How good should academies be?

[Minor Annoyance]

Academies are awesome. So much so that spamming them is a standard tactic. Assuming they should be nerfed, how so?
I put up a bunch of options for shifting around the yield/cost for quick answers, and I covered as many combinations as I thought of but post more creative ideas if you have them. BTW, w/ tech refers to something like Protogenetics which gives +1 culture to academies.
Do keep the array in mind which gives 1 science and 1 energy and can gain 1 more science later. So there is a +2 science +1 energy improvement as competition so going too low in yield to too high in cost for the academy can remove it from serious use all together.

 

[Gorbles]

A tl;dr: from me would be to nerf output to 2 as a short-term fix. Leave everything else as-is.

A longer response would involve looking at all of the tile outputs and their relative costs and tweaking them all. Biowells and Domes specifically (the former due to a lack of necessity in Health post-Virtue acquisition, and the latter due to the nebulous effect of improving City Health), but Energy cost per tile improvement is generally quite low barring the exception that is the Terrascape (which I actually think is pretty balanced given the rewards it gives, and can give).

With this longer-term solution, Academies would remain as-is and other improvements would be balanced upwards to match the Academy's efficiency.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I feel like creating a new poll question:

Why did this poll fail to get responses?
Option one: Too many options to read
Option two: Would have gotten more attention in the general forum
Option three: Lack of leadership skills

 

[LORD ORION]

I'm starting to think they should work like terrascapes, in that they erase the main features of the tile.

Academy: 3 science for 3 energy

You'll still get upgrade tech out of them eg: You build an academy on a desert and you have a vivarium.
Tile would yield: 3 sci, 1 food, -3 energy and that is it.

 

[Ryika]

My personal Version:
+ 3 Science, -4 Gold
Can only be built on Hills

Reasons are simple: Academies are no longer THAT spamable (not only because of location and maintenance, but also because the base tile can't yield food anymore) and now also compete for space with "easy to get" production.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Hill limitation doesn't logically follow, but limiting spamming is a good way to go. There is a flag for improvements that keeps you from building copies next to each other. No adjacency clears up some space. That doesn't make logical sense either though.

 

[Ryika]

Doesn't make sense, but works great in terms of gameplay. If you want them to make sense, then just rename them "Observatories" - problem solved.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I thought of observatory too, although there's already a building called that. It might actually be a good gameplay solution, but it still seems inelegant.

 

[LORD ORION]

Can you limit tile developments by city population?

eg: How many universities do you have in your real life city? It can be more than 1 in big cities, but it is certainly normal for it to be 0 in small towns.

Imagine a new development choice in the 1st 80 turns.
Do I grow a few big cities with my health and can use multiple academies?
or
Do I go wide with many small cities and rely on buildings / Arrays.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I decided to actually try this academy spam all the kids are talking about and it is not over hyped. I played as ARC on the middle difficulty, no mods, no victories, and my goal to get every technology in the web as fast as possible. I'm sure others could do much better buy I was pretty impressed by how well it went for me.

I got the last tech on turn 307 and I had 1711 research per turn at that time. I had taken the KP capital via coup and used that as a generator puppet to power everything. I started getting Purity then I remembered I'm getting everything and there was little competition so I didn't need to pick one. Could have gotten xenonurseries earlier.

Then I loaded a mod that changed the academy to 2 science and 3 maintenance. The research went from 1700 to 1500 and I don't remember what my income was before, but afterwards it was 300+. Not a big difference. The conclusion I'm drawing from this is just reducing the science yield or increasing the cost isn't enough. They have to be limited in number.
Ryika suggested requiring hills to build academies. I suggested no adjacent academies. I still like my idea better, probably because I already modded domes to be better on hills and mines to be better so I've already got use for hills.
There was that France unique improvement that could only be built adjacent to luxury resources that could work too, in function and sense-making. The academy needs something to research, like strange native fruit. Although that function is coded for luxuries and those don't exist in this game so we can't try it out as is.

I was going to play the same map again using the +2 -3 academies mod, but just loading it up at the end gives me a good idea of how in the long run it wouldn't have changed much. I may try the same map but aim for array spam and see if that would just replace academies if academy spam was no longer possible.

 

[Doviello]

Make it so that academies can't be build next to each other, like the French chateau in CiV

 

[Ryika]

Kind of surprising that the xml-stuff for non-adjacent improvements actually still works in BE, usually it doesn't when it's unused. But after copy-pasting the TXT_KEY for that action from Civ 5 it seems to work like a charm. I added the little test-mod I made as an attachment, if you want to play around with it. I'm really interested if it's got the positive benefits you're hoping for as I'm still not sure how I really want to rebalance the improvements in the gameplay-mod I'm working on.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Aww, you beat me to it...
I'll also increase the bonuses from photogenetics and learning centers because with the much smaller number of academies those bonuses would be quite negligible.

