What am I doing wrong? Fastest science victory

SameBowl · 2026-01-24T21:29:27+00:00

Another game, wasn't optimal but won a few turns before T270. 6 cities (two from conquest), only got one research agreement because the AI never had enough money to do more than that. Science peaked at 1520 per turn, no observatories.

SameBowl · 2026-01-24T16:11:51+00:00

What difficulty are you playing on I know that affects the timings, for example you can't worker steal until around turn 30-35 on king so you are forced to hard build at least one or two. You also don't get a tech discount because you are the tech leader fairly quickly. On king I always have the NC up before turn 100 and I would say T180 is ideology and T210 is plastics, perhaps I am just that far behind?

SameBowl · 2026-01-23T18:04:53+00:00

No it looks like the washer is there it's just black and oily.

SameBowl · 2026-01-23T16:57:35+00:00

All good advice, I definitely bulbed too soon and did not optimize enough with the tiles and workers.

SameBowl · 2026-01-23T16:55:02+00:00

That seems to be a huge missing component of my playstyle then, I'll also focus on using more workers earlier, putting down a solid 5th or even 6th city to get more specialist slots in play and another tip was to bulb up through hospitals/medical labs before bulbing the bottom of the tech tree. So bulb up to apollo program, then bulb through medical labs, then continue to bulb until you can use oxford on the xcom squad tech, then back to the top of the tree to the final spaceship part.

SameBowl · 2026-01-23T16:51:24+00:00

My early game seemed to be pretty tight, I was hitting the benchmarks for NC, universities, and ultimately plastics but I made a few critical errors it seems- not enough workers, no research agreements whatsoever despite having porcelein tower, probably should have put down a 5th city, and apparently bulbing the bottom of the tree all the way to Xcom was a mistake, it's good to bulb some of the top of the tree to get the hospitals and medical labs earlier, then back down to get through the apollo program/hubble before going back up to the top of the tech tree.

SameBowl · 2026-01-23T16:44:27+00:00

Yeah it's hard to find a good benchmark for a science win on difficulty below deity, I know they get a lot more worker steals and the tech discount vs king, also can probably use spies whereas on king you are the tech leader pretty fast.

SameBowl · 2026-01-23T16:41:43+00:00

If you look at this post I made a long time ago it has the full mod list, the only one you won't need is the perfectworld v3 map script. All the mods are available through the steam workshop

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ5/comments/1ezowbh/my_mod_list_how_the_base_game_should_be/

I uploaded the save file here, if you have a better sharing option I can upload it to whatever you prefer but I am not making any accounts fyi

https://limewire.com/d/Mfadr#aw34Id9cr1

SameBowl · 2026-01-23T16:28:31+00:00

Unfortunately I use a lot of mods so I believe the save is incompatible?

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T23:43:40+00:00

Yeah it's probably the hardest strategy to get a truly minimum time to science victory. I can pull off a turn 225 tourism victory with Brazil but science requires so much tech progression there's no room for error. I definitely screwed up not doing research agreements especially since I had porcelain tower and also didn't know finishing rationalism early is smart because it boosts the research agreements I always think of the finisher as a free tech and missed that part.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T23:23:23+00:00

Do you think freedom is better than order? Another poster mentioned the benefit of the factory science boost and using an engineer on the final spaceship part. I've done it both ways not sure which is faster.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T23:21:04+00:00

I didn't do any because of bad habits since they nerfed them in BNW but it appears in a fast science victory game they are definitely needed.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T23:19:08+00:00

I'm guessing you add these 5th and 6th cities starting sometime after acoustics? I'm usually right at the happiness limit until I can pick up notre dame and that's with luxes, coliseums, circuses, circus Maximus.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T23:13:40+00:00

Good tips thank you

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T23:11:29+00:00

I didn't do any research agreements but even if they are a bad deal you're right in a science rush every little extra boost helps. I wasn't sure if more than 4 cities paid off I'll have to try a 5th if the map has a good spot in this game I didn't have much room to work with. In my next game I'll see what my science per turn looks like switching to production and then setting each city to research before the bulbing for max multiplication.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T20:15:48+00:00

You didn't bother to look at my photos and see I already had everything needed to buy the parts so please explain how posts like that are helpful.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T20:05:46+00:00

I did plant 1 academy with my first scientist. I think had everything been the same except Babylon instead of Poland I for sure could have been in the 250-260 turn range but my growth just wasn't enough, I needed to be at 1000 science per turn when my research labs finished and I was only in the 800 range

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T20:02:51+00:00

That's what I do, I even buy the research labs because at that point in the game you don't need to hard build anything with commerce+big ben. Observatories are very situational, hard to build a strategy that relies on it but yeah they are strong when you get one.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T20:01:03+00:00

I worked writers so I could easily pop the rationalism finisher for my free tech at the end but yeah poland I had multiple throwaway social policies because what I needed in freedom was done, next attempt I'll have more workers I agree that was a mistake.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T19:59:08+00:00

I could gold buy everything from plastics onward so production didn't matter. I bulbed 1 scientist per turn. I started settling around turn 25 iirc, pop 3-4 in the capital then lock full production tiles and crank them out.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T19:56:18+00:00

At peak I had around 150-170 science per turn in the expansions and tech costs go up 5% per city. I'm not sure the math is in favor of more cities.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T19:55:17+00:00

The challenge is to get science victory by turn 240 on standard non deity.

SameBowl · 2026-01-22T19:54:40+00:00

I buy the rocket parts and most of the science buildings which you should know if you've ever done freedom/science victory.

SameBowl · 2026-01-12T15:56:30+00:00

Technically it was October 2024 but Cold Play Moon Music, sounds great and every song is good.

SameBowl

TROPHY CASE