Scientific victory tenets of ideology

[danaphanous]

yeah I thought the required pop for full hurry was lower too. That definitely makes space procurement better for rushing parts, especially on Deity where the AI have thousands of gold to take out loans for lol. Also the upside of Space Procurements is that you don't need to use your faith to purchase engineers and can get 2-3 extra scientists.

Personally I think the tenet to hurry SPs with engineers is pretty worthless given this information--I wouldn't take it at all if it didn't give the free scientist and engineer. But the fact that it does basically makes it more objectively powerful then space procurements for me. Why? That's another 8 turns off my science AND my last part reduced to 1-2 turns. So 8-2 = 6 turns faster. This is because the last part is the limiting factor in order.

My order cities can already build spaceship parts in 5-10 turns after I buy nuke plants and spaceship factories and with order and commerce discounts I'm only buying these things at 33% of cost so even cheaper then hurrying 1 part with space procurements. This means the only thing that adds a few turns as I'm bulbing through the info era is the very last part. I just did a wide game where I saved my strongest production cities for the last 2 parts, bulbed my 11 scientists straight from apollo through the info era, and only lost 1 turn on production on the last part because my best city built the thing in 5 turns after the tech and the other cities still hadn't finished the first. So worst-case scenario you're maybe finishing 5 turns behind space procurement tradition even skipping the engineer tenet. Taking the tenet I get a free scientist AND don't lose 5 turns. I lose maybe 1-2.

And arguably, if you run your specialists and get factories earlier I think you may be able to get a faster rate then freedom at the end so it should be at least break-even given space procurements is objectively more powerful for quick-buying the very last part. Freedom looks better on paper but there isn't really enough time for the growth from half-food specialists to start beating the factory tenet if you are finishing fast near T200 so I still think the factory tenet is better--especially if you've got a wider empire since the higher happiness from order lets you grow it a bit more too and you get the boost in every city. If anyone is managing to grow to near size 40 by the end of a T200 victory I may be wrong but I can't see it happening without some weird luck like early hanging gardens or lake victoria and 2-3 constant food cargo routes.

in my games (and I'm not a record player) I get ideologies by building/buying 3 factories. This might happen conservatively 80-90 turns before I can end the game with my final scientist bulb push.

Just some quick points for a city comparing the two science ideological tenets from order vs. freedom:

Order: 25% flat boost to science AND factories in half-time. So I simply build factory in fastest 1-2 cities and buy the slowest one for a quick ideology, timed to get this tenet in a few turns with a natural culture tenet. It also has more immediate happiness so you aren't limited in growth in any way after ideologies and can grow even a big empire max-rate to start filling out specialists boosted by rationalism. Turn all trade routes to food routes several turns before it. Order is also safer if you've neglected tourism as most games a majority of AI take it.

Freedom: half unhappiness from specialists, half food from specialists
the only way this helps science is if in those 80 turns you can somehow grow enough to produce MORE science then a flat 25% boost to the city. The half-food and unhappiness from specialists is nice and definitely makes you grow faster but the food it adds is only:
4xengineer, 4xscientist, 4xgold. Totaled this is 12 extra food after you run every one, same as a food ship but less before you can use every specialist. In practice it probably starts after you take the tenet at 4 extra food and slowly increases to 12 as you grow. I'm not sure that you can translate that into MORE science then 25% boost to every city in your empire but it will grow you several pop higher probably. Keep in mind though that in a jungle city or near academies the factory multiplier operates on the terrain, population, AND specialists science. Not to mention factories are suddenly half-price meaning easy to build.

An exception to my above estimates might be Korea. Given they get even more science from specialists it's possible getting them all up a bit faster is better, but even with order you get 25% on all the specialists you DO run along with the population and terrain science.

 

[beetle]

Order does not have to be better than Freedom for SV. It is more than enough that it be viable for SV, which it is. If you are having a game where you cannot bear up to the ideological pressure (of running Freedom), it is great to have another good option.

