Quick Science Victory Tips?

[Alsark]

A coworker of mine has Civ 5 and said we should play together tomorrow. I've barely played Civ 5 and, despite having Brave New World, certainly haven't played that at all (more of a Civ 4 guy). I'm honestly not very worried about him being that good (he said something about just getting riflemen in the year ~1900...), but at least he actually knows how to play, which is more than I can say for me.

I'm going to go for a science victory because I assume that's probably one of the easier ones to understand and relatively straight-forward. So just some quick questions:

1) Who is a good science leader? I'm thinking Nebuchadnezzar... actually, can I use him if my coworker doesn't have that DLC?

2) What's a good build order?

3) How quickly should I expand? Should I have a few good cities or a lot of cities? How close should my cities be to one another?

4) What are some key wonders? Is Mausoleum of Halicarnassus worth it since I'll be getting a lot of great scientists? Also I'm not sure what their definition of "expending" great people is.

5) I've heard you should never do open borders with AI. Are there other "should never do" things that I should be aware of?

6) Are there certain buildings I should never build?

7) What should my improvements look like? In Civ 4 I just cottage-spammed... what do you do here?

8) What are some key techs to beeline?


If I know the answers to these I'll at least be at a head start, I think.

 

[Zaimejs]

Lots of questions depend on your situation.

I was just trying to win a fast science victory, and I went with Neb. Korea is also a good science Civ.

For science, you want a mountain for observatory later. Jungle is good as long as you can grow early. The key to science is population. Each population=1 science, so the faster you can grow your cities the better. So much depends on the world you'll be playing in.

In my science victory, I didn't have enough cities, so my population held me back. I had a couple of amazing tall cities, but just not enough of a population base to get super science. In another game, I played as Gajah and had about 2000 science by the end of the game because I just kept building new cities.

Plant your first great scientist and you'll be well on your way to getting an early tech advantage. I beelined the Great Library, but I think that is a waste of resources. It might be better to just go granary and build up a steady population early.

Good luck to you. Trading posts are the new cottages... once you get into the Rationalism policy tree, they will give you extra science. Jungle tiles become especially awesome when you get trading posts and universities.

 

[tommynt]

TIP nr 1:

dont start new thread for questions been asnwered in 100 other threads before but read them.

 

[Alsark]

TIP nr 1:

dont start new thread for questions been asnwered in 100 other threads before but read them.

Yeah, because I'm easily going to be able to find the answer to all of my questions in a short span of time.

That'd take forever to look up the answer to all of my questions.

Why even bother to take the time to reply to this thread if you just want to be a douche?


But thank you, Zaimejs . Advice from a fellow Gandhi is always good advice!

... Unfortunately I went to play the game with my coworker today and he's like, "I only like to play with all of the victories except domination and cultural disabled." It's just like, "... okay..." I had no idea what I was doing and was in last place by a lot. Go figure in my test game, on the same difficulty, I'm in first place by a lot. Don't even know what I'm doing differently, lol.

 

[SirPepsi]

Learning the game mechanics at first will help you more than any general tips, so if you getta chance, just start up the game today and see.

Here are some general science tips though:

1) You don't want more than 4-5 cities (sci and happiness penalties will be hard to overcome in early game)
2) You want to focus on growth
3) Stick to 2 cities before founding NC (aim for T75-80)
4) Pottery -> Writing -> Lux Tech -> AH (depends tho) -> Calendar -> Philosophy
5) Scout -> Scout -> Shrine -> Granary -> Library -> Worker -> NC
6) Steal a worker from a CS, but don't neglect CS rewards
7) Aim for Education by T115, get unis up quickly
8) Tradition -> Patronage (for Consulates), but don't complete the tree -> Rationalism

Good luck!

 

[Tabarnak]

Check under my signature for some strategies. Most are based at deity but you can always adjust.