I need tips for King+ science and culture victories.

[TheCaptn]

After a few King level games nailing the domination and diplomacy victories (the latter of which, disappointingly, has almost nothing to do with diplomacy if you just keep up to date with CS missions), I thought I'd try my hand at the science and culture victories only to be continually frustrated in my efforts. Help me!

I have two favourite map types: Large Terra, since I really like racing for the new world (which should probably get a more unique distribution of luxuries than it currently does), and a Standard size custom map with the following properties: Highlands, Temperate, Wet, Ridgelines, Dense Mountains, Standard Resources, Large Lakes, Raging Barbarians.
The latter is great fun because of all the bottlenecks and the early struggle to secure pockets of land which are safe from barbarians. Exploring is also quite challenging. This is how I played the last two of my three attempts at a science victory.

The problem I'm having is that no matter what I do I can't seem to manage friendly relations with my neighbours for long enough to achieve victory. I also can't really develop a large defensive army because of the cost and time commitment. I have the most technically advanced force, but it eventually gets overwhelmed.
I play as Hiawatha with the balance mod that treats jungle tiles like forests for the purposes of movement within my own borders. I don't select leaders on the basis of their bonuses but based on which ones I think are cool (Hiawatha, Washington and Bismark mostly). I generally keep my empire smallish, five or six cities with two devoted to production/culture (for engineers) and the others science/cash. I can generally get at least one hardcore science city in the middle of a jungle where I push the science wonders with my engineers.
The first time through I made the mistake of capturing a capital (was the nearest city) in an effort to 'encourage' peace. That worked in the short term, but made me a target for everyone else in the long term, to the point where Alexander, Bismark and Catherine all ganged up on me around the start of the industrial era.
The second attempt I tried to maintain a stronger military force, and sacrificed a couple of 'ideal' city locations in an effort to secure terrain bottlenecks, but as a consequence I kept getting beaten to the science wonders, found myself 20 turns behind on the Apollo Project (not a good sign), and ultimately lost when some unmet civ (exploring really does get difficult on that map setup) won a culture victory just as I started building the first two SS modules.
This last time I was much more careful, I spent most of the game fostering excellent relations with my direct neighbours Askia and Washington, we did lots of research together, undermined other players, had great long-standing resource trades. I even brokered a peace between them very early on, which lasted thereafter. I nabbed all the science wonders, and even a couple of the engineering ones... Then Washington tells me I'm too close to his borders after -he- builds a new city near them (I hadn't added any cities in at least 100 turns), and a couple of turns later Asika gets upset at all the wonders I'm building, whereupon -both- my good friends decide to stab me in the back and declare war. I swear this diplomacy makes no sense, it's as if the US and UK suddenly decided to invade Canada without any warning because they think Ottawa is such a fine city. Anyway I thought I could hold on for the victory by defending the bottlenecks, but instead of attacking me they went after my City State allies, sending me into stagnation and unhappiness from luxury losses. When I finally broke ranks to defend Helsinki from Washington (I was getting both oil and uranium from them, my only source of either resource), Asika swept in through the bottleneck, cutting off my small army, and capturing my science city. I managed to buy a few units to delay the inevitable, but even mobile infantry and rocket artillery will eventually get swamped by enough riflemen and cannons (why don't garrisoned units do anything to defend? It seems so pointless).

So my question is pretty much, how do you guys manage your empires to achieve these victories? In contrast domination is a cinch, just pumping troops and keeping new luxury cities while burning the rest to ashes; maybe following up with settlers if there's something worth having... In pursuit of science I can't let my empire get too big or it becomes unwieldy. And I can't afford to walk the happiness tightrope since I need those golden ages and the science boosts far more than when I'm just being a military dictator.

[edit]
Highlighted the map settings for easier reference.

 

[shinkicker]

I haven't done a science win yet, which is surprising for me since that's how I normally approach Civ and any other grand strategy games.

As for culture, though, my last King game I got a culture win as Darius. I think some of the secret for getting culture or science wins is in the leader you pick. Though I have a friend who got a science win as Japan, he's some kind of frickin' Civ genius

My secret wasn't really a secret. I started from an understanding of Darius' strengths: +50% length on Golden Ages meant that I should pump enough happiness and coincidentally beeline for Chichen Itza (another +50% GA length). Persians are a bit easier to keep happy than other civs due to the free-maintenance Satrap's Court.

Building +culture buildings can really drive up your overall maintenance costs, which is why it's critical to plan your social policies and go for Banking tech (which, not ironically, is how you also get the Forbidden Palace).

My favorite policies for pumping happiness and firing more Golden Ages:

Liberty:
# Meritocracy: +1 Happiness for each city connected to the Capital.
# Representation: +1 Culture in all cities (more policies!)

