Tech-race at Nobel-level: pro-help needed

[farbror Frej]

Im playing Civ4 at Nobel difficulty and again and again I discover the same thing about 50-70% into the game. Im behind in the Tech-race. Never in jumbo-position; perhaps even above average - but almost never in the top 1-3 category either. I have no problems staying competitive in all other areas - with the exception of getting that elusive extra edge in the tech-race. What am I doing wrong here? Any tips?

 

[r_rolo1]

I would bet that you don't focus enough in researching in one line ( like for example Code of laws-> Civil Service -> paper -> Education ) and trade with the other civs in game than to try to get it all by yourself. Think on this: if you are the first to get to Education and if you can trade it to a civ for Engineering and to other by Guilds, you are almost doubling your research rate compared with trying to self-research all the 3 techs

 

[madscientist]

Im playing Civ4 at Nobel difficulty and again and again I discover the same thing about 50-70% into the game. Im behind in the Tech-race. Never in jumbo-position; perhaps even above average - but almost never in the top 1-3 category either. I have no problems staying competitive in all other areas - with the exception of getting that elusive extra edge in the tech-race. What am I doing wrong here? Any tips?

Welcome to the Forums!

There are excellent articles written about running a successful economy, which is basically a way of saying "Teching".

Here are some pointers.

1) The larger your empire, there better you tech, especially later on in the game. Teching at 50% slider with a large empire techs ALOT faster than a smaller empire running at 89-90%.

2) Are you building cottages??? You should ALOt of these if you want to do well in teching (although there are strategies to win with minimal or no cottages). They start out low but when they reach town level are strong. Make sure you use the civics FS and US to help those towns.

3) Do you trade techs with the AIs? Find some friends and make mutually beneficial trades. Also manually research a tech noone has and trade it away to everyone, you will be amazed at how fast you can tech.

4) Try using Great People to Bulb certain techs. Favorites are Education, Philosophy, Theology etc....

5) Trade Route economy is very valuable, but only at peacetime. If your a war-monger, then you won't get much here. If you a builder or in-between (like me!) having friends with open borders (are you opening borders?) helps alot.

6) Are you build appropriate Buildings??? Libraries help with beakers, markets get's you more gold, courthouses save on costs. Leverage the leaders that have the right traits for faster buildings (creative for libraries, Organized for Courthouses).

7) Know the key technologies for you economy and get them sooner than later (Just Don't get yourself killed ignoring military).

These are

Pottery/Writing
Currency/Code of Laws
Education/Astronomy/Economics


8) Finally, there is the old Liberalism race. Win it (at Nobel you should be able to). Take the highest free tech and trade it arround to backfill what you are missing.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1. At the very start of the game, research things to improve the land around you.
2. Then, research things that the AI doesn't have and trade for things the AI does have.
3. If the AI doesn't have anything to trade, it's backwards, so research things that improve either your military or research.

If you get stuck, here are some techs that the AI either delays, or lowers its priority on once another AI has it:

Aesthetics
Code of Laws
Theology
Philosophy
Education
Drama
Music

Once it gets past liberalism it's a little more game specific where the AI will go (different AIs will choose differently), however Steel usually seems a good bet, and not all AIs shoot straight for democracy either. BIOLOGY is also a very good one to head for (and needs chemistry on its path, so steel isn't a bad idea for that reason).

As for actually putting up more raw beakers, cottages and specialists! Make sure each city is optimized for either commerce, production, or great people. That way, you build less buildings but your cities are equally effective, and are set faster.

 

[farbror Frej]

Thanks for the advice above.

I must admit: I almost never speared ahead and researched "in one line" in the tech-tree. Instead I have mostly researched most techs above and below before continuing to the next set of techs to the right. Also, I almost always built all city-improvements in all cities, thinking that all gold-boosting improvements AND all science-boosting improvements (and so on) in as many cities as possible is the best thing. Am I thinking wrong here?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Thanks for the advice above.

I must admit: I almost never speared ahead and researched "in one line" in the tech-tree. Instead I have mostly researched most techs above and below before continuing to the next set of techs to the right. Also, I almost always built all city-improvements in all cities, thinking that all gold-boosting improvements AND all science-boosting improvements (and so on) in as many cities as possible is the best thing. Am I thinking wrong here?

