[GS] Science in the new patch and Trajan 'The Beast'

[Jerovich]

Hello there dear civlovers!

I'm opening this thread just to share my impressions on the new patch. I've just finished my first run on it and went actually well.

I'm not really sure if my approach on the new science line is totally objective since my only game with it was played with Trajan, that roman BEAST. It could lead to an insane early development so I lost the point, who knows...

Why do I say Trajan is so damn good?

The recent buff to industrial zones regarding all those housing districts (aqueducts, roman baths, dams and canals) may weigh positively on this leader, but is nothing compared to Religious Settlements.

The buff this pantheon has suffered is kind of broken with Trajan. His free monuments on new cities combined with the free settler provided by the pantheon gives you an incredible snowball capability.

Needn't to focus on building monuments implies you can use all your early production into settlers and troops, leading to a pretty strong early development. All that, mixed with those Legions (a warrior + 150 gold + 10 iron), makes him unstoppable.

In the game I've told you about, I ended with like 16 cities by turn 100, having been capable of building all the science infrastructure since those legions made it all (I even needn't muskets!).

Finally the game ended on turn 171 with a science victory. I know this is not that fast, but is my best record so far. I just wanted to share it with you and read your own impressions.

Cheers!

 

[incroc]

I'd say t171 is quite fast, at least much faster than my record. Even without harvest too.

I've always felt the Civs with early buffs are the best, so I'm not that surprised Rome is good. I've tried to play similar to before the patch, and good production starts can give you 4 cities by t45 ish. With Rome that'll give you lots of army or builders or whatever instead of the monuments.

How many settlers did you build in the non ancestral hall city?

 

[DanQuayle]

Looks good, but if you post a T1 save, I will be more able to tell you how good it is.
How many science city-states in the game?

 

[Jerovich]

I didn't mention the initial settings. They were: Deity, Pangaea and all the rest standard.

How many settlers did you build in the non ancestral hall city?

All of them, since I didn't build Ancestral Hall but Warlord's Throne. That 20% production buff on all cities when you conquer a city is awesome.

Edit: I mean I built them all in my first 3 or maybe 4 cities, not only in the capital.

Looks good, but if you post a T1 save, I will be more able to tell you how good it is.

I'll post a turn 25 save, haven't any earlier one, and autosaves are overwritten once you start a new game

How many science city-states in the game?

I was pretty lucky with the map, they were 4. I also managed to get Newton and Einstein.

 

[incroc]

Ah interesting, I didn't think too much about this but it kinda makes sense.

A builder is 50 hammers * some scaling I don't know. And you gain 50% in one city from AH. So if you make settlers in 3 cities, it adds up to 60% gain in total with WT. Then you lose the free builder, but if you have enough cities those hammers are gained back and more with WT.

 

[DanQuayle]

Here is the 'reverse engineered' T1 save, if anyone is interested to play the map.

 

[Jerovich]

Talking only about early game I think Ancestral Hall is still a stronger option, because of the free builder. Specially if you manage to get to Feudalism soon.

In the other hand you have Warlord's Throne. Not that impressive early game but, as long as you keep conquering a city every 5 turns, your cities will produce +20% cogs. For the period of time you need! The downside are grievances and trade deals, but if you can afford it, it's wonderful.

Here is the 'reverse engineered' T1 save, if anyone is interested to play the map.

Nice, thank you! Maybe I'll give it another try. Are you playing it?

 

[DanQuayle]

Nice, thank you! Maybe I'll give it another try. Are you playing it?

I had to 'reveal map' to make sure the map / city states were the same as your save.
Thus, I have near full knowledge of the map. I guess I will wait a bit to play it. Hopefully, I will have forgotten about it then.

 

[Victoria]

In the game I've told you about, I ended with like 16 cities by turn 100,

A good snowball used to get you 20-25 with knights so will be interesting to see what MrQ can do.
Did you build IZ in the first 100 moves?

 

[Jerovich]

A good snowball used to get you 20-25 with knights so will be interesting to see what MrQ can do.

