Oh, okay, well my faith in HOF is restored then. Even if you can restart it'd be difficult to replay the whole game perfectly.
Hey, I'm not down under t250 yet but am just playing specifically science civs for the first time and wanting to try for lower records. I'm willing to join this discussion and make an effort. I want to improve on my skills as well. As such I'm gonna ask some science questions that we can all discuss and lets share our wisdom:
Question 1: When do you sign RA's? I have lot of friends so could get 3 going immediately, or could use the gold for CS, or could use it to buy science buildings. Which is better? On Deity all the AI get decent bpt and I often have Porcelain tower by the time the first few are coming in for 7.5 AI turns. My solution is to sign around 2 early after universities and save the rest of my gold for other things. But I could get more. What do you do?
Question 2: Is it better to spend your time stealing the bottom of the Medieval/Renaissance tech tree if the techs are 2-4 turns or to be rigging CS at this point and waiting till they are all 1-2 turns for a quick rush and tech discount? I could do either but always thought a few saved turns in tech was better and purposefully left the bottom unresearched in a blind push for public schools, industrialization, then radio. Meanwhile I'm stealing them, this removes the risk of attack when I have outdated troops. Recently realized lack of CS may be my happiness problem though and on Deity I'm not automatically completing any of the turn quests other than occasionally science.
Question 3: Do you nerf growth to run university specialists immediately? If so how do you compensate for the lost growth? I just started playing Babylon for the first time and I want to use their UA to the fullest. So I do this, build gardens and national epic soon and am rolling in scientists. However, Between the slots in the guilds and universities this often would halt growth in my satellites to very slow and really slows down my capital. I have a food ship incoming and am running 2 university and 2 guild slots in my capital and growth has slowed to every 10 turns after I passed 20-pop even making sure I scattered my 2nd and 3rd guilds about to other cities. 2nd food ship? What if you lack 3 coastal cities?
Question 4: What priority do you give CS? Is patronage the best 2nd choice if rationalism is not available yet? That seems to be what ironfighterxxx always does, and if you are staying small I could see the benefit from a lux/resources standpoint. If you choose patronage how far do you get into it, on average, before you can open rationalism? What order do you choose? Gold gifts or flat +20 influence first? Do you try to ally or just be satisfied with the "friends" status. I've done all of them with great success before but on Deity there have usually been 3 crazy patronage guys who ally everything before I can even get my first ally. I kinda got discouraged from trying, but I could see easily using it to get a couple allies that stuck with me and just friends with the rest for culture, cap food, and +3 happiness from the mercs.
Question 5:Which National and world wonders? Obviously NC as soon as possible as long as it doesn't delay 2nd & third cities getting up. I usually don't try for any others for a long time other than oracle. Is it worth it to emphasize getting national epic and east india company? I usually don't have to hammers to spare as I'm building other things, however, I still tend to get distracted by a few wonders. Not ancient ones, but medieval and renaissance ones. I always try for oracle as it's easy to get and starts a point toward GS far earlier than is otherwise possible. Also a free tenet and +5 culture is awesome and can get it easily even on Deity. By the time I finish basic buildings, NC, settlers, oracle, and first guild I'm usually trying for something else like a religious wonder (Hagia Sofia to finish a religion or get extra faith) Inevitably I'm behind on buildings in my capital so I never get to try for the other national wonders between extra cargo ships, science buildings, etc. Until near industrial. Something seems wrong about that. Porcelain tower is usually my 3rd wonder attempt as I never have trouble getting it either and the extra scientist and +50% to RA's seems too valuable to miss on a science game. Then it's a straight shot to plastics via industrialization and public schools. I usually rush radio for the early extra spy and ideology pick--and culture benefits and build Eiffel in a bit if I have time. Every game I've done this unhappiness after ideologies is greatly reduced. I pick freedom usually and betwen the 1/2 food, 1/2 unhappiness, rationalism science buff, and statue of liberty soon after my food problems running specialists are gone and I run them all. However, with this path I get zero great engineers. You could get more wonders for less hammers if you had some but also would proportionally get less scientists since they annoying share the buffer.
Question 6: Religion try or no? I always try for a religion due to the massive benefits. I don't invest a ton of effort on Deity. Just explore aggressively for maybe a ruin boost or religious CS and build shrine as soon as possible. This has a low opportunity cost. Sometimes Nothing comes of it and I only get a late pantheon in which case I'm still benefitted by it. In best case I get a reasonable pantheon with faith, and end up with a decent religion, but I've found that this leads me to build a lot of religious stuff and change my priorities. IS this bad? Should I always ignore religion or is it actually helping me? I usually can't get a religious building (my favorite) on Deity like I could on immortal, but usually can get a growth one or religious community which helps things out. Do you experts do the same or ignore it and see what the AI brings you?
Question 7: How game-changing is an adjacent mountain? Would you reroll until you got one and are all low t200 scores made with the observatory boost? I've noted it yield a ton of extra early science on my latest babylonian game where I started right next to one and on the coast. It was great.
Question 8: How do you use/prioritize Great Scientists? Obviously, as many as possible. They seem the key to early victories and 1-2 more can mean 16 less turns end-game often. I've been planting them until around public schools (or until I started getting close to 1500 beakers per burn as this seemed better than adding up the contribution of the academy over time with some quick mental math for sub t250 victory). I usually started burning them right away as I thought the cost was fixed but just learned it is a running average. So another question is, do you guys save the ones you get late renaissance. I get around 3 over that time and I just realized waiting to burn until after public schools might really boost the value of them. But then I'm also slower toward public schools and labs so I'm not sure what is better. Do you save? If so, do you wait long or burn for the early tech value? There is value to getting the science techs quicker I'd think that might offset saving them. So the balance I came up with was save them until I see I can get to a valuable science tech like public schools or plastics if I burn them all right then. Same end-game. Save until my pile of GS's can finish out all the techs I need as beakers climb every turn late game and so does GS bulb value. This strat works best with order/freedom to rush the last part upon completion of the last tech.
Question 9: How many cities? Tall 4-standard-tradition? Tall core but with extra satellites (hybrid)? I usually am short enough on happiness that 4 good-growing cities is all I can afford. You could theoretically plop extras down near luxes and horses, make them not grow, and make them happiness neutral until you have ideologies, but then tech penalty affects you. If I'm going optimum science, I personally can't seem to manage much more than 4, but I know some ppl that can and the math says it's better if you can manage it and get libraries in them. What do you do for growth and unhappiness if you do this? Do you decide on extra cities if there are good mountains and jungle nearby for cities 5-8? This really makes extra cities worth it in my experience and keeps them science-positive. I saw someone that advocated tall core with satellites stunted at around size 3-5 varying based on how much happiness they were producing. Then got them up to universities and ran all the science specialists to make them net-positive. I could see Korea really being awesome like this.
Question 10: Game settings? I personally always go huge/Deity as the Deity AI explode, especially on pangaea, and get like 20 cities. This make trading with them awesome as they have loads of gold for loan (to rush science buildings), and their RA's can net me almost 8 turns as they keep up in science for most of the game. Anything that makes AI more powerful seems to result in less time spent for victory in my experience.
