I'm learning about running at 0% science

[CivMcNut]

Back when I used to come on the forums a few years back, all the advice I seemed to get was don't let your science slider run below 60%.

Since I have come back on here recently I have noticed that people are saying that's not a good rule. Am I to believe that you can run your science all the way down to 0% if you conquer so many cities? I am doing this in a current game and I find myself having to build research in most of my cities just to keep the science progressing along. I am trying to grow most of my cities because I just got Monarchy and my cities can handle much larger populations, so running science specialists is not the thing now, but I feel uncumfortable having dozens or even hundreds of turns between techs. I would fall hopelessly behind doing that.

Even at 0% science I was still loosing a little bit of gold every turn. Is that overdoing it? I went on a massive horse archer rush and completely conquered three civs on a standard size, standard number of players Pangea map. I was hoping for an early domination win, but I am nowhere close to that. I feel like if I raze a bunch of cities the AI will jump right in there and fill that open land up with their cities on Monarch difficulty, and I will just have to conquer it again.

I am currently researching Code of Laws, I am praying that getting courthouses down at all my cities will end this scarry phase of the game. Any advice about this running your slider down would be appreciated, I was a real disciple of the 60% rule before.

 

[Tall German Joe]

well, breaking the 60% rule isn't so much about "its ok to overexpand and break your economy," but rather that "there are other ways to get techs besides running your science slider at 60% in the early game."

a few points:

• its often better to run your slider at binary science (meaning either at 0% or 100%) early for a number of reasons. (long story short: you get discounts on techs the AI already knows, you can build up gold before your first libraries comes online, and running for 4 turns at 0% and 6 turns at 100% othewise produces the same amount of beakers)
• running scientists from libraries, especially with representation from the pyramids, can produce a LOT of science at 0% slider.
• the currency tech and/or the great lighthouse can produce TONS of commerce via trade routes, allowing you to produce more science overall even if your effective slower level is lower
• with tech trades, smart tech targets, and the oracle, you can usually boost your way to important classical techs like currency, code of laws, alphabet, and monarchy even in a beaker-poor and overexpanded situation, at which point you should be able to "fix" your economy.

 

[Raphs_Sai]

I'm not a believer in any rule. You have to be adaptive to the game environment. Though, it seems you are running 0% science because you have to, not because you want to (since you indicated you are still running deficit even at 0% science). It just seems you overexpanded without developing your cities properly. You also probably are in desperate need of courthouses.

I think don't an economy that relies on building Research is feasible. Mainly cuz hammers are harder to obtain than commerce. You also don't get any multipliers for hammers other than the Forge (and Factory, which comes much later). On top of that, Research only converts 50% of your hammers to beakers.

 

[elmurcis]

Hmmm.. do you have currency already? And how many libraries you have?
Because I "feel" its better to build wealth and try to save money for 100% research turn(s).. gold +% comes much later than science +% (from libraries.. possible from early academy too).
Another chance is to run 2 scientists everywhere you have libraries done (you will get 3.75 beakers/scientist..).

 

[VSarius]

There's no such thing as overexpanding, unless you are losing gold at 0%, than you have overexpanded. That's a serious flaw in understanding how Civ 4 works.

If you have 15 cities, while the AIs have 5, you will catch up, it's impossible not to. As long as your cities are growing unto commerce tiles, primarily cottages you will recover and zoom ahead of them very fast. The main thing to keep in mind is having access to at least Libraries before crashing, Scientists will help you trudge along to Currency, once you have Currency, access to building wealth makes the ride to Code of Laws easy, throw in Monarchy and you are in a golden position.

 

[plastiqe]

I use binary research, so it's either on at 100% or off at 0%. There are a couple advantages such as taking advantage of multiplier buildings, belining, having spare gold etc. To the OP, wealth is often better to build then research, and wonders for failgold better even than wealth. Building research/wealth converts all hammers (I think it's only 50% in vanilla) but the science/gold generated does not go through your buildings like libraries/markets.

