@Cromagnus: forgot to say i was doing this on Immortal. my goal was trying to accomplish this with just 1 GS as early as i can. since this is suited for the non-science civs the most i wondered if you could still use Bab/Maya to push an earlier start for the snowball effect. the free GS let me delay all the science techs/buildings until i realized i still need to get to 100bpt early. the problem was the initial amount of beakers didnt multiply enough pre-Ren era. 3 would definitely do it but now im going to mess with what i can get with 2 simultaneous bulbs. with Babylon an early focus on culture should get you a fast enough liberty finish to time with your first naturally generated GS (from oracle, bonus% and unis) to get 3 very early.
and yeah, maya will be up next in the comparison if i feel like continuing this. it already feels like the time i learned i could type in "godmode" or "clipwalls" in Doom in 1993 so we'll see how much i care to actually continue this experiment.
I feel the same way. Not sure how much I care to continue the experiment. Unfortunately, the whole thing is tarnishing my civ experience. I may quit for a while.
Regarding the mechanic, I think there's a theoretical limit on how much you can exploit this, because there are many catch-22's. Your bpt affects the total bonus, but the more bpt you have early, the less techs you don't know. And, the sooner you bulb, the less techs the AI has had time to reseach.. So, basically there's a limit on how far you can bulb without waiting until Scholars In Residence passes. (Which coincidentally give more time for the AI to learn techs)
You basically can't get an Industrial tech much earlier than t115, you can't get to Renaissance much earlier than t100, and you can't *really* get to Medieval early at all. Maybe a few turns at most, because you're wasting turns researching old techs first after you start the bulb... so that's a limiting factor.
This doesn't mean you can't get an advantage by doing this early, but it's not a huge advantage.
The thing is, you can't get RAs until you get Education, and don't complete them until 30 turns later. So while you can theoretically get Scientific Theory on t115, your RAs still don't complete until t130, and besides, you just rush-bought Universities... how are you going to afford to buy public schools? If you have to build them for 15 turns, it's not better than rush-buying them 15 turns later. Another catch-22. Why not wait 15 more turns and get more snowball? See my point?
There are 3 factors that influence how many "bonus" beakers you can get out of this:
1) How many techs the AI know that you don't.
2) Your beakers/turn
3) Scholars In Residence
The base overflow, if I understand it right, for techs that all other AIs know, is 1.265x. (1 +0.3*(7/8))
Scholars In Residence is an additional 1.2x on your total overflow, for a total of 1.4625x.
For techs that are roughly the same cost as your base beakers/turn, the net result is:
(Initial bulb beakers)*(1.4625^y) where y is the number of techs.
Let's say, for the sake of simplicity, that there are 10 techs you don't know, that are all exactly 100 beakers. (So your beakers/turn have no influence on the growth rate other than determining the initial bulb amount)
Let's also say for the sake of argument that your bulb is worth 800 beakers.
800*(1.4625^10) = 800*(44.76) roughly, or 35813 beakers.
Once you run out of techs that the AI already knows, you get zero overflow.
So, in this scenario, you get 35813 beakers to play with. Of course, not all techs are 100 beakers. So, that makes it harder to calculate, which is why I don't have exact numbers. I might record them the next time I try to I can write out a table.
The important thing though, is that your total output is proportional to your total input (A), and proportional to the number of techs you don't know. (B)
It's hard for (A) to be big early and B cannot be big early. Also, it's important to realize how much Scholars in Residence affects the outcome. Without SiR, you get 800*(1.265^10) = 800*(10.49) or 8394 beakers. For 10 techs, you're getting only 1/4th the total bonus beakers without scholars in residence.
If there were 15 techs at 100 cost that you didn't have, the bonuses would be 239622 beakers and 27192 beakers, or 1/8th the total bonus withour SiR. That's a huge difference.
In my experimentation of bulbing prior to turn 100, I haven't been able to get my overflow to get higher than 3500 before it dips down, for a grand total benefit of somewhere around 6000 beakers. That's *mostly* due to not having Scholars In Residence. That's a 4x factor, and while I was at 70bpt, that's 70% of the "target" number, so it was a much less significant factor. The other issue is the size of your initial bulb has to be MUCH bigger than the size of your initial techs, in order for it to have time to grow before it starts shrinking.
You basically can't reach the cap without Scholars In Residence or waiting so late in the game that you might as well have had it.
So, let's assume that the theoretical earliest Scholars In Residence can pass is somewhere around t125-130. (If an AI researches Printing Press around t100 AND they've met everyone, + the turns before the vote)
This means that you can't start snowballing the entire tech tree prior to t130 at the absolute earliest, which means you can't complete a space race prior to about t170, even if you somehow had the production/gold to get all those spaceship parts done. Which you won't, because you *won't even have the techs to build factories/hydro dams/etc. until t160ish...*
If you try to bulb around t110, let's say with 100 beaker/turn since t100, well, that means you managed to get early education and have been researching 800 beakers worth of techs. So, you're not very far behind in tech. Which means you're getting closer to that smaller number, or roughly 30000 total beaker benefit. Which will barely get you to the Modern Era. And at 1 tech/turn, you're getting there on roughly t135. And you can get to the Modern Era on t135 WITHOUT this exploit.
