What gives better science, order or freedom

The coal question is problematic.

At high levels you can live with it since that you can borrow some pretty easily and fast enough.

But what for other type of games? Multiplayer and EMP- level are good examples.

I will delay the last gs bulb to make sure that i will discover Industrialization with Radio on the same turn. So the next turn you can have a better idea of what you are going to do(assuming that there is no reload, etc).

There is no math formulas that can solve this problem

Memoryjar said:

I did it a couple of months ago. It was on Prince.
Order give me 10 turns less than Freedom. But I restart from the beginning not from ideology choice (Iwonder how I didn't think about this).

IMHO, more important is what do you do after plastics with Order or Freedom, same path or some detour to Biology and Penicilin.

And when did you reach Fertilizer or Chemistry ? Also, Atomic theory before Rocketry with Order ? Only 1 tenets 3 with order or Iron curtain first.

@Iberian : Yes no coal and few alu. I can't make a good finish with less than 8 alus with Order. I need hammers so Hydro Plant and Spaceship factories. Or those one are not needed, so I waste a couple of turn building them.

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I think people rush buy production buildings since after labs Order don't need the gold. At least that's what I do when chosing Order.

The need for aluminum is significantly reduced with freedom. With Order you want a few good production cities which needs both hydro plants and spaceship factories. With freedom you only need 1 aluminum as you can purchase the parts one after the other. Sometimes you want a hydroplant in your capital to boost apollo and hubble. And you might want the free spaceship factory that comes with hubble.

To me freedom seems as the safer option. Sometimes you do not have the food, or sufficiently developed cities to do Order properly. That you only need one decent production city to win a science victory with freedom is a large benefit, as illustrated by my example above. It would have taken me ages to build the needed parts in that game. This means you can skip the expensive late game pops and buildings and go for max specialists + research in all cities except one after you have gotten your research labs up. This gives a lot of science throughout the endgame which is then amplified by your scientist bulbs. The other cities only need be around 16 pop and only really need the specialist buildings. Terrain is inconsequential as long as they can get that big in time for your science push as you will almost only work specialists after that.

tetley said:

There is never a shortage of people who discount or scorn theory, but in the end if it wasn't for wave theory you wouldn't be reading this on the internet, without newton's theory we never would have sent a man to space, and if it wasn't for sending a man to space OR atomic theory, you wouldn't have a flippin' computer running on polysilicon transistors 9 angstroms thick and 22 nanometers long to play Civ V on.

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Wave "theory" and Newton's "theory" are fundamentally different from the "theory" that's going on in this thread because "theory" means something different in science. A theory in science is something that is generally accepted as true, which has a solid mathematical backing and good experimental evidence. The theories put forth here are not "theories" in the scientific sense, they're hypotheses because they haven't been tested yet.
I'm not trying to discount the value of theoretical thinking. It's definitely very important, but what many people here are contesting is the notion that having a convincing theory (or "hypothesis" if you prefer) means that you're indisputably right. You never accept something on the basis of theorizing alone--nor on experiment alone, for that matter. You need both. Although the theorycrafting going on here provides a good approximation, it would be naive to assume that the complexity of Civ can be modeled by a simple math equation. There's a whole bunch of factors in play that mean that theorycrafting like this is never 100% correct, which is why it's necessary to test these things in a game to make sure there isn't some critical variable you've forgotten, or some miscalculation you've made.

On to my own opinion on the matter: I definitely think Order is better for science and SV. Why:
1. Worker's Faculties gives a significant science boost from factories and lets you put them up faster. While 25% isn't actually 25% due to previous modifiers, it's still going to net you at least a 10% boost to that city's science output, something that Freedom doesn't really have.
2. It's still possible to run specialists with Order. Freedom gives food, happy and hammers (with StoL) from specialists. It's been said before, but that food is maybe going to get you one extra citizen per city by the end of the game. That's likely not going to end up being near a 10% boost to science, especially since the factory science bonus will come a lot earlier. With happiness, you just need to make sure you stay above 0 to get the bonus from Rationalism, which shouldn't be a problem with all the happiness policies in Order. Then there's hammers, which is nice but won't vastly increase your science output, and Five-Year Plan can partially replicate that hammer bonus.
3. Spaceflight Pioneers gives a free GS that Freedom doesn't get, meaning you can push through techs faster. The free GE can be used to rush that last spaceship parts, and the previous ones probably won't be delayed *that* much by the inability to gold-purchase, surely not by more than the 8 turns that the GS will save.
That said, this is just theorycrafting unbacked by actual gameplay, so it must as always be taken with a grain of salt.