Piety
# Organized Religion: Reduces the amount of happiness required for a Golden Age by 25%.
# Theocracy: -20% Unhappiness from population in non-captured cities. (prerequisite: Organized Religion)
# Mandate of Heaven: 50% of excess Happiness added to Culture.

(If you're going for a Science victory, I'd forego Piety and take Rationalism which is why they're kind of conflicting goals)

Freedom:
# Constitution: +100% Culture in Cities with a World Wonder.
# Free Speech: Reduces the Culture cost of future social policies by 25%.

As you've found out, at King level the AI cheats. That places more importance on defining long range narrow goals and shooting directly for those goals without letting anything distract you. I've been able to get the Chichen Itza before the AI in both of my King games, even though some of the other leaders whine about me hording the good Wonders. That tells me I did something right. When I'm really on a roll I can also grab the Forbidden Palace - a huge boon to fight the unhappiness you're going to face when you grow.

 

[TheCaptn]

As for culture, though, my last King game I got a culture win as Darius. I think some of the secret for getting culture or science wins is in the leader you pick.

That kind of defines the problem I'm having. Now that I've generally sorted out the new game mechanics from Civ IV and I'm no longer making n00b mistakes (like trying to send great merchants to far-flung cities), I'm pretty confident that I can win a domination victory against the AI with any leader... I might even try it with Ghandi in the near future.

Given that, I really hate the idea that I might need to resort to one or two specific leaders just to have a -chance- at winning a science or culture victory. Anyone should be able to do it fairly reliably if they play a good game, and the fact that I'm now 0 for 3 and still unable to depend on any kind of diplomatic relationship really bothers me (I've had people declare war on me one turn after a defensive pact ended, although that was in a domination game so I crushed them).
I don't accept that it's just the game and bad AI though, so I'm still inclined to think I'm doing something wrong in how I manage my empire and diplomacy.

[edit]
Regarding Freedom > Constitution, I haven't really gotten that much benefit out of it since I build all my science wonders in one city and any engineering ones in another. The engineering ones are just a bonus if I can get them, I save my Great Engineers for the science ones... Anyway neither of the cities end up being big culture producers, since I mostly top out at just a temple in each one (if that) before they really start to specialise.
I generally pour everything I can into Rationalism unless I need something specific... And with a smaller empire (5 or 6 cities, as I said) I tend to prefer Tradition to Liberty.

If I deliberately spread my wonders around, would that really compensate for the lost bonuses in my jungle city do you think? And am I making a mistake with Tradition? I'm not really the type to sit down and work out the math.

 

[Roxlimn]

How big are your Industrial Era armies? By Industrial Era, you should have Cavalry, Riflemen, nd Artillery. 3 Artillery, 2 Frigates, 1 Caravel, 4 Riflemen. You should have 10 units in your fighting forces, conservatively. Probably twice that number if you suspect you're going to get backstabbed.

What are your city size like at turn 300? How's the science situation? Most games at King can be won with brute force. How do you want to win? Did you want a tech-parity tactical war against the AI? Win with superior tech and fewer numbers? More cities? Less cities?

Hiawatha in particular is a production monster. No reason you should have average sized armies with him around. I'll try to play with your preferred settings using Hiawatha and see how things pan out.

 

[TheCaptn]

How big are your Industrial Era armies? By Industrial Era, you should have Cavalry, Riflemen, nd Artillery. 3 Artillery, 2 Frigates, 1 Caravel, 4 Riflemen. You should have 10 units in your fighting forces, conservatively. Probably twice that number if you suspect you're going to get backstabbed.

In that last game it was (Industrial Era):
- 8 Artillery (1 garrisoned in each city, plus one on a fort in each of two mountain passes)
- 4 Riflemen (1 defending the arty on each mountain pass, 2 defending the town on the remaining exposed flank)
- 2 Cavalry (Also at the two mountain passes. For some reason I had really poor access to horses that game, even those two came from a CS ally)
- No navy, it being a highland map with only spotty lakes. I was planning to deploy Destroyers in one lake by that exposed flank but never got around to it.

By the Modern Era I'd upgraded to mechanised infantry and rocket artillery, and added two more mech inf. It was with 6 mech inf, 2 cav and 2 arty that I trudged off to defend Helsinki. That worked out ok, but once Asika blocked off that mountain pass with his line of troops moving through, there was no way for me to get back in time.
And I generally don't like to reload unless something's bugged or the game crashes. That's like admitting defeat.

What are your city size like at turn 300? How's the science situation? Most games at King can be won with brute force. How do you want to win? Did you want a tech-parity tactical war against the AI? Win with superior tech and fewer numbers? More cities? Less cities?

