Strategy for building the spaceship

[samspock]

I found myself behind in a space race. I looked up to see that one ai had three casings built already and I had yet to start on appolo. I managed to beat him easily though since I had way more high hammer cities than he did (was trying for domination but fell a bit short so I had lots of cities.) Checking world bulder after the victory confirmed that he had not stated building any of the three parts he needed.

[solo]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers

The good news is that Computers are on path for Robotics, so there's no major conflict. Computers become the first research objective. I'm not sure about researching Computers before Rocketry though. At the moment I can't see much benefit. Surely you can research computers while building Apollo? Anyone like to try convincing me?

Fallenhero mention the problem about where you can build the space elevator. Presumably there is a way that you can tell in advance which cities it can be built in. Anyone know how to do this?

Finally, there is the question of civics. A couple of you mention rush buying. I'm generally in Representation and the switch to enable me to rush buy doesn't seem worthwhile. Once again, anyone want to convince me I'm wrong?

Computers first is almost always better, especially on the highest levels where the Internet is often vital to accumulate needed techs in time to beat the AI. A city optimized for high production can even build Apollo in a dozen turns or less.

The Space Elevator is nice to have, but not vital. It's too bad latitudes are not given for cities, but I've found an approximate way to test cities:

Center the map on the city in question and then zoom out far enough until the clouds start appearing. Then look at the minimap to see if the border of your viewing area covers the Equator. If it does, you are probably close enough to build the wonder.

In Marathon mode, spending a few turns of Anarchy for rushbuying can be well worth it, especially for things such as universities, and later on for labs and factories. It's almost always worth switching when playing with a Religious civ, of course.

It might be fun for us to start a comparison game, making it a contest to see who can build a SS the earliest. Perhaps you would like to post a random start that players could download and use to test out their favourite strategies. After games are completed, we can discuss and evaluate. I'd like to participate. Any others interested?

[uberfish]

Genetics then ecology for last two techs seems to be everyone's conclusion and I agree with it.

If you go computers first, you get laboratories earlier which gives you an edge in endgame research. However, you need to have a good production city that can build Apollo quickly, otherwise it's easy to lose that edge back by having the top two cities not immediately ready to begin Stasis and Life Support when research finishes.

Universal suffrage can be very nice just because of the shield bonus from towns, which enables random commerce cities to build casings/thrusters in reasonable time. Also, I find that often the #2 production city is the capital and there are multiple towns there. Usually I prefer to just stay in universal suffrage if I am town heavy and accept the tradeoff of some research for stronger infrastructure and military. (Spiritual civs with statue of liberty should switch in and out as needed.)

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by solo


Computers first is almost always better, especially on the highest levels where the Internet is often vital to accumulate needed techs in time to beat the AI. A city optimized for high production can even build Apollo in a dozen turns or less.

Computers before Rocketry? This seems to me to delay Apollo by more than you gain from having a laboratory. The Internet comes from Fibre Optics. In my games, if at that stage the AI has space ship techs that I don't, I'm not going to win the race to build the big bird.

Originally posted by solo
In Marathon mode, spending a few turns of Anarchy for rushbuying can be well worth it, especially for things such as universities, and later on for labs and factories. It's almost always worth switching when playing with a Religious civ, of course.

In my games, the critical path seems to be learn all the required techs and then build the final space ship component. You can't rush the spaceship part, and rushing laboratories or elevators doesn't shorten the critical path. On the other hand switching out of representation does slow down research and therefore lengthns the critical path. It's probably different in an OCC. BTW, even with a religious civ, although you don't have the anarchy, I believe you still have to wait before you can start another revolution.

Originally posted by solo
It might be fun for us to start a comparison game, making it a contest to see who can build a SS the earliest. Perhaps you would like to post a random start that players could download and use to test out their favourite strategies. After games are completed, we can discuss and evaluate. I'd like to participate. Any others interested?

This sounds like a great idea - I'm up for it. If I post a start, it will likely be with Lizzie at Monarch level - or did you mean all aspects random?

