Trouble with technology victory

[jn3895]

yeah, i'm pretty new to the game, and whenever i try to go for a technology victory on king difficulty i always get ahead in culture or economy instead of technology. so if anyone could fill me in on a general guide for a technology victory, not for any specific civ, that would be cool. thanks.

[Hellogoodbye123]

theirs some ways to get technology faster

-Get great scietists
-Trade/buy techs with the other players by offering peace
-make your city only research science
-get knowledge of a tech by taking over a hut/bard village/ or enemies city
-some civs also already start with a tech, at hand
-mmmm...build libraries, universities to help the science research
-...and the easiest way find the city of atlatis, which gives you +3 techs..

[munchingfoo]

You will need to keep up the economy and culture too. Culture to get great people and avoid flipping, and economy so you can rush buildings.

You shouldn't get an econ victory if you keep spending all your money. It's very unlikely that you will get a cultural victory before a tech one if you don't plan it, and you research to space as efficiently as possible.

As a benchmark, if its taking you longer than 2000 to send the spacestation you are aren't micromanaging and researching as well as you should. There are a few threads with tips for each here somewhere.

[manshoon_m]

The most obvious way to a tech victory would be to suggest playing as the Japanese since they get so many tech advantages. But they fall behind on other stuff.
Try playing as the azteks, their temples produce +3 science (you can get temples just as early and cheap as libraries, and the librariess won't up your culture like the temples will), and they're damn good at fighting and economy too!

[StraDawg]

My SP games last much longer than the games most people here describe, and I'm new to the game, so this may or may not be good advice, but I don't worry too much about who is leading in the middle of the game. I find that by building a good infrastructure, you will often have your choice of victories in the late game.

If you have a strong cultural and economic lead, you can translate this into a tech victory by flipping cities with your culture and rushing buildings, units or wonders with your cash reserves, especially if you don't plan on using that cash for an economic victory. Another great use for your surplus cash is to send the strongest AI civ military to battle the tech leader, or even send the tech leader after the military if that's cheaper.

Having that extra cash can even come in handy when you think you've been beaten. Even if the other civ launches their spacecraft before yours is fully stocked, you can beat them to Alpha Centauri by rushing more engines and fuel onto your craft.

Yeah, my strategy lacks economy. I'll give it that, but I do have fun playing it.

[Yoacim]

Ok, I'll try to give some advice about tech victory. This is what I would have liked if someone explained it to me, but this is not a "strat" or "walk-through", it's just an explanation of how the game works.

The thing to understand in the beginning is that it is possible to "focus" a city differently depending on your long term goal. This is true regardless if you use the "focus on science"-manage option, or manually deploy your workers.

If you focus on science output, you will get a lot of science, but in a small city, without any buildings to help your science output (libraries, courthouses etc), the science output will be very low.

To improve your science output you will need some buildings, for this you need to focus on production. However, you can rush any buildings you need if you have a solid income from other cities.

To have your population work trade-squares for science, you need to have a high population. A small sized city with university and all population working on science will not yield as much science as a big city. Therefore you need to grow the city before it can become a real "science-city". Sometimes it's a good idea to focus on food (manually or not).

It all comes down to - should I focus on science for big science output, or production to be able to build the buildings needed for a big science output, or food to grow the city enough to be able to get a big science output.

I hope this helped

[Hodory]

Ah... tech victory. My favorite type of win.

In my opinion, the single most important factor in achieving this is city placement and how you assign these cities to work what.

Obviously ocean tiles are great at producing trade, which translates to either gold or science. Desert tiles are also great as well, although the potential doesn't get fully realized until you build Trading Posts.

To me, it is vital to have a core group of cities dedicated to produce as much trade as possible. However, it shouldn't just be flat out science... gold is also important for the fact that it helps you to rush buildings with gold in cities with minimal hammer production.

Libraries and universities are absolutely necessary in cities dedicated to produce science. Consider wonders such as the Colossus and the East India Company to further enhance the trade production capability. In cities where you are planning to crank out gold, markets and banks are essential, and the Trade Fair of Troyes help to ensure that you produce even more gold in that city.

Most of the time, cities with lots of ocean tiles often have poor hammer production which slow down the infrastructure building. That's quite okay as long as the city isn't stuck with zero hammers. That's what gold is for, and sometimes switching focus from science to gold in order to stockpile your treasury for rush building can be helpful.

Also, if you are culturally strong and are able to crank out some great people, chances are you will get some great builders in the process. I feel that the great builders are better off saved for rush building expensive buildings and wonders instead of settling them. You just need to protect them well from enemy spies so that they won't get kidnapped.

Lastly, the hammer-poor cities with lots of trade don't really need a lot of buildings in there. Often times, people tend to go into massive build-happy mode by trying to build everything in every cities. This is not optimal. For these ocean-loving hammer-poor trade cities, I would say library/university or market/bank, trade-boosting wonders, and a courthouse could be all that you really need. Walls, temples, and cathedrals are nice to have, but they are not essential as long as you can protect these cities from cultural and military attacks from your opposition.

And oh yes, I forgot harbors. They are very important for sea-side cities for that extra food. More population means more power, and if you are really starving for hammers, you can also elect to put some of the city's population to tradesmen, thereby generating some hammers in the process.

[jn3895]

thanks a lot everybody, i'm starting to get the hang of it now.