Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

And foreigner-assimilation tends not to happen much in my games -- at least, not in my favour! -- because I don't usually build much (early) Culture:

Assimilation does not depend on culture. It solely depends on your government. Wait 35 turns and on average 50% of the foreigners are foreigners no more. For feudalism it is 23 turns, for democracy and communism just 17 turns.
 
Its a very rare chance that anyone actually sees an AI city at the time it has an SGL and that too when playing in debug mode. I don't use the editor much so I don't know if it's possible to give a civ an SGL in the beginning itself. If it is then maybe someone familiar with the editor could try this. Although, what I feel is that the age of science must be broken for both the human player and the AI.
You can make any civ start with a leader or leaders.
 
how does the AI use it?
If they use it for a Science Golden Age, then I might as well uncheck that option in the editor to make things fair.
I honestly don't know. My C3C-playing days tapered off months (if not a couple of years) ago, so I'm a little rusty here. And just yesterday, I tried to install C3C on my new (ish) computer, only to discover that C3C won't install! :cry:
 
This question is related to a regent level game on a huge map with 11 opponents.
I am about to get a SS victory (1610AD probably) but there's one thing that troubles me. I had reached the MA in 1415AD and had several prebuilds ready to be switched to SS parts when suddenly the research turns increased from 4 in the IA to 9 (for miniaturization ) in the Modern age. I know that the tech costs are significantly higher in the MA but still I fail to understand how some players can actually maintain the 4 turns tech pace for the whole game after sometime around getting education. I know that those are players of a completely different level but still, expansion and micromanagement can help only to an extent. This far in the tech tree it is basically the core towns that are getting research while most border cities produce only 1 bpt. Also using science farms doesn't seem to help me much as it would require literally hundreds of scientists to reduce a turn for a research. So what I need is that someone point out the mistake that I've made which I'm obviously unaware of. Btw I have about 103 cities right now and getting more isn't adding to my per turn income. My core cities have a production ranging from 30-50 spt. Thanks.
 
They use Science Labs and they also use a lot of specialists, i.e. scientists.
 
They use Science Labs and they also use a lot of specialists, i.e. scientists.

Science Labs? Do you mean research labs? Well I also built a few of them in my best core cities and then waited for getting the Internet to have them everywhere. As for the specialists, I'll try to use more of them the next time. Thanks.
 
Yes, research labs. They build science farms: irrigate every tile within the urban radius and then put as many citizens as possible just into science production. With a decent-sized worker population you can reconvert those into war-production cities within two or three turns, so never do it in a border city.
 
Also using science farms doesn't seem to help me much as it would require literally hundreds of scientists to reduce a turn for a research. [...]Btw I have about 103 cities right now and getting more isn't adding to my per turn income.

I pointed out your 2 errors. Yes, you need hundreds if not thousands of scientists and you need to build up even corrupt cities. With courthouse and policestation more than 30% of commerce will not be corrupt.

Early to late medieval age doubles(30 to 60) techcosts. Late medieval age to early industrial age doubles(60 to 120) techcosts. Early industrial age to early modern ages doubles(120 to 240) techcosts. Early modern age to future techs almosts doubles(240 to 400) techcosts. Miniaturization with a base cost of 320 is the second most expensive regular tech in the game.

On standard mapsize base costs are multiplied by 240/10 = 24 on regent and 240/4 = 60 on Sid. So to research future techs in 4 turns one needs 2400 beakers per turn on regent and 6000 on Sid.

For miniaturization in 4 turns you only need 1920 beakers per turn. At 100% research about 20 metropolises should suffice to exceed that amount. So my earlier assessment was flawed. Your problem is already in the core cities, not just in the periphery. Give your cities hospitals and commerce harbours and build the cities where you can maximize using sea titles with the extra commerce from commerce harbours. Also you should have all 3 scientific buildings in each city and courthouses and policestations, too. Than 1920 beakers per turn at 100% reserach should be doable at medium ease. Still you would need to keep luxury rate at zero, so you need marketplaces and luxuries and if they donnot suffice also some cathedrals or so. After you have built factories and powerplants and have researched economics you can build wealth to keep you financially afloat without having to reduce research below 100%.

At regent level you can research future techs in 4 turns with less than 40 cities in total. They should be metropolises, though.
 
I don't use the editor much so I don't know if it's possible to give a civ an SGL in the beginning itself. If it is then maybe someone familiar with the editor could try this. Although, what I feel is that the age of science must be broken for both the human player and the AI.


You'll have to create a scenario and then under Scenario Properties/Players you can select Leader as a starting unit and the quantity.

Also, Antal has made a patch here that fixes the Science Age.
 
Thanks. Will have a look.
 
I'm playing on a huge map so the tech costs are higher but I get what I was missing - HOSPITALS. Actually I built my core cities very close to each other so there's a lot of overlapping. This and the fact that I'll have to spend time collecting workers to clean pollution (even if it takes just one turn, I find bringing all those workers to that particular tile a real pain ) . I actually missed the fact that more worked tiles will obviously get me more commerce (Duh!). Infact I didn't even research sanitation in the hopes that an AI will do it, which they didn't. Also what is the exact reduction in corruption that courthouses and police stations bring? Anyways Thank you justanick and Takhisis for the help.
 