The reason it is better to build gold with wealth/failgold is that because you often have better science multipliers (libraries, academy etc) than you have gold multipliers, so you are better off sending your commerce through those buildings with the slider. So to maximize the time you can keep your slider high, you build the thing that you're not good at. ie wealth.

And failgold from building a wonder but not finishing it is often better than wealth because you can get resource bonuses. So a 10 hammer city produces 10 gold with wealth, but if it's working on Pyramids with stone it produces 20 hammers which turns into 20 gold when someone else builds pyramids. Do this with your own national wonders when they aren't a priority (like Hermitage) and then spend the gold you make on 100% research.

 

[CivMcNut]

Hmmm.. do you have currency already? And how many libraries you have?
Because I "feel" its better to build wealth and try to save money for 100% research turn(s).. gold +% comes much later than science +% (from libraries.. possible from early academy too).
Another chance is to run 2 scientists everywhere you have libraries done (you will get 3.75 beakers/scientist..).

I tried switching over to build wealth in most of my cities (since I did have currency) and running up my science slider, but I was still getting about the same amount of gold per turn and research per turn doing it either way. I think those library multipliers must apply to build research too cause I had libraries in most of my cities.

 

[CivMcNut]

I'm not a believer in any rule. You have to be adaptive to the game environment. Though, it seems you are running 0% science because you have to, not because you want to (since you indicated you are still running deficit even at 0% science). It just seems you overexpanded without developing your cities properly. You also probably are in desperate need of courthouses.

I think don't an economy that relies on building Research is feasible. Mainly cuz hammers are harder to obtain than commerce. You also don't get any multipliers for hammers other than the Forge (and Factory, which comes much later). On top of that, Research only converts 50% of your hammers to beakers.

I played some last night and finally got code of laws with just 6 turns having most of my cities building wealth and running at 50% science. I immediately went up with courthouses in almost all my cities, and that seemed to fix my economy up pretty good. I have the Forbidden Palace going up in my most distant captured capital city, once that is up I should be actually teching faster than 2 of my remaining 3 opponents.

I thought the 50% of hammers conversion was a vanilla thing, I sort of remember seeing somewhere in my BTS game it says 100% conversion of hammers to gold or beakers.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think those library multipliers must apply to build research too cause I had libraries in most of my cities.

They don't (at least not in BTS, early in Vanilla they did). However, unless you're working a significant # of tiles the difference in multipliers won't be very noticeable.

 

[CivMcNut]

There's no such thing as overexpanding, unless you are losing gold at 0%, than you have overexpanded. That's a serious flaw in understanding how Civ 4 works.

If you have 15 cities, while the AIs have 5, you will catch up, it's impossible not to. As long as your cities are growing unto commerce tiles, primarily cottages you will recover and zoom ahead of them very fast. The main thing to keep in mind is having access to at least Libraries before crashing, Scientists will help you trudge along to Currency, once you have Currency, access to building wealth makes the ride to Code of Laws easy, throw in Monarchy and you are in a golden position.

I WAS loosing gold at 0%, that's what made me post about this. I figured it has happened to some other serious warmongers or REXers out there. You're right about having more cities, it seems like land is power. At first these little size 1 and 2 cities really strain your economy, but once you have them cottaged and at about size 8 or 9, the commerce starts pouring in and you can really start outshining AIs on the higher difficulty levels.

I guess you have to be careful not to start fighting or expanding too much before you get writing, cause you're right, if you crash your economy before you have access to scientists (and build wealth and research), you really could get stuck in the dark ages and not be able to get out.

 

[CivMcNut]

They don't (at least not in BTS, early in Vanilla they did). However, unless you're working a significant # of tiles the difference in multipliers won't be very noticeable.

Yeah, like I say on my game it was really about the same either way you did it, but I will try and remember to run build wealth if I have currency for future games.

 

[Raphs_Sai]

Well you can fund a war by conquering more cities. Cuz for every city you conquer, you pillage gold from the victory. But just remember the new cities need to be properly developed cuz you'll eventually run out of money. Getting a Courthouse up as soon as possible can help alleviate that, but that isn't necessarily the silver bullet solution.

