why can't I repeat my 1680 space colony?

[civ4_asker]

Hi guys,

I am relatively new. 4 games ago I landed my space ship at 1680. Settings: Continents. Normal speed. Warlord.
Now I am trying to repeat this and I FAIL. I only can land the ship ~ 1800. What happened? And what would be a good victory time for a beginner / intermediate / expert with these settings?
I mean the recipe I try is always quite the same: Get bureaucracy with oracle. Build great library. And then it becomes a lot less clear to me what to do. But anyways I overun the enemy quite early like in turn 120 my assault starts. After 20 or so turns I have 18 cities. What I can see what might be different: In the 1680 I got sids sushi and mining inc quite early on, the ciites where very large and productice. Also in the 1680 game my first attack was 5 turns earlier. How important are these factors?

I guess my main question is: How do you expand (settling/conquering) without being to slow or too fast?

 

[Chalybion]

The theoretical best victory time is documented in a thread about Deity BC Space victory https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ace-strategies-from-a-10-year-veteran.574724/

For those of us that don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Civ IV and thousands of free hours, a more achievable goal is Fish Man's T250 space victory strategy. I can't find their detailed strategy thread anymore, but here is the summary. With this strategy you are aiming for ~4, 12-turn golden ages, with the final golden age timed to complete most of the spaceship parts with the GA production bonus

@CGQ @dankok8

I can demonstrate how to space in another save if you so desire to see, but the gist of it is:

1. Conquer 4-5% below the dom limit with cuirs, cannons, etc. as normal

2. Get communism, adopt SP/caste/free religion/rep ASAP (preferably with golden age)

3. Get steam power for levees, AL for factories (do NOT build coal plants), then electricity for more commerce

4. Beeline plastics for TGD - this will save you thousands of hammers and dozens of health if you can build or rush it somewhere

5. Get superconductors for labs

6. IW in your highest-production city, then rocketry and Apollo in your IW city

7. Start your thrusters as soon as Apollo finishes

8. Fusion for the GE that, if you plan things right, will complete your last golden age; engines in relatively high production cities (and cockpit anywhere; that thing's pretty cheap)

9. Composites (thru satellites) for docking bay and casings

10. Genetics, and build the stasis chamber in your IW city

11. Ecology, and then life support in your 2nd highest production city

If you time things right, all the final SS parts should finish about the same time, and there should be only 75-90 turns between communism and the space win. It is possible to win space sub-t250 given a strong leader on, I'd say, roughly 50% of fractal maps on immortal.

 

[Teneight]

Post 28 at the below link has the detailed guide.

Post in thread 'Nobles' Club 246: Isabella of Spain'

Jul 24, 2020

@dankok8

So this was the map I finally decided to play through on emperor, to finally illustrate in-depth how to most efficiently win a science victory pre-t250.

Spoiler :

The early game was pretty standard. A downright ridiculous amount of food with stone meant mids was the obvious early-game play here. I also went for Great Wall so absolutely no barb troubles, and then built GLH (in Seville) seeing as I had 3 or so islands I could settle for easy coastal trade route spam. I didn't settle the PH because I wanted to be able to potentially build and/or take advantage of GLH and...

• Fish Man

• 

 

[civ4_asker]

Thanks for the tips @Teneight and @Chalybion ! I see I should conquer more, use communism, could try Great light house + colossus combo, optimize the workflow at the end.
I also heard on my lower difficulty I could overun the enemies right in the beginning with the inca warriors and then have the continent for myelf?
Interesting: Fishman demonstrated a 249 move game. Thats similar to my 1680 game, just of course with a much different difficutly.

Still I am boggled by the question: How can it be that I actually think I have improved and learend the game more, but still I only can land the spaceship routinely at ~1800, while 4 games ago I could achieve 1680? Does anyone know how this can be?

 

[Chalybion]

It's not possible to give a definitive answer without seeing examples of your games, but in general there is a balance between knowing when to conquer, and when to build economy (generally, only focus on one at a time). Pottery (cottages), Alphabet (Research), Currency (Wealth), Code of Laws (courthouses), and Communism (State Property) are key technologies for recovering after conquest. As long as you haven't gone deeply into STRIKE, these tools will help your empire generate a positive GPT within 10-15 turns, and if you rebuilt well, your GPT will soon skyrocket due to your increased land. When adopting State Property for the first time, the turnaround time will probably be <5 turns. Without these tools, empires can stagnate for a long long time.

Another concept that helps advance through the difficulty levels: Focus on working high-yield land tiles, and improving/settling the land to maximize yield. Buildings are situationally useful, but well-improved territory will always put you in a good position.

 

[pmarc]

The efficiency of corporations can be map-dependent, and besides, they are not as strong on normal speed as on marathon. On marathon, unit movement occurs faster relative to everything else being slowed down, so it's easier to spread corporations in a timely manner.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Still I am boggled by the question: How can it be that I actually think I have improved and learend the game more, but still I only can land the spaceship routinely at ~1800, while 4 games ago I could achieve 1680? Does anyone know how this can be?

You'd need to provide actual information to get a meaningful answer, like the starting saves of your games (the game automatically creates an initial save when you start a game, but that will get overwritten when you start another game: you should get into the habit of preserving those initial games, by renaming them and/or moving them to another folder).

Now, a likely answer would be that contrary to what you seem to expect, generating two games with the exact same settings does not guarantee the exact same challenge level.
For starters, the initial position you get placed in may vary a lot: a 3-Gems start will lead to a tremendously easier and faster game than the infamous plains Cow start. You may get stuck on a tiny peninsula... or have room to peacefully expand to 10-15 uncontested cities. You may have crazy warmongers as neighbours... or peaceful tech traders. Etc...
Also, the leader you're playing matters: it's much easier to get a fast science victory with Huyna Capac or Pacal than with Tokugawa or Charlemagne for instance.

So you probably got lucky 4 games ago with a super easy map and easy leader, and are now playing more standard fare.

 

[civ4_asker]

@Thrasybulos ok I have analyzed the starts:
1680 game: Start Capital hat cow + many forest -> perfect launching pad for settlers. Then the next 4 cities had commercial ressource (mostly gold) + food ressource for growth. This lead to about 100% more research at the 60 turn mark. I mean 30 gold (3x gold) over 60 turns is about 1800 gold of extra research .. this about guilds + feudalism. So I could research guilds 15 turns earlier. so I could attack 15 turns earlier. So the folowing attack could be even quicker because the enemy was unprepared, so the advantage grows by 10 turns or even 20 turns. Already we are at 15+10 = 25 turns, which would explain the gap?!

 

[Chalybion]

Yes, small early gains will compound into big gains later in the game. When people post a game for forum help, a lot of time is spent planning moves during those first 50 turns, because each move is very impactful.

Guilds 15 turns earlier will be a huge effect, especially on Warlord where opponents should have defensive archers at most. Guilds is in an awkward position on the tech tree, so it's value is less at higher difficulties. Knights are still a powerful unit, but they usually become support for a siege push, instead of the main attacker.