How to get science in a tall empire

I have never (what I can recall) got a city to grow as big as 20, I remember once one of my cities growing to about 17. And with specialists, it would be even harder to grow that big cities.


Well, I start putting specialist to work at pop 10. It does not hinder my growth.

Let's discuss workers and what you have them doing. You must have at minimum one worker per city. In jungle heavy cities, it would not hurt you to have 2.

Happy resources 1st obviously, which I am sure you know. Get a few hammer tiles next, than go all out on farms.

Also, when going tall you must, must!! Get Rationalism!! As soon as this tree opens, start filling it out.
 
Are you putting off infrastructure for wonders?

Nah... I usually only have a chance on the early wonders because all of the wonders usually are built when I have researched the prerequisite tech. I usually putt off infrastructure for buildings in my cities though. But that dosen't matter because I most often play Carthage and build costal cities only.
 
Well, I start putting specialist to work at pop 10. It does not hinder my growth.

Let's discuss workers and what you have them doing. You must have at minimum one worker per city. In jungle heavy cities, it would not hurt you to have 2.

Happy resources 1st obviously, which I am sure you know. Get a few hammer tiles next, than go all out on farms.

Also, when going tall you must, must!! Get Rationalism!! As soon as this tree opens, start filling it out.

Good advice, thanks. I think that I need more workers then, I always seem to prioritize happiness buildings like colloseum because unhappiness is a menace.
By the way, I liked you in Stephen King's "The stand"
 
I have never (what I can recall) got a city to grow as big as 20, I remember once one of my cities growing to about 17. And with specialists, it would be even harder to grow that big cities.

If that is the case, I suspect you are either not prioritizing farms or staying on production focus WAY too long. Remember, the key to population growth is food, food, and more food. Did I mention food? More food. If your citizens aren't working food tiles (generating as much food surplus as you can), your cities are going to remain badly undersized.

In addition to farms, and granaries and water mills, and Civil Service as early as you can get there (it's required for Education, which you want early as possible), BNW allows food caravans and cargo ships to supply food to any of your cities, as long as the sending city has a granary. Early on, when your only international trade routes may be to CSs that will provide only 1 or 2 gpt, setting up an internal caravan trade route to send 4 food to your capital (or from your capital to a secondary city) can be very helpful. Among other things, that food may allow you to devote one citizen to working, e.g., a gold mined hill, generating hammers and more gold than the CS trade route would have generated, without sacrificing growth.
 
If that is the case, I suspect you are either not prioritizing farms or staying on production focus WAY too long. Remember, the key to population growth is food, food, and more food. Did I mention food? More food. If your citizens aren't working food tiles (generating as much food surplus as you can), your cities are going to remain badly undersized.

In addition to farms, and granaries and water mills, and Civil Service as early as you can get there (it's required for Education, which you want early as possible), BNW allows food caravans and cargo ships to supply food to any of your cities, as long as the sending city has a granary. Early on, when your only international trade routes may be to CSs that will provide only 1 or 2 gpt, setting up an internal caravan trade route to send 4 food to your capital (or from your capital to a secondary city) can be very helpful. Among other things, that food may allow you to devote one citizen to working, e.g., a gold mined hill, generating hammers and more gold than the CS trade route would have generated, without sacrificing growth.

Yup, seems that I have shun from food focus because all the unhappiness it produces, good tip with the internal caravans, that should be good.
 
Uh, the internal trade route causes growth. If you have problems with unhappiness and want to restrict your growth because of that, why use the caravan either.
 
Uh, the internal trade route causes growth. If you have problems with unhappiness and want to restrict your growth because of that, why use the caravan either.

As you said before, I must have bigger cities, especially the capital it seems (because of the policy that give hapiness from a large capital). So my problem can't be a lot of food, it has to be that I must get more happiness somehow :)
 
I'm more interrested in how to improve research in a wide civilization. At this point he game is very inviting to a playstyle with 4 cities and tradition, because tradition gives quite good bonusses that are important early on, happyness is also limited early on, settlers are costly to build. Tradition is very good for varied reasons, growth, wonders and happyness.

