I would like to open a discussion about ways to reliably ramp up your early-game science, so that it doesn't take until industrial era for you to catch up to the AI on tech.
BNW, playing deity, and most importantly, I'm looking for solutions that suit all play styles and objectives, not only going for science victory.
So many early-game benefits to science are situational, and even more so than before, with BNW as the biggest early science boost is from trade routes.
1. The first thing to consider is your starting location. If you get two or more food tiles right away, you'll get a good boost for early pop. Now then, coastal would allow more food from future trade routes, but it will take a while for that to kick in, and coastal locations usually have less food tiles to work on their own. Rivers are very useful (garden) but unless you settle on a hill, your early production will suffer a lot. Would you prioritize gardens (river) or observatories (mountains) generally? Settling on a lux should also be considered on deity, because being able to work that tile 100% of the time shoud mostly trump the tile improvement bonuses, which only significantly benefit you starting from reneissance/industrial techs. Your thoughts?
2. Early build order - worker or not? If you want growth immediately, or maybe even a shot at an early wonder, for that matter, you need a worker asap, preferrably before turn 25. City states put out a worker at 17-27 turns, and that's too variable for you to count on that for your first worker (especially as the particular CS may be far from your cap and/or the route is full of rough terrain). Rival civs will have workers right away, but you cannot always steal one early. So you need to consider building a worker after a scout and monument, maybe. Workers do translate to beakers pretty soon, as each farm/pasture/camp will help growth immensely.
3. The next thing are the trade routes. Unless your starting location is really great, food caravans/cargo ships are tempting. But, they are expensive to build/buy and the potential +5 beakers for each external route is tempting too. Which do you prioritize in the early game and when do you build your caravans/ships? Teching sailing, engineering early will give you more trade route slots too, but that tech path may interfere with your optimal research order. So, please share your thoughts on early trade routes! Also, there seems to be quite little you can do to attract early caravans from the AI, so that beaker bonus should be considered just that, a bonus.
4. National college. This seems to be the most talked about subject regarding early tech. But it seems getting an early one is also quite situational. Early friends and multiple copies of luxes will allow you to buy a library or a settler, which will ramp things up, but you can't count on that. People are talking about sub-T70 NCs and OTOH, sub-T100 NCs to be the minimum. Now, as you need both population AND science buildings, staying at one city until NC is done, is risky to say the least, especially as the deity AI will take your land if you don't do it first. But, for 4-city tradition, it is quite a challenge to finish NC much before T100, and even a 3-city Tradition usually means a ~T80 NC requires at least one library or settler bought with cash. Liberty would allow you to bulb a GE for NC if you have a cultural CS ally, otherwise liberty will not be finished in time for an early NC. You could also plant a GS, which would mitigate the loss of a slightly later NC..
5. Tradition or Liberty? I guess this is largely map- and civ-dependant. Tradition offers more population and will work with less available space (maybe, if you don't absolutely need the free settler from Collective Rule) while Liberty allows more production and less interruptions hammering up your core buildings. As discussed, the option of an early GS or GE could be very helpful. As strong as tradition can be, on many maps, you will not have room for four cities. And as nice as Liberty can be, the lack of food bonuses does mean you have to prioritize food tiles more which can mean the +1 hammer from Rebublic will be offset by that, if not more.
6. Managing early war - if you want/need to take a neighbouring city soon, you need troops early. If you do not, you may still need troops early; to clear out barbs, protect your worker, escort the settlers, and defend against Attila. But how do you time your military build so as not to interfere with your growth and tech buildings?
7. Money. This has to do with everything - being able to buy libraries, settlers, workers and later universities and factories, you need a lot of gold. And getting it can be situational. You may or may not have close neighbours for trade, you may or may not have multiple tradable luxuries and strategic resources, you may or may not get early friendships with AIs, you may or may not get a Mercantile CS ally. Building markets and later banks will help, but they also cost many hammers, especially banks. Buying tiles may also be necessery (especially if not on Tradition), as may be upgrading many military units. Or maybe bribing Attila to attack somebody else instead of you. So how do you build your economy early-and mid-game, where gold is harder to come by?
