Jesus and an astronaut walk into a bar. No, this isn’t the start of some morally offensive joke. No, this is just something that may have happened in the world recently created by an amazingly creative player in a game of Civilization IV.

WastinTime (his screen name, and clearly not what he did in the game) managed to get a space victory in the game, having launched his rocket in 210 BC. The things required to accomplish this are just crazy and he managed through some interesting methods of taking advantage of some of the mechanics of the game…At least I think so. I’ll be honest, reading through his guide was more confusing that sitting through your uncle Bill’s conspiracy theories on the “faked” Moon landing. Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself.

OPERATION: Wonder Bread

OPERATION: Strike

From what it looks like, he devised a method to game the system, to generate gold faster and sought to spend it all on what was needed before deductions were made by the mechanics and he had to pay upkeep costs. He would work on world wonders simultaneously in multiple cities, and fail to produce them. Either before one of his other cities, or best-case scenario an opponent’s city, as all the work produced towards the world wonder would be refunded as gold.

While this is by no means the quickest space victory (discussions on Reddit boards talk of common early 200s turn victories), the ingenuity and dedication to pull this off in the manner that he did is inspiring in its own way.