Are science buildings overpowered?

there's already a mod(s) for those of you who want your games to take a long time to play. they stick you in some earlier era forever. for the rest of the players Science, and their buildings, are good to go.

killmeplease said:

You want library and university in each of your cities unlike any other building. Its always better to go for writing, philosophy and education asap. Is it ok for you or do you think its unbalanced and boring? If latter, do you have any ideas, how to fix this?

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The science growth is fine, firaxis decided science growth is more exponential than linear, that's why with each science building, BPT rises a lot. That's not necessarily an issue as long as tech costs also scale the same way.

Problems I see:

- Higher difficulties give AI free techs, 3 in emperor, 4 in Immortal and the 5 tier 1 techs in deity. That free techs are not necessary, you need to get a tech parity to compete with wonders, make wars with same era units, and any kind of resources. Lagging too much behind is a big problem, so you are forced to play science witchever victory you pursue.

- I would split the 50% bonus from NC between Oxford and NC to not be so drastic. NC boost is so huge you need it ASAP.

- Academies are also overpowered, the science points from them get all the % bonuses, witch are quite a few. I would leverage academy yield with custom houses and manufactories, actually academy give 8 base and up to 12, while custom house and manufactory give 4 up to 5, difference is so huge isn't debatable. Maybe lowering academies to 6-10, and up customs and manufactories to 5-7.

killmeplease said:

you cant play without production, but you don't prioritize metal casting to get workshops asap. or do you

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I have before.

Oh and btw, if you do beeline to education and focus too much on libraries, the AI is probably going to overwhelm your neglected army fairly quickly and stomp your ass out of existance. Especially if you play on a higher difficulty than normal(prince).

The 1 gpt of a library can add up when you only make 10-20 gold each turn.

I think farms are overpowered. They have the capacity to double or even triple food output from a single tile. There is no alternative; you have to build farms in every game even below Prince to win. VALVE PLS NERF!1!

Yeah, no. Just because a building is more powerful than most others doesn't mean it's unbalanced. As others have stated, science IS the driving force behind CiV (other 2 are food/production).

Tabarnak said:

But it's still a viable option to go MC in sp games too. An early Colossus with extra trade(engineering) aren't that bad to propose. But most of the time you want to pursuit a dom. game instead(and skip Education) and spam Xbows, muskets and finally cannons. I think you can reach cannons around the same time than if you make the detour to education but the game needs to go past artillery to make it worth.

You can build a lot more units with a MC beeline.

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hmm so is it still a viable strategy? interesting
i thought you should fall behind in tech tremendously with no NC and unis. and unis come much earlier than chemestry and even gunpowder anyways; and theres Civil Service on the path to Education that gives you some crazy growth too, which is much stronger than some marginal production bonus from wrkshops and forges (which you should to build first!). in the city with a forge, only to pay for its cost you should buid 7 crossbows, do you even need that many? and wont it be better to build units in several cities concurrently? imho forge is a pretty pointless building overall.. workshop is not that great too.. at least it takes quite long for the workshop to pay for itself even though its by far a better building than forge.

ps crossbows tech even dont lay on the path where metal casting is

Ninakoru said:

you need to get a tech parity to compete with wonders, make wars with same era units, and any kind of resources. Lagging too much behind is a big problem, so you are forced to play science witchever victory you pursue.

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well i wrote about this hereinbefore. higher difficulty just pushes the player harder to obey the dominant strategy.

academies can be nerfed and other improvements buffed you right..
NC may just be available later i think, as well as unis (and libs?) to relax early game tech rush a bit. maybe, new "literature" tech may be added between writing and philo (put libs and the great lib there). move scientific agreements from education to some later tech... nerf uni/great scientist a bit? that would delay in thech tree all the science buildings making them less appealing i think.

General McUgly said:

Oh and btw, if you do beeline to education and focus too much on libraries, the AI is probably going to overwhelm your neglected army fairly quickly and stomp your ass out of existance.

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you get pikeman at civil service which is a pretty solid unit. i play only king or emperor (as i purposely refrain from cheap tricks like stealing workers, farming xp, trading every resource and open borders etc), is it really you cant defend against trebs/longswords w/o crossbows? if its the case, wont your crossbows be eventually smashed by muskets/cannons if you went bottom branch?

Undefeatable said:

I think farms are overpowered. They have the capacity to double or even triple food output from a single tile. There is no alternative; you have to build farms in every game even below Prince to win. VALVE PLS NERF!1!

Yeah, no. Just because a building is more powerful than most others doesn't mean it's unbalanced. As others have stated, science IS the driving force behind CiV (other 2 are food/production).

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this kind of argument i answered several times it this thread already

you cant play with only just farms everywhere so they are pretty ballanced. you still need some mines and maybe even trading posts but there were times of vanilla when you wouldnt need any improvement except trading post (mind you not a science/food/production thingy). think of that and you'll realize how unbalanced things may be. fortunately science buildings arent that unbalanced, but i'm pretty sure they still are.

civ54lyfe said:

there's already a mod(s) for those of you who want your games to take a long time to play. they stick you in some earlier era forever. for the rest of the players Science, and their buildings, are good to go.

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i dont want slower teching i want balanced paly
nerf to science buildings doesnt imply overall slower teching

If you don't build Science buildings you will enter the Industrial era in 1950, and that's obviously pretty far off reality.