I'm looking forward to hearing from him. It's gonna be interesting for sure!

In this game I didn't actually focus on building a big army, since I felt free to fill my Colosseum ring without needing it. That probably leaded to a bit late neighbour conquering and made more aggression not worth it.

I built around 8 Warriors and 4 Slingers, all of them upgraded to Legions and Xbows, plus 4 directly built Legions. First district was an Encampment so an early General helped with Spain and lately Sweden.

At turn 100 I was about to conquer my second neighbour so I decided to stop warring and focus on development.

Did you build IZ in the first 100 moves?

Yes, IZ in Rome was built around turn 85, just after it reached pop 10 (it had Encampment, Campus and Theatre). My 2nd IZ was built around 95 for eureka/power purposes and my 3rd and last, only for power purposes, around 120 once I conquered Sweden and built Kisivani and Forbidden City in their capital.

 

[Victoria]

o M G....
Just played this to T100 last night.
This is not about owning as Trajan, this is about owning with a wonderful map.
I got to T70 and was on 14 cities. I was going to stop warring then so I made a save I’ll load and continue from but just wargamed to T102 for 21 cities and 217 science.... what a map. You just do not really need the free settler. 4 science CS... I only play fast so am not too efficient but It’s looking sub 150.

 

[Gaonac'h]

Decided to give the t1 save @DanQuayle provided a go.
Ended up with a science victory turn 156, my personal record in GS =d
What a map! Won't be suprise if some better players could get it down under t140.

Spoiler :

The game didn't really started well for me, I was not paying attention to my era score and ended up in a classical Dark age. I didn't had the chance to get the settler pantheon, so I went for culture on pasture.
I also missed on the last Great prophet by 2 turns.... Didn't had any faith to buy him... was really disappointing.

Even while being in a Dark age the conquest was pretty easy, but around turn 80ish my empire was starting to collapse a bit because of loyalty since I wasn't careful enough with my conquest.
At T100 I had 30+ cities and an Heroic age. Everyone was hating me but w/e.
I kept Hungary alive to trigger Warlord of throne later in the game.

About the end game planning:
I wanted to go for Reyna and Moksha promotion to buy districts but I wasted titles on others governors to hold loyalty in the early game and so didn't had enough titles to do so.
Went for 3 spaceports, 1 in a crappy city just to reach the Moon and the 2 others to shoot lasers.
Didn't had enough culture to reach T4 governement.

The map was really really nice, everything is so fast with 4 blue city-states.
Spear of fionn next to Sweden city was also pretty nice.​

 

[Victoria]

What a map

Perhaps a tad too much mountain and not enough tree but better than anything else I have seen.... 4 science CS!

 

[Vizurok]

Hi guys! First of all, I would like to thank @Jerovich and @DanQuayle for providing me with this map - I have spent an eerily significant portion of last week on trying to optimize my science victory. Finally, I settled on a T158 victory, and although I know of my worker micro mistakes that caused me a few turns of delay, I feel absolutely no desire to return to playing the map. (For now.) However, I feel that a more significant bottleneck for me was gold generation as I was honestly struggling to get the gold for chop land purchases and I couldn't afford to upgrade my units beyond the Renessaince era, so I would like to ask for advice / opinions on this subject.

Personally, I am more of a peaceful player, and in my peaceful games, I always easily drown in gold due to the following gameplay mechanics:

• amazing international trade routes (supplemented with Alliance / Trade Route cards)
• ability to sell everything to the AI
• economic alliances
• no army upkeep costs
• espionage missions.

However, in a rapid domination-based science game, I felt that I had to say goodbye to all these options and I had to rely on pillaging which is not an utterly bad thing to do, but it's definitely not that consistent. I really did not feel that I could squeeze more commerce into my build orders as I was also working hard on overcoming the Culture bottleneck, so I was turning all my spare production and card slots to Culture options. On the other hand, I was not even that interested in generating trade routes as I was at war with almost everybody and internal trade route gold yields are lackluster. My question is simple: is this normal? Would putting more emphasis on early commerce speed up my victory time?

