Great Scientist: Academy vs Discover Tech

WeaselSlapper said:

In the beaker now or beaker later equation you must also factor in the value on the GPT in unit maintenance that scientist will cost you to keep him alive until the tech you plan on beakering becomes available. If you don't factor this in you will wind up loosing a lot of gold carrying a GS a lot long than you should have. Unless there's a really high value tech in the not too distant future (Civil Service is a great example of this) I will use him to bulb whatever tech was next in my tech queue or a tech that will get me into the next era to open up more policies.

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You can also just set your tech path, pop the GS and then shift+enter to end your turns. It does mean your tech path is set in stone until you reach a good place to exit, but you don't lose the gold. Considering you can do this with social policies, I consider the only reason they didn't with techs is because it isn't easy to support with the UI.

Unearthly said:

You can also just set your tech path, pop the GS and then shift+enter to end your turns. It does mean your tech path is set in stone until you reach a good place to exit, but you don't lose the gold. Considering you can do this with social policies, I consider the only reason they didn't with techs is because it isn't easy to support with the UI.

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This is an exploit that will most likely get fixed in a future patch, so I wouldn't bank on this working forever. This would break things like the Great Library so I can't imagine this not getting corrected.

I read through most of the thread and I am solidly on the side of "bulb" - I built an academy once when I was playing a lowish level game... basically just to "see" what things looked like.

***** PATCH HYPOTHETICAL FOLLOWS *****

If, at some point they do marginally improve the specialist building and make some way you arent screwing yourself out of what might be your only source of a currently hidden resource there is one more thing to consider with a settled GP outside of a city:

Given the currently popularity of ICS like strats AND even if non ICS'ing given the BFH of cities it should be quite possible to place an academy/manufactorium such that it could theoretically be worked by 3 or even 4 cities. I mention this more for the engineer building than the academy - properly placed it could provide a much needed boost to multiple cities in getting time sensitive, high value buildings like lib/uni/col up faster.

Example: GE is planted in between three cities which form a rough triangle, city 1 begins lib and works manf tile, city 2 and 3 do whatever they would do normally, maybe start lib or settler, upon completion city 1 switches worker to scientist, city 2 takes over manf tile and so on.

I havent given this huge in depth thought but its certainly a way to make "more" out of that one building - it doesnt work nearly as well (if at all) for the science academy since you'd want max multi's on it and thus has its best value near your science city. Given the above discussion I believe that's still a sucky option.

What if lightbulbing gave a fixed amount of to a random researchable tech?

I like the deterministic nature of lightbulbing right now, but I've had a difficult time thinking of other ways to balance it other than making it random like Research Agreements. There's alternatives like keeping it deterministic but restricting the tech to just the current era... thoughts?

Thalassicus said:

What if lightbulbing gave a fixed amount of to a random researchable tech?

I like the deterministic nature of lightbulbing right now, but I've had a difficult time thinking of any other way to balance it other than making it random like Research Agreements.

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I would put the Scientist in line with other GP.

The Artist one gives 3-4 tiles worth around 600 gold, the Merchant gives flat 600 gold, the Engineer gives around 800 worth in hammers. Nothing gets as expensive as techs, so lets say 1000 is a good, round number. Can't directly bulb anything past Renaissance.

I agree with bibor that that's one path for it to take, the other one would be to buff the other specialists and buildings. I've always been of the opinion that nerfing is boring. Much more fun is offering viable alternatives.

Personally I think that the GE should insta build any wonder, not be limited as it is now.

I think the artist should be reworked entirely and give you a free social policy (face it , culture bombs suck)

The merchant should insta-full ally any city state, even an enemy (thereby providing the only way to stop perma-war)

and then you just x2 the number of GP needed for all GPs.

(Oh and we should go back to specialists being added to the city tile, not the special building on outside tiles nonsense)
BAM, DONE.

culture bombs are a great artist attack thing and if someone settles near you can surround them with tiles and take the city in half a turn

academy for scientist, mad artist bomber for defense , the evidence is clear

I think if they gave all the specialists buildings a slight bump in stats and let you build them in addition to the regular tile improvement (or plant them in cities, which I like better) that would actually make planting them useful again. I think that the GE should be able to rush build instantly any wonder except for victory condition wonders (Apollo, Utopia, and UN) these wonders should not be rushable under any circumstance.

