How to get into the modern era super early

This guide will show you how to get into the modern era as soon as possible and if you are lucky win a space victory by the 1600-1700's (like I did on a multiplayer match)

Who to play as and Ideal starting position

When I say super early it can mean many things, for example super early could be 1600's or it could be 1000's. If you want to get the 1000's then you probably want to go as pachacuti. Why? He overall is a strong character with his terrace farms and slingers, which will help you defend easily. If you read my other guide you may have seen that I am a fan of this guy. And his ability will almost make sure you never go bankrupt, and will ensure alot of gold.
Great Andean Road:
Units ignore terrain costs when moving into any tile with Hills
this will make moving workers around your terratory godly
No maintenance costs for improvements in Hills; half cost elsewhere
Are you reading this?! You will be the richest guy on the map



Thats just some proof that i have got the space victory

Pachacuti is a good enough character but then when you find out that he has a hills bias, thats just AWESOME! This will allow you to build observatorys in any city 1 tile within a mountain (An observatory boosts science by 50% in the city) and when you mix that with all your universitys and public schools, and its just godly for science.

Ideal starting position
You want to have your capital by a river and by a mountain. Thats not too hard because of his starting bias but its still pretty rare to get a mountain by the capital.
The rivers will help with the food and the mountain will let you build your observatorys and terrace farms which will give alot of food

Social policys and Ideologys

Social Policies:
Tradition (full)

Rationalism (full -- go down left-side first to +50% science for the reserch agreement boosts if you cant complete the full policy)

Order or Freedom, whichever most people in the world have. If you're first, try freedom.
If you are getting alot of gold per turn and have a large stash and huge cities then go for Freedom
If your cities arnt so big and you arnt getting loads of money, go for order because of the 25% science boost from factories

If you have really high culture and finish every science policy off in the other 2 trees, dip into Patronage for the +25% science from City-States you're allied with

Tradition grows your citys HUGE.This will make your capital very large early game and you a wonder making machine whilst having very high hapiness and about 3-4 cities
Rationalism gives alot of additional Science. With the Porcelain Tower and Rationalism, your research agreements will get a +100% boost. Get research agreements with 1 civ and if you have these 2 things you are doubling it in effectiveness
sothycansuckmydick

What happens if i have a spare social policy but cant unlock rationalism?
Well thats a tricky sitiuation, hopefully when you start tick the "allow social policy saving", because then when Tradition is complete you can just store them until rationalism. But if you havnt go for patronage and try to get as many as those as you can because by the time the world council comes around they will not want your sciences funding and will vote it down because you should be so far ahead, so having a few allys will help, But asap get rationalism.

Build order and Tech order

You want to build a monument first of all, dont bother with scouts, because your warrior should have no movement costs in hills which is your starting bias so you should be able to scout enough ground.Then since you have a hills and mountain bias, if you are on a hill, start building a worker, if you arnt get a granary. This is because being ontop of a hill will give some extra production and you will be able to complete a monument before you finish pottery. Then a granary then make a library, then a buy a settler and build a worker or vice versa.
Settle this settler next to a mountain and hopefully by a river. This shouldnt be too hard because your bias will make sure that there are mountains around.

Or my advice if you are playing on difficulty 6 or lower, go for the hanging gardens, it will help alot, so dont question it. Just get it. For the food growth

Tech:
Pottery
writing
To construction
To mathermatics (for hanging gardens)
calendar
Philisophy
Strait to education

Build 2 more settlers (dosnt have to be the same time) and settle them in similar places, dont worry if they are by a mountain but there are no luxarys, its going to be okay.

From education
Get astronomy and build observatorys, you should have 4 cities by this point and have alot of money ready to buy observatorys and universities
Make universitys in all your cities then oxford university and use the free tech on the thing which requires the most time
Then tech strait to scientific theory and make public schools
Then tech to plastics and build reserch labs (remember whenever you have spare gold buy these science buildings in the order you built your cites, so capital, city 2, city 3, city 4.
Then get penicillin so you can build medical labs which will give lots of food to your city, then to
Rocketry for the apollo program
Then to satellites, and from there build the hubble space telescope ASAP
From there tech strait to all the spaceship parts

Diplomacy and Reserch agreements

Make sure you have a military thats good enough to defend from invaders but not so large that you lose alot of gold from it or it delays the build order.

By the time you have education make lots of friends with the AI so you that can sign reserch agreements.

Reserch agreements are KEY to this strategy. Without them you will never win on deity, if you are playing on 7 or less you can but it would be significantly harder. you want to be friends with everyone and D.O.F them. If they are guarded or hostile against you or surrounding your city then give them gpt or a good deal that they need. If you are giving them 20gpt and 2 lux, they won't declare warl! And if they do then you will get your items back, so not such a bad deal.

Anyway once you have made friends with as many people as possible you should have been saving gold from the early game and you should make lots of reserch agreements, don't lose out on them because the ai will make loads of them.

Get your neighbors to DoW each other, pay whatever they ask. Help the ai be hostile between AIs as early as possible, try every combination of DoW on every civ. Civs at war don't attack you, and spend resources on military that delay their Science and Cultural victories, this in turn helps you more then 30gpt.

