Ironically, Culture civs are better at Science than science civs

@Oberinspektor Derrick I don't 1 turn techs in the first half of the game. It's really not until the modern era (my tech, not world era) when the scientific slingshot occurs.

It depends on the Civ, but a 3-5 theater square opening w/ Colosseum is often a good setup. Certain Civs don't need to go hard on early theaters, such as the Khmer with the Prasat and its excellent pop scaling, or China and its vastly underrated Great Wall UI. I get Colosseum every science game. Boshoi Theater can be manipulated to grant 2 fairly predictable civics and is always considered. I prefer the civics that don't or rarely get boosted like scorched earth and either urbanization or conservation.

I start adding campuses to my first handful of cities as my expands get online, where I primarily go campus first. I'll try and get a scientific alliance around this time if my neighbor isn't being a DB. As a note, the 3 spaceport cities don't need a campus, only a spaceport and IZ for power and preferably an encampment/harbor for the +15% space project boost. Those can be settled relatively late.

With all this said, I'm still tinkering with early mid and mid game return on investment. It's nice to shoot for x cities by y number of turns, but the fastest science games seem to rely on timing and the efficiency of the Magnus tour. How fast does each city provide the ROI? Should I faith buy two or three builders to chop the campus/library/uni and get the second and third districts in one city, or buy a settler that won't really ramp up for another 25ish turns?
 
I see, I might try that ultra heavy culture playstyle some time then. I already focus it quite a bit, but nowhere near as hard as you do apparently.
It's nice that there are several competitive ways forward for the SV, as it can get a bit stale at times.
 
There are definitely many ways...the strategy adapts to the civ and map of course. At times I wish the City State spread wasn't so game changing, but it is what it is.
 
I see, I might try that ultra heavy culture playstyle some time then. I already focus it quite a bit, but nowhere near as hard as you do apparently.
It's nice that there are several competitive ways forward for the SV, as it can get a bit stale at times.

I really got onto high culture SV from Vanilla, where there is a strategy for using Pericles to get like turn 125 SVs. It takes a really good map for it, but it can be done. But ultimately now it seems that Khmer is even better since you don't have to actually build Squares and can easily abuse from Holy Sites instead. Is just hard deciding what mix of beliefs and pantheon to go with, but its situation of course. But don't overlook Sacred Path, as there are lots of rainforests all over the map and they can be use in many ways, so pairing that with Work Ethic can be quite good, and also result in good bonuses for Campuses in high rainforest areas where you can pair the Campus and Holy Site up.

At a point with Khmer it comes down to the decision of whether to build a Square or run a project for GPPs. With Pericles I don't typically bother with religion, though as you say, it can work as well. But with Pericles the strategy involves selling off most of all of the Great Works you get to raise gold, and also getting Big Ben to increase that gold. This of course works better in Vanilla where Big Ben gives 100% instead of just 50%, but it also seems less important in GS anyway as the GPs aren't as critical as they were in Vanilla. With Khmer you have so much Faith to buy GPs the gold doesn't even matter.
 
You really wont flip a capital on loyalty in most cases, because the capital is usually the highest pop city, has the palace for added loyalty, and is usually surrounded by your own cities.
And if someone tries something funny with rock bands, you just DOW them and kick back those rock bands.
Space milestones are also not tied to any city, they are permanent.
You could slow down the exoplanet expedition though if you take out the city that has a space port with ground based lasers in it though.
I just left for some reason I don't recall but yeah I was surprised! I should've DOW, kicked the rock bands and I would've had that, yes. Next time I won't let AI do that to me.
 
I just left for some reason I don't recall but yeah I was surprised! I should've DOW, kicked the rock bands and I would've had that, yes. Next time I won't let AI do that to me.
Alternatively, there is that policy card that kicks them out and stops them from entering your borders.
 
What's proper annoying though is that rock bands behave like GPs and only get kicked back to their nearest friendly city, instead of actually getting killed.
Had a game where I had to get me some light cavalry just in order to chase them down every turn (had no music censorship yet), and had to keep doing so because they just kept coming back.
Very annoying attribute.
 
But don't overlook Sacred Path, as there are lots of rainforests all over the map and they can be use in many ways, so pairing that with Work Ethic can be quite good, and also result in good bonuses for Campuses in high rainforest areas where you can pair the Campus and Holy Site up.

I dont hope anyone overlooks sacred path as Khmer, because that's the best pantheon for him given the usual jungle spawn (adjacency pantheons are broken atm after all).
The problem with sacred path however is that it's probably the second most picked pantheon for the AI after religious settlements, making it hard to pick up as Khmer unless you're very lucky.
Whenever I see tier lists putting him at the very top and they also assume he uses that Pantheon, I kinda facepalm.
 
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