RJM at Sleeper's

[solo]

RJM,

Most of my experience so far has been with OCC at the higher levels (Emperor and above), so Rocketry first may be best at lower levels in non-OCC games.

However, in several OCC games, I saved the game at the point where the decision had to be made whether to go to Computers first or Rocketry. Then I would play it both ways just to compare and found that my results were consistently better when I chose Computers first.

You would think that with just one city, I might have caused an even greater delay, but in actual practice, this did not turn out to be the case. The research time I saved with a lab and later on by building the Internet to get techs I bypassed earlier, more than made up for the delay in Building Apollo. Many SS techs were also acquired through the Internet.

Now in games where the human player has a huge tech lead (more likely below Emperor), I think Rocketry first may be best, since the AI will not be much help in acquiring techs.

As for rushbuying, in Marathon mode, it can easily take over 50 turns for the weakest city to finish its university. This could delay building Oxford University in your best science city too long. A few turns of Anarchy are well worth it, in order to build this wonder 50 turns earlier. Same goes later on with labs and factories. They are needed almost as soon as they become available. If they are all rushed, it will save many turns that would have been spent waiting for cities to build them.

Lizzie at Monarch would be just about right for a comparison game. I think it will be a lot of fun competing for the best SS completion date and look forward to playing!

[CraigRichardson]

Originally posted by solo
Lizzie at Monarch would be just about right for a comparison game. I think it will be a lot of fun competing for the best SS completion date and look forward to playing!

I've been competetive with a friend of mine ever since Civ2, with our priority being early SS (I'll admit - he's better than I am). That's been our first goal in Civ4 as well, and, interestingly, we've been concentrating on Lizzie, although I'm playing Monarch/Epic, while he's moved on to Immortal difficulty but is still on Normal speed. I'm not sure about moving up to Marathon (I'm a builder, and Marathon seems to unbalance in favor of warmongers, i.e. the AI), but I'd be interested in a challenge start, and could give it the old college try...

[uberfish]

You could try this finished tournament game for a space race comparison, though it's a bit nonstandard: http://realmsbeyond.net/civ/c4tourney/adv4.html

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by solo
RJM,

Most of my experience so far has been with OCC at the higher levels (Emperor and above), so Rocketry first may be best at lower levels in non-OCC games.

However, in several OCC games, I saved the game at the point where the decision had to be made whether to go to Computers first or Rocketry. Then I would play it both ways just to compare and found that my results were consistently better when I chose Computers first.

You would think that with just one city, I might have caused an even greater delay, but in actual practice, this did not turn out to be the case. The research time I saved with a lab and later on by building the Internet to get techs I bypassed earlier, more than made up for the delay in Building Apollo. Many SS techs were also acquired through the Internet.

Now in games where the human player has a huge tech lead (more likely below Emperor), I think Rocketry first may be best, since the AI will not be much help in acquiring techs.

Having seen what you can do in Civ II games, I'll certainly give it a try. It doesn't feel right yet though.

Originally posted by solo

As for rushbuying, in Marathon mode, it can easily take over 50 turns for the weakest city to finish its university. This could delay building Oxford University in your best science city too long. A few turns of Anarchy are well worth it, in order to build this wonder 50 turns earlier. Same goes later on with labs and factories. They are needed almost as soon as they become available. If they are all rushed, it will save many turns that would have been spent waiting for cities to build them.

Rushbuying universities, etc, makes sense - particularly where needed for Oxford. I usually have factories before I complete Apollo, and in anycase, production is not the bottleneck. The crucial improvement is a laboratory, and there I often have a problem. My science city is usually maxed out as far as health is concerned. Perhaps I should simply let it eat into its food box. Or perhaps I can gain beakers by moving a scientist into food production. (As I type this, it's obvious that there's a net benefit in building the lab and losing a scientist - I wonder why it's never been obvious during a game?) And will I have enough money? Anyway I will try it in my next game.

Originally posted by solo
Lizzie at Monarch would be just about right for a comparison game. I think it will be a lot of fun competing for the best SS completion date and look forward to playing!

OK I'll start a new thread and post a save. Hopefully there will be enough of us to provide a lot of different approaches.

RJM at Sleeper's