I think there is a strong temptation to burn the Order GE on Hubble or maybe even the Great Fire Wall. If the Order GE is your last GE, and you don’t save it for the last SS part, is that poor design of tree? Or is just poor planning on your part?

 

[danaphanous]

As I stated above, I think order IS more powerful for science if you are finishing fast. Please enlighten me if I missed details, but honestly the ability to grow a bit faster for the last 80 turns of the game just can't seem to beat 25% from factories nation-wide by my estimates.

I won't argue with space procurements being the most versatile but you hardly need it. Who cares about space procurements when the only limiting factor on time is the last part and you can save your best city for it so you can make it in 5-6 turns? Spaceflight Pioneers is not so useful for the ability to hurry with GE, but because you get a free GE and scientist. You can use GE to reduce time on the last part to 1-3 which is pretty lackluster tbh, but the scientist is 8 turns off your finish time. If you are finishing too fast to finish hubble off use the GE for the 2 more scientists. 8 - 3 is still 5 turns faster then space procurements if we're talking limiting factors on finish time. The reason this happens is because you can't bulb all scientists at once without losing part of your overflow beakers. You need to spend them 1-2 at a time so can only get 1-2 techs a turn meaning it'll still take maybe 6-10 turns from the first parts to the last. Order cities can build the first 5 parts by the time you get to the last. My order cities can build parts in 5-10 turns after buying them spaceship factories and nuke plants. Simply start building in reverse order from worst city to best. This works best with a 5-6 city empire, not 4 so maybe that is why you guys have never experienced the fact that order does not limit you on finish time?

My order(ing) would be as follows:

free tenets: +2 happiness from monuments, -33% building purchases
first tenet: +25% science from factories and build them in half time (build factory in 2 best cities, buy in my best jungle city)
2nd tenet: +1 happiness from workshop, factories, and plants
3rd tenet: Academy of Sciences (if short on happiness still) or Five-Year Plan if I can
4th tenet: spaceflight pioneers

This order(ing) gives you an instant 2 happiness per city to start rapid growth and cheapens building purchases so you can start buying research labs faster when they come. If you've timed it to be near a policy upgrade then you get an additional 2 happiness per city in rapid succession as you build all your factories quickly for 25% science empire-wide, I sometimes still buy with my discounts in jungle cities to get all that science quicker. Turn all trade routes to growth routes and double them up if needed as soon as you open ideology and ally all maritime CS . Grow as fast as possible while running all the scientist specialists. Academy of sciences will give you 2-3 more happiness per city if you are growing fast enough to need it but usually you don't need it and can go Five-Year plan for super-productive cities. Beeline rocketry, build apollo in best city, purchase 2-3 scientists with faith, start bulbing them all 1 each turn and build parts in reverse order from worst to best cities. Buy nuke plants and spaceship factories as needed to shave off time. It's easy with order discounts.

I like to combine the above strategy with a wide empire that dipped into commerce before rationalism and got to the -25% purchase costs and +1 science from gold buildings as well. Your building discounts are ridiculous. You can straight-up buy factories, labs, etc for instant science way and quicker finish time. Plus the +1 science from every gold building makes it like your city is 3 population higher in base science so makes up for your lower pop. Poland or a religious civ is best for this strategy since they'll speed through policy trees faster.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

It always amaze me how people like to theorize even despite obvious evidences.

On previous site you got many examples of sub 200T freedom games (in fact I only saw one with order).

This +25% science with order in fact due to many other modifiers is rather ~ +10%; ability to growth more, build science longer (no need to build anything besides Hubble and Apollo after labs) and buy parts in 1-2 turns is huge.

