Planting academies Vs Bulbing GSs with Babylon

Also academies give 10 science at that point (got public schools right?) and on atomic will be 12 science. With rationalism, your capital will have 150% bonus upon labs, 200% bonus with mountain near capital. The 10% science bonus from rationalims opener is also applied here.

A NC capital academy usually output 27 science on their own on industrial, and tops at roughly 40 when got all possible bonuses. Then you get the bonus from freedom, changing the values to 27->38 and 40->53.

There are significant values, that will affect also future scienctific bulbs by x8 their value in the beakers result. If you have a semi-wide/wide empire this bonus will be less important, but on tall empires you can get optimal academies even upon entering modern.

I tried yesteday. 4 cities tradition, cap and another city with mountain.
I plant 4 academies in cap, one in a mountain city, one in a crap science city.
Freedom, plant to Satellites, after bulbing (2 from Hubble, two from faith, one from a city). 1 700 bpt when bulbing. Victory T 260.
Big Ben and Mercantilism gave me a spaceship parts for 1 800 gold each. I didn't build any parts. Civil society seems to have same effect as Iron curtain.
Some points, I tried it on Chieftain (tried goldfish game) where barbs camp give 40 gold, happiness is not an issue and AI don't exist. So early gold wasn't a real issue. I tried to build decent army like in a Deity game. Wonders : Oracle, Pisa, Christ, Satellites (I avoid others because there are not need).

Comparing to order you only need 6 tenets over 9 (if you go first to Iron curtain). I'll try planting with order. After bulbing.
Manage to use the same map, and hope have the same game.

PS: I note that science for a tech are lower in chieftain. Is it real or do I mistake myself ?

Chieftain difficulty gets you 95% research cost. Warlord and up is 100% and Settler is 90%

Ninakoru said:

Also academies give 10 science at that point (got public schools right?) and on atomic will be 12 science. With rationalism, your capital will have 150% bonus upon labs, 200% bonus with mountain near capital. The 10% science bonus from rationalims opener is also applied here.

A NC capital academy usually output 27 science on their own on industrial, and tops at roughly 40 when got all possible bonuses. Then you get the bonus from freedom, changing the values to 27->38 and 40->53.

There are significant values, that will affect also future scienctific bulbs by x8 their value in the beakers result. If you have a semi-wide/wide empire this bonus will be less important, but on tall empires you can get optimal academies even upon entering modern.

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A bulbed scientist after research labs gives over 10k beakers. Even if you get 50bpt from a GS it takes 200 turns to get that science back. You also didn't include the loss of production/food for the lost improvement on the tile you used to plant the academy.

Browd said:

Chieftain difficulty gets you 95% research cost. Warlord and up is 100% and Settler is 90%

Click to expand...

For reference only, the "AI handicap" level new to BNW gets 85%.

T250 with order and bulbing.

10 turn less, same map, same game path. Less faith, so one scientist less.

Definitely order and bulbing.

In my mind there is no doubt that order is better than freedom for science. But the question remains, when to plant an academy and when to bulb.

As I mentioned earlier it depends on some factors:
- How many turns left in the game (this varies from player to player, I aim to beat my Arabia record at turn 226, but other players might be slower/quicker). You can account each future GS as adding 8 turns to the ending turn when doing this calculation.
- How much you get from bulbing. More cities makes it more worthwhile to bulb.
- How quickly it benefits you. Bulbing a GS to get research labs 8 turns earlier can be totally worth it.

I would say the guidelines for planting an academy would be to plant 1-2 academies as any civ but Babylon and 2-3 as Babylon and bulb the rest. I do not recommend waiting until after research labs to bulb them all. I would suggest bulbing all GSs you currently have 8 turns after getting public schools in all cities, or possibly 8 turns after workers faculties with all factories built depending on the timing.

But that is just a general guideline. Exactly how to do will require some experimentation.

One more thing that's involved in the core bulbing vs academy timing:

Since planting an academy drives up science rate; it causes each future GS bulbed later (ideally 8+ turns) to produce more science than the same GS would if there hadn't been an academy.

Personally, I find I now stop planting academies when there isn't a suitable tile that would be worked by my capital. (My capital always builds NC)

Unsuitable tiles for great people (in my opinion): Any case where it would reduce hammers compared to standard improvement. (I rather absorb a 1 or 2 food loss and make it up via a food cargo ship than the reverse) This also means, I'll ensure I build a stable before converting the last Sheep from pasture to Great Scientist.

Edit: With Freedom, Academies max out at 16 beakers each; but remember to include all rationalism's bonuses & the science buildings bonuses for full value.
My 5 academies in my capital (unfortunately no mountains) is typical. At time of completion of Hubble; my beaker rate was 1118 beakers per turn under Freedom.
All but one specialist slot being run in the capital (all tiles worth working by my capital being worked as well)

(1. Any comparison against having saved that last scientist needs to subtract out 16 * 2 (close enough multiplers unless you have mountains) * 8 turns = 256 beakers yield each from all future GS when comparing academy yield. If I'd saved all 5 of these GS, that would be 1280 beakers less per GS.
Along the same lines it needs to consider impact on RAs, especially when you have PT.

2. Any comparison against Order would need to subtract out effect of New Deal on 5 Academies; subtract 10 pop points effect on science; including 8 specialists before adding the 25% bonus for factories under order. In addition, it would need to consider the economic effect of not having the Statue of Liberty hammer boost in cities with a very large specialist population.

I will however concede that space ship parts costing 3000 gold each makes it almost as rare as spare GEs.)

its always a matter of judging a situation individually, you cannot just follow a rule of thumb and expect to do well. You have to consider many factors such as growth, happiness, tech, what turn you want to finish, gold, production, victory type etc.

deity also gives powerful RA's, so babs is gold for planting 2-3 academies to get order asap.

regarding the patronage sci policy - the detour from ratio/order really needs some crazy culture (2-3 cultural CS allies or a win in the world fair) to get enough policies in time