8. Hard building or buying the key buildings. Now, unless you have really great production on your cities (in which case food surplus must be, in turn, a bit less impressive), hard building science and production buildings can really take a while. If it were possible, getting those universities and factories up right away when the tech is researched, would be a huge benefit. But you can't always (not nearly) do that. Borrowing money could work... But if you do hard build these, would you sacrifice your growth for those 10-odd turns the build will take, and change your citizens to work on hammer tiles instead of food until the build is finished? What other thoughts do you have on this?
9. Religion and culture. Culture is mandatory, religion is very nice. How do you balance with these and your tech progress? Remember, we're looking for general strategies here, not only for a science victory. When do you build the guilds? What about shrines and temples? Temples are quite hammer-intensive but they also give +2 faith per city... Decisions, decisions. High culture output will also be necessery if there's even one cultural runaway AI, otherwise you don't get to choose the ideology you want.
10. Social policies up from the opening tree. Please just share your thoughts - rationalism should probably be a part of 90% of games, but when do you open it, and will you settle for secularism, or always also want to score free thought too? What about the optional 'third regular tree' apart from ideologies? Would you go for Commerce, Patronage or even Aesthetics, Exploration or simply focus everything on your ideology once you have your opening tree and rationalism? Could you actually skip rationalism and still pull ahead of the AI on deity? Any tricks for timing your SPs? Cultural CS allies are always nice, but the added CPT can be a double edged sword if it forces you to 'waste' a SP when the time isn't right tech-wise.
11. Great Scientists - planting, bulbing or saving - quite simply, what's your view?
12. When to do the Oxford Uni? The free tech is so useful, but timing it right can be a tough call to make. And, it is not unimportant that Oxford gives you two GW slots and a potential theming bonus, and as great writings are usually your earliest great works, Oxford could really help your early tourism too...
13. When do you start working your specialist slots and with what priority? This will be a trade off between growth and other important bonuses, so it can be a difficult decision. What are your rules for specialists?
There, that's a long one! But I hope some useful discussion, we can learn new things and improve our game
Keep them comments coming!
BNW, playing deity, and most importantly, I'm looking for solutions that suit all play styles and objectives, not only going for science victory.
So many early-game benefits to science are situational, and even more so than before, with BNW as the biggest early science boost is from trade routes.
1. The first thing to consider is your starting location. If you get two or more food tiles right away, you'll get a good boost for early pop. Now then, coastal would allow more food from future trade routes, but it will take a while for that to kick in, and coastal locations usually have less food tiles to work on their own. Rivers are very useful (garden) but unless you settle on a hill, your early production will suffer a lot. Would you prioritize gardens (river) or observatories (mountains) generally? Settling on a lux should also be considered on deity, because being able to work that tile 100% of the time shoud mostly trump the tile improvement bonuses, which only significantly benefit you starting from reneissance/industrial techs. Your thoughts?
2. Early build order - worker or not? If you want growth immediately, or maybe even a shot at an early wonder, for that matter, you need a worker asap, preferrably before turn 25. City states put out a worker at 17-27 turns, and that's too variable for you to count on that for your first worker (especially as the particular CS may be far from your cap and/or the route is full of rough terrain). Rival civs will have workers right away, but you cannot always steal one early. So you need to consider building a worker after a scout and monument, maybe. Workers do translate to beakers pretty soon, as each farm/pasture/camp will help growth immensely.
3. The next thing are the trade routes. Unless your starting location is really great, food caravans/cargo ships are tempting. But, they are expensive to build/buy and the potential +5 beakers for each external route is tempting too. Which do you prioritize in the early game and when do you build your caravans/ships? Teching sailing, engineering early will give you more trade route slots too, but that tech path may interfere with your optimal research order. So, please share your thoughts on early trade routes! Also, there seems to be quite little you can do to attract early caravans from the AI, so that beaker bonus should be considered just that, a bonus.
