Science Victory Strategy (and boasting!) Compendium ツ

[elitetroops]

I've usually started on the Spaceport before t150. But if there's a foolproof plan to get Sagan, Korolev and at least one of the +100% Great People, then that is indeed unnecessary. Maybe I should rethink my early game as well.

I never build neighborhoods, except sometimes for Conservation inspiration in some city that otherwise cannot contribute to my victory, like in the Norway game. I've never built any sewers and so far I've only once built a regular aqueduct. Housing doesn't seem necessary and especially neighborhoods and sewers just don't have time to pay off in a fast game. With Colosseum there shouldn't be any need for Entertainment Complexes either. Amenities are quite easy to keep positive by trading actively for amenities from the AI. In 6otM 01 I didn't build any ECs either, despite not having Colosseum. I had 9 Baths in my 21 cities for some extra amenities, but that's not remotely as good as Colosseum.

 

[whacker]

Decided to replay the gotm1 map, turn 177SV.

I was undecided wether to go Big Ben or not. In the end i did not, but i built too much CD, which was a waste of time. 3 legions and 6 archers were more than enough to take out France, Egypt and Russia. I spared Saladin.
I think a finish around t170 might be possible if you are lucky with great scientists and also get Korolev. I got neither

 

[whacker]

Finally! I replayed the gotm1 once again as i felt this is almost the perfect map. (A lot of room, several ai that are easy to conquer early on, all the best city states, Rome is just fantastic)

T158 SV

I was really lucky with the ai building a lot of cities, so i actually had 22 cities by turn 83 (one of the screens shows my empire at this stage). As the bath is great for settling every inch of the map, i didnt care for good spots, just density. I again went for IZ->Campus->workshop->factory->library->university->powerplant. I got divine spark as pantheon as well as a religion with work ethic, cause Paris and St.Petersburg had holy sites. I built some CD for trade routes to feed my mines only starport city. I also got some markets and banks for gold.

With all the free monuments, Meritocracy card and Da Vinci, culture is actually insane. I got t41 Oligarchy, timed with Legion, t83 merchant republic and ~t145 communism.

I also got lucky with the great scientists this time, as Sagan was the first and Kwolek the second Information Era scientist. Because i had ~320 production in Kumasi, Ruhr, Communism, Goddard, Kwolek and work ethic, i was able to finish the last 3 parts in 2 turns without having Korolev, using a deer.

I used Ra-Kadet to build the traders and chopped t70 pyramids there. It was the only city without overlapping IZ. Got t105 Colloseum with the 215 engineer and t136 Ruhr, using the 315 and 480 engineers, not spending a single turn actually building it. Witht the hammeroverflow of the last charge i started the spaceport, finishing it in t144.

The finishing screen is right before chopping the deer, the savegame is afterwards.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Damn, thats completely insane. 22 Cities by t83, never had a game like that. What was your army like? Was it just one or two at the same time? What districts did you prioritize? Well done, I doubt anyone is gonna surpass that record anytime soon!

 

[elitetroops]

Yup, that's officially insane! Very well done!

I noticed you have built very few builders. Only 16 builders built all game. When I played that map for GotM I built 37. I'm probably building too many.

However, if you have been buying GP with gold, I think some of that money would have been better spent buying builders for chopping. Currently a builder costs 435 gold. 435 gold gives 58 Great People points if in Democracy, only half of that if in communism. 58 GP points through district project, with Hong Kong, requires about 220 raw production. (226 if tech tree is completed, slightly less with techs still to research.) A builder would easily provide a lot more than that, especially with pyramids. This is something I've missed in my games and I've had way too many unchopped forests and unharvested production resources at the end. I think in the perfect game just about everything should be chopped into district projects in the end. The tricky part is timing the builders so that they chop as late as possible for max yields but still have time to to use all their builds.

 

[whacker]

Damn, thats completely insane. 22 Cities by t83, never had a game like that. What was your army like? Was it just one or two at the same time? What districts did you prioritize? Well done, I doubt anyone is gonna surpass that record anytime soon!

My army consisted of 6 archers, 3 legionaires, 1 warrior. I started with scout into settler and settled Cumae as my first city to gain roads towards Kumasi. I also upgraded the 3 legionaires there. With those 3 legionaires and 2 archers i captured everything in the south, starting with Kumasi->Paris->Rouen->Moskau->St.Petersburg->Twer->Sanaa. Simultaneously i conquered Egypt with the initial warrior and 4 archers.

For districts: IZ->campus->bath. Bath first if the city does not have access to fresh water. 1 ED for Colloseum, 8 CD for traderoutes. I finished 3 campi with 3 adjecency each before IZ for some early science. Did not build any other districts.

Yup, that's officially insane! Very well done!

I noticed you have built very few builders. Only 16 builders built all game. When I played that map for GotM I built 37. I'm probably building too many.

