Why Do Scientific Victories Take So Long?

[CelJaded]

On release day my brother rolled up a standard speed game (Emperor difficulty) with Gilgamesh, but despite acquiring a massive empire with an entire continent's worth of conquered cities and riches, he was still playing very late into yesterday evening because of how long and drawn-out the science wins seem to be now.

I sat there crunching some numbers and tried to work out how many turns he needed to complete his spaceport, probe, and the other zillion projects he needed for victory and surmised that he'd be sat there well into turn 420 or so as there just did not seem to be enough production physically available for him for build all this stuff.

Eventually he got lucky and discovered a couple of great scientists who instantly finished a few rocket parts for him, but to finish at turn 384 for such an otherwise potent game seems way late in the day and the experience became an "unbearable slog" (his words) to get through because of the sheer amount micromanaging and clicking end turn over and over.

I know this is somewhat characteristic of Civilization games, but does anyone else share the opinion that the science wins are FAR too arduous in Civ 6?

The problem for me is that I can't see how you're expected to build all of these projects, spaceports etc. and THEN x3 rocket parts at 3000 production a piece (!) without the sort of strong additive modifiers you'd get in Civ 5. My brother's second best city was was quoting 71 turns just to build one of them!

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Or is there something crucial we've missed?

 

[blacai]

I am also playing a standard speed game and going for a scientific victory. Around turn 340... at the spaceport is still not finish. This does need an adjustment.

 

[Karmah]

They are scientists and engineers giving bonuses especially at the latest era. So it means that you need to invest there too. Worked for me as if intended, unless I was just lucky.

 

[pietro1990]

Its better then it was in civ 5 it isn't a vitory you just can win as alternative. in civ 5 space victory was easy to achieve you only needed to built 5 spaceships and thats it Thats fine if the AI would race to it but it didn't was really slow. Results in player allways possibility to win the game withouth effort.

In this game you have to plan for it where do i put my space district?

by the way there is olso a usefull civic called Space Race

in this one there is usefull military policy :
Integrated Space Cell (Space Race): +15% production toward Space Race projects if a city has either a Military Academy or a Seaport.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

To create a powerful production powerhouse you need to:
(1) Build an Industry district in the city and all nearby cities and build Power Plants everywhere (they boost nearby cities and stack). If you play Japan you can amplify the effect even more by getting Electronics Factories.
(2) Make sure that you get Replaceable Parts early and create a farm carpet in non-production areas (each farm will have between 6 and 8F, allowing you to create very large cities)
(3) Keep your river forest tiles. They become very potent with Lumber Mills later on.
(4) Make sure to grab the Space-Race boosting Engineers (there is one that boosts the projects and one that gives a permanent boost to them)
(5) Use the policy that gives you +15% Space Project production in cities with an upgraded Harbour or Encampent district.

From my first impressions the Science Victory requires a powerful Industrial Center, backed up by two secondary Production Cities.
Remember that the Mars projects do not show up before the Moon Landing (and Satellite Start), so get these out of the way with your best prod city asap.

A well set up city should require ~20-40 turns for the Mars projects. Use the lowest of the three cities to build the first Project, then continue research and assign the others to the remaining ones.
Ideally you should be able to finish all three of them in roughly the same time. My best result so far was ~T380, but that was on Prince and with some terrible decision making. I am sure you can get it down to T300 or less by proper planning.

Right now I think Japan might actually be the best CIV for a Science Victory, mostly because their Electronic Factories are a huge boon for your production output. By proper city placement you will get an extra 30+ production in each city, which makes quite the difference.

 

[glaivemaster]

It did feel slow to me, but as it was my first time going for Space Race, I don't know that my cities were optimised for it. For example, the policy for +15% production with a Military Academy or Seaport should be really good....except I didn't have any in any of my cities.

In the end, I managed to nab both a Great Scientist and a Great Engineer who each added +100% production towards Space Race projects. The final Great Scientist in the game, Carl Sagan, adds 3000 production to a Space Race project, and yes that got the 200% bonus. Unless that's exceedingly rare, you should be able to use Carl Sagan to complete all 3 projects virtually simultaneously in that way.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Also

To create a powerful production powerhouse you need to:
(1) Build an Industry district in the city and all nearby cities and build Power Plants everywhere (they boost nearby cities and stack). If you play Japan you can amplify the effect even more by getting Electronics Factories.
(2) Make sure that you get Replaceable Parts early and create a farm carpet in non-production areas (each farm will have between 6 and 8F, allowing you to create very large cities)
(3) Keep your river forest tiles. They become very potent with Lumber Mills later on.
(4) Make sure to grab the Space-Race boosting Engineers (there is one that boosts the projects and one that gives a permanent boost to them)
(5) Use the policy that gives you +15% Space Project production in cities with an upgraded Harbour or Encampent district.

