Do you build academies or research a technology with your Great Scientists?

3 Academies, generally academies upto industrial. You need some high base science yields early on they help with RA's and getting you to public schools/research labs faster. Save all others for late game bulbing.

I'd echo what a few others have said:

As Babylon, the free GS from the UA should become an Academy.

As Korea, any GS you can get prior to the Renaissance really should become an Academy. After that point, I'm not sure on the math, but it would likely depend on how long you expect the game to last at that point.

As Mayans, taking a free GS early enough from the UA is viable for planting as an Academy.

In general, any GS you get very early (if you were to pick one from Liberty Closer rather than take a GE, for example) is one you should make an Academy with. By a certain point in the game, it's going to become a better use to bulb techs with them.

It really depends on everything for me - The longterm gain is obviously better if you plant them early, whereas you'll start using the quick gain during the later eras more, when you'll be less likely to gain as much advantage with long term strategies.

However, if I'm racing my way to certain technologies for whatever reason (especially for wonders), I still often use the quick gain when it truly matters to me.

Yep, early academies are a relatively large increase of one's teching speed - if you're making 40 beakers a turn, a +8 academy is, ignoring any other modifiers, a 20% increase! They also scale fairly well by being boosted by atomic theory and all the city's science modifiers like NC.

Later on, however, there is a point where bulbs produce more raw science than an Academy would during the remaining turns. The bulb would at this point be a no-brainer, but even before that it's beneficial to bulb as early gains are far superior to long-term trickle.

Playing a LOT of Emperor level BNW games, for non-Domination games I will ALWAYS Academy my first GS. For Science games, I will ALWAYS Academy my second GS.

For Cultural games, I did a lot of number crunching and believe (at least on Emperor with my current strat) that it is better to save the second GS for a later bulb, but the Math is pretty close either way. Depends a lot on your Civ and the type of game you are having.

For a Diplo game, I think I would also Academy my second GS as well.

Once again this is for BNW Emperor only and probably does not apply to most difficulty levels.

I never build academies mainly because I would hate to "bulldoze" it when a valuable resoruce (like oil, aluminium, uranium) appear on that tile later on.

BranjoHello, there's only one resource you'd have to demolish it for and that's antiquity site.

Unless you're trying to reach a specific tech quickly it is NOT worth it to bulb them early game. 8 turns worth of beakers vs 8 beakers per turn for the rest of the game is a no brainer, really. Now, once you're producing over 100 beakers per turn it's probably not worth it anymore, though that's an educated guess and not based on calculation.