Is science really king any more?

sonicandfffan

sonicandfffan

Warlord
Joined
Feb 21, 2013
Messages
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Location
England, UK
It seems to me that gold is now king.

You can basically control the game through the world congress. On top of that, with most victories you will pass through at least one world leader vote, it's possible to trade away all your luxuries for votes to other leaders and use gold to buy off enough city states to pass the required number of delegates. At that point in the game you should be cash-rich enough to be able to afford it.

Diplo victory just seems easier than the others. More importantly you don't need any science to achieve it, the world will naturally pass through it if other leaders get enough science and you don't need science to buy votes.
 
If the AI wasn't a mostly passive bunch of hibernating care bears they'd curb stomp a technologically inferior player, though.
 
Without a good science output, your army would be so unadvanced and weak that an enemy invasion could prove deadly. Science helps you research units that can keep your empire safe from harm. For example, if an enemy attacked you with infantry, tanks, and artillery, defending your civilizations with riflemen, cannons, and cavalry would be very difficult. You would probably be destroyed because of your great technological disadvantage. In short, technology is necessary to defend your civilization properly.

Apart from a weak military, you would also miss out on great buildings/wonders that could boost your income, production, growth, etc. Your economy wouldn't be as strong as other civilizations if they had the latest gold boosting buildings and you didn't.
 
Oh, also.

Ignoring science means you'll unlock your ideology late. And that means you'll lose on things like Arsenal of Democracy and Treaty Organization from Freedom or Gunship diplomacy from Autocracy. If your opponents utilize those but you don't, you can kiss that diplomatic victory goodbye.

Also, you'll be inferior in the culture race and get trounced with tourism, because you'll get the artist guilds later than the others.
 
Well...Science helps you make more gold on down the line. :)

I always nab the Commerce tree anyway.
 
I dare to disagree... science is more important than never in BNW. You can't get to any kind of victory if you are not making enough beakers. The tourism enhancers are far right in the tech tree, so you can't win culturally without science. More science also means better units, which is vital for domination. If you want money, you also need science to open new trade routes. Plus, winning science quests also helps with the CS diplomacy. So, in the end, in BNW, you can't go anywhere without science, sorry :)
 
Food was and is still the King! Long live the food...erh, Food-king.

Population gives you all of gold, science, culture and GP's. With a small pop, you gain little, with a huge population you win. Of course, if you have enough soldiers to protect these people. :)

But then I haven't played BNW yet, things might have changed.
 
Science is still king in BNW.
Food though is a very strong means to get science (both direct population based & gold which itself gets reinvested)
 
I have to agree that gold is king in BNW.

Even if you slack on science a little, gold will make up for it. Ally all city states in your region, and pickup patronage to get science from city states. It's not insane science, but it'll definately keep you alive. Then slowly gobble up all the city states into allies and you'll win the voting without a doubt
 
arand86 said:
I have to agree that gold is king in BNW.

Even if you slack on science a little, gold will make up for it. Ally all city states in your region, and pickup patronage to get science from city states. It's not insane science, but it'll definately keep you alive. Then slowly gobble up all the city states into allies and you'll win the voting without a doubt
Click to expand...

But with your science lagging so hard, you're not going to have a chance to hit Globalization before someone decides your lack of modern units is pretense for invasion, or something just hits space before you.
 
You don't need globalisation to win a diplo victory, but getting it pretty much guarantees you'll win the vote. You can trade votes and buy enough city states to win without globalisation.
 
MerchantCo said:
Without a good science output, your army would be so unadvanced and weak that an enemy invasion could prove deadly. Science helps you research units that can keep your empire safe from harm. For example, if an enemy attacked you with infantry, tanks, and artillery, defending your civilizations with riflemen, cannons, and cavalry would be very difficult. You would probably be destroyed because of your great technological disadvantage. In short, technology is necessary to defend your civilization properly.

Apart from a weak military, you would also miss out on great buildings/wonders that could boost your income, production, growth, etc. Your economy wouldn't be as strong as other civilizations if they had the latest gold boosting buildings and you didn't.
Click to expand...

Autocracy is here to help with that little problem. A highly advanced AI army will be very disappointed when it knocks on your door and discovers you stole Flight a couple turns ago.
 
Science is still hugely important in BNW as others have said, but I have yet to win a science victory. I think I've won all culture and diplo victories. Those seem to be the easiest victory types IMO, but perhaps it's just my play style.
 
Arachnofiend said:
Autocracy is here to help with that little problem. A highly advanced AI army will be very disappointed when it knocks on your door and discovers you stole Flight a couple turns ago.
Click to expand...

Tech stealing isn't very fast even with Industrial Espionage, though.
 
I've held off armies with superior tech before, I mean not entirely different eras, but being down 4 or 5 techs is a pretty big deal. The AI is so bad at war, that you can still fend off any of their attacks with inferior units (given that you have at least one unit that can contend with theirs).


You need everything in BNW, but yeah, Gold I think is the strongest. If you have gold, it feels like you can do anything. Diplomacy victories being super easy is a giant perk too.
 
Gold is strong, but it's not the strongest in terms of diplomatic victory. A Freedom civ with Arsenal of Democracy and Treaty Organization will reap huge rewards for much less investment, although they will have to be technological enough to at least get the ideologies and have enough culture to unlock these two tenets. Once that's done, however, gold can't compare anymore.

Assuming you can churn out cheap military units fast enough (which isn't hard, really) you get 25 influence per 3 turns for every City-State. In addition, you get 4 extra per turn with each one you trade with. That averages at about 11 points of influence per turn - about the same as an unmodified 250 gold gift in the late game. The Goldielocks who's behind in technology and is running their entire civ on gold focus may be able to keep up with the Freedom civ in a few City-States at first, but Freedom wins in endurance as you can keep up churning lancers and privateers and spamming trade to City-States practically forever.
 
Does the AI take advantage of Arsenal of Democracy's influence boost at all? I've never seen anything that suggests that they were, and certainly not to even a tiny fraction of the extent that a human player can and will. Similarly, it's not obvious to me that the AI ever really uses Gunboat Diplomacy, but it's kind of hard to tell since the AI picks Autocracy approximately never to begin with.
 
I've seen the AI both pick and "use" Gunboat Diplomacy. Siam with over 600 influence over City-States, that wasn't nice. Not sure about Arsenal of Democracy - I'd guess that even if they use it, they won't abuse it. I hope the devs didn't intend it to be as powerful as it is.

Scare quotes around "use" because Siam was a military spammer for the entire game and just happened to be bordering five different City-States...


Alexander, in particular, also likes rigging elections and doing coups. That can also rack good amounts of influence.
 
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