When to bulb GS?

[Fish Man]

When do I bulb my great scientists? I usually do them all at the end of the game, but is it more efficient to bulb them to get the important science techs?
Also, can anyone point me to a sub-t250 Babylon lp in BNW? Preferably video, but detailed text would also do. Thanks!

 

[Acken]

I usually grab ST with oxford and plastics with one or 2 GS. Every other camps ubtill last techs. Hard to say if its really the best way...

You should be wary of not bulbing too many at the end otherwise you will end up with all the parts left to build and barely any techs left to research. You want to start on appolo soon enough and the firsts parts so that when you get the last techs you re ready to build it or rush it.

Due to this limitation toward production thats why i generally prefer to get key techs faster in order to spread important builds rather than getting everything at once in the end.

 

[tommynt]

ya nothing wrong with bulbing key (science) techs with 1 GS.

Planting GS generaly not worth it, apart maybe 1 early on (obviously the free bab one espacially).

For Sub turn 250 you dont have to do anything Special apart keeping to grow 4 cities all game long - happyness management most important here imo.

 

[Fish Man]

ya nothing wrong with bulbing key (science) techs with 1 GS.

Planting GS generaly not worth it, apart maybe 1 early on (obviously the free bab one espacially).

For Sub turn 250 you dont have to do anything Special apart keeping to grow 4 cities all game long - happyness management most important here imo.

What sizes should my cities be, and what bpt should they be giving as Babylon? A milestone every 50 or so turns would be good. Also, my growth usually stagnates at 20 and my bpt at 1000 on turn 225 as my cities run out of good workable tiles; caravans only do so much. Any way to fix this?

 

[Acken]

Capital should be around turn number divided by 7. More or less depending on terrain and cargo vs caravan and hanging gardens.

Expansions are even more terrain dependant and dont all start at the same time so its harder to give good benchmark.

Bpt depends on observatories or not. 500 around 150 and 1200 around 210 means a very good game.

 

[Fish Man]

Capital should be around turn number divided by 7. More or less depending on terrain and cargo vs caravan and hanging gardens.

Expansions are even more terrain dependant and dont all start at the same time so its harder to give good benchmark.

Bpt depends on observatories or not. 500 around 150 and 1200 around 210 means a very good game.

Thanks for the tips, but what can I do to get over the 20-pop stagnation at around turn 200? Also my bpt has never exceeded 1200, but Babylon should have 1500 at the end of the game?

 

[Acken]

No babylon doesnt have much higher bpt. They get more bpt after first academy and thats it. Their bonus is in more scientists which wont trandlate into higher bpt endgame. They get faster finish times due to more bulb but their raw bpt isnt impressive.

That is if you bulb, if you plant everything then yes you will have higher bpt but that isnt a very good idea.

If you work food tiles, theres not much you can do for expansion. Send extra caravans to them maybe if capital is already saturated.

 

[Uzael36]

Thanks for the tips, but what can I do to get over the 20-pop stagnation at around turn 200? Also my bpt has never exceeded 1200, but Babylon should have 1500 at the end of the game?

1500 is a good game, but is not necessarily what you'll get. Babylon's secret sauce is about how many GS's they produce, not so much about how much science per turn they get. Though you might end up with more planted GS's with Babylon. You may also need to bulb as Babylon a bit earlier than other civs due to how many GS's you'll have.

To get population, you need to send caravans and cargo ships to your capital city, and to other cities as well. You need to focus on building farms, particularly those around rivers and you need to focus on growth, rather than production. You also need to try and get "We love the king day" going as much as possible (WLTKD). And check to see if you can build Temple of Artemis, Hanging Garden's and Petra if available. Those make a big difference.

@ Acken: I went back to that Immortal Babylon game and decided to benchmark my progress on all that you've taught me and I improved by 20 turns. I got a 253 SV, which I believe you had 242. At the end, I definitely felt my population suffered compared to yours (you had about 6 more population than I did on the good city). I appreciate your help, now to see how I can refine even more.

 

[Uzael36]

If you work food tiles, theres not much you can do for expansion. Send extra caravans to them maybe if capital is already saturated.

Speaking of this, I've been trying a slightly new tactic here, lately. Since cities suffer so much with specialists when they are small, after my capital is sporting a solid population and specialists, I've been sending more caravans to my growing cities so they can get specialists up and running sooner. This appears to have helped me get more GS's.

 

[Acken]

Speaking of this, I've been trying a slightly new tactic here, lately. Since cities suffer so much with specialists when they are small, after my capital is sporting a solid population and specialists, I've been sending more caravans to my growing cities so they can get specialists up and running sooner. This appears to have helped me get more GS's.

I find it hard to know which strategy is truly better regarding caravans. I see good arguments in both. The capital has more growth and new pop benefit the natoonal college, also extra capital pop benefit a ton from monarchy, the capital also has to work guilds. On the other hand a single caravan can help an expansion sooo much. I guess next time ill go for caravn to cap and only one on the lowest expansion, maybe thats a good split.

 

[tommynt]

very often my cap is inland and gets all Food Caravans apart 2 Food ships from 2 coastals which feed each other

 

[Fish Man]

very often my cap is inland and gets all Food Caravans apart 2 Food ships from 2 coastals which feed each other

how many food caravans should i allocate? and what about the growth of satellite cities? very often, even with three rivers and grassland, my cap stagnates at 30 and other cities with river/grassland stagnate at 20. I've tried everything - not working specialists, not working mines, farmspam literally everything, buying good tiles, food routes, and none have a significant enough effect to overcome this barrier. see attached save...

 

[Fish Man]

Another really big problem I have is production. Everything in my cities take 10-15 turns to build WITH working full mines which screws up growth...without mines they take up to 20 turns. Not only is this slow production making it impossible to build all the important things in time, but also it hampers my science: universities, schools, and labs are only up ~30 turns after their tech is researched.