 

[CivMcNut]

I also hear the two posts about binary research. I should try that in some of my future games where I don't get TOO overexpanded. I was loosing gold at 0% science there for a while, so building up my gold for a big science push was not an option.

 

[CivMcNut]

Well you can fund a war by conquering more cities. Cuz for every city you conquer, you pillage gold from the victory. But just remember the new cities need to be properly developed cuz you'll eventually run out of money. Getting a Courthouse up as soon as possible can help alleviate that, but that isn't necessarily the silver bullet solution.

Yeah I hear that, if you capture a lot of resource poor cities surrounded by uncleared jungle (and don't / can't clear it out) , desert, or tundra and hold on to those, even a courthouse won't solve your problems.

That pillage money is addicting, but once your army runs out of nearby cities to conquer, the facet cuts off.

 

[Nexlev]

I'm not a believer in any rule.

I'll +1 this with caveats

Most of the rules are useful for beginners at the lower difficulty levels, because they don't understand the game enough to know when "this" applies and when "that" applies. The best rule that covers all bases is "play the map" but you have to learn through practice what that means.

I'm not the best person to answer this question (I only play at Monarch) but I'll take a shot. I also don't know what you're ability level is so some of this advice might be obvious

Any advice about this running your slider down would be appreciated, I was a real disciple of the 60% rule before.

There's many different ways to generate research and commerce. some different ways / tips...

- the slider converts gold into research. If you are running scientist specialists (or any specialist when you're in caste system) their research is not affected by the slider. So you can generate quite a bit of research at 0% if say you have the pyramids and a strong specialist city (lots o food).

- if you need a temporary boost to commerce just to stay out of the red, you can build commerce in some cities or run merchant specialists or trade techs/resources for gold or raze someone's city... so many ways to generate some cash. These are all temporary measures that buy you the time needed to build courthouses/whatnot or improve the land by building more cottages or goldmines or whatever. Technically, running merchants could be a permanent measure but usually it's not one you aim for all game, so it becomes temporary out of desire.

- the rest of these tips are different ways to increase your gross commerce. The science slider takes your total gold and converts it to research, so to increase research you can bump up the slider or bump up the total commerce.

- The more commerce cities you have, the more total commerce, in general. So at 10% for example, a large empire with more commerce cities will generate much more research than a small empire at 10%.

- besides having lots of cities (big empire) having big population (big cities) also increases your gross commerce. You accomplish this by raising your happy cap. Early in the game Hereditary Rule is a good way to do this that doesn't require resources. But it depends on the map, if you have enough gold/gems/mines you might have a high happycap even with only mining. Or you might need to prioritize (or trade for) calendar. Or you might benefit from hunting if you have furs/ivory. Or you can trade to increase your resources

- you can also increase gross commerce by maximizing trade routes. That makes Currency a very important tech. It also makes the Great Lighthouse a very important wonder that makes every coastal city viable.

just the tip of the iceberg. Like I said I'm still learning myself

 

[Raphs_Sai]

I agree that the biggest thing holding you back is the happy limit. Monarchy is one solution for that. You can also build a Forge (if you have gems, gold, silver), a Market (if you have fur, ivory), discover Calendar (for plantations), and so on.

And trade routes can quietly make a big impact on your empire. Connect your cities! I turned a crappy tundra/snow start into a competitive game by realizing I had lots of coastal resources to work with so I beelined to build the the GLH. Mind you, a lot of my cities could only put out 5 hammers/turn despite being size 10, but I was raking in the commerce.

 

[Lennier]

Yeah I hear that, if you capture a lot of resource poor cities surrounded by uncleared jungle (and don't / can't clear it out) , desert, or tundra and hold on to those, even a courthouse won't solve your problems.

That pillage money is addicting, but once your army runs out of nearby cities to conquer, the facet cuts off.

You can raze the junk cities; you still get pillage gold, but don't have to pay maintenance.

 

[Maga_R]

Back when I used to come on the forums a few years back, all the advice I seemed to get was don't let your science slider run below 60%.

You maybe also interested in checking this thread about benefits of staying at 0% (yes, not a typo ) science during early game
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=271687