What gives better science, order or freedom

Strategist83 said:

Hopelessly wrong. The whole point of Order is its ability to settle new cities that will provide quick return on their investment even well into the late game. Freedom is terrible for settling late cities by comparison.

Also, everybody seems to miss that the main benefit of Worker's Faculties is not the +25% science but rather the double-speed Factory construction.

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Hopelessly wrong.

1. Freedom needs very few factory. And it doesn't even need them fast. That benefit is only good for order, freedom doesn't miss it.
2. Settling after Ideology is in general a bad idea. Being able to run all specialists and gain a lot of happiness doing that is very good for lagging cities. Admittedly though Order has Skyscrapers which helps a lot lagging cities.
3. Secularism benefit wide empire a lot. Freedom synergizes better with secularism.

I am new to BNW from lots of GnK and I have only played one Order game, so I am interesting in making the most from ideologies.

Strategist83 said:

Also, everybody seems to miss that the main benefit of Worker's Faculties is not the +25% science but rather the double-speed Factory construction.

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This seems like a very strong tenant, but being as factories are the nominal way to unlock ideologies in the first place, I am perplexed as to how to exploit it? And its Level 2, so three policies in!

Of course, just this week I learned from another thread that I should be opening ideologies by beelining Radio, instead of building factories. So that is a big part of my difficulties.

The way I see it is:

Order gets a modest BPT lead early, but will lag behind Freedom in growth fairly quickly. If it wasn't for the Great Scientist from Spaceflight Pioneers the Freedom advantage would be much earlier. Acken has shown, pretty convincingly, that the two are roughly comparable for a fast (21X) SV. Anything in the 230s or later is almost certainly in Freedom land.

Factories are marginal buildings without Order's perks. Freedom only needs one or two for cities building Apollo/Hubble.

Personally I wish Freedom had a perk that tripled the speed of Trading Post construction so stagnating was a little easier ... why doesn't Civ 5 have any late game worker-speed mechanics?

Edit: @beetle I find that for games that go Sci Meth before Industrialization getting to Radio yields a similar Ideology opening turn as building three factories (which require fast, unreliable coal). Getting to Tier 2 is usually easy if you are first to Ideologies, so delaying factories is often the correct play as Order, I think. In the early Industrial there is usually a ton of hammer commitments, especially if the WF falls right in the middle -> little time for early factories.

Order usually wants 2 things:
-A very fast ideology.
-A very fast second level perk (for better factories)

Oxfording radio is more important with Order than it is with Freedom. The reason is pretty simple. Once you get Scientific Theory, you want to get into Order as quickly as possible so that you can get skyscrapers to buy your public schools cheap and immediately go for industrialisation to start on your factories. Then you should try to time your new policy to get it at the same time as radio if possible.

Obviously it also depends on how comfortable you are with your gpt and your happiness.

Acken said:

Order usually wants 2 things:
-A very fast ideology.
-A very fast second level perk (for better factories)

Oxfording radio is more important with Order than it is with Freedom. The reason is pretty simple. Once you get Scientific Theory, you want to get into Order as quickly as possible so that you can get skyscrapers to buy your public schools cheap and immediately go for industrialisation to start on your factories. Then you should try to time your new policy to get it at the same time as radio if possible.

Obviously it also depends on how comfortable you are with your gpt and your happiness.

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In a mp perspective Freedom can be useful very early with Radio and the 2nd level tenet when you are outnumbered when at war or face a 2vs1 situation(especially if you are the biggest and the tech leader). So a good way to counter this is to get the 6 Foreign Legions asap and solidify your defense. If you can let them alive then Plastics is certainly the next step to reach

Can also be used for offensive but it's usually better mixed with Artillery(with Public schools beeline).

One more thing to notice is when playing on deity order is usually taken by the time you get ideology. Sometimes even by 2 civs. So by choosing freedom you get 1-2 extra policies. Also you never face competition for the Statue of Liberty.

So on deity my vote goes for freedom.

The synergy between secularism and all the talents in Freedom affecting specialists is pretty OP.

So much misinformation in this thread.

You take Order. Here's why:

- is always the limiting condition. You can get a raw bonus here from Order. You can get an indirect bonus via in Freedom, but the marginal utility of late in the game is terrible because the size of the box is large. By contrast, the raw multiplier doesn't just affect every turn, but also every bulb and RA.

- The way you run a ton of specialists with Order is to take your worst city and stack all the artsy-fartsy guilds in it. Then once you put in the Labs and start building :c5research: to power bulb, you instead fill all the specialist slots in that city and set it to build Settlers for the rest of the game. This prevents the city from starving at/near 0 . You really only need three cities to build parts anyway and the returns on the lost and growth are poor, so you end up coming out ahead.

- Buying parts with is a worthless ability since the only one you care about is the last one (the rest are easily built in time) and it takes forever to unlock the last with . Instead of buying it with , Order can just throw the free GE at it. If you have a high capital after you wipe out all the river hill farms and mine them late, you'll lose a turn at worst (remember to exploit overflow). But you'll gain far more than a turn in just from the Factory bonus, and you may do far better if the +25% GPP would not have resulted in an extra GS to bring you level with the free Order GS.