What year is turn 300 in an Epic game? I've no idea.

Science was around 224 from memory, and since this whole thread is about Science Victories that was obviously my goal. Brute force is easy, I've got that pretty well covered by now, I wanted to win by sending a spaceship to Alpha Centauri.

Hiawatha in particular is a production monster. No reason you should have average sized armies with him around. I'll try to play with your preferred settings using Hiawatha and see how things pan out.

Like I said, I don't pick the best leader for a specific victory. I pick a leader who I -like- and then try to win with them... The idea of having the Iroquois surpass all those haughty Ancient and squabbling European civilisations, to win a race to the stars, that's just awesome enough to strive for.

[edit]
Regarding the 'exposed flank', I didn't really consider that to be at much risk. It was facing South-East in toward the corner of the map and Washington would have had to travel up around a long mountain range to come back down onto that flank... Of the two mountain passes one opened North directly adjoining Washington's newest city, and the other opened West onto Asika's empire (with a gap of about 3 tiles).
To get to Helsinki I went out the Western pass and followed that ridgeline about 12 tiles to the NNW to where it was separating Washington and Asika in a little valley-pass about 4 tiles wide. With the return blocked off I would have had to go up and around a much longer route through Washington's territory to come back in the Northern pass... Instead I tried to carve a path through Asika's troops, back the way I came, but it was too late and I kept getting flanked travelling back down the ridgeline.
(If anyone's not grasping just how limited my path options were, try the map settings I refer to in the OP. It creates a very maze-like terrain of long mountain ranges with small gaps, bottlenecks, and pockets.)

Anyway, this wasn't intended to be about my combat tactics, but about how I can avoid combat and getting backstabbed by my bestest buddies in the future.

 

[ccubed]

It really seems that whatever victory condition you actually go for, your best bet is to just beat everyone up. The other civs can't get ahead if you are taking out all their cities. The computer seems to know this too, since the AI can't help but declare war on you in my experience.

Also, for culture, puppet cities don't count against your social policies, so you should keep your founded/annexed city count low. If you avoid some of the lower techs that start with Bronze Working, your puppets will build better buildings for you (since they can't pollute you with Barracks and Armories.) You can also withhold spending your policies until you can take Freedom for Constitution and Freedom of Speech. That'll give you a 25% decrease in future policy costs. If it goes later game, try to get the wonder Cristo Redento for another decrease to policy costs (although that's pretty far up the tech tree at Telegraph.) The Oracle helps too because any free policy doesn't count towards your increasing policy cost.

Not as familiar with science other than as a side benefit of other victory goals. Make sure you have specialists working things like Libraries and Observatories in a city built around generating Great People (like having a Garden and some of the Wonders that increase GP generation.) Using Great Scientists to instantly gain techs helps. You can also try for the Great Library to slingshot ahead, but that can be tricky on higher difficulty levels unless you are Egypt with Marble and you are will to deforest your surrounding area.

Both types are, again, easier if you get a good army going to cripple the opposing Civs. You should also use diplomacy to undermine their economy by making trades for luxury items you don't need. Just keep yourself out of the red happiness-wise and sell the rest. You might avoid this if you want to get a lot of Research Agreements, but I tend to slingshot deep, rather than broadly, into the tech tree. I don't like gambling on getting a low tier tech I have skipped in favor of advancing my era.

Also, you need to be friends with Maritime and Cultural city-states; Maritime especially. Getting an era or two ahead of everyone else in the tech tree and having 2 or 3 Maritime city-state allies will grow your cities really fast and allow you to tech harder as well as generate more production and cash. The Patronage social policies help here. Trading happiness luxuries for immediate money will also help here to establish and maintain your relationships.

 

[Roxlimn]

Your Industrial Era army's a little Arty heavy, so it's not as mobile as I would prefer, but it's okay. Bit on the large side, so that's good.

Modern army's a little anemic. By the time Modern rolls around, you'd want to have 2 Fighters and maybe 4 Bombers to basically replace strategic shelling and to put damage where you want. Washington's good for this with his +1 sight range on all his units, so sight is easier to obtain. No need for Cavs in the Modern Era. Should have disbanded them. Replace with Helicopter Gunships. Having a couple Paratroopers wouldn't hurt either. Those things move really fast.

Tanks would be nice, too.

Haven't counted noses yet, but I'm thinking you should have 6 Mech Inf, 2 Fighters, 4 Bombers, 4 Rocket Artillery, 3 Helicopter Gunships, and 4 Paratroopers. In a defensive stance or to exert power over large distances quickly, more Bombers, more Paratroopers. Those come with Radar, so you might want to prioritize that.

