Citywise beakers per turn benchmarks

[frob2900]

In trying to improve my own game I sometimes wonder what an optimal science empire would look like. Is the research being done in many, many cities at ca 20-50 bpt per city or by 10 or so cities as 300 bpt. A 500+ bpt city isnt feasible without settling GS, is it?

So basically.. How does the research structure develop in different peoples games? At what periods does research slow down? Is lightbulbing/trading an essential component of peoples games? (I know I rely on lightbulbing a lot, but sometimes its not really possible if one has low food and is non-philo)

For space race (my favorite Civ challenge is to get earlier and earlier space finishes) I suppose the most essential period to be able to advance well in tech is when the tech prices rise significantly at Steam Power/Assembly Line or Physics/Electricity.. After that is pretty much clear sailing when all the factory/laboratory infrastructure is built.. Do people generally spend the ancient ages (pre 500 AD) by putting expansion first?

 

[acidsatyr]

Take a look at this save, it's one of my recent games (i think Incas are about to become my vassal).
I never run a single cottage in my initial cities. Notice slider is at 0%. Now, even though I start with pure SE, as I conquer other civs, I get cottages from them. In this game I didn’t bother farming over those cottages, so i ended up with hybrid.. In some of my games, I never run a single cottage. Now, if you don’t think SE research can keep up with cottages based economy, use a world builder, and replace those cottages with farms, and assign maximum number of scientists. See what you get.
Early research is done mostly trough lightbulbing, and that’s why philosophical trait is very powerful early on. But it can still be done without that trait. I captured pyramids by the time I could get constitution, so it didn’t made difference.
In the early period of a game, it is production that’s most important. It is how many units you can get in smallest amount of time, not how advanced you are (to borrow quote from mut: "Im not a military genius I just make numbers). On high levels you are usually just behind AI in terms of research, so only way to beat him is to use numbers. But you cant make numbers if you don’t abuse slavery and nationalism, and you can really abuse those if you don’t use farms everywhere.
That’s how most of my games go. I generally find it detrimental to build cottages.
The slowest research period in SE is probably just before you get to representation. After you lightbulb your way to liberalism you still have to research representation (I sometimes save GM to lightbulb this). After you get Biology, SE skyrockets, unit production is trough the roof with nationalism and whipping...and it’s generally the easiest part of the game, IF you set up your economy properly.

 

[iamnleth]

Take a look at this save, it's one of my recent games (i think Incas are about to become my vassal).
I never run a single cottage in my initial cities. Notice slider is at 0%. Now, even though I start with pure SE, as I conquer other civs, I get cottages from them. In this game I didn’t bother farming over those cottages, so i ended up with hybrid.. In some of my games, I never run a single cottage. Now, if you don’t think SE research can keep up with cottages based economy, use a world builder, and replace those cottages with farms, and assign maximum number of scientists. See what you get.
Early research is done mostly trough lightbulbing, and that’s why philosophical trait is very powerful early on. But it can still be done without that trait. I captured pyramids by the time I could get constitution, so it didn’t made difference.
In the early period of a game, it is production that’s most important. It is how many units you can get in smallest amount of time, not how advanced you are (to borrow quote from mut: "Im not a military genius I just make numbers). On high levels you are usually just behind AI in terms of research, so only way to beat him is to use numbers. But you cant make numbers if you don’t abuse slavery and nationalism, and you can really abuse those if you don’t use farms everywhere.
That’s how most of my games go. I generally find it detrimental to build cottages.
The slowest research period in SE is probably just before you get to representation. After you lightbulb your way to liberalism you still have to research representation (I sometimes save GM to lightbulb this). After you get Biology, SE skyrockets, unit production is trough the roof with nationalism and whipping...and it’s generally the easiest part of the game, IF you set up your economy properly.

Wow. That is very amazing. I obviously have much to learn. How exactly are you keeping your research rates so good with no money towards research and 60% towards culture?

 

[frob2900]

Take a look at this save, it's one of my recent games (i think Incas are about to become my vassal).

I took a look. Impressive I usually get my backside handed to me on immortal (won once with incas tho). Nice how that city to the south of Thebes (I think it was Alexandria) with lots of tundra and sea is raking in 80 bpt..

This kind of nice research with specialists is usually what I get with an SE post-biology on Monarch (I usually play on Monarch, all relevant techs are usually in by ca 1400 -1500 AD) IF I have expanded properly in the beginning. That is, I would guess a SE benefits very much from size.

Of course a CE would do this too, but I'm beginning to think that all things being equal, a SE/farm approach is more powerful in the beginning, hence leading to more expansion (on all relevant skill levels, prince and above, I suppose), and therefore a big issue in the CE vs SE debate is not the tilewise commece of cottages, nor the pyramids/representation debate, but the fact that an SE often leads to more territory.

With the capital at 200-300 bpt, a one or two cities at 100 bpt and the others at 10-40 bpt per city (a very realistic amount per city in any economy) size seems to be everything for teching in the mid-endgame. Perhaps the effort to pump up five cities to 100-200 bpt is just plain more than conquering 20 cities...