However, if you have been buying GP with gold, I think some of that money would have been better spent buying builders for chopping. Currently a builder costs 435 gold. 435 gold gives 58 Great People points if in Democracy, only half of that if in communism. 58 GP points through district project, with Hong Kong, requires about 220 raw production. (226 if tech tree is completed, slightly less with techs still to research.) A builder would easily provide a lot more than that, especially with pyramids. This is something I've missed in my games and I've had way too many unchopped forests and unharvested production resources at the end. I think in the perfect game just about everything should be chopped into district projects in the end. The tricky part is timing the builders so that they chop as late as possible for max yields but still have time to to use all their builds.

I conquered several builders from the ai, got the pyramids and every builder i built came with 6 charges. I used the stolen builders+legions to chop my settlers and built 3 mines. I left them at one charge to gain the additianal charge with Pyramids. I used the builders to build mines in every city with hills, as well as some lumbermills next to rivers and luxuries. Some IZ/factory chopping as well.
I don't think farms are worth the charge in most cases.

I did not buy any GP with gold, actually gold was a very scarce resource in that game. From ~t120 onwards i gained zero gold or even lost up to 44/turn. All these early IZ buildings really drained my account .Thats why i built some markets and banks, i was afraid of bankruptcy. The better choice would have been to invest some earlier envois into Zanzibar.

I agree with you on the project chopping, im still trying to figure out if a 2. wave of builders right before starting the projects could be worth it.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Seeing your map I've figured out I've been using way too many Builders...

Haven't played the GotM map, but from your screenshots, you literally chopped out every woods in your core. Aren't river lumber mills worth it?

Also, why did you choose Kumasi for building the spaceship, and not Ostia? Ostia might've been in the range of more IZs, which might mean more production than the mines near Kumasi.

EDIT: Maybe we should make a similar thread for the other victory types (apart from Domination).

 

[whacker]

Kumasi had 13 or 14 hills, so its production was very good from the start. Ostia on the other hand does not have a single hill and only 2 wood next to the river, so it only became productive once all the IZ came online. Also Kumasi actually has more overlapping IZ, cause the cities in the east/southeast can reach it.
Usually i get more builders, but i was surprised how small the impact of improved tiles actually is. Ostia for example had like 20 production on its own, but almost 150 with all the IZ. Chopping on the other hand is really useful as it speeds up settler/IZ production a lot, especially in cities without hills but wood and stone.
An IZ with 3 envois in 2 industrial city states provides you +4 hammers additionally to its adjacency bonus, which is roughly equal to 2-3 improved tiles, making it very important to get them asap.

 

[whacker]

EDIT: Maybe we should make a similar thread for the other victory types (apart from Domination).

I would be very interested in a CV thread, not so much in RV - i think RV is pretty boring in the long run and on higher difficulties its just frustrating.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I would be very interested in a CV thread, not so much in RV - i think RV is pretty boring in the long run and on higher difficulties its just frustrating.

I think it could work, but we maybe we would need to separate games in certain categories or issue some rules then. From Victoria's guide, apparently there was a turn 107 win using Relics, and it would probably take just as much as a Science Victory without them. Also there's the issue of Domination Cultural (it should't count as a CV if you leave just one Civ with one 1-pop city, IMO).

But yea, I'm definitely looking forward to some good strategies to maximizing tourism.

 

[whacker]

I think they key regarding the relic strategy is playing on higher difficulties. The strat may still be useful but these extremely fast finishes (kruncha achieved a t91 CV in Beta Gauntlet #1) with less than 10 tourists are not possible anymore.
On the other side it is a legit strategy, i just think it does not feel like a culture game.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Now I want to see how our times are affected with new patch. I'd like to see a Science Victory before turn 200 now, without Factories.

 

[mayhemster]

Not tested but going off the patch notes, the space race will now cost the following production (40% production decrease on projects).

Spaceport - 2,000
Earth Satelite - 900
Moon Landing - 1,500
3x Mars modules - 1,800 each

Thats 7,800 production for the projects. You can rush the projects with great people and can get 6,000 production from 2 great scientists (Kwolek & Sagan). I'm sure you can chop for almost the rest of the 1,800 production if you planned it properly, so I think the way to tackle a fast SV now is just to massively prioritise science, anything that gives you great scientist points, and then anything that gives you trade routes for extra production. You can probably go even wider (like 25-30 cities) as you won't need to build IZ in every city so will have a bit of spare production. A few fully developed IZs will still help but not as much of a priority now. No great need to build cities 3 tiles apart either, can actually place them in more optimal locations!

I'm sure someone will chip in with a better approach, but thats how I think I'm going to tackle my next science game.

 

[elitetroops]

Not tested but going off the patch notes, the space race will now cost the following production (40% production decrease on projects).