Also, something exploit-y just came to my mind that I saw in a @Victoria post in another thread. Is it a valid strategy to conquer a very hilly AI city, spam it with mines and give it back to the AI only to pillage it right after the truce period? If done right, you can actually exchange faith into gold via builder charges.

 

[Victoria]

Also, something exploit-y just came to my mind

You should have no need for this.
For a start you probably have slotted the +1 gold maintenance card which you should replace with the raid card. Make you you pillage every mine and commercial hub (your game is not long enough for them to be of better value)
Did you work the quests hard at the beginning of the game? do lots of exploring? Suzerain and making a GPT deal on the diplomacy point grosses you 20 gold per Dip point.
Did you use the public transport card? big Ben? Off continent gold production can be great.

I do not use flip 'n pillage myself, just state it is ab abuse-able thing.To be fair, on the odd occasion I have pillaged a city and realised it will be hard to keep and so repaired and just let it flip but it would have anyway... and it was silly but does slow you down.

T158 seems pretty good. May have to dust off the game and try and see if I get gold issues.
One question, I see you have left Australia in the game and taken a civ above them out... If the civ above them was Korea I would understand it but Mr Curtain is a jolly good science provider... I see you had tanks.

 

[Vizurok]

One question, I see you have left Australia in the game and taken a civ above them out... If the civ above them was Korea I would understand it but Mr Curtain is a jolly good science provider... I see you had tanks.

Yeah, that's not my game. I did conquer the whole world and did pillage every single pillage-able tile that the AI had (surprisingly few CHs, too be honest) but as you can see, I am stuck with Muskets and Horses. On the other hand, thanks for the suggestions, it made me re-consider some of my choices and I feel like that using some of your ideas would have allowed a sub-150 win.

I did have the unit maintenance slotted in for most of the time, however, my options were kind of limited until T3 government due to the must-have cards after The Enlightenment. I mean, you should always keep (or shouldn't you, I am open for suggestion) Raid, Natural Philosophy, Rationalism and Aesthetics slotted in for the quick SV and you also need to fit Feudalism and Land Surveyors at the right time as well. I even went for the somewhat unnecessary Forbidden City for some breathing room.

I really like your Big Ben and Colonial Taxes ideas though, the card could be slotted after T3. I knew that Big Ben used to be an instrumental wonder in quick SV, but I did forget that a well-timed chop after a pillaging spree can be a significant bump even after the GS nerf. As for Public Transport, I understand that skilled players really love this card, but personally I just can't rationalize "wasting" chops and charges on Neighborhoods (however, 600 gold is nice enough).

As for CSs and exploring, I feel like I did an okay job, so I don't think that matters much.Obviously, I spammed the envoys in the blue CSs, but due to the lack of CHs, focusing on the yellow ones wouldn't have been that useful either. I just checked that the Antioch suzerain bonus could have been useful for some gold generation. As for diplo favor, I am also a huge fan of selling every bit of them to the AI, but the worldwide conquest does not really allow for this, as a) the AIs will be reluctant to pay up after they denounce you, b) excessive grievance penalties limited me to 0 favors between T50 and T120.

 

[Victoria]

you should always keep (or shouldn't you, I am open for suggestion) Raid, Natural Philosophy, Rationalism and Aesthetics slotted in for the quick SV and you also need to fit Feudalism and Land Surveyors at the right time as well.

It depends on the maths, it is not all about science... if it was not your bottleneck then it was not and at 2k it seems not. They are great cards but keep an open mind and always re-assess. It is like slotting the maintenance card, people slot it with a religious zeal even though logistics may be better... or even a +1 amenity card can make a bigger difference to everything.

I just can't rationalize "wasting" chops and charges on Neighborhoods

You don’t, public transport gives you gold the moment you place the neighbourhood, not when you finish. If you had Eiffel and Big Ben that can be a lot of gold. Also did you chop crabs at the end?

