What to do with great scientists
- Thread starter Yamian
- Start date
1)Settle them until Scientific Theory.
2)Bulb anything that can accelerate production and science beginning by Plastics.
3)Settle the gs asap on a spot that you gonna work excepted on luxuries. I usually settle them on non riversided tiles, mainly plains or grasslands.
4)Of course.
BNW: Cut off point is closer to Plastics than Public Education.
I actually ran a very detailed analysis in my current game when I poped a Great Scientist a few turns before Plastics. Because the next best tile already had a Trade Post (and I was running Rationalism), it was very slightly advantageous to bulb it. But if it wouldn't have had to displace a Trade post then the math was very slightly advantageous to academy it.
With either Petra or Desert Faith; flat Desert ends up being favorite places for me for GS.
Other choices I like are flat plains without fresh water & Sheep.
With both G&K and BNW, bulbing is the past 8 turns of science; so it's not critical it be an expensive tech; you can actually use your current path by queuing techs.
I actually ran a very detailed analysis in my current game when I poped a Great Scientist a few turns before Plastics. Because the next best tile already had a Trade Post (and I was running Rationalism), it was very slightly advantageous to bulb it. But if it wouldn't have had to displace a Trade post then the math was very slightly advantageous to academy it.
With either Petra or Desert Faith; flat Desert ends up being favorite places for me for GS.
Other choices I like are flat plains without fresh water & Sheep.
With both G&K and BNW, bulbing is the past 8 turns of science; so it's not critical it be an expensive tech; you can actually use your current path by queuing techs.
Thanks for the answers. I have some follow-up questions...
What to do with free great persons (eg. Liberty finisher)? Should I also take scientists? Should I take someone else (like engineer to rush wonder)?
Speaking of trading posts - is TP spam + Free Thought viable? Where should I spam? In my previous games I focused mostly on farms (plains, grass) and mines (hills).
What to do with free great persons (eg. Liberty finisher)? Should I also take scientists? Should I take someone else (like engineer to rush wonder)?
Speaking of trading posts - is TP spam + Free Thought viable? Where should I spam? In my previous games I focused mostly on farms (plains, grass) and mines (hills).
Much earlier in vanilla, which had a much brisker tech tree for SV. Scientific Theory became a pretty common benchmark for G&K.
Would you be able to post some numbers per chance? It's not that I don't believe you, I'd just like the see the numbers. I play a lot of Deity and I keep winning around turn 270 which I know is slow and I'd appreciate any tips or tricks with respect to optimizing that a bit. Every little bit counts lol.
I didn't write my numbers down, but I can tell you how I derived them.
An Academy after Atomic Theory yields 12 direct beakers. I simplified my math by assuming that rather than attempt to pro rate between current & max rate.
Next, I went into my city. Again with Plastics right around the corner (I was researching it at the time) I added the multiplier given by Research lab to that to what it currently was and added those up.
I then go over to science screen, and note the Rationalism opener addition of 10% and all those.
This gives me a per turn rate.
Then I head on over to the science screen. And start calculating how many turns are left before I have all required techs for science launch. Also considering a guess on number of remaining Great Scientists & RA agreements.
Then just divide to get break even point.
I should note that I lucked out and started next to a Mountain range so I included the Observatory bonus.
The break even point would have been considerably longer without it.
And if I'd been going for culture or diplomatic victory that would have greatly reduced number of required techs.
I tend to play on marathon and I don't think the times scale up so bulbing is still only about ten turns and kind of meaningless compared to the academy at that point so I'm not sure if there is ever a bulb point in marathon speed with how pathetic the gain is with 1500 turns total to go.
It's still just 8 turns of beakers at Marathon. Very hard to justify bulbing at Marathon, until you're down to your last few techs.
VainoValkea
Emperor
It feels weird they didn't rebalance it somehow. Do you get more GS's on Marathon speed then?
Nope. Cost per GP starts at 300 GPP and rises 300 for each successive GP. Same 3x proportionality for faith-bought GPs.
Falconiano
Prince
I prefer to save them all and bulb them when needed.
Pure beaker math without considering map-depending facts makes little sense, for instance say you're challenging Pedro at CV, and he's beelining Acoustic faster than you, you catch up with a bulb or two.
Say you're being air-rushed and need air badly.
Say you need Printing Press for Wold Congress host.
Too many factors to just say "but planting gives this very slight advantage in beakers so it's better".
My 2 cents.
Pure beaker math without considering map-depending facts makes little sense, for instance say you're challenging Pedro at CV, and he's beelining Acoustic faster than you, you catch up with a bulb or two.
Say you're being air-rushed and need air badly.
Say you need Printing Press for Wold Congress host.
Too many factors to just say "but planting gives this very slight advantage in beakers so it's better".
My 2 cents.
VainoValkea
Emperor
Ok, so you get a similar amount of them during the course of the game but one of the abilities is nerfed considerably by not scaling with the rest of the game. Sloppy, but at least the academy works.
Rilyharytoze
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2014
- Messages
- 14
It's actually 30 turns on marathon not 8
Acken
Deity
What is this necro. I was going to say you shouldn't settle more than 1 or 2 but it's too much of an old thread 
59saintdane
Warlord
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2014
- Messages
- 230
Wait--PLASTICS? I feel inclined to agree with Acken here, I plant my first natural GS, maybe the second, but after that I save them for bulbs. Just a quick calculation here:
Let's say you get your first GS at T120, planning to win by T220. That's 100 turns worth of academy science. Now the most base science an academy can make is 16. That's modified by a potential 300% modifier in the cap for 48 beakers; with rationalism opener it becomes around 53. 100 turns of science, let's say you bulb 12 GS's for 100 more turns of science (actually don't really know what the average number of GS's to bulb in a game is). So that's 10600 science total from the academy; I overestimated by assuming max value for the entire game which of course it isn't, but it also neglects the fact that the academy helps you to get ST/Plastics faster, which means it isn't a huge underestimation.
So 10600 science is probably similar or slightly more than what you would get from a late game bulb. But a GS planted much later than that won't be nearly so valuable. If planting at plasics, you probably have less than 50 turns left in the game, reducing its value to around 8000 beakers (assuming you have Freedom; if not it's going to be much less, also less with an observatory). But I think 1k bpt isn't unreasonable for a fast SV. Also, if you're planting until plastics you have less bulbs, reducing the value of your academies. There's also the minor bit about reducing food/hammer yields slightly by not improving the tile.
My end game science per turn is typically between 1100 & 1200 per turn.
Also note that I said "closer" and not "after".
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