Yet, consider though that at some point in the game, youre probably sitting there with 4 well developed city's and actually plenty of happyness, and while it would cost you indeed 5% more techcost for an added city, add actually 4 city's that grow to roughly the same size and the others and youll probably have almost doubled youre science for a far smaller penalty, even if youre capital is still doing more than other city's. One can have plenty of excess hapyness by the indusrial age, at which point it would actually be better to have something like 10 city's, but it's not like youre going to have so many beautifull settling options by then than possibly at game start. You could try to conquer the city's, but that scenario has its own implications. Having virgin land to settle in by the industrial age would be very optimal though, especially if it comes with still extra luxury's if asside for hapyness also for the resource diversity, but i guess by the industrial age most empire's can support 6 to 8 city's in happyness depending how much hapyness buildings they can gather, and i'm pretty sure that before 10 city's those added city's can still add to technological speed rather than impair it provided good growth, so actually you probably should try to grow to something like 8 city's.

I too have been looking at things that can aid me with an early wide empire. There are logical things youd probably need, like enough variation of luxury's, lots of workers to turn the land productive fast. A first thing that sounds to me as a very handy bonus is the pantheon belief messenger of the gods, which gives +2 additional science for each city connected to youre capital iirc. If we consider that one for ex grows to 8 city's early on rather than 4, then 7 city's connected to the capital give an additional 14 science i guess which can be modified by buildings. It would though take some time to build the roads, the city's must have grown to a point to make those roads profitable somewhat too, though one probably would have more gold trough a more varied resource diversity.

An bigger empire might actually also catch more trade routes created by other civs, there are more city's to send to and you get more scinece depending on how backward you are, and there are ways to make it more interresting for another civilization to send a trade route to you, so that seems worth some considerations, as in maybe adding caravanseray's might actually add science to youre civ. Afcourse the larger empire should really have the maximum amount of caravans running around too, every precious science will count. Science buildings in all city's is obvious, the national college even though it offers a very nice bonus for a 4 city nation with a powerfull capitali might actually impede expansion plans for the broad building empire and be of a lesser inpact if one didn't take tradition (no growth and hapiness bonus in capital) but rather Liberty for the bonus to building settlers and the speed at which workers can work.

Civilizations of interrest here might be Babylonians, The maya and Koreans. the Babylonians get an early free great scientist and double great scientist generation, not bad when you have an empire which will have more scientists slots possiblu due to more science buildings, whereas the korean specialists all produce an added 2 science whatever their type, that might be interresting depending how fast you can get a specialist building up, marketplaces cost no maintainance and are a good investment for money in my book, spend money to increase money, in the case of korea you could try to use youre larger empire to gain more gold, aim towards currency as a tech not to far away and then buy a market in every city and assign a specialist, then thats another 16 science for Korea (asside of a lot more gold) and currency is not that far in the tech tree. Consider then 8 city's, +14 sciency from messenger of gods with connected city's, + 16 science from specialists in markets by currency, thats +30 base science, not that bad as an addition to what youre making, might actually help quite a bit in making the gap much smaller, with the thought that later on youll have a far more advantagous position with all youre added poppulation. When as korea youve build all those marketplaces, you might as well build the east indian company too in some city with a caravanseray bordering many city's of other civilizations, as a magnet pole for science bringing caravans. The maya get an even better early building in their shrine which also produces 2 science, thats an quite early boost.

One question i have to ask, i guess the national college adds the science across the whole civilization? in that case she is as important as ever, although you need library's in all city's afcourse to build it so that won't be an easy one. That is what youre competing wioth though, civilizations who take tradition and build the national college very early in a fast growing capital can go up to quite a lot of science early, but time should eventually be on the side of the larger empire.
 
No quarrel with your thoughts, just a few reactions/corrections. NC only boosts science in the city where it is built, so that's the city where you want to plant academies and rush buy your science buildings first when you research them. Also Babylon's UA is a 50% boost to GS generation, not doubling (which would be +100%).
 
most of the time I beeline Education
back in G&K i could manage to rush education before T100 but not anymore in BNW:(
 
As you said before, I must have bigger cities, especially the capital it seems (because of the policy that give hapiness from a large capital). So my problem can't be a lot of food, it has to be that I must get more happiness somehow :)

But you said you were going to have to shun away from the food focus... now I'm confused.

Not that food focus is very good anyway, it automatically reassigns specialists to the fields most of the time even though you almost always want to keep some.
 
But you said you were going to have to shun away from the food focus... now I'm confused.

Not that food focus is very good anyway, it automatically reassigns specialists to the fields most of the time even though you almost always want to keep some.

I guess he means that his problem to get big cities was the hapiness not the food
 
I guess he means that his problem to get big cities was the hapiness not the food

If so, why use a caravan either? Population causes unhappiness whether the food comes from fields or a caravan. You either want to grow or not, and if you don't want to grow, you use neither beyond necessary to keep the city stagnant.
 
