What to do with great scientists

Depends on how many cities you have an observatory in. If every city has one, I think you're right. If only your cap has an observatory, then that's going to tip the balance in favor of an academy.

Also, haven't done an SV in a while; what's the average number of GS you get in a game?
 
59saintdane said:
Depends on how many cities you have an observatory in. If every city has one, I think you're right. If only your cap has an observatory, then that's going to tip the balance in favor of an academy.

Also, haven't done an SV in a while; what's the average number of GS you get in a game?
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I got 15 scientist in OCC game with babylon. Won on turn 275. 9 were natural,4 from wonders(towers and hubble),2 with faith. But that is not average game.
 
Even though this is an old thread I think people have been thinking about GS wrong. The goal of SV is to finish the game as soon as possible (any victory really). If you're trying to get a 250 turn victory then at best you're only going to get 150 or so turns from a GS. With that in mind it is almost always better to bulb than to plant. The only exception I can think of is Babylon just because they get a GS 15 turns in the game or so.
 
Rathelm said:
Even though this is an old thread I think people have been thinking about GS wrong. The goal of SV is to finish the game as soon as possible (any victory really). If you're trying to get a 250 turn victory then at best you're only going to get 150 or so turns from a GS. With that in mind it is almost always better to bulb than to plant. The only exception I can think of is Babylon just because they get a GS 15 turns in the game or so.
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The issue is the stacking benefits. Yes, on pure science totals, it is better to wait. But Planting allows you to get to the key wonders 6-10 turns faster (Printing Press - Leaning Tower/Porcelain Tower combo) and so you should do it. The bonuses from the Two Towers are immense, and if planting 1-2 Scientists make sure you cut your time on Leaning Tower of Pisa by 10 turns or greater, then you essentially return your investment (use GE on Porcelain Tower, and get free GS and extra RA power).

That's the point to planting: early game speed is highly valuable for key wonders (and on high difficulties, the pesky concept of getting to elite military techs that much faster). It you don't plant and don't get those two powerful wonders, then there's zero gain from saving.

I'm pretty sure even for "fastest" SV time the investment rewards (+25% GP, Free GS, and RA Boost) make sense. And without a doubt, if you're simply playing to 'win' and not for optimal speed records, they definitely pay off on a risk/reward basis. If the difficulty is high enough where you could lose if you don't play the early and mid-game well enough, then planting makes sense. I used to never plant, but I finally changed my ways.
 
Planting an academy doesn't cut the number of turns to get those techs by 10 that's the problem.

(not talking about babylon GS of course)

Anyway, planting one is okay and is apparently on par with not planting. Things become less attractive starting from the 2nd GS.
 
Nick31 said:
The issue is the stacking benefits. Yes, on pure science totals, it is better to wait. But Planting allows you to get to the key wonders 6-10 turns faster (Printing Press - Leaning Tower/Porcelain Tower combo) and so you should do it. The bonuses from the Two Towers are immense, and if planting 1-2 Scientists make sure you cut your time on Leaning Tower of Pisa by 10 turns or greater, then you essentially return your investment (use GE on Porcelain Tower, and get free GS and extra RA power).

That's the point to planting: early game speed is highly valuable for key wonders (and on high difficulties, the pesky concept of getting to elite military techs that much faster). It you don't plant and don't get those two powerful wonders, then there's zero gain from saving.

I'm pretty sure even for "fastest" SV time the investment rewards (+25% GP, Free GS, and RA Boost) make sense. And without a doubt, if you're simply playing to 'win' and not for optimal speed records, they definitely pay off on a risk/reward basis. If the difficulty is high enough where you could lose if you don't play the early and mid-game well enough, then planting makes sense. I used to never plant, but I finally changed my ways.
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Unless you're in danger of missing those wonders altogether, saving 6-10 turns on them will maybe boost 1 RA and get you a few GPP, but nothing dramatic. Also, you can't start generating GS until Education, and considering that Printing Press is only one column after, it's doubtful that planting your second GS (because you were probably going to plant the first anyway) is going to make a significant difference to teching PP.

The thing about planting too many GS is that planting being worth it is heavily reliant on increasing bulb value. After all, if you bulb 8 GS, that's 80 turns worth of academy science right there. The more you plant, the less you bulb, and the less value you'll get out of each individual academy.

Considering that planted GS help you get to science techs faster, as well as unlocking important buildings/units/buffs slightly faster, as well as the fact that sitting GS are eating gold (not much, but a bit) I'd say planting first GS is probably a good idea, the second is probably pretty close, but I feel like after that you get more out of saving up to bulb.
 
Acken said:
Planting an academy doesn't cut the number of turns to get those techs by 10 that's the problem.

(not talking about babylon GS of course)

Anyway, planting one is okay and is apparently on par with not planting. Things become less attractive starting from the 2nd GS.
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This of course depends of how many cities you have. If you play OCC you sholud plant first 4-6 because with one city much bigger % of beakers come from academies
 
59saintdane said:
The more you plant, the less you bulb, and the less value you'll get out of each individual academy.

Considering that planted GS help you get to science techs faster, as well as unlocking important buildings/units/buffs slightly faster, as well as the fact that sitting GS are eating gold (not much, but a bit) I'd say planting first GS is probably a good idea, the second is probably pretty close, but I feel like after that you get more out of saving up to bulb.
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Just to be clear, all I'm advocating is to plant 2 :). But that was in response to someone advocating none. And don't sleep on the negative side effects of missing Porcelain Tower. Assuming you're playing peacefully, that's worth several GS over the game. If you can manage 10+ Agreements, especially.

