Good science strategy?

What is a good strategy to win using a science based victory?

I played through a long game last night and I was advancing fine, but I ran into two problems:

a) Cities were plagued with unhappiness as I expanded, even though I invested in colosseums, circuses and theatres. I often had to make disadvantageous trade deals to acquire luxury items to keep them happy.

b) Two other civs had massive armies and owned almost the entire continents. It was difficult to defend against them, especially their ships bombarding my cities.

Is it possible to win without building up a huge army?

I am relatively new to Civ (last time i played was in 2005 when IV came out).

the best way to get a science win in my opinion, is to not over expand, keep a medium/smallish sized empire that you can easily defend. build up a solid infrastructure with lots of trading posts and get friendly with maritime city states for food.

if you really want a totally science focused game, play as Babylon (assuming you got it) and rush the great library, then focus on churning out as many great scientists as possible. don't burn them all on techs though, use some for golden ages or you will find yourself in trouble economically.

The most important factor, imo, when it comes to having a sustainable research economy is increasing your population. Population gives you more tiles to work, but to my mind, that's the lesser factor. The greater is that it both increases (directly) your research and your money. Trade routes pay out based on how large your cities are. The greater the population, the more money you get - but you don't pay any extra for the connections. And, of course, libraries give you research based on your city size. And since the extra research buildings increase research by a percentage, the more population, the more research.

Ideally, you want to have as large an empire as you can support, because unlike culture, research doesn't increase as you increase cities. Grab all the Maritime cities you can, because the more food you have, the faster your cities grow. And don't waste money constructing buildings you don't need. You don't really need to go overboard on culture/military/construction buildings, as your focus is on research. Obviously build all the money buildings you can, because they have no upkeep, so are purely beneficial.

By doing this, you should easily have enough money to have a substantial military, which will deter attacks by other Civs. And because you're only building a small subset of the available buildings, you should have plenty of build time to get those military units out there.

As a for instance, in my current game, I have slightly more than half the territory of the leader, but I easily have the most population. And despite being #2 on military, I'm still making over 100g/turn on a Standard map.

Bh

I'd focus your main science output in a non-capital city with tons of food and some production. Settle a great scientist in one of the tiles for an academy, farm the rest and work lots of specialists - and use the production when new science upgrades become available.

So far I'm finding it most beneficial to focus my gold output in my capital. I'm not sure if the trade-route bonus gets 'counted there' and multiplied by the marketline of buildings? But it feels like it.

Don't forget science comes from population, not from gold-producing trading camps. Thus, cities with most farms (probably production cities) are going to focus on science.

Bibor said:

Don't forget science comes from population, not from gold-producing trading camps. Thus, cities with most farms (probably production cities) are going to focus on science.

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Considering how quickly the cost of more population becomes unreasonable, Maritime city states is all you need to increase your population enough.

Bibor said:

Don't forget science comes from population, not from gold-producing trading camps. Thus, cities with most farms (probably production cities) are going to focus on science.

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Actually, if you go with Free Thought in the Rationalism tree, every Trading Camp produces +2 research. That's the equivalent of 4 population, so if you can get to it fairly quickly, building Trading Camps can be a very good way of pumping out the research. Of course, you'd still need people to be able to work the tiles, so population would still be important.

Bh

Don't settle Great Scientist, the academy is worthless. A simple trading post with the proper social policies produces 2 gold and 2 beakers. Use your GS to pop techs and push yourself far into the lead. You're going to need a medium sized empire, so plan on conquering a civ or two in the early game. Focus some of your cities on production (these will be used for military and eventually building the space ship), some on gold, and one on making Great Scientists.

hold on.. that academy is worthless? surely 8 extra science per turn helps over the long term?
I can understand that in the later game the academy is not able to produce 1000 points of science, but surely it can earlier on?

also.. what do you need to do to have a city farm great scientists?

Heretiv...academies were useless until june 2012...(necro thread)

AH well, I was looking for an up to date science focussed guide.
preferably not in video form too!

Here's how science victory has worked for me on Emperor (never got one on Immortal or Deity).

1. Medium sized empire.
2. GS should be saved and popped for long-research techs in the mid-game.
3. Focus on science an great person generating wonders (which should always be GS or Engineer to complete an appropriate wonder).
4. Medium, up-to-date army. You can afford a big military, but few, state-of-the-art units will do the job.
5. Scorched earth wars. Don't expand, just raze highly-developed cities. It's more important to cost the enemy than to gain for yourself.
6. Keep no more than 2 generals. Pop the rest for golden ages when you're stuck in unhappiness (happy building are too expensive).

Traejun said:

6. Keep no more than 2 generals. Pop the rest for golden ages when you're stuck in unhappiness (happy building are too expensive).

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Generals produce Citadels. Only Artists can produce Golden Ages.

Heretiv...academies were useless until june 2012...(necro thread)

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they arent useless untill june 2012 and some thread but useless after like turn 140

Donaskme said:

Generals produce Citadels. Only Artists can produce Golden Ages.

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Nah. Any great person can be popped for a golden age.

Don't know if this changed in G&K. I'm still playing vanilla.

Not much that is relevant to a science victory changed in G&K -- just the tech tree, GS bulbing mechanics/yields, RA mechanics/yields, production cost of spaceship parts, ways of obtaining aluminum, and which wonders give free GPs and GSs and where they are on the tech tree.

Trivial stuff, really.

Awesome. Guess I don't have to buy it then...

Should really. More challenging than vanilla, and more interesting.

I could never go back to vanilla. The composite bow and changes of upgrades into gatling/machine gun were much needed. The gap between 6 combat strength archers and crossbows was way too long.

I don't think the changes to science were that significant though. Other than those crazies who go for the sub-250 science wins, the process is still the same: Build up population, sign RA's when available, use GS slots and people when available.

Traejun said:

I'm still playing vanilla.

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Oh, I see. Yeah, it changed in G&K. A lot did actually, you should pick it up.