Civ 5: How To Build a Spaceship & Win a Science Victory

Step 1: To build a spaceship, you must first complete the Apollo Program project, which is available after researching Rocketry.

Step 2: Next, you’ll need to build all of the spaceship (SS) parts:

Step 3: Lastly, the parts must be moved to your capital to assemble your spaceship.

Researching the Required Techs

The challenge with the Science Victory is in getting the required techs, which are all at the end game.

You’ll want to optimize your civ for generating lots of science.

It’s also generally better to play tall than wide. That’s because you gain +1 science per citizen, but get a compounding +5% tech cost per city.

You should limit your civ to just 4–6 cities. Focus on growth rather than expansion.

City Placement

Try to have a city next to a mountain and near jungles.

1. If they’re next to mountains, they can build observatories. Those provide a massive +50% science output boost.
2. For jungles, those become relevant after researching Education. Your city will be able to build a university, which have these benefits:
   • +2 science from jungles
   • 2 scientist slots with each generating +3 science
   • +33% science in the city

Combining these two features can easily turn your city into a scientific powerhouse.

If you can find that perfect spot and settle on it, prioritize transferring food into that city using caravans or cargo ships. Encourage its growth so you can quickly take advantage of its placement.

Social Policies

For a Science Victory, consider taking these social policy trees:

• Tradition
  • It promotes growth in all your cities and provides free monuments and aqueducts for your first four cities.
  • Completing it allows you to buy Great Engineers with faith starting in the Industrial Era. They’ll be useful later if you choose the Order ideology.
• Piety
  • You can dabble in Piety while other options aren’t available yet.
  • It improves your faith income, which you can use to purchase Great People.
  • In harder difficulties or competitive multiplayer, Piety may be necessary to unlock a belief first.
• Commerce
  • Your capital gets a +25% gold bonus.
  • Its “Mercantilism” policy has these benefits:
    • -25% purchase cost of units and buildings
    • +1 science for every mint, market, bank, and stock exchange
  • It pairs well with the Freedom ideology, which lets you buy SS parts with gold.
• Rationalism
  • It grants an empire-wide >+10% science> bonus if you have positive happiness.
  • It boosts the science bonuses of specialists, universities, and research agreements.
  • Trading posts now have a >+1 science> yield. Build them on top of jungles to further increase their science output.
  • Completing it allows you to buy Great Scientists with faith starting in the Industrial Era.

Great Scientists

Spawning Great Scientists

Aside from purchasing them with faith, Great Scientists appear when a city has accumulated enough Great Scientist Points (GSP).

Your first Great Scientist will spawn at 100 GSP. Every succeeding one will double the required amount.

GSPs are generated by “scientist” specialists, with each one contributing +3 GSP. You can get scientist slots from these buildings:

You can get a stackable +25% GSP gain from each of these buildings:

Using Great Scientists

Great Scientists can be used to do two things:

• Boost Science – You immediately receive a large amount of science, which usually finishes your current research.
• Create an Academy – Academies are tile improvements with a +8 science yield.

It’s smarter to create academies in the early game, as you’ll get the most of their output.

Boost science becomes more viable in the end game. You’ll want the quick science bursts to get the final techs.

Building the Spaceship Parts

Each SS part costs 1 aluminum and 1500 production to build. This takes at least 20 turns in a modern city with 70–80 production output.

Because of that, you should build parts in separate cities to speed up this process.

You’ll also want to build these two buildings with stackable production modifiers:

Ideologies

Like their real-life counterparts, Freedom and Order are the two ideologies best suited for the space race.

They both have a Level 3 Tenet that makes it easier to obtain an SS part.

You can choose either one depending on how you’ve built up your civ.

• If your gold income is off the charts, pick Freedom.
• Choose Order if you have better production, faith income, or point generation for Great Engineers.

Lastly, each of them has their own Steam achievement for winning a Science Victory.