As usually Acken did good job about it: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=534745

 

[danaphanous]

Thanks for you input, I do LOVE to theorize. But as I said above, "Please enlighten me if I missed details".

what do you mean by approximately 10% after "factors"? 25% is 25% and it multiplies on everything. You mean subtracting off freedom advantages? You also get that powerful multiplier several techs before research labs which is a snowball effect and the 33% building purchase discount helps you get them faster and also labs faster. this seems to be a snowball effect to me. The major downside is 4 cities is rather low to pull off optimal timing with a scientist bulb. I said in the post it probably takes 5-6 cities to work best otherwise you have too few cities to time all builds and have to double up on parts for an additional 6 turns or so so in a small 4-city approach like so many people love you lose a few turns. However, the free scientist from spaceflight pioneers is 8 turns so it shouldn't matter even so correct?

I see the sub-200T freedom games so it must do well. I never doubted that. But from my scan of the post it was mostly theorizing. Where are the posted games/times/speeds/civs? Are they summarized somewhere or just buried in the linked posts?

From your comments I'm guessing the reason order stalls is not from the base numbers then it is because of build order. You have to juggle building Apollo-->Hubble-->then 6 spaceship parts. As a result you can't run research end-game in addition to not growing as fast for effectively 3-4 pop lower cities and thus not running rationalism-buffed specialists as quickly. Is this what you are arguing?

I guess i'll have to test more on my own to compare. Order building discount actually enables you to buy research labs almost instantly in my experience with a gold loan from the AI. It also enables quick building or buying of the factories for a much earlier multiplier on jungle cities (if you have them). The multiplier from factories is powerful enough you can be a few pop behind. Are there more details I am missing though? I will also read Acken's post, I've never done a sub-200T freedom game myself so maybe I just lack the experience to see the difference.

 

[vadalaz]

Personally I think the tenet to hurry SPs with engineers is pretty worthless given this information--I wouldn't take it at all if it didn't give the free scientist and engineer. But the fact that it does basically makes it more objectively powerful then space procurements for me. Why? That's another 8 turns off my science AND my last part reduced to 1-2 turns. So 8-2 = 6 turns faster. This is because the last part is the limiting factor in order.

This isn't necessarily true. You can often get enough scientists to finish all the techs by the time you're ready to build/GE/buy the final SS part anyway, so in that case the extra GS doesn't shave off any turns at all. I've seen a couple of games on this site where the players had so much science they didn't even need Hubble.

Freedom: half unhappiness from specialists, half food from specialists
the only way this helps science is if in those 80 turns you can somehow grow enough to produce MORE science then a flat 25% boost to the city. The half-food and unhappiness from specialists is nice and definitely makes you grow faster but the food it adds is only:
3xengineer, 5xscientist, 4xgold. Totaled this is 6 food, same as a single food caravan and less before you can use every specialst. In practice it probably starts after you take the tenet at 2 extra food and slowly increases to 6 as you grow. I doubt you can translate that into MORE science then 25% boost to every city in your empire. Especially in a jungle city or near academies where that multiplier operates on the terrain AND specialists. Not to mention factories are suddenly half-price meaning easy to build.

It's 1 food and 0.5 happy per specialist. With a public school, university, workshop, market and bank, all of which are usually built pre-ideology or shortly after, you're looking at 6 food/3 happy per city, which is extremely strong.

In the late game, this allows you to assign all of your citizens to either specialist slots or trading posts and put your cities on research since you don't have to build parts. This is very efficient. The cities will starve most likely, but you're not going to lose any population before the game ends. This way you also get massive gpt and enough gold to buy all the parts at once on any difficulty.

 

[danaphanous]

Interesting, I've never even tried over-building trade posts--I guess you could since you don't need production. Seems I have a lot to learn about freedom optimal strats.

Good catch on 1 food per specialist, my mistake, I'll update my post. So you'd start with maybe 4 extra food (science specialists) and slowly grow to 12 extra as you worked them all. Exception guilds cities where it'd add a bit more too. So it actually might be conceivable to get enough pop above order and break-even then?

Here's my thoughts with some numbers, keep talking guys!

Given that with rationalism you get +2 more science from specialists it's possible getting them all up a bit faster is better and that plus population science is the benefit of freedom correct?

