r/civrev • u/maiqth3liar333 • 1d ago
I won an economic victory as the Zulus without producing any science
I’m not sure if this has been done before but I’ve seen a handful of challenge runs and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.
TLDR: Deity, no walk-in, no cheese/exploits. No science produced the whole game, I had my cities on gold from turn 1. I had to buy all my techs from the enemy civs along with two that I got from great scientists. I had to play the whole game without alphabet, writing, literacy, steel, and flight.
I chose the Zulus because of the warrior movement, rapid city growth, and gold production bonuses. The strategy was basically to play normally but instead of researching the first few techs, I’d be buying them as soon as I hit 100 gold for the settler. This is super dependent on buying code of laws, and I got lucky that my game had the Romans. You could also build the great pyramid (or have Angkor Wat build it for you if you’re lucky) to enable a switch to republic. From there it’s settler spam to produce as many cities as possible while trying to control choke points to prevent the enemies from walking in on you.
In the middle game, you’re just waiting for the enemy civs to research important techs so you can buy them. This is super RNG in that they might not research what you need and you might at war with them preventing you from buying. In my game, I discovered the ark of the covenant for ~8 free temples which was really helpful, as the culture boost brought in two great humanitarians which I used for the +1 population to all cities.
Once the gold production gets to 75-100 per turn, it gets easy to get the first few economic progression tiers and rushing units and buildings becomes relatively cheap. I got to a point where I had built all the buildings I could and even all wonders available. You can turn aggressive if they sell you feudalism which will give you something to do during the middle portion.
Late game is mostly the same, but the gold production gets insane if they sell you banking at which point it’s too late to catch you. You never fall that far behind in tech because they’ll sell you most of what they research, sometimes the ones they just picked up.
I think a tech victory with no science production is possible, but you need them to sell you late technologies or well timed great scientists. I couldn’t do it because I wasn’t getting the great people I needed and once I hit 20k gold, the enemies would be in perpetual war with me to try to prevent the economic victory.
That’s the write up sorry it was so long. Has anyone else tried this challenge? Curious to know people’s thoughts and if my strategy could be better. The Zulus might not be the best, this was just my first attempt.