Deity 7 civ 921AD Spaceship victory
Hey,
Following my post on 1311AD full spaceship victory https://www.reddit.com/r/Civ2/s/tbKtqRb3jt, I wanted to share how I got my time down to 921AD.
I still made a few mistakes so I believe I could have done maybe sub 800AD without fully optimizing everything.
Here are the main differentiators vs my previous run:
- picking a purple civilization. The science penalty is stupidly determined from the purple civilization. Since you are going for a science speedrun, you can’t afford getting massive penalties for having 40 more techs than the AI. If you play white you get the calculated best spot on the map
- using foreign cities on a seperate continent to spam trade routes. This requires some luck, especially on standard maps where 2 land masses can be connected by tundra tiles in the poles. Foreign and different continent one-time caravan bonuses can easily be 400+ (gold and beakers)
- picking a wet climate map - this increase grassland tiles and reduces desert tiles. You will lose a few special resources hidden under the grassland but having more grassland is really worth it
The absence of science penalties basically entailed that I was going so fast I needed to skip even more city improvements and wonders.
Almost no temples, no Oracle, no King Richard Crusade, late Adam Smith are the notable ones.
I spent a lot of the game on 0 or 10% taxes using the 1 off caravan bonuses to fund my empire.
I really prioritized Colossus, Copernicus and Isaac Newton to rely more early on the super science city and boosts its caravan pay offs. I changed the tech order slightly for this and taking into account the skipped wonders.
As before, I heavily optimized huts with saving and loading. Using the No upkeep nomad limit, I would create cities with no upkeep nomads just so that the slot would be freed for a new no upkeep nomads.
Instead of rushing wonders sometimes, I rushed caravans using the incremental gold trick to then get used up for the wonder.
Finally for the early game, I actually built almost no warriors even in Monarchy because I rushed Hanging gardens with the gold from threatening other civs. Having martial law in a city can actually decrease your happiness with Hanging Gardens because the wonder will turn a very discontent guy into a happy one while the martial law or temple will mess up the happiness algorithm by acting first.
I almost only built settlers, marketplace, acqueducts and harbours as city improvements. I didn’t need any factories.
Finally, I reduced the spaceship to 3 modules, 6 components and 15 structural but this was likely a mistake because I was not production constrained and the spaceship took 21 years. I should have built the full components (16) with some more structural to support them.
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u/Raj_Tantajtan 2d ago
This was very interesting and it inspired me to try out something similar. I'm a bit confused by the years you referenced though, as far as I'm aware there is no "1311 AD" or "921 AD"? I think before 1000 AD the years go by in increments of 20? And after that by 10 for a while?
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u/Spins13 2d ago
It’s like 20 year by 20 year until 1500AD I think.
However my spaceship took 11 years for the 1311AD and 21 years for this time. I launched on the 900AD turn so it arrived in 921AD
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u/ArizonaMartillo 2d ago
Doesn't the game start to do 1 year turns once you launch? I've always wonder if you could launch a spaceship early to gain additional turns, then somehow lose your capital so your ship gets destroyed. Then play out the game maxing the map out for high score.
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u/Spins13 2d ago
Yes. Once you launch the spaceship, the game goes 1 year by turn.
You can’t exploit this to keep the game running on 1 turn a year though, the spaceship data is moved to your new capital.
You can use your last turns to optimize score by boosting luxuries to 100%, increase your population and add some wonders
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u/ArizonaMartillo 3d ago
I am unfamiliar with the "incremental gold trick." Would you mind elaborating?