Base sciences: 2 per pop after library+public school, +3 from public school, +5 per science specialist, +2 per other specialist (with rationalism).

So I estimate in a city with nothing but population running science specialists (size 20 growing to 30) that you would get extra (20*2 pop + 4*5 scientists + 3 ps)*0.25 or 15.75 extra science almost instantly. If we assume with freedom you use your superior growth to immediately run new specialists in this scenario then you get +2 science per citizen, +2 science per specialist with multipliers at the time. So around 6 more science per population until research labs. So averaging out that RL's come later this might mean being 2 pop higher you overcome the initial order factory bonus in a normal city with no terrain bonuses? Sounds plausible and doable, but keep in mind you have to get there to break even. Order has better initial momentum that you then have to catch up on by exceeding after growing. So let's say end-size 3-4 pop to overcome?

However, in a city with academies or jungle you need to overcome a lot more and most optimal games have at least 1 jungle city so let's say you do better then order on rate if you can grow 3 pop higher on average across all cities. with 6 (and growing) extra food per city you probably can? So if your ending empire-size is 5 pop higher I'd say for sure you did better. Is it usually? I know you also slow down at high pops so I have no idea.

I've never employed these strategies you guys are talking about starving cities and replacing terrain with trading posts is novel to me. I tend to avoid anything that hurts my empire like selling buildings.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

what do you mean by approximately 10% after "factors"? 25% is 25% and it multiplies on everything.

Not if you add it to already existing +150% or +100% modifiers.

 

[danaphanous]

Oh I know the multiplier add before multiplying. I thought that was implied, sorry for the confusion. You meant the tenet translates to approximately 10% to your flat science which is probably correct from my experience.

 

[claudiupb]

what do you mean by approximately 10% after "factors"? 25% is 25% and it multiplies on everything. You mean subtracting off freedom advantages?

As a general rule multipliers in civ 5 are additive (with some exceptions). So if you get a 50% buff from something and then another 50% buff those multipliers add up to give a 100% multiplier. Now if you add another 25% buff you get a total 125% multiplier, but that does not mean that that last buff increased your yields by 25%.

Just to give out an example:

A city with just university gets a 50% buff after Free Thought. Workers faculties transforms the buff to 75%. So if your city base yield is X beakers, with just university it will yield X * 1.5. If you add the opener bonus which will be applied to your total science you get X *1.5 * 1.1, so X * 1.65 (this is one case where the buffs are actually multiplicative).
With worker faculties you get X * 1.75 * 1.1 which is X * 1.925.
If you want to see how much this has actually increased your science you will need to divide them so its (X * 1.925) / (X * 1.65) which is 1.1666. So the actual increase is 16.66% not 25% as advertised.

Things only get worse as more buffs are added:

City with University + Observatory: actual increase 12.5%
City with University + Observatory + Research Labs: actual increase 10%
City with University + Observatory + Research Labs + National College: actual increase 8.33%

I think IronfighterXXX's 10% overall estimate is pretty accurate. And if you have even more sources of science that don't even get buffed like Scholasticism or RA's the increase is even smaller.

 

[danaphanous]

awesome, thanks for spelling it out! I knew the multipliers were additive, sorry for being vague, but I didn't realize the hidden effect of rationalism opener! That's really fun. In my above analysis I only talked about net increases in beakers to avoid the multiplier math since I knew it was additive.

I assume there are small benefits for getting to RL's quicker with order too as well? It'll take a while for freedom growth to catch up to the early factory boost if you apply it, starting with academy and jungle cities. Industrialization is on the tech path directly as early as 7 techs before plastics. The bonus as you say is effectively 16.66% for most cities all the way till RL's which is a long time on the tech tree. If that puts you a few turns ahead and you use the purchase discount from order to buy RL's early you've got even more of a head start freedom has to overcome but it will eventually catch up with the extra growth. I guess the main downside is you can't run research in cities end game cause you are using them all? I don't see spaceflight pioneers adding actual turns much because of the free scientist and engineer. Even if you double-up on building in few cities you buy a few spaceship factories and you only lose 5-6 turns at the end which the extra scientist makes up for by getting to the last tech quicker. However you can't run research, how big of an effect does that make it always seemed pretty small to me...