Also, the catch is that you eventually run out of expensive techs to research without having to dip down again, so that's another difficult thing to manage. You need to time completion of your expensive tech with getting all your GS. If you mistime it you wasted your cheap techs. So, all of this means it's just not *all that* advantageous to go for it much earlier than the time you'd get Scholars in Residence anyway.
I believe the theoretical limit without Scholars in Residence is achieved thusly:
Having 2 bulbs instead of 1 makes a huge difference, obviously. Having 3 instead of 2 makes an even BIGGER difference, but to get 3 you either need to go for Pisa, which greatly reduces your unresearched techs, and getting Printing Press by t100 is hard enough as it is... or you need to have not gotten any GS before. Which rules out Babylon.
If you've already gotten 2 GP (Liberty/Writing) you need 300 pts. Each university earns 6 pts/turn or 10 w/ secularism, so you'll never get a GS fast enough that way. Unfortunately with the Maya, if you took a GE, now it's 400 pts. But the Maya is still your best bet IMHO. But it's tricky. You have to *delay* finishing Liberty and not take a GE or a GS until you've spawned one naturally.
The optimal way to do it is to somehow get a University up and staffed on t100 without completing Liberty, get the points GS on t115, bulb liberty on t116, and take the t117 Maya Long Count GS, then bulb all three immediately. If you're at 100bpt, this is 2400 beakers, which, if we plug back into that "15 tech" number, gives you 108K beakers. Of course, that number is made up, but you get the idea. That could, in theory, get you to the Atomic Era around t135.
I think... haven't pulled it off yet. The reason being, it's really hard to avoid researching techs all the way to 117. If you skip the useful ones, there's a cost... like you can't build roads or make tile improvements. If you tech the Astronomy line, unless you're on a Water map or doing SV, that's basically a giant waste of time. Your best bet, as others have said, is to go towards Architecture.. That way you avoid Engineering and Bronzeworking. If you're trying to bulb on t115, you really need all the cheap unresearched techs you can get... Sailing isn't enough.
Basically, I've found that with an 800beaker attempt, you stop growing when you hit the final medieval techs, so I beeline as soon as I run out of cheaper ones. That gets me one second-tier renaissance tech, IE chemistry. With a 2400 beaker attempt, you theoretically shouldn't stop growing until the second-tier renaissance techs, so if you bulb when you hit them, you can get one (1) Modern era tech before you run out, if you're lucky... I haven't timed it right yet. Maybe you could get to the Atomic Era if you waited to start until t120...
The point is you can't really start the snowball prior to t130ish and finish out the tree, which creates a limit on turn to victory.
You can, however, get pretty far up the tree in that case I describe.
But that's best-case scenario, and again, it's a catch-22. If your tech rate is good, and have a university slot worked early, you aren't far behind in tech. In order to fall behind in tech far enough with science output, you have to wait longer. If you don't have good science output, you won't get as much snowball.
You also can't really do this effectively with the bottom of the tree, at least not early. You need good tech output when you bulb, and you won't have it if you work the bottom of the three. You'll get more cheap techs, so you'll get more bonus beakers, but your bulb will be worth less.
So, while you can get, say Rifling or Cannons, on t105, you can't get much farther than that.
This all makes the more interesting question: Which tech do you beeline? t130 Dynamite? t115 Industrialization? T115 Sci Theory? Which tech is the best use of the exploit?
Personally, I think Industrialization might be the most interesting use:
Use GG to get coal, rush-buy factories... you have ideology on t115. But then what? What's the goal? For domination you'd be better off beelining a war tech.... Unless you've been leveling CBs... upgrading all your CBs to Gatlings on t115 is expensive, but if they've got double-tap, those are some nasty units. But, range-2 gatlings lose a lot of the tactical advantage of range-3 XBs... So, yeah, not sure super-early ideology is worth it. However, there are a TON of social policies in there... I'm sure someone could figure out something cool to do with early ideology.
Then there's Sci Theory. Ok, so you're just doing an optimal science run, which you can do without the exploit. *yawn*
Dynamite? T130 artillery is fun, but it's not all THAT different from t140 artillery, which you could achieve without the exploit.
T115 Archeology on the other hand, now that could be interesting for a CV... getting all those archaeologists out earlier could be fun.
Personally, I'm warming up to the idea of going for earlier tanks. Flight isn't a good plan because you can't upgrade into those units. So you're sitting around building air units or buying A LOT of them.
However, with tanks that's a lot of expensive upgrading. But, by t140 you could definitely have the cheap upgrades from Honor, and the cheaper upgrades from Ideology when you get Combustion... see, now THAT is a fun idea.
Anyway, this is turning into a rant.