Definitely. City specialization is a top skill - it can severely vary how well players do (I dominate emperor and I still consider it a weakness of mine that if I shored up, I could win consistently on immortal).

Hammer cities make forge/factory/hammer boosts, and then build units. If you're getting too many units, build wonders or wealth.

Commerce cities should focus on either science or gold multipliers, depending on how high you can run your science slider. Usually you want science buildings first though unless you're expanding a LOT and the slider is dropping on you. These cities do very little for most of the game other than building commerce multipliers and working cottages/commerce tiles.

Specialist cities rely on food to run specialists. Not rocket science, I know . The key here is putting in the multipliers relevant to that specialist and nothing else. A typical GP farm for me has a granary, a monument if I needed one, and a library, and has 5+ scientists enabled. There are exceptions (always are in civ) but I won't complicated it for you here. Scientists are greatly favored in a GP farm by most players but there are of course other routes.

Balancing these is important and where I fall short. Usually, when I fail its because I either forced a city to be something that it shouldn't have been, or didn't get enough cities that could make use of hammers, but you can screw yourself just as easily by neglecting any .

 

[madscientist]

Thanks for the advice above.

I must admit: I almost never speared ahead and researched "in one line" in the tech-tree. Instead I have mostly researched most techs above and below before continuing to the next set of techs to the right. Also, I almost always built all city-improvements in all cities, thinking that all gold-boosting improvements AND all science-boosting improvements (and so on) in as many cities as possible is the best thing. Am I thinking wrong here?

Science Building are useful if you getting beakers (via specialists or commerce via the slider) which gold producing building are useful if getting significant gold (again specialists, commerce, shrines).

Examples:

If you have an early religion shrine, build a market there ASAP. Otherwise markets can wait as they are expensive (although most cities have them by the end).

Library if you have ALOT of cottages or you have excessive food allowing you run those two scientist specialists.

Barracks are needed in cities that will build military, often those strongest in production.

Harbors are rather weak if your at war with the only other AI arround and you do not need that extra health.

In antoher words, look at each city and say "How will this help me right now" rather than "I will eventually need this, might as well build it now".

Also read some articles on city specialization. Yopu want one to be a GP farm (high Food), another for a Military city (high Production)m maybe another for gold (shrine or merchants), a science city (where you will eventuially build Oxford).

 

[Roxlimn]

Hand in hand with specialization is city placement and planning. Don't go all hammer-crazy and plunk down 7 production cities without any commerce to back that up!

First requirement for city placement is food. All cities need food, and GP Farms need more food than most. A good city site has at least one good +food resource or tiles that add food such as floodplains. Fresh water is important as well - you want to be able to farm your tiles if you're planning on using them for food, and you generally want to found your city on a coastal or a fresh water tile for +health.

Second requirement for city placement is production. Most cities will need some kind of production. Most production comes from hills and forests, but grasslands are good, too, once you can get the Workshop improvement profitable. A Production City will have great tiles for food and production but require little else. You can convert food to production using the Slavery Civic and whipping. You can counter low production sites using this early on, but it's a little dangerous to be dependent on this for more than a few cities.

Final requirement for cities is commerce. Not all cities will require commerce. Only Commerce Cities will really need it, although there's no harm in developing the commerce tiles you happen to claim with a Production City. Commerce Cities will have some food and some production, but mainly major in Commerce. Commerce comes from +Commerce resources and the Cottage improvement. You are best advised to build the Cottage improvement on Floodplains, riverside tiles, and any unirrigated grassland tile within the range of a Commerce City. There are other cases in which the improvement is advisabvle, but those are more corner case scenarios.

Use the function that shows tile output on the mainscreen all the time. This will tell you where the production, food, and commerce can be found.

 

[cabert]

you already got the best advice available but I can't help throwing my own salt in.

how do you get beakers?
- commerce through slider : basically, it takes a lot of cities with a lot of cottages
- specialists (scientists or others + representation), it's about the same except the food is king
- great people can "bulb" a tech or some beakers towards a tech (if you use specialists you will get them, else, build a few wonders)
- build beakers (not very efficient in vanilla, but a lot better in warlords/BtS)
- beakers from religious building + university of Sankore
- techs from the AIs (trade, extortion, espionnage)
- huts can be fun too, but a very reliable way to tech

If you use all or at least a few of those correctly, you will tech well.
But if you know what you're researching and what for, and know what you expect to trade it for, you will be far and away above all noble AIs.

