What gives better science, order or freedom

I tend to run tall, tradition focused science empires with cities that often reach at least size 20 by the time ideologies roll around. I usually go freedom for civil society, universal suffrage, new deal, avant guard and space procurement not to mention access to the Statue of Liberty. But I am wondering if order isn't the better pick, thanks to the policy that gives all factories a flat, percentage based bonus to science.

Which approach general yields better science?

Thanks for the advice.

You should run a poll! My 2c: If you're Korea, go Freedom. Anyone else, Order.

Order.
factories give a substantial bonus.

Order, as +25% to is significant. Also once you build Medical Labs in all cities growth issues should disappear so the benefit from half for every specialist can quickly become mute. Although the Statue of Liberty is very nice.

If they hadnt nerfed the statue of liberty freedom would be a shoe in, but they neutered it pretty hard so now order is the best.

How did they nerf the Statue of Liberty?

I have always went order for factory science bonus and shorter build time. However, recently I saw some pretty good games taking advantage of Freedom's policy to buy spaceship parts which in some scenarios probably allow even quicker SV

It's a toss up. While Order gives an extra 25% bonus to your total science, it ends up to only give about 10%, as you already are getting about 150% from other sources. So 25% on top of 250% is only a 10% boost. Freedom lets you run a bunch more specialist, which adds to your base science. So you get +2 base science from every additional specialist you run, which uses half the regular amount of food as Freedom, which allows for faster growth.

Freedom also allows you to buy spaceship parts out right, which is better than using engineers, as you have to use faith to purchase those engineers, which could otherwise be used on great scientist.

I'm not certain which is best, but it is far closer than many realize. I tested out on the same game, while using Babylon, and won ~2 turns faster with Freedom (turn 242 vs 244 if I recall correctly). With Korea, I imagine Freedom definitely wins out with the additional base science for each specialist.

This completely depends upon
1. If you have Secularism to give 2 extra science from every specialist.
2. Number of specialists you are running from that point on. (Civil Service, which is a level 1 tenent, decreases food requirement, allowing additional specialists, enhancing secularism's benefit)
3. Number of academies you earlier built. (New Deal, a level 2 tenet adds additional science to every academy)

vs Number of cities with factories you have.

In general, the taller your empire, the more you benefit from Freedom, the wider it is, the more you benefit from Order.

Uzael36 said:

Freedom also allows you to buy spaceship parts out right, which is better than using engineers, as you have to use faith to purchase those engineers, which could otherwise be used on great scientist.

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But the 3rd tenet of Order can give you a free ge and gs. And when you are close to complete your last tech for the last part you already have built them while you were teching.

So, in fact, you don't need to buy any ge from faith, maybe excepted for Hubble.

Tabarnak said:

But the 3rd tenet of Order can give you a free ge and gs. And when you are close to complete your last tech for the last part you already have built them while you were teching.

So, in fact, you don't need to buy any ge from faith, maybe excepted for Hubble.

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That depends. Sometimes I tech faster than I can build the parts and need more than 1 GE. I've had games where 3 would have been required to finish out the game without delay. 1 is required, but more is often needed.

I've had very good results with freedom lately. And when I reload to compare to Order I get approximately the same results as Order (by 1-2 turns).

Both are very close and in my opinion Freedom is definitely underrated on these boards.
Korea freedom feels like a nobrainer to me.


Here is a summary of my experience with both:

-25% per factory is nice IF you have immediate coal (which translates to around 10% total bonus in reality). Otherwise it loses a lot of its value if you have to wait T200 to get coal by an AI/CS. Freedom can work all specialists right away and still get some growth. After schools freedom don't need much hammers, making it easy to pull those citizens out of mines/horses to work slots. Order has to wait a little longer while it makes factories.
-Production must be sufficient to make the parts at a steady pace.
-Order requires you to bulb earlier... which means weaker bulbs.
-Extra GS at tier 3 is very good but cumulated with the necessity to get a faster hubble there is potential to lose an extra natural GS (depends on the game)
--33% gold cost is extremely good for schools and labs.
-Kremlin is rather bad but Order doesn't really need the extra policy.
-Statue of Liberty synergizes pretty well with Freedom
-Cumulating gold for freedom is easy
-Finishing all parts with gold may force you to get diminishing buy bonuses like BigBen and Mercantilism.
-Freedom can freely use loans but are a single player only mechanic.
-Wide empire benefit a lot from freedom and it's easier to make a late city beneficial (in bpt) with freedom than with order.
-Order needs either strong production or extra faith. Otherwise you'll get bottlenecked by production

Acken said:

I've had very good results with freedom lately. And when I reload to compare to Order I get approximately the same results as Order (by 1-2 turns).