Freedom has its merits, sure, but in my opinion Order will probably win out here. Actually, it seems like Order is stronger than Freedom in general. Anyone else notice this?

Well the counter arguments to your points 59saintdane are those I've already made on the first page:

1. Faster factories and science from it is nice... if you can get coal when you reach ideology.
It takes a while no matter the difficulty for the AI or CS to get their coal. It can go up to T175-180 on Deity and even T200 on Immortal. There is the argument that you can settle an extra city to grab a remote coal source. But it will still take some time and you'll suffer a tech penality.

If someone is willing to plead for Order strength in a "no coal scenario" I invite that person to play the game suggested earlier from Ironfighterxxx. It doesn't take that much time, only 60turns to play, note that I chose to purposely miss the same science wonders to make the comparison fair.

2. If you run all specialists (merchants and engineers) at the turn you hit Order some cities may have trouble growing. Freedom can get a couple more pop in comparison. Does it mean that freedom catches up to factory science ? Maybe not (sounds unlikely). But the real question is whether or not the difference matter or outweigh the other points of contention between the two. Also Freedom bulbs later.

3. In my experience Freedom can often (not always I guess) get an additional natural GS over order because it needs Hubble really late (and Tier 3 Order also increases the counter twice !).
For example in my example above where I finished at T203 I got my last natural GS at T199 and finished Hubble at T200. Order cannot afford to delay both tier3 and hubble 3 turns before the end (well it "can", but it's a lot trickier and can increase production problems). While the GS is definitely a strong boon for Order it is not always a guaranteed extra GS over freedom. Freedom doesn't miss the GE obviously.

These 3 points are based on real experience with comparing the two out of the same game. However, I don't want to give the false impression that I think you should always pick freedom either. I'm just raising a counter argument to the aforementioned hypothesis you have made to illustrate that the difference is probably closer that you'd expect. I'm interested in finding how big the difference is and where one shines over the other.

"Also freedom bulbs later"

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What do you mean by this. That you are bulbing scientists later, or that running the specialists increases the science bulbs compared to Order, who can simply run the specialists for the 8 turns beforehand for the bulb.

If only there was more competition for the SoL by the ai (or by other players in mp) then this would seem more one sided, as without it Order seems much better. The other obvious bonus for order is that many AIs favour it and so you don't end up against the world as the lone freedom player, and can still make research agreements (though not many should be necessary by the end).

Freedom uses its GS later than Order. So while Order has (if coal) higher bulbs with factories, the fact that freedom waits longer allows freedom to increase its bulbs before using them (I doubt it would beat Order just from that but still it's a part of the comparison). It's just easier to really maximize your bulb value with Freedom since you have more time to get all the specialist slots, build research and add trade posts.

If you're aiming for a very fast victory, ideologies differences will have almost no impact even on Deity. The game cited previously, I won before a single AI took an ideology (on immortal). And definetely they come too late to impact your ability to get RAs.

Acken said:

It's just easier to really maximize your bulb value with Freedom since you have more time to get all the specialist slots, build research and add trade posts.

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That's what I miss. I idle my workers until railroad and always forgot trade posts with Freedom and free thought.

this is all so pointless ...

freedom gives like nothing which speeds science win drastictly, apart Tier 3 buy parts.

The value of the buy part thing should be calculated/noticed, not the other Close to useless boni.
How is missing coal or alu a Problem? One out of the 16 CS SHOULD have alu and/or coal ..

All I care for in a science game is bakker and bulb Output and there Order wins big time. Growth will be stoped few turn after idiologies anyway for all out specialist and Trade post empire.

If I could SOMEHOW accumulate as much Gold as I need to buy all or all but 1 parts I might give freedom a thought - but that seems unreaslistic - or not?

What's the synergy between Freedom and Trading Posts? I must have missed that SP.

beetle said:

What's the synergy between Freedom and Trading Posts? I must have missed that SP.

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Freedom has more food so it can work more trading posts which will give 1 science cos of one rationalism policy. Forget the name but it also gives 17% science for uni's.

Okay, I knew about the SP in Rationalism that adds a science for TP. Is that really enough that people start converting farms to TP? If so, all farms, or just grassland/floodplain farms? Even with Freedom, food seems more valuable to me. This might be something I need to try more.