Something that is the same for every civ can't be over or underpowered, I think the title should be "Are science building too strong", a minor difference but still. I also don't like the word balance.. it makes no sense in civ, it's not supposed to be balanced. Every ability/unit/building can be stronger or weaker in different situations.

I think basic science buildings are fine, you don't have to rush unis or public schools to win even when going for SV on deity. It is often more optimal to go construction before philosophy, machinery before education, dynamite before scientific theory. Staying alive is always better in the long run

What makes it boring is the NC, it kinda forces you to go for the same opening every game. NC at turn 100 instead of 85 will loose you the game while getting unis at turn 125 instead of 110 is not a big deal.

killmeplease said:

hmm so is it still a viable strategy? interesting
i thought you should fall behind in tech tremendously with no NC and unis. and unis come much earlier than chemestry and even gunpowder anyways; and theres Civil Service on the path to Education that gives you some crazy growth too, which is much stronger than some marginal production bonus from wrkshops and forges (which you should to build first!). in the city with a forge, only to pay for its cost you should buid 7 crossbows, do you even need that many? and wont it be better to build units in several cities concurrently? imho forge is a pretty pointless building overall.. workshop is not that great too.. at least it takes quite long for the workshop to pay for itself even though its by far a better building than forge.

ps crossbows tech even dont lay on the path where metal casting is

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You should always build the NC unless you want to go straight with CBs all the time(which is possible for emperor or below). No need for food when you gonna expand through AIs and use food caravans(4 of them early if you build Colossus).

MC beeline means less fast Xbows of course. But you will have the hammers to build trebs and longswordmen and upgrade them later. Typically it's better to stick with 3 huge cities where workshops will be enhanced a lot. With 35-40 hammer cities you can produce a lot of units. An early armory is powerful too, combined with honor. Build the Ironworks if needed. Work an early engineer and get Pisa for a free gs to get cannons faster.

Best times implies no MC beeline only because the AI is very rich. But it's still fun to play with hammers and make very huge armies(30+ units).

vanzlmalc said:

Every ability/unit/building can be stronger or weaker in different situations.

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thats what "balanced" is (i think)

Just to clarify, people aren't complaining that science focus is a strategy. The problem is that when you 'choose' to run scientist specialists over engineer or merchant specialists you aren't really making a tradeoff. It's like choosing not to punch yourself in the junk.

killmeplease said:

thats what "balanced" is (i think)

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Yeah, I think so.

My concept of balance occur when you have actually an option to choose between two or more, even the scenario will benefit one option over others. The problem comes when there's an option that will be always better in any scenario, even if other options are viable, it is not balanced.

This happens with the non culture GP usefulness:

GS >> GE >>>>>>>>>>> GM, GA, GG.

Or with ancient social policies:

Trad >> Liberty >>>>>> Piety >>>>> Honor.


And there are some build options that are severely underused, because they add little and usually are ignored on competitive play, because are near always suboptimal:

- Building windmill.
- Planting a great merchant.
- Great merchant generation.
- Building classical era catapults.

Smote said:

science is nothing without hammers to back it up

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No its not. I can easily use the republic policy and a hill to produce a library in a 1 population city, in 15 turns, 32 for university. And thats not even counting the +5% building production.
Also, unless your`e going ICS you will probably not have 1 population cities.
(and even then a normal city population is about 3-5)

In my very modest Prince/King experience I would agree that both science and science buildings are indeed OP in their respective ways. Science just makes you good at everything else. Best way i'm able to get a tourism win is to simply get to internet fast enough to spend a good bunch of turns under it's effects. Playing true culture means i won't even get close to it before 2050.

As for buildings , maybe if science wasn't as building oriented as it is , other vc's wouldn't have to rely so much on it. That or i'm just doing it wrong.

I think the problem isn't about science buildings but science in general. Every VC requires having a great science output. Also, it should be easier to research techs other civs know. It's just ******ed to see an AI on reneisance era while you're launching your Alpha Centauri spaceship.

vibe96 said:

I think the problem isn't about science buildings but science in general. Every VC requires having a great science output. Also, it should be easier to research techs other civs know. It's just ******ed to see an AI on reneisance era while you're launching your Alpha Centauri spaceship.

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That I definitely agree with

There is already a cost discount based on civs that have the tech.... I would add

Each turn get somewhere between 1 and 5% (depending on balance) of the total Base cost of a tech for free if you know a civ that has the tech

ie if someone knows Philosophy (base cost 175) and you don't.... you get 1.75-8.75 research added into Philosophy each turn

So you will get all the techs your neighbors had 20-100 turns ago (depending on balance)


This way not investing in science would be valid... until someone showed up from the other tech advanced continent and squished you in 20-100 turns.

TheGrandWazoo said:

Science basically defines the game, as it moves you along eras and unlocks the buildings you need for victory conditions.

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Not just that, but whoever has the tech advantage wins the wars. Whoever gets to the artillery first will break his neighbors quickly, even if they have Great Wall.

Science is quite IMPORTANT, yes, but nerfing the science buildings............

Civilization 5 is a game where if you lag in tech, you lag in everything. Science is very important, and scientific building are naturally also very important, but the buildings aren't really OP.

Well, Library is kinda core building and it's not OP.

the rest of the science buildings are more or less +% oriented, and if you can't grow, no amount of +% will help you there. So, it's kinda balanced.