I've won a Science Victory

[Baba Yetu VI]

Congrats on the victories.

I hope you've stopped using that strategy you were talking about in the previous thread. I imagine you've realised by now that it's just objectively bad. Congrats also on how early you got the science victory in your last game, though, that's a big improvement on the previous thread. Next time, you should aim to win the science victory before 1950, and once you become experienced enough you'll be able to win before 1900.

Cultural victory is fun. In order to win a cultural victory in Civ VI, you need to have more visiting tourists than any other civilisation has domestic tourists. Because of this, you don't actually need lots of culture to win a cultural victory, what you need is lots of tourism (although the latter usually implies the former anyway). You get tourists through wonders, great works, artefacts, seaside resorts, and national parks. So when you go for a cultural victory, focus on trying to get theatre squares up, and try to get lots of great artists, writers, and musicians. In the late game, build seaside resorts on flatland desert, plains, or grassland. National parks are a little tricky to get, because you need to have quite strict placement rules for them, and you need to buy the naturalists with faith, but if your empire is big enough you should be able to get one or two of them, more if you're lucky. Good luck.

I know I'm just lucky. I realize that if one of the CIVs go for cultural victory, I can't stop them.

Can you enlighten me on adjacency bonus, like campus adjacency, how to arrange their location to get this kind of bonus?

 

[mrwho]

I know I'm just lucky. I realize that if one of the CIVs go for cultural victory, I can't stop them.

Can you enlighten me on adjacency bonus, like campus adjacency, how to arrange their location to get this kind of bonus?

The campus get one science for every adjacent mountain, 1 science for every two adjacent jungle tiles, and 1 science from every two adjacent districts (including the city centre). Of these, usually the easiest and strongest adjacency bonus is for mountains, so keep that in mind when you're founding cities.

 

[Dale]

I m getting very busy soon, because, I intend to try fine tuning my victory effort. Maybe 2 to 3 more games with the same method.

Then I will try other victory types. I believe actually in CIV 6, religion victory is the most difficult. Why? As you know, the more cities there are, the more missionaries you need. Besides, they have to travel a long way. This is very difficult. Not to mention the AI can undo your effort. It may not even possible.

Cultural victory may be good for trying.

CIV 6 is keeping me busy at work and at home/

Religious victory actually isn't too hard. The thing to remember is you target the cities which have holy sites. Convert cities with holy sites first and you eliminate that religions ability to create missionaries.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Seems you've been learning how to optimize your game. Good job! Just keep in mind that future patches might require drastic gameplay changes.

If you want to counter a cultural victory, you need to generate more culture. The more culture you generate, the harder it is for the AI to win a Cultural Victory, since the "domestic tourists" are calculated based on your accumulated culture over the game. There are a handful of ways to do that:

• Build Monuments in every city, which give +2 culture. It may seem unimpressive, but it's not expensive after the very early game, will help getting early civics and the little bits of culture accumulate over time (especially after you built them in ~15 cities).
• Build a handful of Theatre Squares. Not many are needed, though, because they use up a district slot.
• Send envoys to Cultural City-States. You don't need to be their suzerain, just aim for the 3 envoy bonus (or maybe 6 if envoys are so plentiful)
• Have a culture-giving pantheon (except if playing a religious game). God of the Open Sky and Oral Tradition are pretty versatile in this respect.
• Grab the GWAMs before the AI. You don't actually need their Great Works (though they do give some culture), but merely preventing the AI to get the tourism. You can delete them if you don't have the slot.
• Use culture-giving policies. I especially recommend Meritocracy, which can give large amounts of culture if you've expanded enough and have been building districts.
• If all else fails, remember the old saying: "As the number of nukes increases, the number of problems they don't solve approaches zero."