I calculated above that given the order head-start and general multipliers you would want to come out 4-5 pop ahead of order to break-even. Check my math to make sure I'm thinking about this correctly. I'm still unclear on the best time to stop growing to run all specialists too but I usually did this around entering atomic since it won't be long before the bulbing starts and the game ends. At this point I'm sure Freedom begins to catch up since it doesn't need to stop growing to run all specialists but the game is ending in 20 turns or so anyway after this point.

 

[Chum]

Honestly, Order has ALWAYS yielded competitive, but slower finish times for me than Freedom. Really, the commerce + big ben discounts bring down SS part cost into the easily affordable land, even if you don't have deity AI gold laying around to loan from. Late game you should be pulling 3-500gpt easy off trade routes and other yields. You don't HAVE to buy all 6 parts, you can build the first few and the buy whatever you can afford and the last one. Even best case scenario is you researching nanotech and then buying the part and adding to spaceship next turn. That's 2 turns to finish for Freedom, and Order you have to research nanotech, GE the part, and then if your city is 40 pop (which it may not be), you get it on T3 at the earliest, but sometimes 3-5 turns. When you're going for competitive, 1-3 turns difference at the end of the game is a big deal.

I'm really underwhelmed by order factories - after Ironfighter pointed it out quite awhile ago, that was when the whole Order tree fell apart for me, I just fell outta love with it. It's a better ideology for infrastructure, but for victory, Freedom just trumps it.

That being said, with the current state of the game where the AI mostly clumps as Order, if you're not first to Ideology and have dominant culture or tourism, it's perfectly serviceable for any and all victory conditions. I would hope it was designed that way, but I don't have that much faith in game developers these days, it probably just ended up that way.

 

[Browd]

Just to further complicate things, the factory 25% only applies to beakers produced by a city with a factory -- for example, it does not apply to beakers from CSs under Scholasticism or trade route science (meager though those beakers might be at that point in the game) or (should go without saying) beakers from puppets that haven't built (or had bought for them) factories.

 

[Iamteehee]

awesome, thanks for spelling it out! I knew the multipliers were additive, sorry for being vague, but I didn't realize the hidden effect of rationalism opener! That's really fun. In my above analysis I only talked about net increases in beakers to avoid the multiplier math since I knew it was additive.

I assume there are small benefits for getting to RL's quicker with order too as well? It'll take a while for freedom growth to catch up to the early factory boost if you apply it, starting with academy and jungle cities. Industrialization is on the tech path directly as early as 7 techs before plastics. The bonus as you say is effectively 16.66% for most cities all the way till RL's which is a long time on the tech tree. If that puts you a few turns ahead and you use the purchase discount from order to buy RL's early you've got even more of a head start freedom has to overcome but it will eventually catch up with the extra growth. I guess the main downside is you can't run research in cities end game cause you are using them all? I don't see spaceflight pioneers adding actual turns much because of the free scientist and engineer. Even if you double-up on building in few cities you buy a few spaceship factories and you only lose 5-6 turns at the end which the extra scientist makes up for by getting to the last tech quicker. However you can't run research, how big of an effect does that make it always seemed pretty small to me...

I calculated above that given the order head-start and general multipliers you would want to come out 4-5 pop ahead of order to break-even. Check my math to make sure I'm thinking about this correctly. I'm still unclear on the best time to stop growing to run all specialists too but I usually did this around entering atomic since it won't be long before the bulbing starts and the game ends. At this point I'm sure Freedom begins to catch up since it doesn't need to stop growing to run all specialists but the game is ending in 20 turns or so anyway after this point.