Both are very close and in my opinion Freedom is definitely underrated on these boards.

Korea freedom feels like a nobrainer to me.

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I feel the same way. I think the thing that gives Order an overrated value for SV is a misconception of what 25% more science does. If it increase all your science by 25%, that would be awesome, but it does not.

Equal. Though as you go wider, Order helps more. Though Korea and Babylon who have better/ more academies can get more benefit from Freedom than usual.

Regarding faith, normally I have enough faith that after buying a few great scientists, I can't afford another but can buy two GEs to add to the Order one for three insta completed parts.

2 GE is 2500faith. So it means your next GS is more than 2500faith ? That means you can buy 3GS and 2GE for 7500faith ?

Although GEs, GMs and GSs are on the same Great Person Point counter, they are on separate faith-purchase counters. So, if you spend 2500 faith on two GEs, your first GS still only costs 1000 faith.

Browd said:

Although GEs, GMs and GSs are on the same Great Person Point counter, they are on separate faith-purchase counters. So, if you spend 2500 faith on two GEs, your first GS still only costs 1000 faith.

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Indeed, I can always buy 2 GE + 2 GS in my own games. (And if I'm going for cultural victory I still get a high enough faith count to add faith based Great Musicians for concert tours while hosting the Olympics on top of that.)

I think what also should be taken into account is the fact that AI more often will choose order rather than freedom. Which in peaceful games might mean 4-5 RA's instead of 2-3.

Phanixis said:

I tend to run tall, tradition focused science empires

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Freedom. /thread

Acken said:

-Wide empire benefit a lot from freedom and it's easier to make a late city beneficial (in bpt) with freedom than with order.

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Hopelessly wrong. The whole point of Order is its ability to settle new cities that will provide quick return on their investment even well into the late game. Freedom is terrible for settling late cities by comparison.

Also, everybody seems to miss that the main benefit of Worker's Faculties is not the +25% science but rather the double-speed Factory construction.

Freedom = wide as it gives great bonuses to food/hammers happiness per specialist per city.

Order = tall as it give gives more science % but has less happiness available.

Freedom has the advantage of it being front loaded into few hugely strong policies. Providing that you work max specialists as you should, with the statue of liberty and your first 3 policies you get 12 food, 12 hammers and 6 happiness per city, a social policy, 25% more gpp and 50% more golden ages. Notice that it gives bonii per specialist and that a city can only have a limited number of specialists. The marginal increase in base science drops sharply after you have filled your specialist slots and food cost for increasing pop grows exponentially. High pop is good for many things but it may be an unnecessary luxury. The sweet spot for freedom is cities where you can work all specialists which is at around 15 pop without trade routes. Every such city you can get in reasonable time by building or conquest is a large bonus to your tech rate (61 base, bonus 110-160%). However, you do need to produce the specialist buildings and wonders. Instead of boosting the population in your core cities you can use your trade routes for the weaker cities. The problem is usually to get a lot of developed cities before your great scientist rush after plastics. The best civs for this is Korea for pure science, civs with extra happiness, good production or good unique units for medieval/renaissance conquests. My best science victory was korea+freedom at 216 on deity. It is substantially better than my order attempts.

The good policies in order are at the 2nd level which means you have to choose between five year plan and workers faculties and party leadership. There is happiness per city at the 1st level but it is 2 or 3 per city rather than 6. Both 5 year plan and workers faculties give larger benefits to larger cities and you will need larger cities to compare with the specialists and per city bonuses of freedom. The sweet 15 freedom cities are comparable with order cities at 20 pop in science, hammers, food, but you also have much more happiness. Order does get two free great peoples at space pioneers which is really good. Purchasing space ship parts is much better than using great engineers though.