What techs do you generally bulb with scientists for SV?

I had about 4 sitting around and I was never sure on which ones to actually bulb for.

I generally look to bulb or build Oxford for Scientific theory, Radio, and Plastics. After that, I'll go for Apollo/Satellites with about 3-4. Maybe leaving 1-2 for after. After Apollo and Hubble are finished you end up with 2 more and I'll bulb to the missile tech for rocket boosters. Then bulb for factories and the space ship part after that (?), then lastly I go up top to bulb to the last space ship part. Many of the last GS come from faith purchasing. I might also decide to buy an engineer or 2 if I'm going with Order if I appear to be teching faster than I'm building parts.

The trick at the end is to not save too many GS after Apollo is built so that you don't finish teching before the parts are built. Burning them to get to Apollo sooner gives you more time to build while you tech. I go for the missile/rocket boosters before factories, because it gives you 3 parts to build at once, so you can get started, and save gold to buy factories once you bulb for them after the rocket boosters.

yeah, I play Mayans almost exclusively, so the order track + engineer with faith is easy to achieve for the last one. So you bulb most going for Apollo/satellites? I like your track though, I will try it next game. What is your normal science production at this time?

I'm not really certain, but I'd guess that near Apollo, I'm at ~1300 bpt. Perhaps in the 1200's. Looking at my finishes, I seem to have between 1300-1500 at the end of the game.

As far as the bulbing to Apollo goes, you will want to evaluate what works for you. If you find yourself waiting on finishing parts after you already teched everything you need, you need to start bulbing to Apollo sooner than you are currently. If you find yourself waiting on tech's after finishing all the parts you can, you are bulbing too soon. Remember to figure in faith purchases when you start bulbing.

Since you're going with Order, you might want to get some Engineers as well to shave off a few turns building the parts.

I normally tend to plant my GS up to Public Schools, save my GS between Public Schools and Research Labs and then bulb all of them 8 turns after Research Labs. I normally have 3 planted and 4 saved up by this point, sometimes getting another one from faith. It means I can normally bulb pretty close to Satellites, which of course means I'd get another couple of GS from the Hubble Telescope which I use instantly.

Order : Like rawrtrav.
Liberty : I plant academies until Plastics. Then save them until I reach Penicilin/Atomic theory (2 or 3) to reach satellites. Hubble and Faith ones after Apollo is done and last natural GS is born (I wait for him before finishing Hubble and faith buy others).

I choose my ideology mainly if I have coal (order) or not (Liberty). And if I'm not on Deity (it's pretty hard to sustain Liberty on Deity). I search after Electricity after Public School, build Oxford during industrialization, end Oxford and reach Radio when I know where is coal.
An exception is Poland. Like Cromagnus suggest, I tend to build 3 factory before choosing Order. To save a policy. If no coal, I lost an ideology tenet. Not important, Liberty needs less tenets for SV than order.

Why does it matter? Given you do not waste any science on getting techs too early via bulbing and you bulb a tech that you would get anyway, it shouldn't matter when you bulb.

If you have to spend 1000 "units" on science, it wouldn't matter if you skip 500-550 or 750-800, regardless of the techs.

Given the bulbing gains you a fixed amount of science, regardless of the tech you are bulbing. Following this idea it would be best to bulb as soon as the techs become expensive enough to not waste any science.

DocRock said:

Why does it matter? Given you do not waste any science on getting techs too early via bulbing and you bulb a tech that you would get anyway, it shouldn't matter when you bulb.

If you have to spend 1000 "units" on science, it wouldn't matter if you skip 500-550 or 750-800, regardless of the techs.

Given the bulbing gains you a fixed amount of science, regardless of the tech you are bulbing. Following this idea it would be best to bulb as soon as the techs become expensive enough to not waste any science.

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When you bulb, you get an amount of science based on your beakers per turn at the time you use it. The later in the game you are, the more beakers per turn you make. So you generally want to wait as much as you can before using them. However, using them to get to science making technologies can also speed up how long it takes to make more beakers per turn, so it is also quite useful to use them to get those science making techs. And lastly, you want to give your self time to make spaceship parts before you finishing getting every tech, so you don't want to waste GS's to get to your last tech before you are capable of finishing the space ship parts, so timing when they are used is important.

Uzael36 said:

When you bulb, you get an amount of science based on your beakers per turn at the time you use it. The later in the game you are, the more beakers per turn you make. So you generally want to wait as much as you can before using them. However, using them to get to science making technologies can also speed up how long it takes to make more beakers per turn, so it is also quite useful to use them to get those science making techs. And lastly, you want to give your self time to make spaceship parts before you finishing getting every tech, so you don't want to waste GS's to get to your last tech before you are capable of finishing the space ship parts, so timing when they are used is important.

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I thought they changed this in BNW, I thought when the scientist spawns his bulb power is permanently at that point (so if you have 800 beakers, that GS bulb power will always scale off of that, and not what every you decide to bulb it at).

Heart Break Kid said:

I thought they changed this in BNW, I thought when the scientist spawns his bulb power is permanently at that point (so if you have 800 beakers, that GS bulb power will always scale off of that, and not what every you decide to bulb it at).

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If they did, they changed it back.

Uzael36 said:

If they did, they changed it back.

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Holy Crap! I didn't know that, I've been burning them immediately if I was planning on it! So good to know!

You're telling me if I'm gonna bulb I should put all my cities on research and run all science specialists and I get free extra bulb power. Then I can just change it all back? That seems exploitive but okay I guess...

Or is it a running average? I'm pretty sure they took out the "only consider this turn" part of the power. Like, it might now be a running average of the past 20 turns or something...that would make more sense.

danaphanous said:

Holy Crap! I didn't know that, I've been burning them immediately if I was planning on it! So good to know!

You're telling me if I'm gonna bulb I should put all my cities on research and run all science specialists and I get free extra bulb power. Then I can just change it all back? That seems exploitive but okay I guess...

Or is it a running average? I'm pretty sure they took out the "only consider this turn" part of the power. Like, it might now be a running average of the past 20 turns or something...that would make more sense.

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It's a running average. It works based on the last 8 turns, which is why a lot of people wait until 8 turns after you've got your Research Labs built as that's the optimal time to bulb them

Usual strategy is to bulb late like most people. I might however bulb into scientific theory (if it means Ill get my schools up in a more convenient window than if I waited to tech it manually), I might bulb into plastics (same reason) and I also may use one scientist on the fertiliser line (if my land really needs it)

danaphanous said:

You're telling me if I'm gonna bulb I should put all my cities on research and run all science specialists and I get free extra bulb power. Then I can just change it all back? That seems exploitive but okay I guess...

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Great writers work on the same way.