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

For Religious Victories, it comes to carefully choosing Apostles' promotions. Some of the better ones for this are listed below:

• Debater (+20 religious strength in theological combat)

If you destroy a religious unit in theological combat, the enemy religion's influence drops, and your religion's influence increases. This promotion gives a HUGE boost to theological combat, so use it to destroy other Apostles and Missionaries (even Inquisitors take a bit of damage with this). Not recommended to use an Apostle with this promotion to convert cities, because conversion is based on the Apostle "health". Since this one will be fighting a lot, it most likely won't have full health.​

• Translator (Religious spread has triple strength in cities of other civilizations)

If you have problems converting enemy cities, use this promotion. Conversion strength gets ridiculously powerful, but it's better used with a fully-healed Apostle.​

• Proselytizer (Religious spread eliminates other Religions in the target city):

I don't find it as powerful as Translator, but it does help in converting enemy cities (especially if they already have a religion).​

• Orator (Can spread Religion 2 extra times) and Pilgrim (Gains 3 extra spreads when moving adjacent to a natural wonder for the first time):

Not as good as the other three, but extra conversions help, especially in cities that don't follow a religion yet.
​

If the City-State Yerevan is present in your game, don't spare envoys to become its suzerain. Apostles can only choose between 2 random promotions, but Yerevan suzerain bonus lets you choose any promotion for your Apostle.

If what concerns you is travel speed, religious units have a movement of 4, which ties with Horsemen and Knights, the fastest land units early on. There's also the Missionary Zeal belief, which makes religious units ignore terrain. In my experience, Religious Victories are the fastest victories I had (~180 turns on Emperor, standard speed, Pangaea map)

 

[UWHabs]

For Religious Victories, it comes to carefully choosing Apostles' promotions. Some of the better ones for this are listed below:

• Debater (+20 religious strength in theological combat)

If you destroy a religious unit in theological combat, the enemy religion's influence drops, and your religion's influence increases. This promotion gives a HUGE boost to theological combat, so use it to destroy other Apostles and Missionaries (even Inquisitors take a bit of damage with this). Not recommended to use an Apostle with this promotion to convert cities, because conversion is based on the Apostle "health". Since this one will be fighting a lot, it most likely won't have full health.​

• Translator (Religious spread has triple strength in cities of other civilizations)

If you have problems converting enemy cities, use this promotion. Conversion strength gets ridiculously powerful, but it's better used with a fully-healed Apostle.​

• Proselytizer (Religious spread eliminates other Religions in the target city):

I don't find it as powerful as Translator, but it does help in converting enemy cities (especially if they already have a religion).​

• Orator (Can spread Religion 2 extra times) and Pilgrim (Gains 3 extra spreads when moving adjacent to a natural wonder for the first time):

Not as good as the other three, but extra conversions help, especially in cities that don't follow a religion yet.
​

If the City-State Yerevan is present in your game, don't spare envoys to become its suzerain. Apostles can only choose between 2 random promotions, but Yerevan suzerain bonus lets you choose any promotion for your Apostle.

If what concerns you is travel speed, religious units have a movement of 4, which ties with Horsemen and Knights, the fastest land units early on. There's also the Missionary Zeal belief, which makes religious units ignore terrain. In my experience, Religious Victories are the fastest victories I had (~180 turns on Emperor, standard speed, Pangaea map)

Just had a religious victory with Russia. Dance of the Aurora + tundra Lavras + Yerevan and it was easy. As for promotions, I used Proselytizer most - completely wiping out the foreign religion is very strong. Send one of them and a couple missionaries and you can convert a size-12 city with no trouble. Once the opponents started getting their own and I had to fight more, then having a few debaters as the backbone of the military was strong. Never used Orator or Pilgrim except for the few apostles when I didn't have Yerevan under my control. Especially good because you can just build missionaries while you're not in control of Yerevan, and apostles while you are. And yeah, definitely put all your efforts into Yerevan - I had a time where I wasn't, and it was so disappointing to get apostles that only had the barbarian conversion or "+100 gold if converting for the first time" bonus, which were useless in my state (I either needed fighters, or guys strong enough to wipe out a foreign holy city). Without Yerevan it would have certainly taken a lot longer.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Both are really strong, but most of the time I aim for Translator, because it's still useful if the city still don't have a majority religion. But as I said, it's Proselytizer is still quite powerful, especially against more religious opponents or those that have been spreading their faith earlier/farther away.