There is still a problem : where does the gold come from, if you go for "all beakers"?
Go for currency early enough!
It allows :
- markets, in your gold producing cities (I mean your holy city, or the city with settled merchants and priests, or your big commerce cities)
- trade for gold : you can sell resources to the AIs for big money, you can sell techs for bigger money, you can extort gold,
- you can build gold!
If you keep good relations with the AIs you can ask for their gold and they will give it to you!

 

[SnowlyWhite]

In antoher words, look at each city and say "How will this help me right now" rather than "I will eventually need this, might as well build it now".

that should sum it up; n.b. - in some instances, it's wise to plan ahead and build something knowing that you'll follow up later, but 90%, the above is key.

build less, build more specific, long term we're dead, etc.

And, if you're fine military and abit back in research, it never hurts to go clubbing your neighbor; usually the good techers don't hold awesome military.

 

[Rotty]

For the Nobel tech race, you want to beeline to Dynamite. Getting there first will give you a special Great Engineer who can endow a committee in a city with an Academy that will attract five Great People every turn.

 

[madscientist]

For the Nobel tech race, you want to beeline to Dynamite. Getting there first will give you a special Great Engineer who can endow a committee in a city with an Academy that will attract five Great People every turn.

 

[Civman123]

For the Nobel tech race, you want to beeline to Dynamite. Getting there first will give you a special Great Engineer who can endow a committee in a city with an Academy that will attract five Great People every turn.

 

[Joshua368]

A typo joke.

 

[mirthadir]

A few other notes:

Watch your civics. If you are beelining lib with GS bulbs you really want Pac if the race is going to be close (and you want Pac even more if you are bulbing Astro then lib). OR for building infrastructure/wonders, FR (unlockable with Paya) is ownage for tech racing aside from bulbs, and theo is strictly for unit building. Feudalism is essentially crap for any non-war monger (and often not worth it even then; mostly I run it with a Cha war monger using a mounted army, otherwise I need B more). B is huge, even for a mostly pure SE, I normally want to have one city, somewhat centrally located to be nothing but riverside cottages. Rebuild the cap if you must, just make sure your cap gets maximum bonus from B. Switch to FS when the majority of your improvements are villages/towns. Slaving is good for getting early infra, caste is worthless until guilds unless you want to run many, many specs. Serfdom is garbage until you master civics enough to play with advanced whip cycles; then it still mostly sucks (just useful for religious civs under certain limited circumstances). HR/rep/PS/US is the hardest to gage (if you get the mids); HR allows for you to run very high happy caps, rep doubles specialist efficiency (somewhat less, but not much as earlier worker/infra/wonder techs compounds), PS is unit spam/long wars, and US is good for late game towns (and great with the Kremlin).

Other tricks to dominate technology race:
1. Use a GSp to infiltrate an AI and rob them blind of their monopoly techs (which you may then trade to the other AIs). This requires alphabet and some hammers, but it is the most tech you can get out of an early GP (if you want a GSp you need to go for the GW or courthouses). Save your beakers for beelines and use one GP for effectively many techs.
2. Extortion. Mansa is a tech beast, but you notice he hasn't got ivory. A nice war with phants and pults can let you decimate him. Often it is VERY worth it to let him buy peace once you've nerfed his major cities for multiple techs. Leaving an AI with one tundra city is annoying (as you still get culture revolts, etc.) but the AI gives a huge tech bounty if they are about to die. Best against peace mongers like India and Mali.
3. Have the AIs autonerf. Some AIs, like Shaka, are almost certainly doomed to suck at teching. However once you pass them you can bribe them into wars and mutual hatred with some techs. This helps in that the AI wastes on troops instead of buildings, loses OB and trade; and may lose cities or have tiles pillaged down. You do want to ensure that you don't create a monster when one AI completely devours another or when vassaling creates problems. More AI wars = everyone else slows down their tech rate.

 

[Supr49er]

Welcome to the Forums farbror Frej.

 

[troytheface]

Divine right - you can trade it for a gazillion techs. Shadawayne Paya - the best wonder in the game - Free Religion, Liberalism - (takes you down the science buildings route and gives free tech if you get there first. )
Cottages are overrated. A better route is to pillage the enemies cottages and collect cash and up the science bar. Allies over war.