Academy spam

[kingsbury]

I am mainly a warmonger in Civ, but I am currently trying to figure out the viability of an Academy spam strategy in Beyond Earth.

I guess this strategy might lend its hand to the pan asian cooperative in the long run with their increased worker speed, but I think that the slavs might also be a decent choice because you don't waste however many turns researching the academy tech which is about 700 beakers, and can start building them right away.

Obviously the only necessary thing for this strategy is to get the +2 science from academies virtue in the science virtue. Then either do an ICS strategy and try to deal with the health issues with the expansion virtues, or mix in some biowells and go industry.

I was able to get around 100 science around turn 100 with this strategy, which is by no means a legendary amount, but I would imagine that I could get more if I perfected this strategy.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Academy + alot of cities I was able to get an turn 215 harmony win, before the ai was able to build their improvements.

 

[kingsbury]

A variation on this strategy that I might try is this:

-Use free tech on bionics
-Spam biowells in capital
-Institute quest free tech to unlock academy


Then just spam academies in all cities but the capital where you spam biowells to both help with health as well as give you a production center to build things like trade convoys and military units.

The advantage of doing it this way is that you can quickly switch to a battlesuit rush if an AI spawns near you and looks to be hostile.

 

[omniclast]

Isn't there an additional late game tech that gives +2 science on academies? That seems pretty key to pick up as well as the virtue.

The other important point here is to get your cities tall enough to actually work the academy tiles. And watch out for the governor, sometimes it won't actually put your pop into the academies.

 

[kingsbury]

The other important point here is to get your cities tall enough to actually work the academy tiles.

My current preferred strategy is a variation on my original post. Just ignore health, take over all other civ cities, annex, and spam academies. Even with low population cities they are still producing 30-40+ science a turn each which can be massive when added together. Produce nothing but military units and sell off any +health buildings, rush buy units with excess funds.

 

[ZHONN]

I've found the academy spam to be very effective. The academy science yield with the science tree +2 is really high compared to the base science from population or specialists. The upkeep can be a bit high sometimes but mostly it's very manageable. It also helps that I far prefer the Science tree from the virtues for the other stuff as well.

 

[Kanasuke]

This is what I do every game now. Science is overpowered in this game.
The problem you run into is not just health though. It's the maintenance cost on the Academies. I had to run Solar Orbitals in a few of my cities to keep up on costs (or steal money from stupid AI). Ideally I would like to run the food orbital but something has to give I guess!

 

[Promethian]

Don't neglect the strength of the culture to cash virtue. It pays out hugely once your culture engine is rolling which you should be doing if you are going knowledge.

 

[omniclast]

Overall, TRs yield much more cost effective science and they are available much sooner, and by the time I can get academy spam going I already am way ahead in science from TR spam. Plus Eudaimonia is so damn good that you have to beeline prosperity before you even open knowledge, that seriously delays getting to the knowledge buff. So I'm not sold on this strat -- though maybe it will be strongest once TRs are nerfed.

 

[frozen]

I think the worst thing about BE is how easy it is to get to a pop 10 city. It is very difficult to grow really tall but you are pretty much guaranteed a decent city size regardless of tile improvements because of the internal trade routes.

The other thing is that you don't really need to build food tiles in the capital either. Just make sure to send the first trade route from each city to the capital and you will never have production or growth problems.

Btw, I did win my first game with external trade routes and they're also good but they peak at an earlier stage of the game.