there is no doubt that rush buy science buildings is better in your turns time finish
Absolutely, this point is not in debate. I am asserting that, based on the rough math, RAs are even better!
before you continue to go on about how much better RA's are, shouldn't you have BNW first, so you at least have some first hand experience with the new RA system?
Lucky for you that I am still on GnK or I prolly never would have noticed that the conventional wisdom that RAs are weak doesn't hold up to scrutiny. (People were saying that back in the Gnk days too.) Asside from RAs being half as good as they were, what else might I be missing? An RA being worth ~2 turns of empire science is the BNW value.
Just as gold now is more valuable than gold later, early beakers are more valuable than later beakers
Absolutely. But I think the metric of “turns of empire science” addresses this. So much easier than estimating beakers, then comparing early beakers to late beakers. I will confess some lingering concern that this metric may be obfuscating rather than finessing the 30-turn delay aspect of RAs, but I think it's legit.
In your example, you assume the early science building will take 12 turns to hard-build, but that rush-buying only accelerates your next tech by 3 turns. That may be an OK assumption in general terms, except it misses the point that the early science building will accelerate every subsequent tech as well.
If Technique A outperforms Technique B, and Technique A is available earlier in the game than Technique B, logically it has to follow that Technique A leads to better acceleration/snowballing than Technique B.
Also, the extra science building may, at the margin, yield you one more (or at least an earlier) GS, which the RA will not do.
Good point, as is your observation that RAs can be lost to a DoW (or an AI being eliminated). Also the observation that RAs benefit your opponents. Also, needing DoF might limit your preferred play style. Still, no one has challenged my rough math that, in terms of beakers bought by gold, RAs are competitive with rush buying science buildings.
The more common choice, in my experience, is either (1) doing the RAs now and deferring rush-buying the science building until I have the gold
If my math is right, delaying rush-buying for RAs is a net gain of beakers.
or (2) rush-buying the science building now and doing one RA a few turns later and another some number of turns after that
If my math is right, passing on an RA opportunity so you have enough gold to rush buy ASAP is a net loss of beakers.
There was some concern [from the other thread] that a player could never get enough RAs going to make a difference. A fair benchmark for rush buying after NC is 3 universities and 3 public schools, hard building in the cap only. That would be enough gold for 12 RAs during the course of game, but if RAs out perform rush buying at 4:3, one would only need 9 RAs to test this. With 7 civs on a standard map, 9 RAs seems pretty feasible for the course of a game. Optimal would be a mixed approach: aggressive RAs with rush buying in lowest production cities, and rush buying in other cities only to the extent that RAs are not passed over for lack of gold.