Science Victory Strategy (and boasting!) Compendium ツ

[JamesCivFan]

@yung.carl.jung I am all for Macedon but when is this going down?

 

[whacker]

I would like to have Kongo in game. He can not build HS and likes campi, so he won`t screw up every city.
As mentioned above, i don`t have DLC`s but i will just buy them - go for it!
Thanks for your efforts btw.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

@JamesCivFan

I just finished my exam today so for the last ~4 hours I have been obsessively rolling starts, about 50 I think, and there wasnt a single decent one for Alexander. I did get the mod for restarting games and it helps.. But it still takes a lot of time. I guess if I find a suitable map I would do it on the weekend, what do you think, sound good? I have time on Friday and Saturday probably. But this all depends. If you want to help out you can try rolling a few maps yourself. Im not even picky, I am just looking for 3 characteristics:

- Starting somewhere in the middle, anything but coastal
- Having at least 2 or 3 neighbors in a ten tile distance. Ten tiles is actually a lot on the standard map, but for some reason this never happens for me.. It should be pretty common, happened to me all the time when I was playing Sumeria
- Having at least 2 decent tiles in your starting five. 2x 2F2H is okay, 2X 3F1H is even better. But starting with just wheat or just stone 2F1H or Cattle & Rice 3F0H (probably worst case) sets you back so much.

I have however rolled one completely ungodly map. Its beyond good, probably the single best map for peaceful play I have ever rolled in Civ 6 and Civ 5.. But were playing as Alex. So this is really counterintuitive. I could post that, but I want to make the challenge one that actually involves warfare.

Just for the curious, dont spoiler yourself if you actually want to experience this map

Spoiler :

City states I met first: 3 Commercial 3 Cultural 3 Industrial 1 Scientific. That means +6 Culture + 15 Gold + 6 Hammers for buildings and + 2 Science onwards from turn ~25. The capital starting tiles are just brutally good, there is a incredibly nice Natural Wonder adjacent to the cap with good surrounding terrain that can be used for the first Settler and there is near infinite expansion space if one wants. I met the first Civ around T30. Using 3 Scouts, a Warrior and a Slinger for scouting. Yeah, thats right

I have some more time, but to be honest rolling starts for hours is incredibly boring. Ill do a few more though and report back.

 

[JamesCivFan]

@yung.carl.jung Friday and Saturday both sound excellent. That map does sound interesting. I haven't read the spoiler, but sure. Pass it to me. I might give it a spin. Rolling maps for me is way too boring to do, especially if you wanna hand-pick the opponents. You can try for a bit more I guess.

EDIT: I believe I got a decent start. If you want, I will PM you the details when you're on. Here's an initial screenshot of where I am about to settle, after moving my Warrior on the hill to the west: http://imgur.com/a/Ibbnm

Spoiler about tiles :

As you can see, it has an immediate 2F2H tile for you to work on, and then it immediately grabs on the Dyes tile, which has 2F2H1Faith, enabling you to choose Urban Planning, AND get a Pantheon early. I also saw the Chinese right to my south, but the downside is, there's a lot of jungle there. Scythia is to the west. I used CQUI because I really can't play with vanilla UI anymore.

EDIT 2: Additional info: there's a new continent right to the west, if you move the warrior 1 more tile towards there. Also there's a Goody Hut to the southwest, 5 tiles away from the capital. 2 CS are to the east, both of which you can meet first REALLY easily. They're Toronto and Palenque.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

If anyone is willing to play with @JamesCivFan and me today please let me know.

Well, lets do this today then! Im ready. I rolled a really good start, too. Now we just need to make the decision fast and get it rolling. One more question: If I roll a start with CQUI does that mean that other ppl can only play it if they have the mod? If so that is asinine and I hope it wont cause problems.

Your start looks nice aswell. I have played mine for ~40 turns and scouted almost the entire map. There are 3 opponents right next to your capital, one of them extremely weak, three more opponents very close by but not threatening at all.. Not that much jungle, few hills and mountains (but mountains in cap!) and lots of place for expansion. It is a 100% perfect map for fast domination. Starting tiles in capital are extremely good, but all in all lacking food which sucks. But otoh it has insane lategame production and adjacency bonus potential. The starting tile is a 3F2H Horse on a Hill iirc. Pretty broken start. There is a military CS you can meet first for Slinger spam.

 

[JamesCivFan]

One more question: If I roll a start with CQUI does that mean that other ppl can only play it if they have the mod? If so that is asinine and I hope it wont cause problems.

