You can win the hardest difficulty in under 50 years, I can almost guarantee it. Based on 2.0.5 but most ideas should work in general.
Guide to Speedrun
The Whole Thing
You can definitely get a sub-20yr wonder 550% diety win. I did it with Emirates because in the current patch spice is a bit OP. Your enemy is always logistics and hunger.
Turn up the heat on world generation to high to reduce potential for cold deaths. I personally recommend less water for more arable land and large maps for less rerolling.
Start between two fertile zones, one of them with tulips for easy Middle Age. Make sure that a port is within 7 tiles because you’ll want a fishing colony (although seeing the ROI on deep ports in hindsight you can even start closer to the water to fish from capital)
On starting reduce the initial tools to 50 and stone down to 40ish as well, but get extra wood for farms and obviously food. If you’re doing emirates do a dry run to check how much clay you’ll need until a trader late in Y1
Plan out your grid in advance, land TH between the fertile zones so you’re not blocking any valuable land. Farming and toolmaking for woods bonuses.
I’m a fan of farming so first thing I do is immediately pop down the breeder to unlock farms and get people started on houses (turn wood off, it’s warm enough). Then immediately tiny 64 farms to get food (no need for tulips until you can comfortably sustain). You’ll take the farms down and upgrade to ones you can understaff later but in first year I found smaller farms to be worth it even if they get destroyed next year.
You should be able to get a comfy harvest in year 0 and can get started on fancy things after harvesting – like a tool workshop (one will last you long time, low upper limit like 50 and sustainability cards) I also had good returns on a hunting shack poison arrows with an paused unbuilt fruit gatherer. I 1-staffed it but YMMV.
Keep expanding farmland all winter every winter, cutting grass for fields takes longer than expected and make sure not to queue more fields than you’ve got wood for otherwise resource confusion.
Y1 you should have all the farmland you need for a small medicine field and tulips. Grab an immigration centre that you’ll toggle on/off depending on need and some storages right outside of your fertile zone. Tall farms work better, multiples of two columns preferred. There’s a check of “am I hungry” that only happens after 2 columns are serviced so they’ll keep going rather than ADHDing to eat. The best ROI I found is to get as close to a 2-person multiple of staffing (128, 256, etc) and half-staff it. Not going over the worker threshold is 1 less click!
Housing: I tuck my housing away in a corner, if there’s no heating people never go there unless they deliver luxuries which happens relatively rarely and can be done after farming is done. Leave room for library and school (2 houses worth of space, bank was never worth it for me).
Always be expanding farms; to get stone for trading post cancel all gathering and gather only stone for a hot second, from here on you’ll be buying stone because it takes so long to gather. Wood buying cards are great because they don’t charge import fees and are cheaper, plus don’t clog up your trading port.
TC>market for first research priorities. I’ve gone back and forth on this but putting down 10 blueprints to reduce trading fees is just too good, markers only work best if they have something to store. Finally no more manual juggling of trading!
Pottery with the pottery card is a massive boon to research speed at the start. Make your own pottery, buy a cannabis breeder, and your T1 is set with minimum work. Once you have a luxury importer (absolutely worth it) then just ship the pottery in. You won’t have the free pop for the advanced version, don’t even bother – 1 or 2 will be enough until you import it.
Tundra colony with no luxuries and only deep sea fishing = excellent ROI. Ship all food out, ship tools and medical herb in. I didn’t upgrade the ports but 1-staffed them and made 70 of them. This colony will need to do nothing else, and as long as there is a close storage to ports the logistics port will teleport literally thousands of fish every time it arrives. Don’t forget to put down a couple regular fishing ports to get the collective fishing card.
Find an industry with highest ROI per person (real, not perfect case they never get hungry). I rushed spices for retooling all those farms you have built up for massive $$ income. Like absolutely massive, a 2 man field will bring in 600+ of $30 crop. From here on everything you build will be ctrl-B, for me even including the monuments. Rivers are imho overrated because of all the walking they require, I bet some good innovation can be done with irrigation on this strat. Melons have a pretty good value and yield too, but they lag when hundreds of people constantly eat and still lower ROI.
Never waste science on anything that doesn’t get you where you need. Not using it? Bank it, there’s no limit. Farming research after you have everything you need in that age, etc. I didn’t get hand size upgrade until enlightenment, and wonders only when I can buy them outright.
Medicine was never worth the investment for me because herbs heal to 100% either way – but definitely worth building 4 of the advanced medical buildings to reduce sickness chance in all cities (0 staff but has to be built). Iron tools have bad ROI but with some sustainability cards you’ll have around might be worth it. Cheap to market buy.
If you’re having happiness issues build 4 advanced breweries, massive boost to food happiness. Same for zoo, getting a boar is easy and reduces hunger which is the main driver of your people never getting their work done. Ditto for other animal sets.
Buy all luxuries you need, each tier has 2x cheaper luxuries than others and luxury use is very small annually. I didn’t manufacture a single T3 luxury, all paid by massive spice farms on fertile soil.
Final Thoughts
Bookworm is great as a science card. I went communism, but both would work. No military cards. Quick-build all roads as well, but didn’t bother upgrading them. Quick-building farms is great way to clear soil of trees or debrie, I waited until farms done selling in winter and then quick-built more farms on fertile soil around. Lots of immigration centers, I tried the penal colony for children only strategy but they were actually useful in main town as science slaves and carrying spices. Bread is kinda meh compared to deep sea fishing without massive investment, same with high tier industries.
I never researched electricity before winning the game.
You can do it!
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