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

I m still wanting to fine tune my play.

Near the end, Germany tried many many times to sabotage Production sites wasted me a total of 12 turns to repair the facilities.

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

As I explore more on Science Victory, I find different ways enjoying the pleasure the game brings along.

Just now, I am again, working on a new game trying to figure out how to make to the victory point with minimum number of turns.

The AIs are not struggling for SV, so my score is way and way ahead of them, mine is 150 whereas Brazil is the second on 77.

Russia and Rome are struggling for Religion Victory. Brazil has all been converted by the Russian, including myself. I am now building 2 more cities, one has been converted by Rome already.

I find I have the sole advantage because I have already researched and is building Spaceport. And as luck could have it, I have oil and aluminum. My next plan is now to build Nuke, hopefully before either Rome or Russia completes their religion victory, or Russia getting the cultural victory. It's really great fun!

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Science and Cultural Victories (without gaming the tourism system with Relics) are nice because they usually play until late game.

 

[Photi]

CIV 6 is keeping me busy at work and at home/

remind me not to hire you!!

 

[PurplyIcy]

Religious victory actually isn't too hard. The thing to remember is you target the cities which have holy sites. Convert cities with holy sites first and you eliminate that religions ability to create missionaries.

How many holy sites would you recommend actually building yourself for optimal religion output without falling too far behind?

 

[Dale]

How many holy sites would you recommend actually building yourself for optimal religion output without falling too far behind?

You don't need many. Enough to smother holy site cities of your religious enemies.

In most cases, just take them via war then convert at leisure.

If the enemy has no holy sites to spread an opposing religion, it is no competition. You don't need to get each religion to zero cities. A religion only needs no holy sites to die out.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Hmm, you might still want to found more cities. It's usually better to found/conquer a good number of cities early (until turn 100, give or take) and develop them later (usually post-turn 80). More cities = more faith (in your case).

But still, it seems more solid than before.

Do you have Yerevan in the game? Either way, just spam Apostles and get some with Debater and some with Translator/Proselytizer promotions. The former to kill enemy religious units, the latter to convert cities.

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have good news.

I've made it at turn 170, Science Victory.

Dale is right along, the fundamental strategy is to build more cities. And you can do that without exploring much during the first 20 to 30 turns. Just build them wherever you believe is the right location. I built at the end only 7 of them. Quite honestly, I used them to supply productions via trade routes to the two major cities for the Space Project in late game.

No wars throughout the entire game, that's a bit of a miracle. I have fine tuned my Tech Tree Research strategy which is, keep heading towards the next era, but also closely monitoring the science score. As soon as it is way ahead, like 15 points ahead of the other Civ, you can go back to research the necessary tech and focus on building other non-science related buildings, mainly production related ones, like the Workshop and also the Bank.

I believe this is the best that I can do as far as KING difficulty, ONLINE speed.

I have uploaded the 1st game file as well as the last two files Turn 170 and Turn 171. Please PM me if you like all 171 files, I can send you the zipped.

I am so happy that my experiemental effort is fruitful. CIV 6 is a fantastic game which keeps me busy everyday. I can hardly go back to CIV 5 now, there are many features which I am getting used to and I like the tactical map also. THANKS Sid Meier for bring us this great game.

For those who would like to try, just kind reminder that you may need build 1 more, i.e. 3 Spaceports because the Mars thing consists of 3 launches, I was lucky to get the GS who in this particular instance, helped me to achieve the last launch in 1 turn. Had it not because of getting him, I would have needed 16 more turns to finish.
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[ShinigamiKenji]

That's very good news! The important thing (not only for Civ, but for life) is always try to improve.