 

[Fish Man]

Since I have so many woes, I might as well post them all right here.

1. Faith - how do you guys get like 50-100 fpt? Desert folklore, religious buildings, holy sites, and faith CS can only give so much, and to acquire all these things take resources which I don't have.

2. Culture - I can't get GW fast enough, and even if I get the cultural GP, can't get appropriate buildings up in time (museums, opera houses, amphitheaters, etc). Tourism suffers as a result, and when I pick ideologies the slightest shove by a cultural powerhouse plunges my civ into unhappiness. Cultural CS help, but their quests are hard to fulfill with wonderspamming AI on deity and I don't have enough gold to outspend anybody on deity. Also, can't fill out rationalism in time.

3. City spots - because of said food problem in previous post, I choose city spots very selectively, which leads to not having enough space.

BTW, I moved to deity, since emperor was too easy and tommynt said "deity is the new emperor" (I played comfortably on emperor in G+K).

 

[Fish Man]

Sorry for spamming posts, but I'll be the one giving advice if this ends well.

Tommynt, if you have the time/patience, can you play the save I attached a few posts back and record yourself doing it? Three-river cap is good enough for a sub-t250 or even t200 sv, and some things are easier demonstrated than said.

 

[Uzael36]

It might also be nice to have the original save, from 4000bc. You likely have made mistakes along the way that he'd play differently.

 

[Fish Man]

It might also be nice to have the original save, from 4000bc. You likely have made mistakes along the way that he'd play differently.

Alright, I'll do that. In the meantime, still waiting for advice...

 

[Uzael36]

I took a peak at your save and have a few observations:

1) You will not get a sub 240 win on that map. Without mountains, salt or some special features, it will be very tough to win in under 240 turns.

2) You only have 3 cities, and none are power houses. You are only at 381 beaker a turn at turn 191. That is more likely what you'll have before 150 on a sub 240 turn win. Heck, most games.

3) You have 1 single caravan running between your cities. You should have caravans feeding your capital at the least. Probably 1 from each city you have.

4) You do not have a single city state ally and Alexander is not on the map, so there isn't much of an excuse. You also have not discovered very many of them. You need to explorer with a caravel at this point.

5) As Babylon, you should have at least 1 planted GS. 3 is more typical.

6) Babylon's strength is generating great scientists, you should take advantage of that with gardens and the national epic.

7) After reaching Scientific Theory, you should take Industrialization and work on factories while bee-lining to Radio to open up your ideology (Order). At the vary least, you should have built factories. If you had made 3, that would also open up your ideology.

8) You do have decent gold output, but not because you have any markets or banks. Your caravans are all going outward for gold. If/when you decide to send them to your own cities to make them large, you'll have to rely on your markets/banks/etc to keep your gold up.

I'm sure others may have more in depth responses, but that is what popped out at me so far. If you do make a 4th city and grow your total population a bit, you will be forced to seek out those city states, as you will be struggling on happiness.

 

[Fish Man]

I took a peak at your save and have a few observations:

1) You will not get a sub 240 win on that map. Without mountains, salt or some special features, it will be very tough to win in under 240 turns.

2) You only have 3 cities, and none are power houses. You are only at 381 beaker a turn at turn 191. That is more likely what you'll have before 150 on a sub 240 turn win. Heck, most games.

3) You have 1 single caravan running between your cities. You should have caravans feeding your capital at the least. Probably 1 from each city you have.

4) You do not have a single city state ally and Alexander is not on the map, so there isn't much of an excuse. You also have not discovered very many of them. You need to explorer with a caravel at this point.

5) As Babylon, you should have at least 1 planted GS. 3 is more typical.

6) Babylon's strength is generating great scientists, you should take advantage of that with gardens and the national epic.

7) After reaching Scientific Theory, you should take Industrialization and work on factories while bee-lining to Radio to open up your ideology (Order). At the vary least, you should have built factories. If you had made 3, that would also open up your ideology.

8) You do have decent gold output, but not because you have any markets or banks. Your caravans are all going outward for gold. If/when you decide to send them to your own cities to make them large, you'll have to rely on your markets/banks/etc to keep your gold up.

I'm sure others may have more in depth responses, but that is what popped out at me so far. If you do make a 4th city and grow your total population a bit, you will be forced to seek out those city states, as you will be struggling on happiness.

Thanks for the information, I'll try to keep that in mind.

About the no special features/not powerhouses thing - what part of 3 rivers intersecting isn't special? By all rights my cap should be hovering at 40 and other cities at 25-30 right now, since almost all tiles are 4 food, but there's somehow no production or growth coming from them. In an immortal game as Russia culture, Budweiser challenge, I saw earlier someone had 30 food per turn by turn 87. And they didn't even have that many fp tiles? How? Also there's a whole slew of unanswered questions that I spammed before uzael's post. I also find a severe lack of in-depth responses in these forums nowadays. Any help, or am I doomed to mediocrity forever?

 

[Uzael36]

Rivers are good for food, but they aren't going to be as good as one by a mountain with an observatory. If you wanted to use your size to your advantage, then you need to grow your capital. You are utilizing the river tiles only, but you have no caravans heading into your capital. With 3 expansion cities sending caravans into the capital, you'd have 12+ more food. Satisfy your cities demand for luxury resource, and you'll get a 25% bonus to growth. With a faith, you can add another 15%. It all adds up. The most insane city I ever had, was able to hit 115 food per turn with 3 cargo ships running to it, with 15% bonus from faith, we love the king day, Petra with a slew of hill tiles, with a couple rivers (number of rivers doesn't matter as much as tiles by the river) and it was on a coast with some fish.