Science is dramatically slowed on Huge Maps

I strongly suggest playing Assyria, especially if you are going for a domination victory. I did a few basic techs for luxuries and writing and started on a conquest spree (on emperor). Basically after that initial ones, I only worked on techs to improve my military and the rest I just stole from finding new people and killing them. This helped to offshot that science negative for going wide. The benefits from building libraries and their special unit weren't bad either for this tactic.

I went rationalism and signed plenty of RAs, but still stuck with WWII units at turn 400. The bigger issue is how the AI can't catch up in science; England is still using ships of the line and ironclads (they've only just built their first battleship)

I've found I'm teching faster, with fewer cities. I like to punish the AI and not feed them cash with trade routes. I funnel all my TR's into my cities and grow tall. Then, as each new city hits size 10-12 I poop out a new city, feed it and repeat. The 3% really doesn't seem to effect me much. Playing a Diety pangea, huge map and I managed artillery before 0 AD without much effort. AI still hasn't found gunpowder.. New AI is stupid, slow and boring.

As a wide-player I definitely notice a MAJOR tech hit.
10 cities basically puts me to the point I need 25 to 30 turns to research anything.
You won't make up for this with buildings either.
The penalty is much more severe than any gimmick you can come up with once you get to 8-10 cities.
Of course deity AI isn't affected much by this, even the runaways with 30 cities still tech fast.
If you want to go wide you'd better off pick Korea, Babylon, etc.

Btw the penalty is 5%/city on tiny, small and normal, 3.5% on large and 2.5% on huge.
2.5% is acceptable (10 cities is 25%) but 5% means halved teching with 10 cities.

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet but, I only play marathon, and before BNW in my games we would be in the modern era in the 1800's it was far too easy. The new tech is balanced a lot more. It gives you a chance to win in other ways before all the space ships launch.

It's good, I haven't looked into the 5% increase but from what I've played so far... It works

As long as you don't like mass settle post industrial, the tech penalty is really minimal. It stacks up obviously to an amount that matters, but as you actually do stuff with your cities, overall you'll still be better off for having more cities.

It hurts mass puppet empires a little more. However they seriously nerfed the SP cost increase for annexing. <.<

It mostly curves out serious runaways.

rodrigoq said:

I've found I'm teching faster, with fewer cities. I like to punish the AI and not feed them cash with trade routes. I funnel all my TR's into my cities and grow tall. Then, as each new city hits size 10-12 I poop out a new city, feed it and repeat. The 3% really doesn't seem to effect me much. Playing a Diety pangea, huge map and I managed artillery before 0 AD without much effort. AI still hasn't found gunpowder.. New AI is stupid, slow and boring.

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Is this for real? Artillery before 0 AD in deity? I have hard time to believe this.

marlowe221 said:

Prince. I would usually play King/Emperor in G&K but it was my first game of BNW and all so...

I figured I had a hard time with science due to me being Venice and focusing more on economy and diplomatic relations than beakers.

Oddly enough, I had the highest pop at the end of the game and built every science building I could - but I did not go into Rationalism so that's probably a lot of it.

Germany, the score leader for most of the game, never seemed to tech any higher than I did judging by the wonders he was building and his military units.

It was kind of funny to watch a wood and sail naval war going on between Indonesia and Byzantium in the 2030s.

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I've had similar experiences on huge/marathon though it was rifleman instead of boats. Tech is fubar.

Civking5 said:

Is this for real? Artillery before 0 AD in deity? I have hard time to believe this.

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Feed you're cities, and grow tall fast. Internal TR's almst feel like an exploit when you get engineering and have 4 cities feeding 1 with an aqueduct. Size 10 city in a hurry, which is a good amount of sci and gold. Rinse and repeat, get patronage tree to recive tech from CS, trade gpt for gold, buy CS allies, and watch as you tech like mad. And get a strong relgion, mass faith, and buy some great scientists.

trade routes in BNW are a neat feture, but you don't need to use them to make money trading.