Great Scientist Academy Spam

madscientist

madscientist

RPC Supergenius
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I ahve always used GS for settling or bulbing, and 1 or maybe 2 academies.

In my recent Wang Kon game I had alot of cottaged, riverside cities so I decided that every GS would found an academy, starting with the most science and one down (I think I got 6 or 7). Between that and the UB I was rolling in beakers.

Anyone else done this, and does anyone think this is a valid strategy gin an average game. Or was this more of a unique situation thing? I will admit I was a little late in getting GSs as I did not have a good GP farm until Pacal graciously donated his capital to the Korean effort.
 
Well, for any commerce city with sufficient base beakers, an Academy is a great improvement. Basically you make a decision when you get a Great Scientist ...

you compare the relative strengths of ...
1. Settling
2. Academy
3. Bulbing
4. Golden Age (hate to waste GS on these, but it is possible for this to be the best)

The choice between settling and an Academy is usually pretty easy to make. A little simple math and you can see which is better (and you should take into account city growth and working more cottages)

The choice between settling/academy and bulbing is a little harder, but if you are the tech leader, bulbing is usually less attractive because usually most of the advantage of bulbing comes from trading the tech you bulb.

I can definitely see the possibility of games where 6 or 7 academies are very strong. I haven't had games with this many academies, but having 3 or 4 is not uncommon, and if you have that many strong commerce cities and enough production, 6 or 7 academies is great.
 
About Bulbing, that is what I always thought. I was chasing Musa in tech but went Academies anyway. The I hit a point where between the academies and UB I passed Musa lightning fast. He ended up giving up on science and turned the culture slider up. I'll probably still win the tech race before Musa out cultures me, but it made me reconsider the academy.

I had 4 primary cottage sities that were sitting on a long flood plains river, plus one off river horse city whch ended up being a decent HE city. Once I got US and levees the cottage cities production took off. The rest were Chinese and Mayan cities.
 
It's unlikely that your 6th best science city has the 50-100 base commerce (depending on civics and science slider) needed to beat a scientist settled in Oxford University.
 
It's not a unique situation, but it is certainly situational. You can also often capture a few academies from the core cities of opponents in the mid-game, which is more often my trajectory to 6-7 academies (together with building 3-4, as Xanadux says).
 
DaveMcW said:
It's unlikely that your 6th best science city has the 50-100 base commerce (depending on civics and science slider) needed to beat a scientist settled in Oxford University.
Click to expand...

True, but in the situation madscientist described with pretty late GSs, it is possible.

In response to mad's last post, a lot of games, it looks like the AI is running away in tech, but steadfast devotion to economy development can quickly take the day.

An example is the first Emperor game I won on Vanilla CIV4. It was my first try at a SE. I played with Saladin. I had an isolated start, and when I met the AI, several of them where about 5 techs ahead of me. I did my best to start a war between them, but failed, so I kept developing my Economy, running mass scientists in my SSC and settling all scientists there. It looked hopeless, but I kept playing, and it turned out that my tech rate was vastly superior to all the AI, and I easily won a space race victory with no war. Although this was a SE game and not CE, the lesson is the same ... a very strong science economy, be it SE or CE, often can overtake a large deficit in tech.
 
It looked hopeless, but I kept playing, and it turned out that my tech rate was vastly superior to all the AI, and I easily won a space race victory with no war
Click to expand...

SE economies are bizarre in vanilla for this reason -- you appear to be on the low end of the GNP spectrum when you look at the stats. screen, but you might have way more output than the other players. It can be hard to know where you actually stand.
 
DaveMcW said:
It's unlikely that your 6th best science city has the 50-100 base commerce (depending on civics and science slider) needed to beat a scientist settled in Oxford University.
Click to expand...

Yoy may be right on this, but it's close. I'll take a look at the save tonight but at 80% science slider without labs I had 7 cities with 100+ beakers.

I did build an academy in the water heavy Putal which was the GP farm and was running three scientists. Build an academy in Bejing whcih was half coast but had the Moari statues so I was working alot of 2 food, 1 hammer, 2 commerce tiles. Howver, both these cities had very good trade route income snce they were my best sea coast cities.
 
There is also another thing - those decisions sometimes on the map size: Playing Standard Size maps - DaveMcW is most probably right. On Large and especially Huge maps however the relative value of one Super City is lower - Oxford+Academy is still nice of course, but there are more strong cities, the techs need more beakers to reasearch and the AI has bigger empires to keep pace with.
 
Refar said:
There is also another thing - those decisions sometimes on the map size: Playing Standard Size maps - DaveMcW is most probably right. On Large and especially Huge maps however the relative value of one Super City is lower - Oxford+Academy is still nice of course, but there are more strong cities, the techs need more beakers to reasearch and the AI has bigger empires to keep pace with.
Click to expand...