The only thing they need to do to nerf the GS is put force a 15 turn wait between bulbs (normal speed), making slingshots impossible. I do agree that the culture bomb as it is is pretty useless. There was only one time I thought I could use it, but I would have only gotten me two tiles so it would have been a waste. While having a GA give a free policy would be overpowered they could have it add a variable amount of culture based on the number of cities (only count cities that count toward policy costs). I'm not quite sure what they could do to the GM to make me want to use him for anything but a GA, but they do need to improve his ability too.

The great artist is not useless ... I love landmarks.
Not 'cos they're particularly powerful, but they look so damn sweet on the map.

I also used culture bomb recently to get at uranium that's just outside my territory.
Was playing a culture game, so the city was almost done grabbing its third ring .. but the uranium was one hex away.
Grr, I thought ... make a new city? Oh wait, culture bomb.

troytheface said:

culture bombs are a great artist attack thing and if someone settles near you can surround them with tiles and take the city in half a turn

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half a turn? clarify this with evidence please

Figure of speech.

IgnatiusTBarfat said:

half a turn? clarify this with evidence please

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It's troytheface, read this:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395910

Clarification is clearly 3 turns better than building catapults.

The evidence is clear: spam evidence while teching warriors and run from workers.

I am thinking about the trade-off between getting a bunch of early techs a earlier, versus getting 1 late tech earlier. It's more complicated, becaues the early game is exponential but once you hit neighbours it becomes linear. Not a trivial question for Babylon, I almost feel that DLC's are powerful but more complicated.

Now that the game has changed a bit so that the benefit of bulbing/beakering is based on your empire's science output, are academies finally a viable strategy? On my Huge Marathon Prince game as Persia, I built more than a few in my capital, along with many, many manufacturies and holy sites. Of course these were also desert tiles with the Desert Folklore pantheon and Petra, so they were giving faith, food, production, and gold along with their standard outputs.

I ended up winning a diplomatic victory just before the end of twentieth century. I was in the Information Age while my nearest technological competitor, Rome, was still in the Modern Age. I managed to conquer his massive North American empire at the rate of two cities a turn, which was immensely satisfying after all those years he spent bullying my city-states and taunting me about it from across the Atlantic.

It seems that academies have become a lot more useful with G&K. Does anyone knows the exact formula for how bulbing/beakering works now?

Bulbing is the sum of your previous 8 turns of

Fully pimped up with all the multipliers an academy can be worth 30 per turn
So if you get a few GS early it makes to settle them but for pure science victory bulbing them once you get your bpt to over 1000 (which is in the turn 230ish range) is optimal

Is that total beakers or just city output beakers without taking into account beakers from city-states, 15% happiness bonus, etc? Also where did you get the "Last 8 turns" information from? I'd be interested in giving it a more thorough read, along with information on Great Engineers and how their production rush works.

Settling an academy, is going to strengthen later Scientists whom you bulb.

In vanilla I always settled the first. Now the first 1-3. Not sure about this, especially since I never build the GL anymore in favor of stonehedge.

I've found myself settling a lot more. My capital city's output is around 650 beakers after modifiers now thanks mostly to academies and specialists.

I did recently consume a GS to discover a tech and gained about 9k beakers, which put me about halfway through. My empire was generating 1.4k beakers a turn at that point, so assuming that had grown a bit it does seem to be consistent with the last 8 turns formula that you guys were talking about.

I'm still interested in information about the Great Engineer, though. So far I haven't found a wonder that I couldn't rush to completion, which makes me wonder now if it's manufactories that we shouldn't be bothering with.

Itrade said:

I've found myself settling a lot more. My capital city's output is around 650 beakers after modifiers now thanks mostly to academies and specialists.

I did recently consume a GS to discover a tech and gained about 9k beakers, which put me about halfway through. My empire was generating 1.4k beakers a turn at that point, so assuming that had grown a bit it does seem to be consistent with the last 8 turns formula that you guys were talking about.

I'm still interested in information about the Great Engineer, though. So far I haven't found a wonder that I couldn't rush to completion, which makes me wonder now if it's manufactories that we shouldn't be bothering with.

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You'll want to have a great engineer at times on immortal+ to grab key wonders. That said, it's not uncommon for me to go entire games without ever having one GE.