Science victory in 428 turns, help!

[skip11]

So I played with Poland last night following this guide (a few accidental misteps, like going 2 trad policy instead of just the opener) http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=501378. I still couldn't get how he can have so much beakers, culture, and faith at that turn? How can he grow his cities that fast (I build farms all over)?

I managed to get around +180ish beakers at that turn. I think I'm still not understanding the basics of science, population, and tile working. Anyone can answer this for me?

 

[joshua43214]

So I played with Poland last night following this guide (a few accidental misteps, like going 2 trad policy instead of just the opener) http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=501378. I still couldn't get how he can have so much beakers, culture, and faith at that turn? How can he grow his cities that fast (I build farms all over)?

I managed to get around +180ish beakers at that turn. I think I'm still not understanding the basics of science, population, and tile working. Anyone can answer this for me?

tommynt is always worth listening too. Do not expect to match his results. The game shown in that thread is a godly start with an OP civ played by an extremely good player.

If you read through the thread there are other very good players commenting that they are also having trouble matching his results unless they also get a godly start.

Note also that this is a Poland strat, it will be far less effective with another civ as many of the comments also reflect.

As to how do you get the growth, yes you work food tiles and stuff takes forever to build. This is why early growth is paramount. You do not have anything important to get out quickly in the early game, so you are very often better off working nothing but food tiles until you have 4-5 pop and then allowing a mixed food/hammer tile. I sometimes put farms on river hills to get a bit of both. Salt is of course godly. When I aim for very tall or play OCC, I never work hammer tiles until I have every food tile being worked unless I am rushing out a key building/wonder.

 

[Autokrator48]

How to you get turn 400 sv? O.o Even when I get a bad science start because of wars or stuff, I can still manage turn 300-320 sv. Are you building universities quickly, putting specialists in them and plating gs? Do you grow your cities? When do you get public schools?

 

[skip11]

Just finished a game w/ Poland. 395 turn victory at king difficulty.

@autokrator: That's what I like to know as well. I plant GS and put specialist. I think most of the problem is that my city is not growing fast enough + I'm a relatively new player (played civ 3 and 4 but never actually took the time to understand and really PLAY the game).

 

[Lunco]

Is there a 250 SV LP out there? Preferably BNW.

Can't get it below 300 I need to see more details, especially what to build inside the cities.

 

[skip11]

@lunco: What's LP?

Also I hear a lot of times about hard building? What exactly is hard building?

 

[Browd]

"Regular" way of building something in a city (building it the hard, slow way), as opposed to "rush buying" with gold or (where relevant) faith or "rush building" with a Great Engineer. Can also mean putting the city on full production focus (stagnating growth if necessary), as opposed to building in more leisurely fashion.

 

[joshua43214]

Just finished a game w/ Poland. 395 turn victory at king difficulty.

@autokrator: That's what I like to know as well. I plant GS and put specialist. I think most of the problem is that my city is not growing fast enough + I'm a relatively new player (played civ 3 and 4 but never actually took the time to understand and really PLAY the game).

bee line education (taking lux techs), and try to get 4 cities up and running with 12+ pop in each by the time education is done researching.

With out more details it is hard to know where you are going wrong. Are you wasting time researching military techs on a science game? They are of secondary importance to science techs, your better off learning good city placement and effective use of units than teching to something like iron working early. Are you micro-managing your cities? This is probably the most important thing, and where most new players go wrong (that and making a huge defensive army). Work nothing but food tiles until you hit 8-12 pop and then allow a mine or two to be worked. Never stop growing, make sure you are always growing. Use internal trade routes early if needed to feed a new city. Always settle rivers, they have far too many benefits to list. Get the NC up asap.

 

[skip11]

@joshua: I tried to micromanage my cities trying to work mostly food, but I also work the academy tiles as well, is that wrong?

You say try to get 4 cities, doesn't that slow down NC (because now you have to build 4 libraries? And when do I build the settlers?

