How research agreements in G&K work?

[Matthew.]

I had an OCC 267 finish with no less than 27! RA's. Which only proves how little use they have these days.

I guess it is a matter of perspective. OCC at 267 should take effort. 27 RA's, how much was that total? ~12,000 gold? Not a bad price to win the game.

Then again I am biased. I never liked the game when it used to be a handful of RA's would slingshot you to the end of the tech tree.

 

[Teedman]

I am glad that I am not the only one that thinks early RAs are a bit of a waste (and by early, I mean a signing them a few turns after getting Edu). It's my experience, too, that late game RAs (maybe Industrial era on??) are much more beneficial. But, perhaps more experienced players have a different opinion. For my next game, though, I am planning to do RA’s far later in the game and use that gold to buy cultural buildings and ally CS.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I guess it is a matter of perspective. OCC at 267 should take effort. 27 RA's, how much was that total? ~12,000 gold? Not a bad price to win the game.

I guess around 15K. Have to bankroll AI as well. But the 'difficulty' of achieving an early win is not my point. I don't complain about that (if you want to hear complains, you should visit GD forum where people rant about AI post patch being too good and demand to re-dumb it back since they're getting beaten on warlord ). My point was they're nearly useless, that's why I needed so many of them. Some provided as little as 2 turns of research. And that's immortal. I can only imagine how little they give on lower levels. Maybe that's not a bad thing. I don't really care. We'll adapt and find another way to squeeze out those beakers. Scolasticism is a nice alternative right now. And late game RA's when AI's bpt is high and you have both boosters are still very nice.

 

[hyden]

I almost always play as Nebby (need to experiment with some of the others one of these days). I beeline to Writing and drop an acadamy as quickly as possible. At that stage of the game, it effectively doubles your BPT. I have never tried multiple acadamies; I tend to bulb them after the first one.

Sadly, I have never had the discipline to stay on point with my win condition and do vary a bit, so while I do get science victories on Emperor, they generally arent always pretty.

Point being is that an early academy can be quite a push.

 

[The Pilgrim]

There is no argument over Babylonian early academy. Cases in question are those when you get GS after turn 120 or so.

 

[Teedman]

I typically play Babylon for tech victory. What I do is save 2-3 GS for the end. With Hubble that gives me another 2. Best case is that I will have 5 GS by the time I need them after rocketry. With a few RA's (3-4), that is ususally enough to get me through most if not all the tech needed for the spaceship parts. As for the other GS, I plant them for academies.