I got there in the 1770s, but on a small map. It was a Lot harder than I thought it'd be. I used an SSC which got to about 35 pop, and about 30 size-8s. I think you could maybe get back to around 1750 if you were willing to be Really careful about it. A fair amount of luck is needed too IMO, especially in getting good land with rivers etc. The two most important things I found were to have all the smaller cities have caravans to the SSC (which more than doubles their trade with all 3 caravans) and to establish good defensible boundaries with the other civs early. If someone can do it before 1700, I want to a) shake their hand; and b) hear how!

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Mark Everson
Project lead for The Clash of Civilizations
(That means I do the things nobody else wants to do ;-) )
This Radically different civ game needs your suggestions and/or criticism of our design.
Check our our Forum right here at Apolyton...

I've just abandoned a game I've been playing for a month, after discovering Automobile in 1600 and realizing I still had a long way to go.

It took me Lots of tries. Maybe 30 games I just pitched because the terrain was lousy. Then I played at least 4 or so to the point where it was clear I wouldn't do it by 1800.
And to be perfectly honest, I Actually landed in 1783 because I Forgot Fusion was neccessary for a Fast ship until after Launch . (In my defence I don't generally have the patience for a spaceship win, so this was like the 2nd ship I ever built.) So I said late 1770s, 'cause that's what I think I could've gotten if I hadn't choked at the end. IIRC I lost about 6 years of transit time due to no Fusion. So if I had caught it earlier it would've been 1777 or so. I can't remember if I overshot the absolutely required techs or not. So it could've been as late as 1779. I was so sick of the concept that I didn't want to redo it to see what the real date was...

So don't feel too bad

BTW I think I may have figured out a trick that might enable launching somewhat earlier, say around 1750. It has to do with the variable tech rate that exists on deity. If you are a bit ahead in tech you get socked with a +1 to the 'tech paradigm' if the book can be trusted. That's something like a 7-10% hit on your research effectiveness. So after the AIs quit trading, which is very early for my style of play, give all your tech away to everyone asap. Obviously if you're gonna build a wonder you need to keep That tech secret until you're done.

The thought is that this will take that looong stretch when you're getting a tech every 5-10 turns or so and juice it up a bit. If anyone tries this, let me know if it works.

Congratulations!

Anyone care to speculate on why this is so? My guess is:

1. Harder to get gifts from AI when you have more cities. (AI more likely to give/trade tech when it thinks you are weak).

2. Harder to stay at peace when AI sees you as strong.

3. As Paul has shown, you can take a more streamlined approach with only 1 city - no need for happiness wonders/improvements with ST in your 1 city; no need for Hoover, etc.

One issue is mainly is whether the greater opportunity for trade caravans is outweighed by the need for happiness items. Another issue is the size of the map and the geography. Early landing dates are easier with a small map but the drawback is that there is usually only one continent. That means the payback from caravans is much less. If someone had a small map with multiple continents it might be ideal for an extremely early landing.

Perhaps the ideal isn't to have just a few cities along with your super science cities, but rather a super science city + ICS approach, where all of your other cities are small enough to be kept happy with Mike's and JSB, and therefore need neither luxuries nor city improvements. But the higher you are on the power graph the more you will be penalized in beaker costs for advances, and it would likely take a lot of size 4 or 5 cities with no improvements to make up for the difference.

So you're not just a conquest guru now, eh?

Communism the whole game? Incredible.

Could you please send me the log (no saves)? My email address is in my profile.

1) Repeating trade commodities. Trade was seriously messed up in this game - Berlin kept demanding Beads for most of the game, although I sent them several Beads caravans. I rush-built one caravan per year for a span of about 200 years, for bonuses of 200-600 (mostly on the low end of that range). Roughly a break-even proposition in gold, but certainly a boost to my science.

2) Late-game warriors. I had several cities building warriors right up to the point when I traded for Feudalism. All of these were upgraded to musketeers or riflemen, at a low, low original price.

No, I didn't use caravan rehoming - I'm sure I could have trimmed a bunch of years off the final result that way. Most of my science really came from arrows - once I had my science city at size 36, it was generating 800 beakers/turn, even under communism (Einstein doesn't care what type of government he's working for). I never reached one turn/advance, but stayed at two turns/advance until I discovered flight. I gave away lots of techs to the AIs and traded with them for some key techs.

Sorry for not making myself clear. I *did* use caravans for trade, but only ones I built in my capital. And I built lots more than I was entitled to, because of repeating commodities. There were several times where a caravan made the difference between an advance coming in two turns or three turns, and a few times where I picked up an advance in one turn with caravan help.

Game options were small map, Deity, raging, 7 civs.