Worker's Faculties helping with researching Plastics probably saves around 3 or so turns, depending on how long it takes to get factories up. As IronfighterXXX mentioned though, it's a bit easier to run all specialists with freedom though. They are probably around equal in that regard. I'll almost always go Commerce and get BB if I go freedom so I don't find buying RLs with freedom particularly hard either.

If the timing of Spaceflight Pioneers is poor (and you don't have policy saving on), the +200 GPP increase could prevent you from getting a natural generated scientist, but it doesn't really happen very often because you can usually strategically use Great Writers to avoid it.

 

[Browd]

It's interesting to think about this in the context of an OCC science game.

On the one hand, you would think Freedom would be the hands-down choice for an OCC civ, if for no other reason than being able to rush-buy SS parts with gold is incredibly necessary for a fast finish at OCC (there's simply not enough time to sequentially build multiple SS parts in a single city and achieve a rapid finish time).

That said, Freedom has one significant potential downside in an OCC game -- if you need to work merchant and engineer specialist slots to get your beakers where they need to be, you dramatically increase your risk of generating unwanted GEs and GMs (particularly if you made the mistake of building too many wonders that provide GE and GM points -- it's so very tempting in an OCC game and takes real discipline to avoid doing).

Also, the incremental beakers from working 4 GM slots and 3 GE slots (assume you settled on a hill, so no windmill) would be the same 14 base beakers (2 beakers per specialist) in a Freedom or Order game, but the Order game would give you an additional 25% boost to those beakers (and all other city-generated beakers) vs. Freedom. Might that outweigh Freedom's specialist-food growth boost in an OCC capital? Well, it might or might not (continuing to grow at the same rate does get harder as the city gets larger, even with extra food from Freedom's specialists), but it would be interesting to experiment.

In the end, even if an OCC capital with Order did generate more raw beakers over the course of a game than an OCC capital with Freedom, the inability to buy SS parts for gold might be fatal to the Order civ's finish time.

If I recall correctly, the recently completed GOTM was a Babylon OCC game. Might anyone who played that game using Freedom be interested in trying a re-play with Order, to see how your finish times compare?

 

[danaphanous]

Someone else can run that experiment. I don't really like OCC that much haha!
Interesting thought experiment though. If you filled your scientists first, then engineers, then merchants. Then went order in OCC, you would get only scientists, then an engineer or two at the end which would be a free part or two. Might actually work out better since order can use the engineer and order would yield superior production. I've gotten part build times near 5 turns with order's mine-boosting tenet.

I assume in OCC the slower growth at high pop would be more limiting on Freedom's natural advantages.

 

[donkeyfish]

If I recall correctly, the recently completed GOTM was a Babylon OCC game. Might anyone who played that game using Freedom be interested in trying a re-play with Order, to see how your finish times compare?

I dont think that game had easy Coal, an annoying issue with Order - especially if you want to try it with OCC.

 

[Browd]

Ah, that would be a challenge.

 

[Chum]

I dont think that game had easy Coal, an annoying issue with Order - especially if you want to try it with OCC.

This is another real trouble - if you're first to Industrialization, or first to the Modern era, you've got the trouble of rolling the dice for coal, which could make or break the whole game for you then. If you're not on Immortal+, it could be quite awhile before you get a CS caught up in tech to get you some as well.

It's one of the reasons I've moved on from standard maps to the Hellblazer's maps - the option of having a strategic balance with coal + aluminum takes more of the guesswork out of the ideology game, and it's easier to compare from game to game what yields the faster finish time.

When you know you're going to get a baseline minimum of resources and the buildings that accompany then, you're eliminating variables and then can get the rest of the work down for refining your strategies for speed.

 

[danaphanous]

I'm pretty sure all you need to do is gift the CS ally about 200 gold to "connect" the resource for them. I did this to get uranium and aluminum on my last game--I could do it as soon as I go the tech if I recall. So all you really need is enough gold to ally a CS and connect the lux, hopefully you already have enough allies though.