researching Satellites.

Admittedly, I haven't played above Emperor yet on BNW since I am still trying out the new civs and getting used to the new game mechanics. Immortal/Diety may be a bit different.

 

[Zednaught]

Thanks, all. I think I need to replay it, and hoard some GS before the information era to boost me through the final techs I need. And maybe save up faith for GS purchases--no more inquisitors and pagodas!

You really shouldn't replay it. You'll learn more by trying to get yourself out of a tough situation, and it seems that you already know what to improve for next time.

Most importantly, I think the game's easily winnable, so why give up?

If you have a tech lead, why on earth would you be afraid of war? Remember, the player is always better in war than the AI, so even if you're outnumbered, you should win with tech parity.

In all likelihood, you'll clobber Alexander with a tech lead.

Remember, you're only going to war to lock Alexander out of winning a diplo victory.

Go to the World Congress screen and see how many votes he needs to win. Then, buy or coup as many cities as you need to stop him from winning before the vote. Declare war before the vote and he'll be unable to buy them off of you.

 

[eewallace]

Update: I went back to an earlier (industrial era) save of my Babylon game and replayed the end, using some of the ideas posted here. I hoarded lots of gold, faith points and great scientists--also popped a useful great engineer that I saved for the end, too.

I got my buddy Napoleon to DOW on Alex with me, and he proved to be a surprisingly good ally. (I gave him lux and gold to keep him happy.) Rigged some city-state elections. Discovered that it IS possible to bribe AIs to vote for me for world leader--a big bribe would get me four of their votes, and with those added to my own votes, I held off 2 world-leader elections until I could get my spaceship done. Turn 346. Fun game!

 

[Hippocrates]

It is a definitely still a viable strategy, but you certainly have to start committing to it around the Industrial era. I can normally launch before the first world leader vote if I plan ahead accordingly. save a GS or 2, hold off on building Oxford, complete Rationalism to get Rocketry, save a GE to rush Hubble, save gold to buy all the spaceship parts, and have enough faith to faith purchase at least 1 or 2 more GS. If you do all this properly, you can launch within 2-5 turns of finishing Apollo.