Can someone explain the rationale for hoarding GSes?

[Zezima]

I understand that the general idea behind this tactic is to hoard your mid-late game GSes until rushing Hubble and then "bulbing" them all at once to rush the last few techs needed for the spaceship parts. Clearly the intent here is to hit SV as quickly as possible.

I keep seeing this being described as a generally accepted tactic in high level play (to the extent that it's just taken for granted that players will do this). I'm just failing to understand how this is nearly universally considered optimal play.

I understand that at that point in the game (information era), they provide the highest raw number of beakers, but isn't the number of turns more important? For example, if popping a GS in the medieval era wipes 8 turns from a tech, but popping a GS in information era only wipes 7 turns, the medieval era GS was technically more efficient.

Not only that, but early game GS-bulbs can help you reach key SV techs much quicker (Plastics, for example). There's the added maintenance cost of keeping them all around as well, but that doesn't have much direct impact on SV times.

Does the beaker-to-tech cost ratio just fall in a way that GS bulbing tends to shave off the highest number of turns during the information era? If it is too late to build an academy, I bulb my GSes right away, because in my mind having public schools or research labs 7-8 turns quicker is just huge and probably more than offsets the 1 or 2 turns (if any) I might miss from not waiting to bulb till Hubble.

 

[Matthew.]

Play some games both ways and compare

For me it is partly an infrastructure issue. 7-8 turns in the mid-game seems silly if I am waiting on like 10 turns for new science buildings to complete or policies to finish. Getting a jump on tech doesn't mean much if the other pieces aren't quite in place yet.

In the big picture doesn't it make much of a difference? Probably not. There is a lot of "dead space" near the end of the tech tree, and unless you are getting massive beaker variance from population (picking up additional cities) or still have key policies to finish, it doesn't matter if they get bulbed on turn 275 or 282. Beaker count will likely be roughly the same.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Before BNW I would have said you're right, turns would have been about as important as beakers. Late bulbing was a little better since you could burn through the techs and build the parts before your opponents could take advantage of the "already been researched" bonus to catch up whereas early bulbing does give them a chance to catch up.

Post BNW I think it's more important because chances are very good that some one will win a diplo or culture victory before you can build all the parts if you research them the long way. You actually trigger World Leader votes as soon as you hit the information era. It doesn't matter where the other civs are tech wise. You need to be able to snap out all the ship parts before one is elected.

 

[z284pwr]

One reason I see as that you will never beat the academy science output late game that a single bulbed scientist will provide. Academy will output what 10-12 bulbs per turn by late game. If timed correctly scientists can provide 6000+ bulbs easily by late game. My last game I spent 7 scientists worth 10,000 bulbs each. How long would 7 academies take to equal 70,000 bulbs.......Makes it pretty easy to decide how to use them.

 

[joshua43214]

You plant the early ones to get through the tech tree overall faster. Its theory vs. practice. There are occasions where bulbing early makes sense (you need a military tech right now cause Shaka is on your doorstep), but in general, planting the early GS's gives a continuous smooth flow and you have to take into account the effect of planted GS's on RA's as well.

To get the most out of the GS, you want to use it when you are at maximum science output. So this means 8 turns after you finish labs. Some people will even recommend running all specialists for 8 turns even if you starve before bulbing them off. On a typical 4 city SV set up, you are talking over 8k beakers a bulb.

The timing also works out better to do this during the atomic/info era because you can bulb everything off, build 4 parts right away while you hard tech your way to the last parts and finish them off. It is much more efficient

 

[MarshalN]

You plant the early ones to get through the tech tree overall faster. Its theory vs. practice. There are occasions where bulbing early makes sense (you need a military tech right now cause Shaka is on your doorstep), but in general, planting the early GS's gives a continuous smooth flow and you have to take into account the effect of planted GS's on RA's as well.

Planted GS also increase bulbing effectiveness. I haven't done the math for this, but with the right bonuses and what not and enough GS, it may be the case that planting one immediately and then bulbing the rest might net you more than if you bulb them all. I'm not sure what that "enough" number is though.

 

[Zezima]

Thanks for the responses.

First off, my OP was just attempting to address the benefits between bulbing GSes ASAP vs. waiting until Hubble. I know academies' effectiveness decreases pretty quickly in the early-mid game.

Infrastructure is sometimes an issue. Popping plastics 8 turns quicker doesn't help too much if I won't have the gold to rush buy for another 10 turns. Staffing all specialists for 8 turns is an interesting point. This is along the lines of what I'm trying to address. Are there any other tactics that allow you to "artificially" increase beaker count, thus increasing the effectiveness of the bulb and making it more beneficial to hold off until Hubble?

Still, there are techs like fertilizer that positively impact science output regardless of infrastructure limits (well, nearly. Happiness is still a concern). The CiV golden rule has always been that early benefits snowball and are thus generally better than late benefits. I guess that is the premise of my argument that early bulbs are likely to provide greater benefits than late ones.

What I did just realize, however, is that I play epic speed, and since GS bulbing does not scale (12 turns instead of 8), they are actually less effective overall compared to standard speed. This might contribute to my preference of early bulbs, since it requires a higher bpt increase to make bulbing more effective.

 

[FeiLing]

Lets say you know you'll win the game by around turn 200. You'll get one GS at T50, another one at T100 and any more at T150 or later.

You plant the one at T50, so he has 150 turns to make beakers. However at that point an academy isn't giving as many beakers as it gives later and you also won't have up universities yet, so lets say it's 15 beakers per turn, growing to 20 beakers at T100 and maybe 30 beakers by T150:
50*15+50*20+50*30 = 3250 beakers, very roughly.

Now at the end of the game just before you usually burn your GSs you'll have like 1000 beakers per turn, so each GS gives ~8000 beakers.

So even the very first GS you get in the game very early isn't worth it beaker wise. He is however actually worth it, because early beakers give you more buildings/wonders/techs/units earlier so the advantage snowballs.

What's the optimum number of academies vs bulbs? Dunno. Planting the first GS always seems like a good idea. All others are decided by me on the fly, depending on when i get them or if I like need to bulb one immediately to get a critical tech/reach renaissance and also on game speed. On quick speed I have the feeling that not even one academy is worth it while on epic/marathon not a single bulb seems worth it.

 

[FstrthnU]

My general rule is that I plant the first one, then bulb if my research is ~225 or more. I tend to bulb earlier because I think the benefits of getting those earlier techs faster outweigh the extra beakers of bulbing later.

 

[Walter R]

If you multiple bulb through some techs that will no doubt leave a significant amount of units requiring upgrades - if you have accumulated a fair few puppets that's unlikely to be an issue (i.e. plenty of GPT), but if you haven't it could be. Bulbing several at a time sounds like it could work out pretty expensive?

 

[FstrthnU]

If you multiple bulb through some techs that will no doubt leave a significant amount of units requiring upgrades - if you have accumulated a fair few puppets that's unlikely to be an issue (i.e. plenty of GPT), but if you haven't it could be. Bulbing several at a time sounds like it could work out pretty expensive?

Well, you're eventually going to spend all that gold on upgrading them anyway, so if you're in a tight situation then upgrading a few units now and more as you receive more gold later seems like a smarter option. Unless you are waiting to get Military Tradition (?) or the Pentagon.