I'd recommend playing India to start off. The initial happiness speed bump for India to establish 4 cities is about what you would like for mid-game growing anyway so playing India will "train" you to get up that much happiness fast. After getting 4 cities, India's happiness boon means you can focus on food, food, and more food.

Sources of food:

Pantheon beliefs
Grasslands
Special resources (Cow, Deer, Wheat, Bananas)
Granaries
Caravans
Maritime City States
Wonders
Civil Service+Fresh Water
Buildings (Water Mill, Lighthouse)

Highly recommend turning tile yield icons on when selecting a city site so you can count apples when selecting a prospective site

If you're going for an early wonder, I would recommend HG over GL, but that's just me.
 
Playing India made it. Because of the halved unhappiness trait for population in cities, I could grow 4 large cities. I got an astounding 230 sience! at about midgame :)
 
Playing India made it. Because of the halved unhappiness trait for population in cities, I could grow 4 large cities. I got an astounding 230 sience! at about midgame :)

230 sience with 4 large cities? I do not want to disappoint you but that cities seem to be not that large...:D
 
4) Get policies faster with : Great artists/writers/musicians

5)Sign RAs <30 turns before Porcelaine Tower and 50% boost policy

6)Plant your gs until Scientific Theory

Here's a question: I generally try to save finishing Rationalism until the Information Era so I can get a really good tech out of it (my last culture game as Morocco had a research agreement timed with me finishing the Sydney Opera House so I got Telecommunications and Internet on the same turn, it was beautiful); unfortunately that leaves either Free Thought or Scientific Revolution unfinished. Could you give a rough guide to how many research agreements I should sign to make Scientific Revolution superior to the boosted Universities from Free Thought? Or should I just go ahead and finish Rationalism without trying to time it for an expensive tech?
 
Or should I just go ahead and finish Rationalism without trying to time it for an expensive tech?

I think that now it quite balanced - you can save it for high tech, or to open labs faster, or to take ideology faster.
 
I finally managed a good science game (on immortal):
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=166406576
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=166406134

I managed to settle 2 cities next to a mountain for observatories, built all science buildings, and run all 8 trade routes internally. Managed to grab tithe as the 5th religion (why doesn't the ai like that :confused:), which helps a lot with money issues. But more than anything else covered in this thread, what I found to be the most helpful to both growth and science outputs are these two Freedom tenets:
  • Civil Society: specialists only consume half food
  • Universal Suffrage: specialists only generate half unhappiness
These, coupled with Statue of liberty (+1 hammers per specialists) and the rationalism tree (+2 beakers), makes all of your specialists supermen. I'm running at least 10 of them in each city, it almost didn't matter which type. Each farm late game supports 3 additional specialists, which would give barely any unhappiness.

You can almost grow indefinitely with those, at least until all possible specialist slots in the game are gone lol. In fact, after getting the win I reloaded and continued to play that game to grab a couple other achievements, I think I got them all to size 38+ at the end.
 
I finally managed a good science game (on immortal):
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=166406576
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=166406134

I managed to settle 2 cities next to a mountain for observatories, built all science buildings, and run all 8 trade routes internally. Managed to grab tithe as the 5th religion (why doesn't the ai like that :confused:), which helps a lot with money issues. But more than anything else covered in this thread, what I found to be the most helpful to both growth and science outputs are these two Freedom tenets:
  • Civil Society: specialists only consume half food
  • Universal Suffrage: specialists only generate half unhappiness
These, coupled with Statue of liberty (+1 hammers per specialists) and the rationalism tree (+2 beakers), makes all of your specialists supermen. I'm running at least 10 of them in each city, it almost didn't matter which type. Each farm late game supports 3 additional specialists, which would give barely any unhappiness.

You can almost grow indefinitely with those, at least until all possible specialist slots in the game are gone lol. In fact, after getting the win I reloaded and continued to play that game to grab a couple other achievements, I think I got them all to size 38+ at the end.

This is impressive. Turn 254 on Immortal diff and already building SS parts, 8 turns from WL election, making 166 Gpt without external trade routes (not a single one ? Ever ?), having managed to contaminate your continent with your religion, and last but not least making 1200+ beakers per turn. On Immortal I can make 1200+ beakers too with my four cities, but on turn 350, not 250 :lol:

The earliest victories I was able to achieve so far were a diplo win on turn 327 (Immortal) and a space win on turn 348 (Emperor), I really need to focus a lot more on science and specialists... Anyway thanks for the thoughts guys.
 
Top Bottom