Yes in that game I got a little trouble with war. First I saw songhai below me marching his armies near my cities, I got panicked and build a few military units. Then mid-game, after my NC is done and what not, Napoleon on my right declared war on me so I have to build some more military units. As for tech, I think I researched up until constrution only for military units but that's after finishing the NC tech.

 

[joshua43214]

A common strat is to do a 1 or 2 city start to get the NC up fast, then drop the last cities the turn the NC finishes. This does require some cash and can be difficult on lower difficulty levels and in BNW.

Ignore early game DoW's, they will just mill around with some archers and some spears. Should be able to kill everything thing with 1-2 archers. archers will handle spears and cats. CB's will handle pikes and trebs. If Japan is a neighbor and got iron, you need x-bows lol. leave your units 5 or so tiles outside your borders to spot incoming armies. When you see one, see if you can pay him to war with someone else, or someone to war on him. You better giving away a lux or some gold to prevent a war than getting into a war.

Yes, work the academies, and food

 

[skip11]

Wait, so at higher difficulties you get more gold? Do you think I should try emperor instead of king?

 

[joshua43214]

At higher difficulties the AI has more gold, so you are more able to sell lux's and the AI can afford RA's. The AI also does a better job of keeping up with you the wise, so there are windows when you do not have to gift an extra 100g

 

[Lunco]

LP means "Let's play", basically videos of people playing and explaining things. Like this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIn-J5vZXOJMJhoFQgB-FQ7Dkv0jrh5AP

So you actually don't freaking work non-food tiles AT ALL? I thought it's worth changing focus for stuff like NC and Unis.

 

[ntr0py]

So I played with Poland last night following this guide (a few accidental misteps, like going 2 trad policy instead of just the opener) http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=501378. I still couldn't get how he can have so much beakers, culture, and faith at that turn? How can he grow his cities that fast (I build farms all over)?

I managed to get around +180ish beakers at that turn. I think I'm still not understanding the basics of science, population, and tile working. Anyone can answer this for me?

Don't try to compare anything to that map. That start is absolutely broken. I've rolled a few hundred standard maps, non of which were remotely close to that.

- Poland (considered very strong, borderline op)
- 3 Salt (best lux in game, considered op by many), 1 incense
- 3 River Wheat
- 17 of 36 tiles are river
- Horse
- Coal

City spot 2 has a river, lux
City spot 3 has a river, lux
City spot 4 has natural wonder giving +10 happiness (this let's you grow way faster, basicly it is equal to 2.5 additional lux)

There's also a fair amount of luck involved, since 90% of the time (if Barbs don't spawn camps) Japan or Mongolia will take your city slots, which will increase the turns you require to finish the game, or even force you to declare war, which means no Faith growth bonus.

----

That being said, if you get a somewhat decent start 250-260 turn finishes are doable without much hassle.

 

[skip11]

Yeah, I realized after a while my starts are no where near that good haha. What is a nice number of beakers per turn at around turn 150?

 

[joshua43214]

Yeah, I realized after a while my starts are no where near that good haha. What is a nice number of beakers per turn at around turn 150?

A good rule of thumb is that your bpt should be about equal to the turn number until about T100ish, then should start creeping up and be double the turn number by T170ish. Its flexible because you get new science building at about that point so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[skip11]

I've been reading about bribing AIs to start war with each other, how do you exactly do this (not just bribe for war, but bribe for anything)?

Also, I've been having problems with happiness. How do guys keep happiness up? Most times I don't have the gold to buy the city-states (for lux), or not so lucky to have enough lux to keep my cities happy. I think I've only managed to get a golden age through happiness accumulation twice (like 2 golden ages in total) in like 5 or 6 games.

 

[Browd]

For bribe to war, go to the trade screen for that civ. At the bottom of their side of the ledger you will see other civs. Expand that to show the "Declare war on" option. Click that to show a list of civs. Pick the civ you won't them to DOW and then click what will this take? Bargain from there.

Same works for soliciting World Congress votes (although that also requires you have a diplomat in their capital).

On happiness, don't shower gold on mercantile CSs; try to satisfy quests instead.