My game from yesterday: T-213. Could have been like T-206 if I didnt screw up rationalism finisher, had to wait about 7 turns. And also had oxford unused. Got a bit unlucky to only have 1 maritime CS in the game and far far away, so population growth wasnt that good. But otherwise pretty good game.
Got to:
NC at T-52
Petra at T-74
Education at T-93
Astronomy + 2 SPs at T-109
Scientific theory at T-146
Plastics at T-186
Good job! I was keeping up with you pretty well in my Salt game, through Astronomy. I'm wondering if I should have used Oxford to open the Renaissance, like in Sadato's OCC science guide. That would've given me Secularism quicker but it would also delay Aesthetics a lot, and I don't know whether that's a good trade-off. Faster observatory is all good though.
Btw why does everyone talk about needing aluminium? There is no need for it here imo. Only coal, but with every CS allied + GG + all hexes around your city its very rare not to have it.
I never got coal, even though I could see mined coal on my CS allies. My understanding is that they unlock techs once two civs have researched them, and the AIs in my game barely made it to the Renaissance. I think they might get military units faster if their ally is a tech leader, but not resources. No factory probably cost me about 10 turns.
And btw 2, is planting GSs really worth it? I always thought you get more science if you bulb them late in the game instead.
First, I suspect that it's better to use scientists as soon as possible. Each bulb will save about 6-8 turns. If you save them until the end, they simply cut the game short by a few turns each. If you use them right away, the effects are more complicated: You get quicker access to key science and growth techs, but you also research later techs with lower population (i.e., fewer beakers). I'm really not sure which effect is biggest, but I suspect that they roughly balance, and using the scientist now will spare you the unit maintenance and unlock policy eras sooner.
A similar argument applies to Oxford and the Rationalism finisher, with the additional complication that the benefit varies according to which freebies you take. Is it better to save 14 turns with Astronomy, 9 with Plastics, or 14 with Globalization? Probably the first or the last, but I'm not sure which.
Now for academies versus bulbs: An academy only makes sense if you can save significantly more than 7 turns with it. Otherwise, you're better off using the bulb now and getting one more terrain improvement. The hard part is figuring how many turns it'll save you, and whether that's enough to be "significant." When I planted my Long Count 62 scientist, it gave me 12 out of 42 beakers, and twenty turns later it was 12 out of 48. The academy saved me about 7 turns just in those first twenty, and of course it contributed 12-30 bpt for the rest of the game. That's much better than a bulb!
When I built my observatory in turn 109, I had 159 bpt and a 2.33x science modifier. Adding another academy at that point would bring me up to 178 bpt. In the short term, it would only recoup about 2 turns, and in the long term much less than 10% time saved. An academy at that point might have saved me 7 turns throughout the whole game, almost certainly less valuable than a bulb and another worked tile.
Earlier, glory7 recommended no academies after Scientific Theory, but I'd say the break-even point comes even sooner than that, probably Astronomy. Any scientists you can get before the Renaissance are probably worth settling, but of course it's tough to get them that early, outside of the Mayan and Babylonian UAs.