I've always said that Order is probably slightly better to get a very very fast SV, like sub200 if you get the perfect map/civ.
But to say that buying parts is worthless or that freedom has nothing to ever compete is just wrong.

Anyway the best way to truly have a comparison would be to have a few Turn130ish games that people can play from and compare both. Because comparing game from turn 0 creates way too much random elements to have a fair comprison

Here is one for example at T107 (but if someone has saves closer to Ideology turn (of a good game) feel free to post them, it's the only one I have left sorry and salvaged it from the bin). Some variation would be nice, wider games, korea vs not korea, coal available vs no immediate coal etc.

Martin Alvito said:

So much misinformation in this thread.

You take Order. Here's why:

- is always the limiting condition. You can get a raw bonus here from Order. You can get an indirect bonus via in Freedom, but the marginal utility of late in the game is terrible because the size of the box is large. By contrast, the raw multiplier doesn't just affect every turn, but also every bulb and RA.

- The way you run a ton of specialists with Order is to take your worst city and stack all the artsy-fartsy guilds in it. Then once you put in the Labs and start building :c5research: to power bulb, you instead fill all the specialist slots in that city and set it to build Settlers for the rest of the game. This prevents the city from starving at/near 0 . You really only need three cities to build parts anyway and the returns on the lost and growth are poor, so you end up coming out ahead.

- Buying parts with is a worthless ability since the only one you care about is the last one (the rest are easily built in time) and it takes forever to unlock the last with . Instead of buying it with , Order can just throw the free GE at it. If you have a high capital after you wipe out all the river hill farms and mine them late, you'll lose a turn at worst (remember to exploit overflow). But you'll gain far more than a turn in just from the Factory bonus, and you may do far better if the +25% GPP would not have resulted in an extra GS to bring you level with the free Order GS.

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You are missing a few freedom bonuses in your fact list. Freedom gives the ability to not only grow fast, but run a bunch of specialists which all give base science +2 with the right rationalism policies. Buying spaceship parts is also faster than using engineers, which may also cost you GS's when purchasing.

Anyways, I've tried this a couple times, as Acken mentioned. I've taken games where I got to the turn I could pick Freedom or Order and saved the game. I played both out the best I could, taking advantage of Order or Freedom's advantages. In both of these instances, it was really close, and both times Freedom beat Order by 2-3 turns. This is based on a Standard speed game and victories from 235 to 245.

It is one thing to put forth a theory, but until you test it, it is only a theory. I advise that you test this out yourself.

Note: I may have given Freedom extra oomph with extra academies, as I was playing Babylon. With fewer/no academies, it may have been different.

I'm always a little bemused that the pro-Order side of discussions like these are so adamant. Thanks to Acken, Uzael, and others who've run it both ways.

I'd like to think that at this point it's pretty well established that both are strong, and that a good Freedom player isn't missing out on significant potential gains by not choosing Order.

Another note about my test, and prior. I have always chosen Order, because of all the reasons the pro Order people said, and the fact so many recommend it. However, I did like Freedom's UB and specialist policies. I then noticed another policy that caught my eye, the one that doubles the benefits of great person buildings. Around the same time, I had come to realize that Order does not boost your science by 25%, but instead adds 25% more of your base science to your total. With a bit of math, I come to see it only gives a 10%-12% boost, which explained why I did not see the massive science increases I expected prior.

At that point, I decided to test them out and to my surprise, Freedom not only held it's own, it ended up winning out by a couple turns. If I had not used the academies, it may have been a dead heat. In either case, Freedom is much better than I had previously realized.

for venice science victory freedom is obviously much better as you only have 1 city to build in....
I generaly go science when i do not have killed 2 civs (I.E. domination like victory...) As somewhat stated roughly if you are wide order is better, else freedom is better ...
so at deity it depends a lot of
a) your civ and its development at this moment (i had the biggest continent once with venice due to some early war buying instant army is really nice) so in that case order was best.
b) the type of victory you are aiming at.... if you have the tech lead freedom ability to buy components is really awesome... if you struggle against a runaway on the other side of the world order is the way to go imo...

I've been doing a lot of Freedom lately and have come to the conclusion that even with Civil Society unlocked you will get growth issues(not in cap of course) if you work all specialist slots until you research Fertilizer and Penicillin(and have medical labs built). I'm assuming a minimum 10 turns per new .

To answer the OP I'd would say you need to know if you have coal or not, and for that Industrialization will need to be researched first. If you do then Order seems best as coupled with Big Ben, Skyscrapers, and Mercantilism buildings become very cheap to buy, and Factories are built in half the time. If not the it's probably better to pick Freedom as you won't be getting coal anytime soon, assuming you have played the science game and are ahead in tech.

phillipwyllie said:

I've been doing a lot of Freedom lately and have come to the conclusion that even with Civil Society unlocked you will get growth issues(not in cap of course) if you work all specialist slots until you research Fertilizer and Penicillin(and have medical labs built). I'm assuming a minimum 10 turns per new .