If its at all going to be close, err on the planting side to ensure the resulting Cascade.
 
That's a good point about the academies benefitting RA.
 
Nick31 said:
The bonuses from the Two Towers are immense, and if planting 1-2 Scientists make sure you cut your time on Leaning Tower of Pisa by 10 turns or greater, then you essentially return your investment (use GE on Porcelain Tower, and get free GS and extra RA power).
Click to expand...
Wait, you use the free GP from Leaning to get a GE and use it to rush Porcelain? I think you should just hard build Porcelain. The AI almost never picks up Rationalism that early, so you get it for free basically. Only problem with hard building it is that you have to buy a Public School for the cap because it takes so long to build it so its gonna be done after ST tech.
 
unrendered said:
Wait, you use the free GP from Leaning to get a GE and use it to rush Porcelain? I think you should just hard build Porcelain. The AI almost never picks up Rationalism that early, so you get it for free basically. Only problem with hard building it is that you have to buy a Public School for the cap because it takes so long to build it so its gonna be done after ST tech.
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So, I play on Immortal ( with the occasional Diety game ). I also find myself frequently with production poor Capitals pre - Industrial Era. While the play may not be 'optimal' , I don't like risking a hard build. And I can use the time on other Infrastructure or some Military.

I'm generally coming at these questions from the perspective of a 'good' player but certainly not an elite player. That said, elite players benefit from these discussions far less than good or average players :).
 
Well, if you're operating on the principle that you'll be able to successfully hard build Porcelain 95% of the time, maybe not. But you get the free GS from Porcelain, so if you're worried about a leading AI or frankly an unexpected attack from a neighbor which might require units built, using the GE is a rather successful play. It could be deemed as non - optimal, but I'd view it more as a cautious play.

There are a lot of early and mid - game plays that will cut victory times, but it's also nice to take away setbacks which could make a game trickier. I suppose it's a question how optimally one plays.
 
It's not whether or not you can build it 95% of the time.

The problem with what you suggest is that you take a GE, increase GP counter, make PT with it get a GS, increase GP counter. So all in all you just increased the counter by 2 for a single GS and better RAs.

Whereas if you build only Pisa, you get a GS and increase counter by 1. So you just increased the counter by 1 for a GS.

Then you have a good chance to build PT yourself which will mean 2GS for +2 GP counter.
 
I would respectfully point out that over the course of a game the RA's can be enormous. You seem to be glossing over that loss, which I think in terms of beakers can be the equivalent of several GS. I don't know why the risk in losing that (and in turn allowing a lead AI to have it instead) would be considered non - important. That is my confusion, anyway.
 
Because you would need a lot of RA for the 50% bonus to be worth a end game GS (10K science) or a bulb for ST even(2K5). And an unrealistic number for "several GS".

It may depend on what kind of value you get out of your RAs compared to your bpt. I personally feel lucky when I get 2turns worth of science (around 600science) out of an RA in the mid-game done somewhere after education. So PT would increase that by 300.

And it's not like I miss PT. I rarely do, I just don't feel both negating the risk and the benefits justify sacrificing the great person from Pisa.

PS: This is with BNW in mind, GK and Vanilla RA are much more powerful.
 
What Acken is saying, and what I was saying earlier (actually it was on another thread), was that choosing a GS from Pisa is a good choice even if you know you'll miss PT if you do that. For PT to be worth the GS you'll lose over the course of the game (due to increasing the counter twice rather than once) you essentially need to generate 20k base beakers from RAs. While I don't use RAs that much, it seems unlikely that you could generate that much science just from RAs.
However, the fact is that you have a decent shot at PT building it. Even if you only have, say, a 50% chance for PT, the benefit from choosing a GS and hand building PT is significantly greater that choosing a GE for Pisa, while the benefit from choosing a GS and missing PT is at least comparable to the benefit from GE rushing PT.
 
Acken said:
Because you would need a lot of RA for the 50% bonus to be worth a end game GS (10K science) or a bulb for ST even(2K5). And an unrealistic number for "several GS".

It may depend on what kind of value you get out of your RAs compared to your bpt. I personally feel lucky when I get 2turns worth of science (around 600science) out of an RA in the mid-game done somewhere after education. So PT would increase that by 300.

And it's not like I miss PT. I rarely do, I just don't feel both negating the risk and the benefits justify sacrificing the great person from Pisa.

PS: This is with BNW in mind, GK and Vanilla RA are much more powerful.
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Yeah I'd really like to add, anecdotally, it feels much more useful to just bulb ST and even Plastics if I know I can immediately buy or build science buildings than to plant those same GS. Academies seem more useful if you know you're going to try to do a cultural victory since you're going to try to get the world congress to pass those resolutions that give cultural output.
 
Huh, fair enough. Although, I should mention that I meant more powerful RAs act as mid-game GS bulbs; not the equivalent to Information Era GS. But those mid-game boosts can coincide with things you may wish to bulb anyway.
 
I'm noticing a lot of people save their GS's for later after they have research labs. Personally I never do that. If I understand correctly a bulb gives you a science boost similar to the sum all science over the eight previous turns. (correct?)

So though it is true that this would give you more beakers after labs, I'm not sure whether this would result in less turns to finish the game. If you bulb earlier, you get less science, but it's still eight turns' worth, and it helps you get techs that increase your science.

So to me it seems bulbing right away would be better. (Not even considering the gpt you lose one your GSs.) What do you guys think?
 
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