Advice on research please

[katipo]

I need some advice on improving my research strategy:

My basic practice is roughly like this:

First I pick up a handful of basic stuff like Bronze Working, Pottery, Hunting etc. This lets me build the basic improvements like walls, cottages, libraries etc.

I then go directly after Optics so I can be the first to circle the globe at get the shipping movement bonus.

My next target is railroads for the obvious land movement benefits.

Then I go after Industrialism (Tanks) and Rocketry (Spaceship).

My problem is it always takes me until around the mid 1600s to get to Railroads. By then it is extremely difficult to get a victory of any sorts before 2000 which appears to be necessary to get a decent score.

I usually mange to build most of the research orientated wonders like Pyramids and the Great Library and build libraries in all my cities But this doesn't speed things up much.

Any advice would be a big help.

Thanks

Katipo

 

[Jayhawk_Colin]

Dont be so specilized, reaserch a bit of everything. If you focus on one area it takes longer to do the reaseach. Try to go strait for Divine Right in a game, when you get to it, it takes like 60 turns to finish, but if you reaserch is balnced it wont take as long to get a tech.

 

[Silver Marmot]

Circumnavigating the globe first really isn't that important. I wouldn't recommend shooting for optics first.

 

[Pantastic]

How much of a beeline are you making for these items? If it's just 'what I'm headed for' that's one thing, but if you're pretty much picking that item and going straight for it, you're crippling your research and economy. For one thing, techs cost more if you haven't finished earlier techs, I'm not sure what the formula is but this can really slow down a super beeline. Also, it sounds like you're skipping a good chance at a free tech from Liberalism and not going for any of the economic techs, like liberalism (free speech) and Democracy (Universal suffrage, emacipation) to make your towns much better, or education (universities and Oxford) or economics and corporation (free market, Wall street, etra trade). For quick tech later on, you really need fully developed cottages.

Also, going straight to railroad lets you move units around quicker, but you don't have any really good offensive units - you'll end up with cannons, grenadiers, and machine guns, when I'd really rather get infantry first - and infantry requires several of the economic techs anyway.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I need some advice on improving my research strategy

Your research path should be a function of which leader you are playing (how can you take advantage of your traits), the map, your local terrain, the kind of victory you are playing for, etc.

A useful starting point might be to begin with your unique unit. Figure out what tech you need to unlock it, and work backwards from there to create a strategy that matches your situation.

In my recent games, the most significant techs have probably been Literature, Civil Service, Communism, Radio. But that reflects more than anything else the fact that I've been concentrating on production of late.

Recommended exercise. Examine the tech tree, and consider how your research path would differ for leaders from the same state. Start with the easy ones (Peter vs Catherine, Frederick vs Bismark, Qin vs Mao) before moving on to the hard ones (Washington vs Roosevelt, Elizabeth vs Victoria, Napolean vs Louis, Genghis vs Kublai, Asoka vs Gandhi).

 

[Dagoril]

Unlike earlier versions of Civ, research in 4 is much more flexible. So like VoU says above, what you need to be researching will vary from leader to leader, and even from game to game. There's no point in rushing to get masonry right away at the beginning, for example, if you don't have stone or marble nearby to quarry...and if you do have cows, animal husbandry would be a better choice. And if your leader's UU requires iron and horses, you are probably best off getting iron working and horse riding faster than otherwise.

But as a general rule, ignoring my UUs, I tend to try to get BW and IW out of the way early (for warmongering), and put a priority on getting CS and Machinery (so I can field macemen and crossbowmen asap). I'll also try to get to the techs that unlock the civics I want to be running. For me this is Slavery and Organized Religion asap, then Hereditary Rule and Bureaucracy a bit later, then Caste System, Representation, Mercantilism and Pacifism later still. Eventually switching to Emancipation will give the ai civs a happiness penalty until they also switch, so the earlier you can do that, the better for you.

Naval battles are rarely critical, so I would agree with the poster above, Optics is not an urgent thing to get.