Spaceport - 2,000
Earth Satelite - 900
Moon Landing - 1,500
3x Mars modules - 1,800 each

Thats 7,800 production for the projects. You can rush the projects with great people and can get 6,000 production from 2 great scientists (Kwolek & Sagan). I'm sure you can chop for almost the rest of the 1,800 production if you planned it properly, so I think the way to tackle a fast SV now is just to massively prioritise science, anything that gives you great scientist points, and then anything that gives you trade routes for extra production. You can probably go even wider (like 25-30 cities) as you won't need to build IZ in every city so will have a bit of spare production. A few fully developed IZs will still help but not as much of a priority now. No great need to build cities 3 tiles apart either, can actually place them in more optimal locations!

I'm sure someone will chip in with a better approach, but thats how I think I'm going to tackle my next science game.

Don't forget other production multipliers. Hong Kong, Communism, +20% Great Engineer and Encampment with Military Academy (which might just have become relevant again as IZ aren't that powerful anymore). It's still unclear to me exactly how these modifiers add up and/or multiply, but I know I got a total +71% multiplier with all of those and no +100% great people. Add Kwolek and it should be about +171% and Sagan alone can launch everything. Other option is using Korolev for +1500 production instead of Kwolek.

However, you can't launch everything in one turn with Sagan alone, because builds don't complete on overflow alone in one turn. You'd need to burn Sagan, then add productions through chops to complete more projects the same turn. So for all projects in one turn with Sagan, you need 4 chops no matter what. In that case Kwolek and an extra +10% from somewhere (for example Communism) is enough.

As for new strategy, I think the Big Ben strategy now becomes even stronger. It should be possible to recruit Sagan and Kwolek pre turn 200 without any factories at all. Haven't played with the patch yet though.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

How much gold do you usually have when you build Big Ben? Past Modern Era, those Great People get damn expensive.

 

[elitetroops]

I've never built Big Ben, but some people did in the current gauntlet with pretty decent results. There was some discussion on the issue there, you'll find the thread in the HoF forum.

You can calculate how much gold is needed to make it worthwhile to build Commerce Hub buildings and Big Ben. Calculate total production cost for all the extra buildings and the wonder and divide by 4.5 to get an estimate of how much Great People Points the same production could have given you invested into district projects. Next multiply that by 7.5 to get the cost of buying that same amount of Great People points assuming you run Democracy. Divide that by 2 and this is the amount your extra Commerce Hub buildings need to generate before Big Ben completes to break even in Great People production. When you know this amount, you can calculate how many turns it would take the buildings you've built to generate that amount and get an estimate on how long it would take for the investment to pay back to build those Commerce Hub buildings. And keep in mind that that's only for break even in GPP. Campus projects also generate science, so to invest into CH buildings instead you'd need to do better than break even in GPP.

 

[whacker]

Has anyone ever tried Jesuit Education? Now that you can swap IZ with HS, i have been wondering if it could work.

 

[mayhemster]

Has anyone ever tried Jesuit Education? Now that you can swap IZ with HS, i have been wondering if it could work.

I've been thinking about this but not tried yet... even if you only get to rush buy a few buildings all game then they are still essentially free and more valuable than before when we could build universities in 3 turns cos of overlapping factories.

EDIT: thinking about this more, this could be really strong. Now waiting for the first sub-200 turn game by one of you that are really strong at efficiency and expecting one in the next 7 days

 

[Machiavelli24]

Has anyone ever tried Jesuit Education? Now that you can swap IZ with HS, i have been wondering if it could work.

If you're trying to grab Jesuit as your own religion it will be tricky. It requires founding the 3rd religion (because the AI takes beliefs deterministicly from what I've seen). Getting a religion is consistently possible but it is a toss up as to if you get 3rd or 4th. It also requires a commitment I don't usually find worth it outside of a few Civilizations that have easier access.

Now if you're just looking to access it via an AI's religion than it won't mess up your early game. But it isn't going to be a consistent gambit. The AI that gets it may be on the other side of the map and come too late.

It is 2 Faith per 1 Production (~1.8 faith per production in Theocracy) so a fully built Holy Site with +100% yield from buildings will provide (2+4+3)*2=18 Faith per turn + adjacency, which is comparable to an Industrial Zone with 5 adjacency and +100% adjacency policy.

 

[whacker]

Thanks for doing the quick math Macchiavelli.

I would only consider grabbing a religion on lower tier difficulties, cause i agree that getting a religion on deity is not worth the investment. On prince/king it is fairly reliable to get the 2. Religion after the stonehenge. Given that divine spark should be even better after the patch (considering you will play more turns and GSP are harder to acquire), it is not even a trade off to get the prophet points.

You should also keep in mind that the meeting house provides +2extra production and the Synagogue +5 faith.