King Space victory - what I learned

[remconius]

My first in civ 6 was, being old school peacemonger, a space race victory at King level.

In Civ, science has always been power. I built 4 campus districts and ruled the in terms of science, had the best units and was the first to be able to build space port and projects. This was great, but I neglected faith and culture this which had some serious down sides. Civics tree has benefits to production which came very late and there is a great scientist which boosts space projects which I got 1 turn before launching the last one. Having low faith I missed that one.

I also struggled with production having cities with 20-40 production needing to build space projects of cost 2000-3000 production. I solved this by sending all trade routes from my spaceport city and focusing on production trade routes I managed to increase the production to 80 and later 100. Which still took 25 turns per project. I only had 1 space city, but perhaps I could have had 2 or 3 to build projects in parallel.

I do think the district system work great, it really forces you to choose specialization for each city. My cities were:
capital - science, commerce, entertainment, culture (late game), airport
city 2 - science, commerce
city 3 - science , culture (late game)
city 4 - science, encampment, industrial
city 5 - industrial, encampment, spaceport

I think I should have better balanced districts, 1 holy, 1 culture early, 2 commerce, 2-3 science

I was wedged between america, egypt, france and brazil. My civ was had 5 cities in a vertical pattern with the consequence that if I had units on my border I got questions from the ai about units passing and I said they were just passing by. Having them fortified within my borders cause me to break my promise, which is crazy. Later I ignored there request.
I managed to appease the americans because I was with the americans on the left side of the island in one continent and the egyptians and french were on the right side on another continent. So I never caused problems on teddy's continent. Keeping the egyptians peaceful was more difficult because my military was always too weak. My lack of great people kept Pedro at bay. And because I traded (spied) the french were usually happy.

Something else that happened. At one point I denounce egypt as they had wedged a city between mine. I attacked and took the city. Right until the end they still denounced me for having their city (3000 years later and it was much longer mine than theirs.....).

About the AI. At one point when I had musketmen and cannons France was at my border with 20 horsemen. When they declared they were cannon fodder. On the other border was Teddy with10 spearmen. There should be cheaper upgrades for AI. Also Teddy built several cities in the middel of the Ice, which I am sure didnt add much.

All in all a fun and good victory. The middle end game did take forever because not much happened and I spent 150-200 turns only building space port and all projects. And with my old computer each end of turn took 1 min. Spent hours waiting for victory. Sometimes I was declared upon and took a few cities from France or Brazil. A nice break in waiting.

In my next game I will do more focus on culture and faith to see what that delivers. Also up the difficult, because this was not very difficult.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I think a greater number of industrial districts would be really helpful. They make a dramatic difference.

 

[MyOtherName]

Also, get the late great people that give bonuses to space race production: an engineer gives +1500 production, another engineer gives 100% production modifier, and a scientist gives +3000 production boost.

 

[Qoce]

It seems that the science victory is also now heavily reliant on production, so it is essential to get more of the industrial district. In my first game, I had pretty good production, with several cities naturally in the 70s and 80s, and then some trade routes to get them even higher, but it still took me 20-30 turns to get build each part of the Mars project. This was with 3 cities with spaceports, including the building of the spaceports and the moon landing project. It was probably at least 75 turns of production to finish it off, even with 3 cities doing the production. I had finished the tech tree and was researching future tech by the time I won.
Additionally, wonders felt too expensive to be worth the time for most of the game. I usually only got wonders once they were a couple eras old.
I think another big thing that slowed my production down was that my civics tree progression was a bit slow. It eventually caught up, but I was two eras behind my tech production at one point, and this meant that things like neighborhoods were very late, so my growth was more limited than it should have been.
Also, the great people that MyOtherName mentioned are very strong.

 

[thesurdin]

What turn did you complete the game on?

I just completed a science victory on T324, the last 30-40 being the projects. I had originally planned to do a culture victory but I changed my mind because I wanted the achievement for science, so that may have delayed it 10 turns or so.

 

[Qoce]

I completed it in the 1960s (standard speed). I don't remember the exact number of turns, but It was over 300.

 

[drubell]

I just finished a King science victory as my first game myself. My finished time was very late though, somewhere in the T420 range. The biggest problem with my game was that I did not plan for the amount of production needed to finish a science victory (a lot). I didn't have industrial districts in the cities I planned to launch space parts in until I started constructing my first spaceport which was a 70+ turn build. Then I started spamming industrial complexes and sending all my trade routes to my spaceport towns.

The clearest tell that I was really backward in my production planning was that I completed the tech tree about 120 turns before my science victory