From my first impressions the Science Victory requires a powerful Industrial Center, backed up by two secondary Production Cities.
Remember that the Mars projects do not show up before the Moon Landing (and Satellite Start), so get these out of the way with your best prod city asap.

A well set up city should require ~20-40 turns for the Mars projects. Use the lowest of the three cities to build the first Project, then continue research and assign the others to the remaining ones.
Ideally you should be able to finish all three of them in roughly the same time. My best result so far was ~T380, but that was on Prince and with some terrible decision making. I am sure you can get it down to T300 or less by proper planning.

Right now I think Japan might actually be the best CIV for a Science Victory, mostly because their Electronic Factories are a huge boon for your production output. By proper city placement you will get an extra 30+ production in each city, which makes quite the difference.

Japan's Electronics Factories are not a big boost.
They give +4 production to all cities in 6 range
Regular Factories give +3 production to all cities in 6 range
(Not a very big difference...but Factories and Power Plants are massively important...for a Space Race you want those 'packer' cities)

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Japan's Electronics Factories are not a big boost.
They give +4 production to all cities in 6 range
Regular Factories give +3 production to all cities in 6 range [...]

Huh, you are right. Somehow I must have missed that. Well, that makes my point pointless.
:<

 

[spfun]

My first game was a T249 space victory on standard settings/speed/map size on Emperor with Germany, so I'm going to have to disagree. After 2 full games its been inline with my Civ 5 win times so far. I was building the 3000 production mars projects in 9-12 turns.

 

[Erindel]

Just finished a space victory as Germany in Emperor on turn 320. Final parts took 20 turns. It's annoying that at turn 280 you've basically won but can't put all cities other than the 3 building the parts 'on hold', same for trade routes. Just wanted to end turn as fast as possible to finish the game. I understand that if the ai is competent, you need to give it the time to react and attack you, same for multi. I just wish that everything but the 3 cities could be automated.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

The Ruhr Valley wonder (+30% production, +1 production per Mine and Quarry) is a huge help. If you're going science you should be ahead enough in tech to be able to build this thing consistently. It does require a river tile adjacent to an Industrial Zone, so plan ahead.

 

[phillipwyllie]

Perhaps your brother forgot that factories effect every city in a 6 hex radius of the industrial zone it was built in. I assume Nuclear Plants do the same.

 

[spfun]

The Ruhr Valley wonder (+30% production, +1 production per Mine and Quarry) is a huge help. If you're going science you should be ahead enough in tech to be able to build this thing consistently. It does require a river tile adjacent to an Industrial Zone, so plan ahead.

I built this in my production city, surrounded by grassland hills along a river littered with mines. Another thing that helps is strategically placed diamond shaped hansa/commercial hubs with the commercial hubs in the middle of the diamond, with some resources nearby and the 100% industrial adjency policy card... Was fun, all my cities could build pretty fast.

 

[phillipwyllie]

Do you still have the save? Would be helpful to me if you could post it.

 

[spfun]

Its overwritten sorry, a shame that Civ 6 doesn't have the Hall of fame and the replay save file among many things Civ 5 had. I didn't hard save, played from start to finish.

Edit. This is basically how it went, started on Pangaea with plenty of room to expand with quite nice hilly terrain to expand into and only a bunch of city states nearby, rushed to 8 cities taking out 2 city states along the way. Built 2 campuses pretty early and rushed to apprenticeship, from then on I played Sim city building up my diamond shaped commercial/Hansa and campuses. I spammed internal trade routes. Had suzerain with Toronto? which gave me +3 regional effects and another Industrial and science city state at +6. I'd say most things went right in this game. Took out my neighbor around at infantry tech, China was close to a religious Victory. I didn't go for a religion myself.

 

[Katakanja]

I think the issue might be more how used to the civ 5 science victory we've become than the civ 6 one being especially arduous. When I went for a science victory earlier I wasn't expecting it to be so demanding in terms of production, which definitely slowed me down as I had to spend a few dozen turns repurposing all the cities i had focused into gold and science with stacks of campuses and commercial districts. The mars projects and spaceport districts do cost a lot of production, but I think once we start devising better strategies involving the bonuses from smartly placed industrial districts that final push will go a lot faster. Also, Carl Sagan appearing at the right time can be a godsend

 

[CelJaded]

Some great comments so far. Thanks all.

