Space race without war - deity

[Paxel]

Hello, some months ago I published some advice for who want to win by space race without attacking other civs. Now I can do the same at deity, the difference is:

1) At immortal you can win with 8+ cities, at deity you need 11+ If you are boxed you may try a cultural victory or a quick war to liberate yourself.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=496541

2) At immortal you can afford to build a small defensive army, at deity you cannot: every hammer is needed to expand your empire, you must defend yourself with diplomacy only. For this reason spiritual leaders becomes very important, you will have to switch civics/religion to have good relations (I now play with Asoka). BTW if you are attacked early you can usually whip a defensive force when needed. Bribing other civs is very important too, "stop trading with" is great.

My play at immortal was quite simple: zero workshops, cottages everywhere, zero "pure" production cities. This will make you the tech leader, and this means that you win space races and wonder production simply because you get techs much before them. At deity you cannot be the tech leader so 2-3 pure production cities (no cottages, only farms and workshops) are required if you want to win the Internet (very important!) and the space race.

Since diplomacy is the key, and you must be liked by other civs anyway, you could also win by UN. The problem is that you must be the one who builds it, and I don't like it.

At deity, after liberalism (which you could lose of course) I usually choose between paths: if I'm very good at techs (usually not) I research to democracy and I try to build the Statue of Liberty. If not, I research to biology. A +1 food is a great advantage and later (much later) you could trade it. When I get rifles I usually build a small defensive army.
I usually keep a Great Engineer to create the Mining Inc. If I got another one I use it for the 3GD. As I wrote in the other threads, my space race "begins" with the Internet, then Apollo, then I go immediately to fusion and genetics. Composites and Ecology are the last.
Since I use spiritual leaders, I keep/plan 3 GP for two golden ages during the space race or internet construction.

About the first 120 turns, you may study the youtube games by Chris67132, with some minor differences: placement of cities must be choosen also with long term planning and since you won't need an army, you don't need so many farms and so much whip. His diplomacy is great and you must study it.

Have fun. Obviously you need a good leader and your initial land must be at least average. It's possible to win also with isolated starts.

 

[Seraiel]

You're projecting a lot.

I. e. switching religions / civics is not necessarily needed to have good relations, nor are 11+ cities needed to win a spacerace. You find that you get good results with it.

I'm basically having a lot of troubles with reading that post, because I'm not sure on the intention of this post, and the informative value of it is somehow diffuse and not too huge.

What I understood was what you wrote about the path of research and to that I'd like to say, that Democracy unfortunately is a really poor tech and that the Statue of Liberty is only really worth it on the larger maps (I've done math about that) , and Biology is a good tech, but with mainly Cottages + Workshops, it's value isn't too great regrettably. Sid's Sushi + Mining Inc are the ways HoFers go in almost all Spaceraces, really interesting would be a comparison of that route to State Property.

What I'm guessing is, that an area where you could improve greatly would be city-management, because beginning the spacerace with the Internet somehow tells me, that you're somehow not in a too good position before.

Regarding what you write about the videos of absolute zero: That player usually plays very fast, and I cannot really agree with your thought that cities must be choosen with long term planning, if you'd say "also" with long-term planning I'd agree, but short-term to mid-term benefit is usually what I prefer, long-term needs long to pay off, in that time lots of things can have changed. It's not that I ignore long-term, it's morely that I see the benefits of short-term, a city getting strong fast can i. e. mean getting another city faster.

Seraiel

 

[shakabrade]

I am 100% sure you can win with 8 average cities and focused play.

Statue of Liberty has no value (expensive techs and wonder for almost no benefit). I mean, that is about 4700 on normal settings (4700 /1.2 and 1500/2). I you run 11 scientists with Representation, you get 11*6 raw and need around 70 turns to pay it back. Without counting the opportunity costs. The perfect example is The Internet you could have skipped if you skipped SoL. So, Computers are around 11000? Beakers and The Internet 3000 /2. If you converted all those wasted commerce and hammers on unnecessary techs and wonders to , you'd win much sooner and much more probably.