I'm beginning to think that early teching at the expense of expansion is very bad. Even though I often can have biology/chemistry (bulbed) and steel(liberalism) at ca 1000 AD on prince (biology/chemistry at ca 1200 AD on Monarch, with liberalism spent on something less advanced than steel) my game tends to stagnate significantly at this point...

(As a final note, I have to admit that I am a somewhat sucky CE player.. Most my CE games tend to stagnate, since I am scared of the whip and probably overcottage)

 

[acidsatyr]

SE is not only more powerfull in the beggining, it is more powerfull in the rest of the game thats the point. If properly done, SE gives you as much research power as CE. Like i said, if you don't believe take that save and farm over cottages, or do you own setup in world builder.
So now that we see that research is at least equal, there is something that CE lacks, and that is food. Food = power! All those high food cities can be whipped and drafted without fear of slowly regrowing back. The slider is not an issue anymore, so all extra commerce you throw for culture which gives you lots and lots of happy faces. So happiness is not an issue in good SE. And you have example, you said it yourself, Alexandria is nothing special, yet brings in 80 beakers without academy, and still you can draft, whip, etc, and it will still grow back like seaweed If you had cottages there, would you still do it?

 

[acidsatyr]

Wow. That is very amazing. I obviously have much to learn. How exactly are you keeping your research rates so good with no money towards research and 60% towards culture?

Thing is, that position would be more powerfull if I actually farmed over cottages since I'm keeping slider at 0%. They are not doing anything for my research. They only bring lots of unecessary cash so i can keep culture slider high (which if you noted is unecessary at 60%)

 

[futurehermit]

acidsatyr rocks

it's very true: SE = larger empire because you're not worried about trying to keep your science slider up in order to get your research, so you can expand without worrying as much about maintenance crippling your economy. just chop/whip a library (or if you're running CastS, no worries!), build a couple farms (the AI loves to do this for you!), and you're all set

 

[mice]

Take a look at this save, it's one of my recent games

That's why it's such a bummer that the 'discussions on immortal' thread died. Would you consider at some stage posting on it just 6 or 7 saves, no screenies needed. Just some saves so we can see the progreesion from those early moves to the stage that this game is at ??

 

[acidsatyr]

To be honest I intended to post all saves when I finish it. I continued to play it but didn't do report as it was really time consuming. When I installed new patch my Civ just broke and I had to reinstall the whole thing, deleting in the process every save I had... I don’t have single save left from that or any other games. There might be a save or two on one of my usb drives, I'm not sure, but I’ll def put them up if i find them.
So that’s a bummer.
I hope you got from that game at least something, whatever that is..
If anyone’s interested how the game continued - after whipping out Gandhi I got steel, started mass producing cannons. Mao got grenadiers in the meantime so I didn’t attack yet, but waited all the way to infantry, when technological gap between us become even greater. Then simply drafted ridiculous amount of units and that was it. I was owning whole continent and then i stopped; i was missing a few percents for domination, so I just quit. I also switched to free religion to alleviate pressure from other continent. Cathy who was pissed was eventually pleased with me and that’s about it. Nothing interesting really. I think I demonstrated the most important part of the game. The rest was just building up on that.
I am considering doing another demonstration, but I just can’t find motivation to do so! It’s not like I get a free cookie or anything

 

[iamnleth]

Yes, I would also love to see how this game progressed. I'm looking forward to learning the inner workings of a specialist economy. If you are able to find any, could you please post them?

Or perhaps a guide starting and running a specialist economy?

 

[Phrederick]

To be honest I intended to post all saves when I finish it.

It would be interesting if you just played a game, and posted saves from every 10-15 turns, so people could follow the course of the game, or try to play from one save and compare their progress with yours. I can win consistently on Emperor, but I've never achieved success with a SE, so I'm interested in your playing style to give my game more options and variability.

 

[mice]

About the original post, I look for benchmarks too. I tried noting down how many total beakers I had throughout games, but gave up after a while. It seemed better to figure out if I had the edge on the AI and then how to use this.

For we mere mortals who play at Prince, some benchmarks could be useful though.
In the many leaders game in my sig I'm counting up how many beakers players have gotten through teching ,popping, extorting and trade all together.
There's quite a variation. These figures might be useful for you. check it out.
It's at Prince level.

 

[acidsatyr]

It would be interesting if you just played a game, and posted saves from every 10-15 turns, so people could follow the course of the game, or try to play from one save and compare their progress with yours. I can win consistently on Emperor, but I've never achieved success with a SE, so I'm interested in your playing style to give my game more options and variability.

Like i said error on my part for not posting saves as i went trought... In fact i simply forgot from all those pictures, and nobody asked for it initially so...

 

[cabert]

I have the feeling that the lightbulb power is much better at higher levels, because of trading opportunities.

In prince games, you're better off simply researching what you need.

 

[Dirk1302]

SE is not only more powerfull in the beggining, it is more powerfull in the rest of the game thats the point. If properly done, SE gives you as much research power as CE.

This is absolutely true, once Constitution and Biology are in you can do anything late game from whipping for production (or assign angor wat priests) to putting 10-15 scientists in big cities for research. Very flexible.