To create a powerful production powerhouse you need to:
(1) Build an Industry district in the city and all nearby cities and build Power Plants everywhere (they boost nearby cities and stack). If you play Japan you can amplify the effect even more by getting Electronics Factories.
(2) Make sure that you get Replaceable Parts early and create a farm carpet in non-production areas (each farm will have between 6 and 8F, allowing you to create very large cities)
(3) Keep your river forest tiles. They become very potent with Lumber Mills later on.
(4) Make sure to grab the Space-Race boosting Engineers (there is one that boosts the projects and one that gives a permanent boost to them)
(5) Use the policy that gives you +15% Space Project production in cities with an upgraded Harbour or Encampent district.

From my first impressions the Science Victory requires a powerful Industrial Center, backed up by two secondary Production Cities.
Remember that the Mars projects do not show up before the Moon Landing (and Satellite Start), so get these out of the way with your best prod city asap.

A well set up city should require ~20-40 turns for the Mars projects. Use the lowest of the three cities to build the first Project, then continue research and assign the others to the remaining ones.
Ideally you should be able to finish all three of them in roughly the same time. My best result so far was ~T380, but that was on Prince and with some terrible decision making. I am sure you can get it down to T300 or less by proper planning.

Right now I think Japan might actually be the best CIV for a Science Victory, mostly because their Electronic Factories are a huge boon for your production output. By proper city placement you will get an extra 30+ production in each city, which makes quite the difference.

Those are some excellent tips, thank you. The part about farms is especially noteworthy as it's clear you need BIG cities to be building stuff in the late game.

It did feel slow to me, but as it was my first time going for Space Race, I don't know that my cities were optimised for it. For example, the policy for +15% production with a Military Academy or Seaport should be really good....except I didn't have any in any of my cities.

In the end, I managed to nab both a Great Scientist and a Great Engineer who each added +100% production towards Space Race projects. The final Great Scientist in the game, Carl Sagan, adds 3000 production to a Space Race project, and yes that got the 200% bonus. Unless that's exceedingly rare, you should be able to use Carl Sagan to complete all 3 projects virtually simultaneously in that way.

Yeah, I think there's way too much of a bonus being assigned to great people here. It seems if you miss out on Carl Sagan then you're getting set back dozens of turns.

The Ruhr Valley wonder (+30% production, +1 production per Mine and Quarry) is a huge help. If you're going science you should be ahead enough in tech to be able to build this thing consistently. It does require a river tile adjacent to an Industrial Zone, so plan ahead.

I agree, planning ahead is clearly the biggest takeaway from all this. It seems Firaxis has made it really difficult to pivot from domination, which is good in a sense, but it's made the late game even more tedious than I would have imagined.

Perhaps your brother forgot that factories effect every city in a 6 hex radius of the industrial zone it was built in. I assume Nuclear Plants do the same.

Is the boost really that significant? We'll have to review those districts as it didn't seem clear to me in-game with how the UI is atm. Another part of the problem was that his empire was mostly earned through conquest and the AI doesn't consider city placement in the ideal way for this. I'll read up on the bonuses - so annoying that the Civlopedia can't be reached from the main menu!

 

[elitetroops]

Is the boost really that significant? We'll have to review those districts as it didn't seem clear to me in-game with how the UI is atm. Another part of the problem was that his empire was mostly earned through conquest and the AI doesn't consider city placement in the ideal way for this. I'll read up on the bonuses - so annoying that the Civlopedia can't be reached from the main menu!

The boost is massive. An industrial zone with factory+power plant gives +7 production to all cities within 6 tiles (9 tiles with Toronto). If you place them well, your production cities can easily be within radius of at least 3-4 Industrial zones in addition to their own for 21-28 extra production. Once they are up, you can fill in any small gaps between your cities with new cities that can make 30+ production/turn immediately when they're settled. Then all they need to do is to get up an Industrial Zone with Factory+PP of their own to further boost all cities around them. Since the late game Entertainment Complex buildings also have regional effects, you don't need to worry much about amenities when settling new cities anymore.

 

[CelJaded]

The boost is massive. An industrial zone with factory+power plant gives +7 production to all cities within 6 tiles (9 tiles with Toronto). If you place them well, your production cities can easily be within radius of at least 3-4 Industrial zones in addition to their own for 21-28 extra production. Once they are up, you can fill in any small gaps between your cities with new cities that can make 30+ production/turn immediately when they're settled. Then all they need to do is to get up an Industrial Zone with Factory+PP of their own to further boost all cities around them. Since the late game Entertainment Complex buildings also have regional effects, you don't need to worry much about amenities when settling new cities anymore.

OK, excellent. I'll give this a try next game. Thanks for sharing!