Academies overpowered

[tedeviatings]

In Civ V the efficient way to produce more science was about as clear as it is in BE:
Get national college > Get universities > Get public schools > Get labs
Also you want big cities to sustain specialists and because science scales with population. And if your ideology of choice is order and you can add factories to the list, possibly before public schools if you wanted to oxford modern era for fast factory tech bonus.
That's basically how it works and if Civ V had 4 science victories all you'd see would be people playing this strategy as well. Which is why I don't think the problem lies in the easy way to play "the science game". The problem is more that the Civ BE science strategy works well for every kind of victory there is.

 

[parts]

In Civ V the efficient way to produce more science was about as clear as it is in BE:
Get national college > Get universities > Get public schools > Get labs
Also you want big cities to sustain specialists and because science scales with population. And if your ideology of choice is order and you can add factories to the list, possibly before public schools if you wanted to oxford modern era for fast factory tech bonus.
That's basically how it works and if Civ V had 4 science victories all you'd see would be people playing this strategy as well. Which is why I don't think the problem lies in the easy way to play "the science game". The problem is more that the Civ BE science strategy works well for every kind of victory there is.

This is bang on.

 

[Acken]

There's also a problem of progression. The first techs in CivBE takes a while to get but come mid game when your academy spam begins you will ramp up very quickly.

It takes approximately as much time to get from affinity 0 to 3-4 than it takes to get from 4 to 13. If someone doesn't view that as an issue please raise your hand.

This is the problem with academies, they accelerate your game way too much for being a single, easily accessible tech. The comparison with Civ5 science tech doesn't hold because civ5 uses these techs to make you accelerate only toward the next step. The tree being more linear allows the developer to control your flow much more easily that way.

 

[tedeviatings]

There's also a problem of progression. The first techs in CivBE takes a while to get but come mid game when your academy spam begins you will ramp up very quickly.

It takes approximately as much time to get from affinity 0 to 3-4 than it takes to get from 4 to 13. If someone doesn't view that as an issue please raise your hand.

This is not entirely on academies though. It's also caused by the end of your expansion phase. Generally the time you start getting academies is also the time where you start growing your cities, getting the science buildings up, getting healthier and all that. I remember at least one game in which I had no more than 6 academies max on about as many cities - and 0 to 4 still took about as long as 4 to 13. Academies of course add to this effect... But I don't think they're the cause.
I do agree, however, that this progression-problem exists, whatever the causes, and it would be more fun if 4 to 13 took longer and had more meaningful choices / things to do.

This is the problem with academies, they accelerate your game way too much for being a single, easily accessible tech. The comparison with Civ5 science tech doesn't hold because civ5 uses these techs to make you accelerate only toward the next step. The tree being more linear allows the developer to control your flow much more easily that way.

If I read you right you're basically saying that "playing the science way" is way stronger in BE than in Civ V. And I agree with you and with your reasons.
But I don't see where this invalidates the Civ V comparison made earlier where I essentially said: "BE has only science VCs and all people ever play is science strategies. If Civ V only had science VCs all people would ever play would be science strategies - and it wouldn't be much more interesting."

 

[keldaur]

The problem is more that the Civ BE science strategy works well for every kind of victory there is.

Pretty much. I am not knowledgeable about CiV5 and why i had never done or tried to compare both, but to me has always been clear that the problem lies that whatever Victory you go for, Affinity is the most important resource to acquire (military upgrades, access to build gates/flower) and because it's completely tied to research, science is the resource you have to go for.

I would completely re-do the affinity and remove it from the tech trees.

 

[Ryika]

In Civ V the efficient way to produce more science was about as clear as it is in BE:
Get national college > Get universities > Get public schools > Get labs
Also you want big cities to sustain specialists and because science scales with population. And if your ideology of choice is order and you can add factories to the list, possibly before public schools if you wanted to oxford modern era for fast factory tech bonus.
That's basically how it works and if Civ V had 4 science victories all you'd see would be people playing this strategy as well. Which is why I don't think the problem lies in the easy way to play "the science game". The problem is more that the Civ BE science strategy works well for every kind of victory there is.