@yung.carl.jung I am not sure about that, but downloading and installing CQUI is super easy since it counts as a DLC. You can simply turn it on and off with a single mouse click. What time are we supposed to play, though? I still don't know. :/ Last but not least, I should have mentioned that my map is a Tiny Pangaea one. A player like whacker can end it within 100 turns, I believe.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

We can play whenever you want, I have time today and tomorrow, almost the entire day. I will post the thread right now. Just double checked and everything seems to work fine

 

[mckinney156]

Interesting thread, I like the complete randomness of Civ though that's what provides the challenge for me. I never knew so many players were hand picking opponents and rerolling to get perfect starts.

 

[stinkubus]

It's not much of a boast, but I just finished my first sub T200 science victory (Trajan, small continents, emperor difficulty). Won the game on T198. Kwolek and Godard were the only relevant great people I managed to snag. Built Ruhr Valley in my spaceport city instead of Big Ben and that ended up costing me at least ten turns on the win as I missed out on Sagan. I only had 15 cities at the end, so 5-10 more could also have sped things up.

Big thanks to all the contributors in this thread and in the GoTM after actions threads. I haven't tried my hand at a GoTM yet, but I've learned so much from others who took the time to recap their games.

 

[Victoria]

Built Ruhr Valley in my spaceport city instead of Big Ben and that ended up costing me at least ten turns on the win as I missed out on Sagan

Yeah Ruhr return on investment is not sensible if you want sub 200, you did well.

 

[billyboy920]

I recently moved up to playing on Emperor level. Just won a space race at turn 189 with Germany. I really want to thank yung carl jung and Victoria in particular for the excellent advice. This thread has helped my gameplay so much and I want to thank everybody who participated.

At Emperor I am having lots of success with Germany due to the fantastic production from hansas and the extra district even though early wars are a bit tougher with Fred's vanilla units. I still lack the discipline and focus needed for deity level play. I also prefer a more balanced civilization which is at odds with the earliest possible victory.

 

[Victoria]

Well done.
From 189 every improvement is based on the finer points like how your units move to take the city and wether that civilian should be working rice or elephants, that trade route to a culture civ early, that project chopped in to jump that scientist. It's a level above what I normally play because it slows down play a lot and my time is limited.

 

[stinkubus]

Yeah, I really wanted to get the sub 200 for the heck of it, but I don't know if I'll try to better it or not. Doing nothing but chopping campus projects and your spaceport/space projects for the last 70-80 turns doesn't really make for a very engaging game. The district projects are too good and they make it impossible for the AI to compete for great people after the first 100 turns or so.

 

[billyboy920]

Yeah, I really wanted to get the sub 200 for the heck of it, but I don't know if I'll try to better it or not. Doing nothing but chopping campus projects and your spaceport/space projects for the last 70-80 turns doesn't really make for a very engaging game. The district projects are too good and they make it impossible for the AI to compete for great people after the first 100 turns or so.

I agree. I really like building things and that is not the most efficient path to victory so I'll play a less efficient but more enjoyable game.

 

[Bad_Viceroy]

My thanks to all posting here too. I am a recovering growth addict and builder so the advice here really goes against the grain. (muh granaries!!!) Just completed my first Emperor win (SV at turn 300 with Pericles). Got it down to 296 with Fred (early war went wrong due to interference of friendly Nubians which distracted me and meant I was stuck at 8-10 cities for far too long). I know I can go a LOT faster once I finally shed earlier tall habits.

 

[Laurencius]

This thread has taught me a lot, thank you. Though, my head is still spinning from all the information here. I would love to see a video of a sub turn 200 SV win.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Thanks for all the positive comments, I am really happy that this thread has managed to help people even though the OP is outdated. The discussion is probably more relevant anyway.

I have been thinking about making a sub t200 video for a very long time, now I finally have the hardware. I won't promise anything but I'll try to make space for it.

 

[Bad_Viceroy]

256 with Trajan on Emperor, Standard, Continents. Still slow but getting better. Made so many mistakes including my personal favourite: accidently building Great Library instead of Oxford AND in the only spot in my Empire where Zimbabwe could go! Elite play

 

[Laurencius]

To have 15 cities by turn 70 or so, how small do you keep your capital? I'm playing on Monty on Prince, around turn 70, the AI only has 2 cities. I conquered 2 AIs and 1 CS, captured 1 settler, pumped out 2 settlers, for a total of 9 cities by turn 70. Teddy and Bapu were already screaming at me for my warmongering. Seems like I need to add a couple more AIs for city conquering, or keep my capital at pop 3/4 for a while.

 

[Bad_Viceroy]

This is a question I also struggle with. It sounds like you have already been on quite the rampage. It must be combination of settler building til say 100 and luck with close CS to conquer or close neighbours, I guess. It feels really late though to still be building settlers and not campus etc I think in your cap