I Won My First Two Deity Victories in Civilization V

Y-you can make other leaders afraid of you? I have seriously never seen this. 😮

Yes, if you have nukes and they do not, they will "fear your great might." Also, if your military is significantly more powerful, they will make respectful comments about it.

I had an 1846 science victory last night on Immortal, 8-player highlands map. That was my earliest victory so far. I was fortunate enough to start with salt, surrounded by a protective mountain range that gave me room for four large cities.

I opened with worker first (usually I do scouts) because I wanted to get that salt rolling, and it really paid off. I was putting out 500 light bulbs a turn by 1400 AD.

Cultural victories are still proving elusive though.

1846? SWEET! How many cities did you end up constructing and which civ did you use?

I played Poland with 4 cities. The Maya are probably a bit better for a science victory because of the fast start Pyramid gives you, but the Polish social policy bonuses are powerful in their own right.

They key to light bulb generation is population, so I went for four population 30+ mega-cities. That requires generous spacing between the cities, farmable land, and running the cities in food/growth mode for most of the second half of the game (which in turn, requires managing happiness carefully). In addition, I plopped each city next to a mountain so I could build observatories for the 50% science bonus. Preserve jungles tiles away from water sources for the university science bonus. Build trading posts on them.

As for tech, I went for philosophy relatively early and built a national college before founding my second city, and then went straight to education so I could build universities. Next it's all about getting to astronomy for the observatories, then scientific theory, followed by plastics, and finally a push to satellites.

For wonders, I focused on those with science points, to increase great scientist generation. Don't bother with Great Library on immortal or above, because the AI will beat you to it 90% of the time in a game with multiple opponents. Porcelain tower is the most important. Build improvements with your scientists until you have research labs, and after that you can just spend them. Also, spend your faith on scientists and maybe an engineer or two to get you a quick wonder.

Accelerating the win is all about research agreements. The 50% bonus from porcelain tower stacks with the 50% from the scientific revolution social policy. You will need lots and lots of money to pay for RAs, and I often gift money to the AI so they can meet their part of the deal. You need at least 3 friends (5 is better) to keep the RAs rolling, so you have to be very careful about diplomacy. Don't do anything to offend people, avoid wars, forgive people for spying (and avoid spying yourself), etc.

Finally, you need to choose your ideology. Freedom and Order are viable, and which you choose will depend on your balance of gold vs. hammers (production). If you are flush with case, even after funding RAs, freedom allows you to buy the spaceship parts, saving many turns at the end of the game, but you'll need about 18K gold to do so. I find that Order is generally the best though, because it has lots of happiness policies and the 25% science bonus for factories. You'll want to save (or buy) a great engineer to build your final part and save some more turns.

I hope that helps!

This game is awesome! I've been playing the Civ series since 1993 when my 7th grade history teacher loaned me his copy. I now own 4 restaurant franchises and manage them using strategies I learned while playing Civ. You should write a post about the correlation of strategy gaming and business success.

Ben, can you contemplate us with some insights? I started my own business last year, and was thinking exactly about this recently, the correlation between virtual strategy games and the "real" ones.

Mountain setting feels like cheating, so I always play with standard and full players. I played Civ 5 for a month 1/4 and got a science victory in my first deity game. I lost only once at Emperor then got okay with the game. Just focus on science, especially your capitals growth I got, mine to 45 when I won the Science Victory on Deity. Just don't leave a Civ armyless, because weak cities draw Warmongering Civs (Japan, The Zulus, Mongol, Etc.) and probablly max out the city defense (Arsenal, Castle). Great Engineers And Great Scientists were my only great people. The more great people you generate, the less generation the other gets. Save Engineers for Wonders like porcelain tower and the science endgame.. same goes with great scientists I only use them at the Information Era. I was too late too make a pantheon.. but I realized it done me great because of more great scientists rather than prophets. You'll still get benefits when a city adopts the religion of a another civ. But keep in mind that you can only purchase faith items if a city has adopted a religion.

I always use alexander.. but this are great science civs:
Korea
Persia

What computer are you using this on? My MBPr really heats up running this game but runs it so smooth and nice! My first game I think I accidentally gave a bunch of cities away. You really have to read whats happening, the game can feel like its pushing you along but it doesn't have to be that way!