The game was a standard sized Big/little map although all the AIs were connected via land.

Technically my land was the most but this was due to Bismark and teh Khmer dude spinning off colonies. I believe I have 11 or 12 total cities.

The capital had Oxford and the National Park (yeah, a strange game indeed).
 
Also, if you're debating whether to Academy your 6th best science city (say it has 60 base commerce), or settle at Oxford, then your empire-wide output is probably near or above 1000 beakers, and the difference between the two options probably doesn't make much difference to your overall research rate. Practically speaking, it probably won't matter a whole lot.
 
Ultimocrat said:
Also, if you're debating whether to Academy your 6th best science city (say it has 60 base commerce), or settle at Oxford, then your empire-wide output is probably near or above 1000 beakers, and the difference between the two options probably doesn't make much difference to your overall research rate. Practically speaking, it probably won't matter a whole lot.
Click to expand...

This is probably the bottom line (it is near 2000 beakers if I recall). That last academy did not even give me one extra turn in researching the current tech.
 
Settled after computers is (6 (+3 with Rep)) base, +100% from buildings, +100% from Oxford, +50% from Academy.

So without representation he's worth 6x3.5 = 21 beakers/turn.
With representation 9x3.5 = 31.5 beakers/turn.

So if you have a city generating 42 beakers per turn (63 if running Representation), making an Academy there is only costing you 1 base hammer in your science city, which is significant but not game breaking.

Given a ton of grassland rivers for cottage spamming, I can certainly see where it is occasionally worthwhile to make a new academy instead of settling - it won't happen too often, but if you play enough games I'm sure it'll come up again sometime. My biggest caution against this is that dropping the slider hurts the science production of the new Academy city, but doesn't hurt the SSC's settled scientist's production.
 
I have also used (some would say "wasted") a couple of great scientists in mid-game on conquered capitals or other good cities. If I think the city will eventually be an OK science city, the 3:culture: from the academy can help push out those borders.
 
DaveMcW said:
After Computers, you have to start calculating how many turns the game is going to last...
Click to expand...

That's what I was doing until the Khmer dude (Monty's evil twin) sent about 15 cavalry units against me. Gave Musa Fascism to declare and him and I have to track those horse down with tanks before I can get the space ship launched.

Being at marathon speed I still have quite a few turns to get through.
 
DaveMcW said:
After Computers, you have to start calculating how many turns the game is going to last...
Click to expand...


Which makes bulbing stronger (not weaker) long term compared with settling/academy. Many people argue that bulbing late game is weak because it only shaves off a turn or 2 ... but compared with the alternatives, it is stronger than ever. Once the game gets late enough, the options are bulb or Golden Age.
 
Morgrad said:
Settled after computers is (6 (+3 with Rep)) base, +100% from buildings, +100% from Oxford, +50% from Academy.

So without representation he's worth 6x3.5 = 21 beakers/turn.
With representation 9x3.5 = 31.5 beakers/turn.

So if you have a city generating 42 beakers per turn (63 if running Representation), making an Academy there is only costing you 1 base hammer in your science city, which is significant but not game breaking.

.
Click to expand...

That is if the city is running 7 specialists. Representation only affects specialists not overall commerce. Unless you are thinking of the capital under Buearacracy. In which case it does give a 50% boost, but that shouldn't be your 6th best commerce city and should already have an academy. Late game with that many cottaged cities you are better off running Free Speech for the +2 commerce from each town empirewide. From the sounds of things he probably has 6 cities with an average of 7 towns each. That is a boost of 84commerce under free speech. Unless the capital has a base commerce of 168 it won't come close to passing the free speech bonus. if all his cottages are on riversides in the capital they produce 7 commerce each (town4,printing press1,finleader1,riverside1). Being generous and saying he has 4 trade routes all worth 10 commerce each then he will need 148 commerce from his towns. Even if he has all 18 tiles in the BFC as towns, that is 126 commerce for them all. Totally 166 commerce in the capital. I really doubt he has his entire BFC cottaged. And it is also unlikey all 18 are on rivers.
 
I almost always bulb until printing press, next gp is for a GA, after that i go for academies, i usually have enough cities above 50 science to profit. Late game i save Gp's for golden ages.
 
I often think this is a good strategy, especially with someone like Liz. If you have a commerce city which is able to work 10 cottages prior to biology then slapping an academy in there, especially with a financial leader, is going to be a very nice long-term investment.

I'm considering this approach more and more now since on monarch I generally have to tech most of the tech-tree myself so these kinds of options are more appealing than ever.

I think it also depends on if you are thinking of going for space or not. If you're going for domination than bulbing toward military tech is usually the strongest option.
 
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