As for diplo favor, I am also a huge fan of selling every bit of them to the AI, but the worldwide conquest does not really allow for this, a

sure it does... just started playing and selling every diploma point for as much as I can. Spain is rich meaning he has some markets so I have managed to befriend him before declaring a formal war on Sweden, this delays his denouncement of me. So it is about managing as much as you can also. The longer Inleave Spain, the richer his markets will be.

 

[Gaonac'h]

One question, I see you have left Australia in the game and taken a civ above them out... If the civ above them was Korea I would understand it but Mr Curtain is a jolly good science provider...

It was already taking me 1t to finish most of the techs and I was swimming in gold/faith ( thx to kilwa and 3 religious city-states).
And I was also getting quite bored with the wars....

 

[Vizurok]

It depends on the maths, it is not all about science... if it was not your bottleneck then it was not and at 2k it seems not. They are great cards but keep an open mind and always re-assess. It is like slotting the maintenance card, people slot it with a religious zeal even though logistics may be better... or even a +1 amenity card can make a bigger difference to everything.
You don’t, public transport gives you gold the moment you place the neighbourhood, not when you finish. If you had Eiffel and Big Ben that can be a lot of gold. Also did you chop crabs at the end?
sure it does... just started playing and selling every diploma point for as much as I can. Spain is rich meaning he has some markets so I have managed to befriend him before declaring a formal war on Sweden, this delays his denouncement of me. So it is about managing as much as you can also. The longer Inleave Spain, the richer his markets will be.

Okay, thanks on the Public Transport clarification - I always suspected that something was off with my understanding of this card. Actually, this does make all the difference, as I can get like 10k gold with one well-timed public transport + Big Ben push (Eiffel would make it even nicer but I don't like its place on the tech tree), just enough money for one more Spaceport and the science infrastructure for the Amundsen-Scott. I guess that squeezing in Big Ben is possible, even if I have to do it without Magnus.

As for diplomacy, it's good that you could maneuver better than I did - it's giving me hope for my inevitable replay. I am also interested whether you will get into the negative favor zone - I guess if you don't do multiple wars at the same time, it could be avoided. On the other hand, now that the money has been settled, I don't really care about the looting potential of Spain, so I would still go first for them (and Japan) as the terrain heavily favors a westward expansion. With some proper scouting, however, it could be very useful to get an early friendship with some of the remote civs (Georgia, Maori), too bad that their agendas are not the easiest.

Thanks again for the ideas, I learned a lot today (and it's not even 3 pm yet!).

 

[Victoria]

I am also interested whether you will get into the negative favor zone

I am now getting into the negative zone which is inevitable if you are going to take cities, let alone take out entire civs.
How about 1 more idea....
I had a scout gain the opportunity to take a settler off Hojo so declared war.... I only have 1 xbow, legion and skirmisher on this front as I am about to attack Spain so I make peace with Hojo and on the turn he makes peace he has not denounced me and therefore I can sell him loads of dip favour. I think it was 25 for 14 GPT. I doubt I'll make the full 30 turns with him but it is an option and event 140 gold is better than 25 dip favour.
I'm a fast player and will just power through the game and make lots of mistakes but the idea is to get a feel for the gold in the game, not sub 150 it which requires a lot of effort.

EDIT: @Vizurok - 164 victory, did lots badly, been a while.however there is plenty of gold there if you slot the raid card, did not use public transport but used Big Ben, the 50% is not as strong but the extra economic slot helps also. Not sure it is worth keeping the cities to the left, pillaging the holy sites gave more than adequate for builders and pillaging if faster than taking cities and does not cause the malus. I did take the cities but It will be interesting to play capture right flank, raid left. Now I know the map the game can be reduced and that’s the thing here, having a play to get the turns down.
The extra science since the patch is outstripped by the 2 extra science CS and wicked adjacency. Under T140 would be difficult though @Gaonac'h
The Oligarchy bug helps this game a lot as I did not upgrade my legions.