I actually never thought about it that way but... yeah, I guess you're right. It's interesting how especially BNW with its new cultural Victory managed to introduce mechanics that, while still built upon early-/midgame-science, lead the game away from a pure science game.

 

[Acken]

This is not entirely on academies though. It's also caused by the end of your expansion phase. Generally the time you start getting academies is also the time where you start growing your cities, getting the science buildings up, getting healthier and all that. I remember at least one game in which I had no more than 6 academies max on about as many cities - and 0 to 4 still took about as long as 4 to 13. Academies of course add to this effect... But I don't think they're the cause.
I do agree, however, that this progression-problem exists, whatever the causes, and it would be more fun if 4 to 13 took longer and had more meaningful choices / things to do.



If I read you right you're basically saying that "playing the science way" is way stronger in BE than in Civ V. And I agree with you and with your reasons.
But I don't see where this invalidates the Civ V comparison made earlier where I essentially said: "BE has only science VCs and all people ever play is science strategies. If Civ V only had science VCs all people would ever play would be science strategies - and it wouldn't be much more interesting."

True on both account and I missed the point behind the comparison. However I still think academies make for too big a jump. Here are some collected data, in my recent let's play I have
T90 56bpt
T110 89bpt (Cognition T103)
T130 203bpt
T150 339bpt
T168 403bpt (before building science and before getting apprenticeship)
T189 543bpt (full on science production)

If we look at T168, each new pop get 1 science and by building clinic cyto gene labo network in every city I get 9 per cities. I also have a point in knowledge.
Therefore the base science at 168 is : 403/1.1 = 366. With all 4 buildings I have 366-9*9 = 285 science.
My pop at T90 is 10 7 5 5 4 = 31
My pop at T168 is 19 18 14 13 13 9 9 8 8 = 111
285 - 111 = 174
Extra terrain (silica resilin): 13 => 161
Scientists: 6*3 = 18 => 143
Routes: 13 => 130

In other words the science from getting academies is around 130bpt. That is 35% of my science at turn 168:
Academies: 36%
Population: 30%
Buildings: 22%
Other: 12%

Things are a little different later on though but not for long since the research ends on turn 189. However if you want to add apprenticeship that I get late at turn 170 you would have 111*1.25 = 139 from pop for a total of 394 so academies and pop get closer to each other.

Well it's very arguable whether it's good or bad, I'm just not a fan of spamming an improvement regardless of terrain.

Edit: More precise calculations.

 

[Doviello]

I haven't tried academy spam yet but damn, those are some numbers.

I don't like how after reaching the last ring of techs, im generating so much science that backfilling the leaf techs i ignored in the earlier rings take like 1-2 turns per tech, on Epic speed. Increasing my main affinity from 1 to 13 takes the first half of the game, while increasing my secondary affinities from 1 to 10 take about 10 turns in the late game; that's super lame. Playing a pure affinity game is almost impossible, merely a gimmick. I often end with affinities leveled at 18/14/14 or something, i wish there was SOME advantage or reason to go 18/0/0.

One solution could be that for every tech you research, every other tech becomes more expensive, say, 10% or something. This would make the progression more linear in terms of research time. Also, increase the academy maintenance to 5 or something.

 

[Acken]

Your idea is actually what Endless legend uses with every tech of a tier being available but with increasing costs.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I haven't tried academy spam yet but damn, those are some numbers.

I haven't tried it either but I'm getting too much science anyway. Not finish the game in 130 turns like others can, but still fast.
My instinct is to specialize a city for science but by the time you get cities set up like that the game is over. It would be better just to build them anywhere, but that feels so unstrategic.

One solution could be that for every tech you research, every other tech becomes more expensive, say, 10% or something. This would make the progression more linear in terms of research time. Also, increase the academy maintenance to 5 or something.

Your idea is actually what Endless legend uses with every tech of a tier being available but with increasing costs.

From what I've seen something like that was considered for this game. In the affinities XML there is something that appears to be a tech cost multiplier for affinity tech. At a certain level of your highest affinity, techs for other affinities double in cost then later 4x etc. It doesn't function though, obviously since there are still values set but the science cost doesn't increase.

 

[tedeviatings]

However I still think academies make for too big a jump.

I'm just not a fan of spamming an improvement regardless of terrain.

I agree 100%.