You can achieve lower turns to victory by founding more cities, but at King it's more of a personal preference. Sometimes it can be boring to order some 5-6 cities to do the Campus project every turn. But if you plan on going to Deity, you might want to up to 10-ish cities.

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

I have been trying to fine tune my gameplay. But this is the best which I can do.

At Online speed at KING difficulty, it is around 170-175 turns to make it to Science Victory. Equivalent to standard speed would be 340 to 350 turns.

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

You may say it's no big deal, just a few turns less than 170. But I did use a different strategy.

Instead of going in advance of era, I slightly emphasized on culture development. So my Civics tree was done pretty full by end-game. However, I don't find it helping a great deal in terms of making my way towards science victory.

This time, the major difference in my strategy rather was on citizens management, which I spent most of my time spanning the game to 2 days and it took about 6 hours in total.

As soon as you finish building Camp, Library, University and Research Lab, lock up the tile, but you have to check the growth of citizen, as soon as you find they are dying, release the locking.

Also, for each Spaceport city you plan for, add a factory to it and when all the space projects are researched, unlock the Camp tiles and lock up the Factory tiles that way you can have more production. Check my game file and you will see.

Also, don't let the AI grab the GS and GE you need for space projects. Good luck!

Looks like I am a few steps ahead now. shall try to fine tune.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

A few remarks here and there, overall.

Research Labs take quite a while to arrive and to be built, and by then your research until Rocketry is pretty much finished. Just keep researching while you build the Spaceport and finish the first project. By the time you finish them (Spaceports actually need more production than a Mars Colony part), you might have unlocked the second project and probably a part (maybe even all of them).

Also, specialists' yield aren't that great; you might find it better to keep your cities growing. Doing a bit of maths here: IIRC, each specialist adds +2 of their respective yield (science, in the case of Campus). Each new citizen gives +0.7 Science, which means only 3 citizens are needed to reach +2 Science. But those 3 new citizens are able to work more productive tiles and unlock one more district (which also gives more yields).

Just a question, as I'm not able to open your saves: How many cities do you have?

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

A few remarks here and there, overall.

Research Labs take quite a while to arrive and to be built, and by then your research until Rocketry is pretty much finished. Just keep researching while you build the Spaceport and finish the first project. By the time you finish them (Spaceports actually need more production than a Mars Colony part), you might have unlocked the second project and probably a part (maybe even all of them).

Also, specialists' yield aren't that great; you might find it better to keep your cities growing. Doing a bit of maths here: IIRC, each specialist adds +2 of their respective yield (science, in the case of Campus). Each new citizen gives +0.7 Science, which means only 3 citizens are needed to reach +2 Science. But those 3 new citizens are able to work more productive tiles and unlock one more district (which also gives more yields).

Just a question, as I'm not able to open your saves: How many cities do you have?

Yes, all that you mentioned happened, thanks for the hints, I will definitely try all that.

Things about research lab is that they are expensive and it takes 3 citizens to fully utilize them, if your city doesn't grow to that big, having research lab is not useful unless city growth is not a primary focus. Other contributing factors are more obvious and effective in my experience.


Along the way, I find many things about CIV VI mechanism actually.

There are a few cards I find absolutely not useful: The adjacency bonus for Commercial Hub and Industrial District. And also, whether I advance to nearly the end of the Civic tree doesn't help Science Victory that much. And Amenities aren't affecting production.

Good things I find are: 1) As long as you build 6 to 7 cities, you don't need that many citizens in each cities. The faster they grow, the more housing is needed causing interruption to achieving the space projects. 2) The citizen management is very flexible and effective, despite might be tedious at times. 3) You can set random to every parameters in game settings except of course the game speed in my case, it adds randomness and creates more challenges.

Overally speaking, I don't know whether 160-170 turn are the limits for science victory, but I couldn't find better ways.