What's the easiest way to win Science victory?

[RobotParty]

I always end up hitting culture victory waaaaay earlier. I don't have any of the DLCs so not sure if any of them help with this but it honestly has to be the victory that requires the most work to accomplish?

[parent child bowl]

Science is the second slowest victory condition by design. It's normal that you win culture before science if you lean into culture.

Science is purely a yield game.

[grognardgary]

Easy would be to pick Hammurrabbits or my personal favorite gilgamesh. really anyone that gets you expansion bonuses or settler bonuses, then build lots of cities and lots of education districts and all the wonders you can that provide science bonuses.

[RobotParty]

I ask because I want to get the achievement for science victory and the game doesn't seem to give you achievements after you've already won, for obvious reasons

[EthanT]

Science is purely a +Science type victory, pure yield. You want as many cities as possible, each with science district, and ideally having tiles with +science if you can. Raw science output is how you win.

Hammurabi is the more advanced version if you are good at eurekas farming.

[plaguepenguin]

The basic structural difference between culture and science victories is that for culture you're playing against the other civs, while for science you're just running against the clock.

The lower the difficulty, the less competition you have for culture and tourism. You end up getting cultural dominance easily over civs that don't focus on all the things that get them domestic tourists. It's always the one or two that do all those things that get them domestic tourists that are the last to fall to your onslaught. Low difficulty means that this one or two aren't able to get very far in their tourism so you can overwhelm them also not too long after the easy prey fall victim. Their gain is your loss, and if they can't move forward easily, your path is easier.

For science victory, both you and the AI are running against the clock, not each other. However well any civ is doing in the space race, that doesn't help or hinder any other civ's progress towards the goal. Whoever gets to the end first wins, period. The only way the competition factors in is if they get there first, which should never happen on lower difficulty.

At higher difficulty, you can almost always get to a science victory first, if that's what you choose to focus on by the mid-game. There's a chance you won't get to any victory first,of course, because the AI is going to get both their tourism up there, and their exoplanet expedition launched, in way fewer turns than they would at Prince, because of their huge yield bonuses.

You could still win by science earlier than tourism at lower difficulty, by playing a less balanced game. You have the luxury of getting and staying ahead in everything at lower difficulty, so it's natural to play a balanced game that does that, keeps you ahead across the board. Stop doing that and focus campuses and industrial zones, plus every wonder, policy card, govt plaza building, suzerainty bonus, etc. that helps win science victory, and you'll get there quicker than to culture victory. Focusing for science victory, of course, means that you put all the things that help you win culture victory at a lower priority, because the game forces you to make trade-offs.

[Sstavix]

If all you're after is the achievement for the science victory, then you can use the advanced game setup options to set it up so that the ONLY victory condition is science. Then play a high-science leader (e.g. Hammurabi) and set the difficulty fairly low. You can even choose some of your opponents to be those that put little emphasis on science (like Phillip II, who always seems to go for a religious victory) and set the start of the game at a more advanced age (e.g. atomic) to speed things up.

[gdshore]

Another tip, as soon as possible after launch of your exo-planet mission build a couple of laser stations. They speed up your flight time, one game I played, I was getting close to end of flight, when 4 Ai's declared war on me. One turn from victory, I lost my capital, painful. So keep your army up two, in particular air force.

[RobotParty]

I don't have any of the DLC so I can't do the laser station. I think my best bet is indeed to Gilgamesh rush science and praise the big man's beard

[bwhitejr]

Vanilla science isn't too hard - if you know all the ways to generate science, and build your empire to support it. You can build science into your religion, you can build science boosting wonders, you can focus on scientific city states, etc - but science also requires production, and a LOT of it, so you'll need a solid production base, on top of a scientific one, so culture is less important, and skip religion. So civs like Freddy can be a good choice, because of how powerful he can be on production.
However, if you have confidence running a religion based game, Saladin is actually easy to get a scientific win, because of his unique building, the Madrasa, and that spreading your religion gives you more science, and makes it cheaper for neighbors you convert to build the Madrasa, which boosts your science even more. And, no need to rush to get a Great Prophet, as you get the last one no matter what. It's an interesting way to win a Scientific victory, and I had a lot of fun with it. I noticed I always ended up racing Saladin on science victories over time back before the DLCs came out, and I found out why, he's designed to be a scientific powerhouse, through religion.

[ACS36]

If you're winning a culture victory on accident it's because you're playing on prince or king, which are basically auto victories of all types as the AI puts up no resistance and barely does anything. Even emperor is very forgiving in terms of how long it takes the AI to win but at least then you wont be able to build every wonder in the game and do whatever you want since the AI will actually build and expand faster.

Play on emperor or above if your'e tired of winning culture victories on accident. You will not win a culture victory on accident on deity or immortal. As the AI has significant amount more cultural out put.

If you want to get a science victory on easy difficulties just don't build tourism at all. Anything that generates tourism, avoid it. The AI barely builds culture on king or lower so they can't defend against your tourism scores.

[Fluff Bunny]

Originally posted by RobotParty:

I always end up hitting culture victory waaaaay earlier. I don't have any of the DLCs so not sure if any of them help with this but it honestly has to be the victory that requires the most work to accomplish?

When you start a game, do the advanced game setup and unselect culture victory. That way you CAN'T win that way.

[RobotParty]

Update: I won with cleopatra so uh... that's a thing, lmao

[epicsimian]

Amazing how few people point out the production aspect of a science victory. Whenever I am going science I usually will pick my best production potential city around late Medieval period and as I'm going I try to set it up with Ruhr Valley and a lot of mines. A petra city can also work if you have the right terrain for it. Also, you can do both since you can split the production up over multiple cities, I just like to have 1 main 1 to do some of the heavier lifting.

This will really "launch" you into a science victory at late game but if you wait until you are already in the process of building space parts then it's already too late.

The other thing to do is protect your rocket building sites with spies because if you are ahead of the AI in a victory condition they'll try to sabotage your production.

Another option is to just disable the Cultural Victory Condition. I usually will do that for diplomatic victory condition because that is way too easy to get and usually results in not getting very far through the eras.