Basic question Tech/Science

[guenzak]

Was thinking of going for my first tech victory game but had a couple basic questions that some of you may know.

Is the Scholasticism policy worth it? It give you 33% of an allied city states science but from what I can see there is no way to tell what there output is before taking this policy. Has anyone used this and did you find it very useful or worthless?

Real general question - I know you can achieve all victories with both large and small civilizations but which is the best choice for a basic tech victory. Since science is generated by pop it would lead you to believe expanding and growing would be best but then you spen a lot of time building building to combat unhappiness. Does small or medium work best so happiness isnt as much of an issue and you can concentrate on science boosting building? Again...i know there are strategies to do this both ways but in general for a moderatly difficulty setting game which is geanerally the best approach.

THX!!!

 

[tibbles]

If you maintain a fair number of city state allies it's a decent boost. I think I've gotten 200ish from it before. There's no way that I know of to see ahead of time, but I'd guesstimate it'll scale from about 10 to 20 beakers per ally as the game progresses.

In general, more cities is best for space race.

 

[bryanw1995]

I have 10-12 CS allies right now. I'm getting ~ 110 science from it, just got riflemen so I'm not very far along the tech ladder either.

 

[ccubed]

This is a somewhat sarcastic reply, but it does seem to work. Rapid Expansion (REX) for Infinite City Sprawl (ICS.) Here's a quote to its efficacy from this thread:

Just tried a serious REX+ICS strategy for the first time. Launched the spaceship on turn 199 (1370AD iirc).

This was Emperor/Pangaea/Standard.

It wasn't really the policies that dominated, since I hardly bothered with culture at all. I picked up 4 policies in Liberty and that was it for the rest of the game. After that, my Social Policy costs were increasing faster than my culture. The ridiculousness came from raw population (Science!) and the trade route income.

I was packing cities at max density with no regard for terrain. Workers built luxuries, then roads, then farms. The trade route income was absolutely obscene. After turn 80 or so, I had stopped training settlers and was purchasing two every three turns. By turn 120, that was three every two turns. I'd temporarily lose a city or two from an AI DoW, but the overlapping city crossfire eliminated any danger from invasions. I'd rush buy a few military, retake the cities, and keep expanding like nothing happened.

The cities built nothing but a Colosseum and Library. Once the first few expansion cities were finishing their Colosseums, everything snowballed.

Unfortunately, playing the game this way was extremely dull. I was extremely excited about Civ 5 reducing the amount of time each late-game turn would take, with puppets and whatnot. ICS is a total reversal of that. You spend a very small amount of time early on making important decisions, and then spend a ton of time later on managing inconsequential crap.

The last thing I managed to research was Nuclear Fusion. It took 1 turn. I researched all of the Future Era techs in 1 turn each. The entire rocket took 11 turns to construct.

Here's another thread about ICS. And here's a thread with screenshots and descriptions of someone playing ICS as Rome.

Use with caution.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Short answer: as with most things, it depends.

Helpful answer: if you have the ability to juggle a bunch of early allies (Greece and China are best), it can effectively turn you into the Babylonians during the early Renaissance. Unfortunately, it gets overshadowed by the Rationalism tree as the game progresses.

On lower difficulties, ICS is pretty clearly the way to go. On Deity, you can use the AI's growth and production advantages against it to out-tech a pure ICS through early conquest and leveraging the AI's Trading Post spam with Rationalism. I don't have enough data to tell you whether or not the ICS will launch faster; I've been winning most games on Diplo because I get tired of microing and clicking Next Turn.