I think you have outlined the SE strategy for winning the game on high levels quite well in the immortal thread and in several posts here Now it's up to us to implement it correctly and that's not easy of course.

One question left at the moment, how do you generally manage happiness in the early game on Emperor and above? The cap = 4 in capital, 3 in other cities on emperor, maybe even more severe on immortal.Getting early happiness resources are not something you can always count on.

 

[Nightmare99]

SE is not only more powerfull in the beggining, it is more powerfull in the rest of the game thats the point. If properly done, SE gives you as much research power as CE. Like i said, if you don't believe take that save and farm over cottages, or do you own setup in world builder.
So now that we see that research is at least equal, there is something that CE lacks, and that is food. Food = power! All those high food cities can be whipped and drafted without fear of slowly regrowing back. The slider is not an issue anymore, so all extra commerce you throw for culture which gives you lots and lots of happy faces. So happiness is not an issue in good SE. And you have example, you said it yourself, Alexandria is nothing special, yet brings in 80 beakers without academy, and still you can draft, whip, etc, and it will still grow back like seaweed If you had cottages there, would you still do it?

Hello i have a question in the beginning i never now how many specialist i should assign i mean more means less grow and less means bad research what is a good balance?

 

[tibbles]

I'm in the same boat as Nightmare99 with my SE game right now and would also like to know this.

Most of my games involve this situation:
It's ~200BC I've built the Pyramids, 3 cities, and just finished attacking an AI civ and capturing 2-3 cities. All my cities have a happiness cap of ~8 and a pop of ~4 from whipping.
I've got Alphabet, no code of Laws yet, so running at near 100% research is running at a massive deficit, though I do have a few hundred gold from capturing cities. Generally I've got enough cash saved to run at the deficit through 1-2 more techs, but then I have 0 gold left over for later upgrades.
Scientists would keep my research high without a deficit and get me more gpp, but If I assign Scientists so early, the cities won't regrow near as fast up to my happiness limit.
Either way I need decent research to keep pace with the AI and have techs for trade, right?

So when and how many Scientists do you assign? Should I grow then assign or assign a few as I go and grow slower?
Also, do you shoot for Literature for the Great Library or ignore it and get say Code of Laws to reduce maintenance?

 

[acidsatyr]

I'm in the same boat as Nightmare99 with my SE game right now and would also like to know this.

Most of my games involve this situation:
It's ~200BC I've built the Pyramids, 3 cities, and just finished attacking an AI civ and capturing 2-3 cities. All my cities have a happiness cap of ~8 and a pop of ~4 from whipping.
I've got Alphabet, no code of Laws yet, so running at near 100% research is running at a massive deficit, though I do have a few hundred gold from capturing cities. Generally I've got enough cash saved to run at the deficit through 1-2 more techs, but then I have 0 gold left over for later upgrades.
Scientists would keep my research high without a deficit and get me more gpp, but If I assign Scientists so early, the cities won't regrow near as fast up to my happiness limit.
Either way I need decent research to keep pace with the AI and have techs for trade, right?

So when and how many Scientists do you assign? Should I grow then assign or assign a few as I go and grow slower?
Also, do you shoot for Literature for the Great Library or ignore it and get say Code of Laws to reduce maintenance?

Having pyramids simply screams for playing SE, assigning specialists. The problem I assume is that you are building cottages as well. Your cities cannot grow back easily if you use cottages, you need to farm cities. Those cities will grow back in few turns literary. After that assign maximum number of specialist. But this is not a formula, sometimes you want to assign some specialists as you grow.
The point of slider is that its not important for SE, the fact that you cant run at 100% doesn’t mean anything, since you dont have cottages to begin with. Rather you use that extra commerce for culture so you can raise happiness cap. Having representation that early in the and running specialists beats any other combination. If you have representation so early, don’t waste your time on cottages.

 

[acidsatyr]

I have the feeling that the lightbulb power is much better at higher levels, because of trading opportunities.

In prince games, you're better off simply researching what you need.

This is true, the higher the level the more effective is SE. On highest levels your research and production is lagging, and you need them NOW, not in a few turns when you might already be dead

 

[tibbles]

Hmm, I don't want to derail this thread with too many details specific to just my own case. But I guess I should be a bit more clear on my example and what I'm looking for:

I've got everything farmed with the possible exception of a couple cottages in the capital, particularly if I can't irrigate, and my intent is to run a SE.

My worry was if I let the cities max before assigning scientists and run a very low slider, I am generating no research until those cities regrow. So usually I try to power my research by the slider at a deficit until my cities max and I can assign scientists. It keeps me up with the AI in early research, but hurts me later when my GSs arrive later and I have no cash to upgrade units.

So to tie this back to the original topic:
Is this period of low research while cities regrow expected of an early SE?
or
If I'm going to slow my growth by assigning scientists to nonmax pop cities, what ballpark beaker per turn or turns per tech should I shoot for?

As to the save game progress, I would love to see that too. There are plenty of good guides on this site for opening build orders in the initial city. And once you have that tech/power lead it should be clear where to go from there. But for us newer players it would be great to get a concrete example of how to progress from that opening city to that massive lead with a SE.