4. National college. This seems to be the most talked about subject regarding early tech. But it seems getting an early one is also quite situational. Early friends and multiple copies of luxes will allow you to buy a library or a settler, which will ramp things up, but you can't count on that. People are talking about sub-T70 NCs and OTOH, sub-T100 NCs to be the minimum. Now, as you need both population AND science buildings, staying at one city until NC is done, is risky to say the least, especially as the deity AI will take your land if you don't do it first. But, for 4-city tradition, it is quite a challenge to finish NC much before T100, and even a 3-city Tradition usually means a ~T80 NC requires at least one library or settler bought with cash. Liberty would allow you to bulb a GE for NC if you have a cultural CS ally, otherwise liberty will not be finished in time for an early NC. You could also plant a GS, which would mitigate the loss of a slightly later NC..
5. Tradition or Liberty? I guess this is largely map- and civ-dependant. Tradition offers more population and will work with less available space (maybe, if you don't absolutely need the free settler from Collective Rule) while Liberty allows more production and less interruptions hammering up your core buildings. As discussed, the option of an early GS or GE could be very helpful. As strong as tradition can be, on many maps, you will not have room for four cities. And as nice as Liberty can be, the lack of food bonuses does mean you have to prioritize food tiles more which can mean the +1 hammer from Rebublic will be offset by that, if not more.
6. Managing early war - if you want/need to take a neighbouring city soon, you need troops early. If you do not, you may still need troops early; to clear out barbs, protect your worker, escort the settlers, and defend against Attila. But how do you time your military build so as not to interfere with your growth and tech buildings?
7. Money. This has to do with everything - being able to buy libraries, settlers, workers and later universities and factories, you need a lot of gold. And getting it can be situational. You may or may not have close neighbours for trade, you may or may not have multiple tradable luxuries and strategic resources, you may or may not get early friendships with AIs, you may or may not get a Mercantile CS ally. Building markets and later banks will help, but they also cost many hammers, especially banks. Buying tiles may also be necessery (especially if not on Tradition), as may be upgrading many military units. Or maybe bribing Attila to attack somebody else instead of you. So how do you build your economy early-and mid-game, where gold is harder to come by?
8. Hard building or buying the key buildings. Now, unless you have really great production on your cities (in which case food surplus must be, in turn, a bit less impressive), hard building science and production buildings can really take a while. If it were possible, getting those universities and factories up right away when the tech is researched, would be a huge benefit. But you can't always (not nearly) do that. Borrowing money could work... But if you do hard build these, would you sacrifice your growth for those 10-odd turns the build will take, and change your citizens to work on hammer tiles instead of food until the build is finished? What other thoughts do you have on this?
9. Religion and culture. Culture is mandatory, religion is very nice. How do you balance with these and your tech progress? Remember, we're looking for general strategies here, not only for a science victory. When do you build the guilds? What about shrines and temples? Temples are quite hammer-intensive but they also give +2 faith per city... Decisions, decisions. High culture output will also be necessery if there's even one cultural runaway AI, otherwise you don't get to choose the ideology you want.
10. Social policies up from the opening tree. Please just share your thoughts - rationalism should probably be a part of 90% of games, but when do you open it, and will you settle for secularism, or always also want to score free thought too? What about the optional 'third regular tree' apart from ideologies? Would you go for Commerce, Patronage or even Aesthetics, Exploration or simply focus everything on your ideology once you have your opening tree and rationalism? Could you actually skip rationalism and still pull ahead of the AI on deity? Any tricks for timing your SPs? Cultural CS allies are always nice, but the added CPT can be a double edged sword if it forces you to 'waste' a SP when the time isn't right tech-wise.
11. Great Scientists - planting, bulbing or saving - quite simply, what's your view?
12. When to do the Oxford Uni? The free tech is so useful, but timing it right can be a tough call to make. And, it is not unimportant that Oxford gives you two GW slots and a potential theming bonus, and as great writings are usually your earliest great works, Oxford could really help your early tourism too...
13. When do you start working your specialist slots and with what priority? This will be a trade off between growth and other important bonuses, so it can be a difficult decision. What are your rules for specialists?
There, that's a long one! But I hope some useful discussion, we can learn new things and improve our game
Keep them comments coming!
That alone would outweigh the benefit of settling that coastal city and allow your capital to breathe freely.