To answer the OP I'd would say you need to know if you have coal or not, and for that Industrialization will need to be researched first. If you do then Order seems best as coupled with Big Ben, Skyscrapers, and Mercantilism buildings become very cheap to buy, and Factories are built in half the time. If not the it's probably better to pick Freedom as you won't be getting coal anytime soon, assuming you have played the science game and are ahead in tech.

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Have you done any test games where you compare the result? And what was those results?

I would also advise that you do not have to run every specialist slot for Freedom to do well. Until your cities get monstrous, you only need to run a couple extra specialists to at least break even with the factories. Add more as your cities get bigger.

Someone mentioned more potential RA's with Order (more civs choosing Order=Friendly). I would add trade/lux/happy as affecting the overall science output, especially when forced to hard build most science buildings. I tend to not do RA's much (map/neighbor/gpt dependent), as I generally prefer to not generate hostility by DOF except in the early game.

Order is better, no need to discuss ist obvious as it gives a double boost right away.

Filling every building slot is possible with order too - at least for the 10-20 turns you need to, to fill tech tree.

Freedom MIGHT be about as same good if game d go on for 100+ turns after reaching idiologies, but its usually over <50 turns after.

tommynt said:

Order is better, no need to discuss ist obvious as it gives a double boost right away.

Filling every building slot is possible with order too - at least for the 10-20 turns you need to, to fill tech tree.

Freedom MIGHT be about as same good if game d go on for 100+ turns after reaching idiologies, but its usually over <50 turns after.

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How does order give a double boost right away? It is obvious you have never tested it. I'm not saying one is definitely better, but it is much closer than you think, and my tests had Freedom pulling slightly ahead. This on standard turn ~240 SV's.

I challenge anyone who has not done so, to play your best SV, and on the turn of your ideology choice, save the game and play both ways. With Order, make sure to get factories going, with Freedom, get the specialist policies and run more specialists (because of half unhappiness and half food, you should be able to run more). And get the 2nd tier policy for double academy bonuses.

Test this out for yourself instead of going off "obvious" advantages. That 25% science bonus on the factories only translates to a 10% boost to science.

tommynt said:

Freedom MIGHT be about as same good if game d go on for 100+ turns after reaching idiologies, but its usually over <50 turns after.

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Which neatly gets at the underlying math here. To simplify a bit (by ignoring the positive effects of growth on Order) for explanatory purposes, the way the policies map onto as a function of time is as follows:

Order: f(t) = k (a constant) with f'(t) = 0.
Freedom: g(t) = 0 at t=0, g'(t) > 0 for all t and g''(t) < 0 for all t.

It should be immediately apparent that the only ways that Freedom can win are if g(t) rapidly becomes greater than k (which it doesn't) or if t is large (which it isn't).

Note that I'm ignoring the effect of doubling the value of specialist buildings because the math on planting Great Scientists (other than Babylon's early one) always depended on unnerfed RAs. There is currently NO way that planting a couple of midgame Scientists to accelerate Public Schools and Labs will ever get you back the 7000+ you forego by not bulbing in the late game.

Nick31 said:

I'm always a little bemused that the pro-Order side of discussions like these are so adamant.

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It's because the math is self-evident. Suppose my kid comes up to me and insists that 2+2 = 5. I'm going to argue to the death that 2+2 = 4, and if he persists in the error then I'm eventually going to become quite strident about it.

I get that politics these days yield the useful heuristic that strident argument = lie (thanks, Fox News), but there's no basis in logic for that heuristic and you can't carry it to other venues as a result.

Uzael36 said:

How does order give a double boost right away? It is obvious you have never tested it.

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You've picked a particularly poor person to accuse of never having tested things.

In any event, we don't need to test this proposition because the whole point of mathematics and theorycrafting (which is why this forum exists) is to reveal things that are reliably true. Testing things and then attempting to draw inferences about how you should play yields the correct result if and only if you're playing optimally otherwise. If you're planting several Academies, comparing Freedom/Order and then concluding that Freedom > Order, you only reach that conclusion because you biased the test against Order. If you'd played Order properly by saving your Scientists and exploiting the fact that Settlers prevent starvation, you'd come to a different conclusion.

The reason I find it hard to believe you tested it, is the theorycraft isn't quite what you think. 25% science isn't the boost people think it is.

If your city has a base 50 science, for example, with all the buildings and observatory, puts you at 125 science (no academies). Adding a factory takes you from 125 to 137.5 science. Adding 2 additional specialists specialists would have taken you from 125 to 137 science, which is quite easy to do, and every additional specialists past 2 puts in the lead. If you had 2 academies in that, that's another 25 science bonus for Freedom.

Now, that settler exploit sounds a little interesting, but I have to wonder, do you just stop building anything do use it? When would you use that exploit? I've never seen or heard of someone queuing up settlers to run a full group of specialists. I don't know how that would turn out, but you also prevent growth doing that. How do you deal with the loss of 15% science from unhappiness (Rationalisms first bonus)?