What gives faster research rates?
- Thread starter Mutineer
- Start date
anthropophage
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2013
- Messages
- 212
It depends on your starting dirt. Food heavy is better for a one city national college, hammer heavy works better with expansion.
National College is easy to build when you only have 1 or 2 cities, tradition is good for 3-4 cities.
-----
Venice seems to be getting good research when founded in a decent location. I have it on a coast with 3 wheats and a bunch of wine (that's important not for food but for happiness). But at some point you have to get allies and research agreements, buy out city states.
I also went commerce and bought a whole lot of mercenaries, upgraded all archers into gatling guns with all the gold Venice can generate and conquered my neighbor.
So far I like Venice.
-----
Venice seems to be getting good research when founded in a decent location. I have it on a coast with 3 wheats and a bunch of wine (that's important not for food but for happiness). But at some point you have to get allies and research agreements, buy out city states.
I also went commerce and bought a whole lot of mercenaries, upgraded all archers into gatling guns with all the gold Venice can generate and conquered my neighbor.
So far I like Venice.
If you're at a low enough difficulty level in which you can succeed in Great Library, that's always the quickest science path. That 50% science from NC is huge. (Plus you also have a really expensive tech [for its time] for free from the GL)
The standard 2 or 3 city NC is because even on Emperor it's not guartined that you'll beat the AI for all starts to GL. (And in Immortal it's almost impossible) The 3 city version is more popular in BNW than it was in G&K because so much ultra early gold was removed in BNW that its often the case that by the time you get 400 gold a second city could have hand built a library and so it's cashing buying the library for the 3rd city without slowing NC down.
The slowest path is attempting to build GL but failing and getting fail gold.
The standard 2 or 3 city NC is because even on Emperor it's not guartined that you'll beat the AI for all starts to GL. (And in Immortal it's almost impossible) The 3 city version is more popular in BNW than it was in G&K because so much ultra early gold was removed in BNW that its often the case that by the time you get 400 gold a second city could have hand built a library and so it's cashing buying the library for the 3rd city without slowing NC down.
The slowest path is attempting to build GL but failing and getting fail gold.
I recall starting on really good dirt (with salt) doing the traditional 3 city start -> NC, while someone else did the GL start on the same map. I believe he beat me to Education by 5 turns (~90 vs ~95). But that came at a price, having lost good land and having smaller cities. By 150, the traditional start caught up, and went ahead.
I'm not sure if there were other reasons for the non GL start from taking the lead, but the 3 city start had a major advantage in settling and growth, which I'm confident is the reason for it out pacing the GL start.
I'm not sure if there were other reasons for the non GL start from taking the lead, but the 3 city start had a major advantage in settling and growth, which I'm confident is the reason for it out pacing the GL start.
This is roughly what I would expect, with both routes pulling equal again some time later (unless that early NC cost you a major city site).
In this example it did. I think the end was about ~18 turns faster without GL, but by the time you finish a game, there are lots of factors that might have played out different. The traditional start did have much better city spots as a result of getting them before the AI did.
You keep telling that, while you know that both games are not comparable. I had already lost good ground, because the AI settled in a completely different way (and that before I could even start with the settlers), heh
GL is awesome, if you can be sure that you are still gonna get all the good land you need, there is nothing that would stop me getting it.
The later is also game specific. In some games you'll get the exact same spots, especially if you sent your starting warrior off to where the AI was going to found and DOWed them right before they founded to get a free worker.
You keep telling that, while you know that both games are not comparable. I had already lost good ground, because the AI settled in a completely different way (and that before I could even start with the settlers), heh
GL is awesome, if you can be sure that you are still gonna get all the good land you need, there is nothing that would stop me getting it.
Yes, it is the only good comparison I have. And yes, that is part of the problem with the GL, you are late to settle, so you 1) don't get as good of spots, 2) will be several turns behind on growth.
Acken
Deity
I'm not a huge fan of delaying expansion, never witnessed it to be worth much in the long run. If you want GL try to expand once first imo.
Its not that simple. In that particular game, I settled the spots that were available. It was the same spots that I could take without GL too.
Also - you are maybe a few turns behind on growth in the expo's, but not by that much. See - if you do the GL on food focus, you grow the city while building it and improve more tiles, so you don't spend 12-13 turns on a settler, but only 6-7 max. And to be honest, these early turns growth lost in the expos do not matter that much. You can compensate for that for sure. The only real difference could be the size of the first expo - you could probably have 2 more pop if you go the standart route, as instead of T40 you do it T65 or something.
I had experimented a bit, and two of my best expansion cities were definitely available if you built it after two scouts, shrine and worker. There is no way both of those spots were gone before two settlers were made, as the other require Mecca to travel a long ways to take (and he always made the trek). Every time I experimented, I got the one west as well, but when I did a 1 city attempt, Poland did grab that fairly fast. There was another good spot NW which is also open for some time as well.
Going 1 city definitely effected your settling options. Perhaps you do a more delayed 3 city start when not going for GL, so it didn't feel that different?
As to the growth loss of spending more time to build my cities, that doesn't seem to be true from my experience. When you first reach pop 3, your city typically stalls out for a while, that is why I build settlers.
Edit: Perhaps we should both play the game twice, once with GL, once without, and compare our results. Out of curiosity, were you able to build Petra as well? I think you said you did, but I don't remember.
it was the polish guys who denied some land, and that was early, but I don't really remember the details.
I always start with the settlers at 4 pop. Making it at 3 seems to take forever, as you don't even have time to improve a hill or something, and sometimes you don't have one too.
Anyway, lets discontinue this. There is no way to prove who's right or wrong on this one, as even on the same map different things can happen that do not depend on you, but on the RNG. You saw the immortal challenge game, right? glory7 gets SH in the 50s and in my game Maya builds it on T40 (on the turn before me), even if we followed pretty much the same pattern till that point.
Still, even with worse cities I finished it only like 15 turns after you, and we can add my inability to stay focused on SV after ST.
The only thing that I remember for real from that game is that I had the fastest Education in any of the games I'd played And that would not be possible without that GL.
I always start with the settlers at 4 pop. Making it at 3 seems to take forever, as you don't even have time to improve a hill or something, and sometimes you don't have one too.
Anyway, lets discontinue this. There is no way to prove who's right or wrong on this one, as even on the same map different things can happen that do not depend on you, but on the RNG. You saw the immortal challenge game, right? glory7 gets SH in the 50s and in my game Maya builds it on T40 (on the turn before me), even if we followed pretty much the same pattern till that point.
Still, even with worse cities I finished it only like 15 turns after you, and we can add my inability to stay focused on SV after ST.
The only thing that I remember for real from that game is that I had the fastest Education in any of the games I'd played
And that would not be possible without that GL.I don't remember, that at least 2-3 months ago. There should be some screenshots in the thread if you manage to find it.
phillipwyllie
Wannabe Deity
I've tried both ways form the map I'm using the Spain-The Science Years challenge and the game where I didn't build the GL I got to Education on turn 91, wheres with the GL it was on turn 94. Although the GL gives +%50 to 
I think early expansion will always yield better results in the long term.
I think early expansion will always yield better results in the long term.Attachments
anthropophage
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2013
- Messages
- 212
It doesn't. It gives three beakers and a free tech. +50% would just be a win button I think.
phillipwyllie
Wannabe Deity
Oops my bad