Also, I found that the promotion from BNW that gives the Impi it's first strike doesn't work. I wanted to give the ability to the xenoswarm so the manticore in the unit has something to contribute.

 

[Ryika]

I'm probably just blind, but I can't even find the impi-promotion in the Civ 5 game files right now. ^^

But feel free to make it a mod, I'm not planning on making a real (standalone) mod out of it. Just want some people to test it. :>

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I just finished doing an array spam experiment. I did the whole tech tree by turn 338 at which time I had 1324 research a turn. Not a huge difference really. 31 more turns and roughly 1/4 less research.
I used the same map so cities were mostly the same. I got to the spying bonus in might later so I didn't steal KP's capital, but I didn't need it to spam generators and power my academies anyway. I used my free tech to get astrodynamics and double the science of the array. Not something I think anyone would do in a real game though, because it doesn't lead to a victory so you'd need a lot of time and arrays to cover the cost. They should probably get rid of the institute free tech anyway and leave free techs to harder to get goals. One reason I think it didn't make a huge difference is that I would start spamming arrays as soon as I got them, while academies stalled on occasion due to needing more energy for them. Arrays started and peaked earlier but academies had the better output in the long run.
Not a conclusive test though, because there are player far better than me who likely could have gotten the academy spam off the ground faster.

Part of the issue is still that trade routes meant you don't need to generate a lot of food or production via tile improvements because you can enhance that with trade. I'm reminded of civ 4 corporations allowing you to have a city generate no food at all but have a high population.

I will be doing the no-adjacent academies thing, but it would be tested better by someone who can really rock the Apollo academy spam win. Playing with one hand tied behind your back isn't that much of a handicap if you were half as good as others to begin with.

I'm probably just blind, but I can't even find the impi-promotion in the Civ 5 game files right now. ^^

The actual promotion is called anti-gunpowder since they also get that bonus so it's just on the same promotion.

 

[Ryika]

Ah, thanks. Yeah, does indeed not work. Which is a shame. :/

 

[cityspammonkey]

I just finished doing an array spam experiment. I did the whole tech tree by turn 338 at which time I had 1324 research a turn.

I just did a REX/academy/superfarm spam game (turn 236 win, 606 beakers, +100 energy, gemini, quick speed, purity, AU Pioneering Pioneers) and then continued to work the entire tech tree just for the achievement on Steam. I was done on turn 294 with 1319 beakers and it really felt like the game should've ended at that point. It began to get more interesting again as Elodie caught up in secondary affinity levels.

7 solar collectors on the last turn, 33 academies between 9 cities. I aim for 20, but I always seem to get carried away. 4006 energy in the bank and only -4 per turn on the final turn. I ran a deficit (up to -50ish) chunks of the game and financed it with spying and the interest bonus. I really never felt like I was running into an energy wall even as I was running out of tiles I could even possibly build academies on. Most of my energy issues came from running an enormous military for border control and even those weren't bad this last game.

No academies were built after the win, and I don't think more than 3 were built after turn 187. I had 5 by turn 108, and 16 by turn 128, but I started building after turn 83. By turn 162, I had my energy budget back in the black. At the point I quit building academies, I needed more population to work them, so my science continued to grow by huge jumps when I switched to food focus (plus later bonuses brought them all to +4 science). All in all, I spent around 100 turns building academies.

I was bored so I also built: Spy Agency, Drone Sphere, Memetwork, Daedalus Ladder, Panopticon, Human Hive, Master Control, Precog Project, Stellar Codex, Gene Vault, Ectogenesis Pod, New Terran Myth, and Cynosure--as well as starting on the other two affinity victory wonders. I didn't quite get the achievement for all the wonders, but I did get the tier 3 virtue synergy bonus...

It really feels like the victory conditions are placed in the middle of the game rather than at the end. It seems to make domination nearly impossible in the allotted time (of ~240 turns if you don't disable affinity victories)--but I'm more of a REX player than a domination player. Contact is a wildcard and I've never tried for it, but I've heard it can be done stupid early.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Kind of surprising that the xml-stuff for non-adjacent improvements actually still works in BE, usually it doesn't when it's unused. But after copy-pasting the TXT_KEY for that action from Civ 5 it seems to work like a charm. I added the little test-mod I made as an attachment, if you want to play around with it. I'm really interested if it's got the positive benefits you're hoping for as I'm still not sure how I really want to rebalance the improvements in the gameplay-mod I'm working on.

I finally got around to make it a complete mod:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=427794956
It's the no adjacency flag set plus 2 more culture from Protogenetics and one more science from Learning Centers.
Haven't played out a game with it yet because I'm doing other stuff in anticipation of further patches. I'll get back to the game eventually but I decided to let other players test it out in the meantime.