A common situation for me on deity is to have a massive economy but no scientific buildings. I can reasonable buy techs or steal them and trade my way up the tree, but sometimes the prices charged are exorbitant. Most commonly these scenarios are where only 2 other civs are researching and trading with each other and I can only buy from them. I was wondering if it's better to just self research instead in those cases. I had a recent game where I had 10k gold saved and ready to trade, but I tried building libraries and universities and self researching. I could get a tech in 8-9 with a reasonable deficit but what I discovered was the ai would research at the same speed or faster. When researching I was deficit spending around -100 gold, while with Max interest I could accrue 500-600 a turn. I don't want to pay the ai 4-5k gold per tech and fuel their research, but self researching just bleeds money with the same result, at least for me. Stealing techs is risky because of war and losing luxuries, although steals are half the cost of buying techs. I was wondering what other players did in this situation.
Deity Self Research Questions
- Thread starter Kyokyo
- Start date
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/what-will-the-ai-research-next.45559/
Maybe this will help? Knowing what the AI will research can help you to choose a tech that you will have a monopoly on.
Maybe this will help? Knowing what the AI will research can help you to choose a tech that you will have a monopoly on.
Last edited:
Assuming you have universities and the commerce bonus of republic, you should be able to get more than 1000 beakers per turn. Once your economy is actually strong, self research seems to be the obvious choice.
Buying techs works well while prices are low compared to the price of self research.
Once only 3 strong civs in total(this includes your own civ) are left, buying techs may no longer be in your best interest. Of course you need some time to prepare your economy for that case. Libraries are still reasonable cheap, universities however are expensive. So plan carefully ahead.
Not having done closer research on the issue i would assume that self research should be the norm. Buying a tech when the last few beakers a still to be researched can be an option to circumvent the rule "4 turns per tech" reasonably cheap.
I think self research is the way to go to when the price for techs is extremely expensive, I just have problems with the timing for building universities. Because of how the game panned out, I was 5-6 techs behind in the middle ages and 3 behind when the first civs entered industrial. Naturally I went full economy to buy techs, building market into banks into cathedrals. By the time the industrial age rolled around most of my cities were finishing cathedrals and factories were available to build as well as universities. Also the start was flood plains/plains so the shield count was low too. Just seems like I never have the time to build universities.
Did you mean to write stock exchanges rather than cathedrals? If you are building cathedrals, then my advice is to build universities instead. Cathedrals aren't that helpful (unless your luxury situation is truly horrible).
Changing from buying to self-researching (or the other way around) is painful if you've sunk a lot of shields into buildings. If you have to do it, remember to sell buildings you don't need anymore, both to get back some cash and to keep from having to pay maintenance on them.
Changing from buying to self-researching (or the other way around) is painful if you've sunk a lot of shields into buildings. If you have to do it, remember to sell buildings you don't need anymore, both to get back some cash and to keep from having to pay maintenance on them.
No I actually built cathedrals, because my core cities were all size 11/12 and I had 4 luxes and entertainment at 0. So you think it's better to build universities and just use entertainment instead? The weird issue is that usually you catch up in tech in the mid industrial ages on the ai and then I want to start researching rather than buying. So from the period from when I build universities to when I catch up I'm losing the maintenance cost. I feel like selling is bad too because you always want the option to start researching. If you have both universities and stock exchanges, you can switch between the two.
Donnot build any banks, temples, cathedrals or even colloseums. Chances are that you should switch to regular research somewhen in the middle of the middle age (at the latest).
Techs become quite expensive at the start of the industrial age. But it is not the absolute costs that matter. Unless buying techs gives you a significant discount (or another significant advantage that needs to be calculcated in), you should research yourself.
You may take a look at F1 at full research. Multiply beakers per turn times the amount of turns till the tech finishes in order to estimate the costs of research. Sooner or later you need to be ready to research. Better be ready sooner than later.
Not researching yourself is supposed to be an exception. Of course you can still trade with techs, but now you can pay with techs instead of gold.
Or import luxuries.
Similar threads