Well before you begin the big post-Labs science push (working all specialist slots and jungle and TP tiles and putting every city on produce science to squeeze out every possible beaker) and subsequent GS bulb-fest, you want to convert as many farms as possible to TPs. By definition, once you've bulbed all of your GSs, the benefits of further population growth have a minimal impact on the timing of your science victory. Yes, additional pop might help get the tech for the last SS part (assuming bulbs didn't get you there), but it takes time to generate that additional pop and the value of the earlier TP spam is, IMO, greater.

tommynt said:

this is all so pointless ...

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Well, actually discussion started to bear concrete results http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13468289&postcount=84

tommynt said:

How is missing coal or alu a Problem? One out of the 16 CS SHOULD have alu and/or coal ...

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Well, they can have it, but without tech it gives you nothing (in game mentioned before it didn't happend to the end - 208T immortal)

tommynt said:

If I could SOMEHOW accumulate as much Gold as I need to buy all or all but 1 parts I might give freedom a thought - but that seems unreaslistic - or not?

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If I remember correctly with mercantilism and Big Ben one part cost only 1800g - pretty easy to get gold for all on high difficulty with friendly AIs

Accumulating that much gold by, say, turn 260 is easy, but by turns 210-220 (or such) is much more difficult, particularly if you are also rush-buying labs in multiple cities.

Browd said:

Accumulating that much gold by, say, turn 260 is easy, but by turns 210-220 (or such) is much more difficult, particularly if you are also rush-buying labs in multiple cities.

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In game mention before Acken managed to accumulate money on turn 203 even without commerce so it's definitely doable

'Also since you went Patronage instead of Commerce I had to pay full price for the parts so I had to accumulate 18300 gold lol.'

IronfighterXXX said:

In game mention before Acken managed to accumulate money on turn 203 even without commerce so it's definitely doable

'Also since you went Patronage instead of Commerce I had to pay full price for the parts so I had to accumulate 18300 gold lol.'

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It is easily doable. With 4-6 cities working all of the merchant specialist slots at turn 200 you will have 400+ GPT. You can sell that GPT for 25 gold each to friends for a total of 10k+ gold.

I don't usually see AI friends sitting on 2K+ of gold, but I can't argue with your arithmetic.

Browd said:

I don't usually see AI friends sitting on 2K+ of gold, but I can't argue with your arithmetic.

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You don't need to trade it all in one turn, more like over 10 turns, and with multiple trading partners. Once you trade some gold, they will only generate more faster, making the rest easier to get. Also in these games going for the fastest SV I'm assuming people pick peaceful AIs that will stockpile gold and give DOFs. It may not work as well without preselected AI.

For reference, in my current game on Great Plains with Bab on T160 6/7 AI have around 100GPT and I have a DOF with 4 or 5 of them. Accumulating the gold to build parts will be trivial.

You can also sell buildings and destroy your units for extra cash at the end, I had to do a little bit of that to get up to 18300 gold.

The thing is, since you're slowly giving your gpt away in the 20 or so turns before the end, the AI get more and more gpt as a result so you have more and more gold to exchange with them. You're basically buying their own gpt. And with enough friends it's usually easy on immortal/deity to accumulate 10K gold in 20 turns. That is only 500gold per turn: EASY when all your cities have 4 merchant specialists and the 3 building. Also you redirect caravans as gold instead of hammers like order if necessary.

10K5 is what is required if you got BigBen + Mercantilism. Otherwise it costs 18K3 which was a lot closer than I would have liked but since Ironfighter went Patronage instead of Commerce I was forced to it. I advise to take Commerce if you want to try it out.

beetle said:

Okay, I knew about the SP in Rationalism that adds a science for TP. Is that really enough that people start converting farms to TP? If so, all farms, or just grassland/floodplain farms? Even with Freedom, food seems more valuable to me. This might be something I need to try more.

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To be honest, that is also a part that I need to work more and is mostly theoretical now.

But the thing is that Freedom can actually sacrifice mines for TP if you want to keep your food. And then you probably don't use all your farm tiles anyway when running 8 specialists per city so you might as well make TP there for later instead of making a farm that will never be used. Then when the time is right you switch some food to TP.
You obviously don't do it 50 turns before the end otherwise you kill your growth but in the last 20/30 turns to increase bulb value and get 1base science out of each TP. The benefit of TP outweigh the benefit of a possible +1 pop and like I said Freedom can sacrifice hills to it (maybe not in cap).

Also each TP is worth 3 base gold (since you'll be in a golden age). And this plays well with how Freedom must play its game.