Get embassies in every civ, trade frequently with all of them. If the "We've traded recently" doesn't show up, donate 5 gold per turn and 99% of the time it will hit bright green. You'll get a Declaration of Friendship offer quite soon after
When the World Congress comes, if you're not going to win the vote (or even if you are), vote your closest neighbor or someone you're 50/50 with diplomatically, and pick useless motions in the WC that will please everyone like the world fair or international games, BUT dont do both because you will never win and it will help the ai. I avoided "33% Great Scientist boost" even though it would have benefited me because 6/7 civs would have been angry, and the Research Agreements are more valuable
Some games, it can be a real pain trying to find Civs willing to DoW others, but many a time it's quite easy and very fruitful. A leading civ on Deity can win the AI a Science victory T280-T290 when left alone the entire game, while a leading civ at war can be delayed until T335-T340. With the money you have from 7-8 Trade Routes, you can easily afford to keep the entire world at war, while signing RAs with everyone (this is why a Coastal start is very, very important).

Tips and finishing off

What to do with great scientists
Always build accademys, never use them for the tech boost unless you are past plastics

When should you stop planting great scientists down and start using them for tech?
You should do this about when you have plastics unless you havnt got many academys then wait until you think its the right time

Micro-management
Always put your city on food focus unless building the 2 essential wonders(porcelen tower and hubble telescope) or building spaceship parts when the game is almost over
Other than that, your #1 priority is to grow your city, as high as you can get. Buy or build the Medical Lab and Hospital to get the large food bonus. You get a free aqueduct completing Tradition. Ally or Friend Maritime City-States (+2 food if friend, +3 if ally in the Capital.) Put work boats on fish tiles (Don't forget to buy the Lighthouse and Seaport for extra hammers/money on water tiles.)
specialists in all 4 Science slots (University, Research Lab, Public School)
then production ones (Workshop, Factory, Windmill) afterwards to get a Great Engineer to rush Hubble.
Eventually you'll want to fill every specialist slot available for the +5 science per specialist you'll eventually get (that +5 is worth about 16 science with % modifiers)

Spys
Briefly never put them in enemy cities because they will get annoyed and you want to play this diplomatically, you want to put them in city states. Put them in this order
Cultural and Maritime C-Ss, others are a waste of time, if you are at war then maybe ally with some militaristic city states
Later on plant a few in civs just to get intrigue and see which wonders they're building. I then share the intrigue with the civ being plotted against and get a huge diplo bonus. This will help even more with the RA

Buying tiles
early on thisis extremely important! Save all your money for this purpose (and RA). Deity AI are HUGE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥S and plant cities all around you and steal all of the luxarys you were expanding towards and stop your expansion. You need those tiles to grow, drop Great Scientists as Academies, for production, etc.
Important: buy in large chunks. Get tiles AI would naturally expand towards soonest, try to get 3-4 in one go, because the AI will likely ask you to stop buying tiles (to which you respond politely :)), preventing you from buying for... 30 turns I believe? You'll get a message saying you kept your promise around 30 turns later, then you can buy another swath. This gives a good diplo bonus

Some nice tips
A trick you can't use is the "Once you have 200 gold and at least 5pgt get a 112 gold per 5gpt loan and buy a worker" since you can't trade lump sums without being Friends, so this isn't as useful early on , but can still be done eventually.
You can still trade your luxuries (since you're OCC you can sell most, if not all of them and remain happy), sell them to friends for 240, or if you're desperate and don't have friends sell them for 6gpt, or 5gpt if they won't accept.

Religion
Religion sucks. I hate it, if you dont get one its good. If you are in a jungle, you can get a pantheon to get the jungle culture one, but otherwise religion isnt that good
Moreover, you get a nice diplo bonus when your neighbor comes over and "converts" you to their religion :D


Thanks for reading my guide, and please comment if this guide helped you, and if it didnt what I could do better :)
Feel free to ask any questions and please rate this guide as you see fit :)

[C C]

Religion does not suck, with the amount of happiness and gold you can get from it especially. Not to mention culture. What sucks is dealing with the nuisances of it.

[perilous]

While this route works well towards a Scientific Victory, you are not likely to accomplish that anywhere close to AD1600. The OP did that in a multiplayer game where his opponent(s) skills are suspect and so may have been left unchecked in areas the game's AI would not have allowed.

[シ Scout [NZ]]

'Strait to education' - the fucking irony

[Stayin Alive]

wow, reading this makes me feel so old

[Ultra-Violent Radiation]

If a city-state is nearby and you haven't met anyone, you could quickly declare war, snag their worker, and peace out.

[Shortylax]

science win at year 1600-1700...
id like to see that even if played vs AI on Prince diff.
science win at year 1850 is pretty normal if u focus on science with any civ exept Venice and decent start lands.
"religion sucks" is just plain bad opinion
Inca is my favourite too. That petra hills with terace farms are broken.

[Closet Deadpooler]

This definitely didn't get a victory by the 1000's. I followed the guide literally step by step and only got to atomic age by the 1800's.

[comicconcarne]

Since you're playing diplomatically and being friendly with everyone, if you do get religion be sure to spread it. As someone else said, use the tithe upgrade to get a big gold bonus each time *any* city converts.

[Scarlet E.]

You keep saying some numbers likle 280-290 turns, X gold for worker etc.... but NONE of these numbers check out for me, as I always play on Marathon speed.

You didn't wrote something as simple as telling the readers what game speed do you play on (which would make sense, if you give some exact numbers of turns or gold vs gpt ratio trade advices).

So.... what game speed is this guide for? ;-)

[R2T2]

Your guide is very complete for Pachacutec, I´ll follow it the most that I can and promise to give feedback upon my progress. You may know I´m native from Peru and so was Pachacutec, this gives me a lot of enthusiasm, I apologize for my English and would appreciate it very much for any further advice. Thanks for sharing this guide.