No need to hold back on Science victory. Just go the normal warring way you want and get the Space Ship in your own sweet time.

 

[TheCaptn]

True, but bear in mind that my only oil (4) was coming from Helsinki, which is why I went to defend them... (Un)luck of the draw, I started with good access to luxuries but poor access to any strategic resources which weren't Iron, of which I had 30, hehe.

 

[Nunya]

I'm affraid it's only possible to establish permanent friendship with an AI player if you live on a different continent.

One alternative is to be friends (for trading & stuff) with people who are far away and to wage semi-regular war on your neighbours. They won't like that, but as long as you don't take any of their cities they'll get over it. Taking cities is also where the majority of warmonger hate comes from. So declare war, kill their entire military, pillage their tile improvements, capture all the workers/settlers you can find, then make peace and after a while you can go back to being friends.

And then there is selective technology. There's actually a good chunk of the technology tree that you don't strictly need for a space victory. Go into the tech tree and click on Nanotechnology and the game will mark all the technologies you actually need. You'll still want some of those that aren't strictly required (such as Fertilizer and Railroad) but you can do fine without Rifling and Combustion. You will also need Dynamite if you want to upgrade any Cannons you might have, but you can make brand new Rocket Artillery without first getting regular Artillery. Similairly it's possible to get Mechanised Infantry without first getting Rifleman or regular Infantry.

And as crazy as it may sound, it's actually possible to get to the Industrial Era without ever having researched Mining. Of course Mining is an essential working tech, but going for Biology without first having invented Bronze Working is perfectly feasible. First you get Horseback Riding so you can raid your neighbours and/or protect yourself. Then you beeline for Civil Service and after that Acoustics. You can also do Acoustics first (to unlock Rationalism and Freedom) and Civil Sevice after. Welcome to the Rennesaince. Shoot for Education, then Biology. When you feel your Horsemen and Pikes aren't strong enough get Chivalry and follow it up with Banking (maybe do this between Education and Biology). You might also want to squeeze in Sailing & Optics at some point, but it's not essential. In order to progress beyond Biology you will then have to start investing in other techs, but with Universities and Public Schools it should go really fast.

Run your libraries at full capacity and save those Great scientist for crazy slingshots. There are many places where you can advance several techs in a straight line and jump into the next era, unlocking new social policies and increasing city state bonuses.

The above is especially useful for a cultural warmonger. Puppet cities don't increase policy cost, but they do provide science & culture. And if you never researched Bronze Working they can only ever build Happiness and Culture boosting buildings and never waste production and upkeep on Barracks and Armories. You might get a Stable though, but at least that's only 1 gold upkeep. So you can go around puppeting city after city safe in the knowledge that they'll only ever build useful stuff. Or at least that they'll only ever build useful stuff until you finally research Bronze Working.

The Iroquois are a bit screwed by this aproach though since both their UU and UB get unlocked by technologies that you're actively avoiding. You won't get much use out of Mohawk Warriors at all, but Longhouses will still become very useful later on when you are building the spaceship.

 

[TheCaptn]

Awesome Nunya, I'll try that... I was reading the thread about steamrolling with horsemen, but didn't think it could add much to my Science Victory goal (I don't want to get the science win by having a defacto domination victory first). In the past I've had little success in encouraging peace by decimating enemy armies, but then I never tried pillaging all their improvements.

Ordinarily I fill up everything to the start of the Industrial Era (Biology, Dynamite, then Steam Power) before beginning the bee-line, but you're right, that's probably not an efficient use of my science points... I do think it's worth detouring to Metal Casting for the longhouses, and Engineering for the lumber mills though. That's nice production on tiles which are also my highways.

 

[Nunya]

You probably won't be able to make peace any time you want, but if the AI isn't winning it will eventually get tired of the war and ask for peace. I might be wrong, but I have the impression it's more sensitive about losing workers/settlers than about losing military. Wars also seem to have some sort of minimal duration of around 10 turns.

And this is really cheezy, but there is a bug where peace treaties sometimes never end. The more times you go to war and negotiate peace with someone, the better odds that the bug will kick in. I'm not sure how common the bug is either, I only experienced it once until so far. So it's not something you want to rely on, but it's good to keep in mind. It's most important at the times when you want a domination win, in which case I only ever make peace with someone after I've taken their capital.

I think you're right about Engineering and Metal Casting for a space race with your own cities. Avoiding Bronze Working is more useful when you're aiming for a cultural win with lots of puppet cities.

Another downside of selective research is that it makes research agreements much more of a gamble. You can get something awesome or you can get a tech you could research yourself in 2 turns. So it's better to spend your gold on other stuff. Like maybe purchasing buildings.