Hospitals help, if you have left enough space in your core area (which you should not have, because that would mean you left lots of prime uncorrupted land lying underused for half the game: ancient age and middle age...). Usually I make a settlement plan that allows all first-ring and most of the second-ring cities to use exactly 12 tiles at 24 food for maximum production (trying to arrange "magic numbers" in shields for all of them).
That way I can live without Hospitals and don't need to waste 4 turns on researching Sanitation. (The AI can usually not be relied on to provide it on time...)

So the key is infact to get your science farms up and running during the industrial ages, and utilizing every single one of your core tiles with size-12 cities. Here is an example of what this could look like, though the map only shows the food value for each tile - I was too lazy to optimze the shields here... But that can usually be done on the fly. If there are some mined hills and mined plains between two cities, you can switch around the tiles a bit so that both cities get exactly 10spt or 15spt or whatever, depending on what they are building. (When building Knights, even 14spt can be a "magic number"...)
 
Also what is the exact reduction in corruption that courthouses and police stations bring?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=76619

There you can see the math in detail. Both buildings have the same effect, but police stations are twice as expensive. If corruption is extremely low neither building will reduce corruption significantly because there simply is too little that can be reduced. If corruption is very low, than only courthouses will make sense. At medium corruption both buildings make sense, but the first one(usually courthouse) will reduce corruption by a greater degree. If corruption is high, say betwen 50 and 80 percent, than the absolute reduction in corruption is very high and can be 20 to 30 percentage points. In some rare cases this might even mean that the second building(usually police station) will create bigger reduction in corruption than the first one. If corruption is extremly high the maximum corruption is relevant. Both buildings will reduce it by 10 percentage point. So maximum corruption is lowered from 90 percent to 80 percent to 70 percent. As maximum corruption cannot be exceeded corruption will often be slightly below it due to required rounding.

In communism things are a bit different. The first building will reduce corruption by more than 12.5 percentage points. So if corruption is lowered from 40 percent to 27 percent the real output of the city is increases by slightly more than 20 percent. The second building will have a lower reduction in corruption of more than 6.25 percentage points and will thus increase the real output of the city by about 9 percent.

Hospitals help, if you have left enough space in your core area (which you should not have, because that would mean you left lots of prime uncorrupted land lying underused for half the game: ancient age and middle age...).

I somewhat disagree. I understand your logic and there are cases where this is the better way. But if you use some temporary cities you will reach 4 turns per tech as early as with strictly 12 tiles per city. Also the total economic net output prior to the potential availability of hospitals will only be slightly inferior if at all. But than Hospitals change the balance for good. Less cities per used tile mean lower corruption and lower maintence costs as each city can have each building only once. If you aim at spacerace at higher diffulty settings this approach will likely be superior. Also it increases the margin for error at the lower difficulty settings. So depending on circumstances it might be the better choice for Atishay Jain aswell, but I am not quite sure about that. It is probably best to have tried both approaches to get a feel of how it works.
 
Initially I had planned to put up as many cities as I could as early as possible and also to utilize all the land that was closest to my capital. Due to this I don't have any free tiles in my best cities which is why I skipped sanitation and went on to build courthouses in almost all cities and police stations in a few which had gems or gold or those that produced a lot of Commerce if not for corruption. I also built a few science farms (113 workers were quite enough to irrigate all of my border cities). I launched the SS in 1605AD which could have been better had I used the above tricks and also the one where at the beginning of a new Era you buy all the 1st level techs to get a 2nd level one as free Tech. Thanks everybody.
 
This question is related to a regent level game on a huge map with 11 opponents. . . . I know that the tech costs are significantly higher in the MA but still I fail to understand how some players can actually maintain the 4 turns tech pace for the whole game after sometime around getting education. I know that those are players of a completely different level but still, expansion and micromanagement can help only to an extent. This far in the tech tree it is basically the core towns that are getting research while most border cities produce only 1 bpt. Also using science farms doesn't seem to help me much as it would require literally hundreds of scientists to reduce a turn for a research. So what I need is that someone point out the mistake that I've made which I'm obviously unaware of. Btw I have about 103 cities right now and getting more isn't adding to my per turn income. My core cities have a production ranging from 30-50 spt. Thanks.
They use Science Labs and they also use a lot of specialists, i.e. scientists.
Science Labs? Do you mean research labs? Well I also built a few of them in my best core cities and then waited for getting the Internet to have them everywhere. As for the specialists, I'll try to use more of them the next time. Thanks.
I don't know if the terminology has changed but a few years back, we referred to them as "science farms." Research Labs are structures that you build within a city. A "science farm" is something else entirely.

There are three relevant items that are unaffected by corruption: (1) food; (2) specialist output; and (3) building upkeep. A scientist in your capital produces 3 beakers that go straight into research, uncorrupted. A scientist in your 153rd city also produces 3 beakers that go straight into research, uncorrupted. If you build a library in your capital, any commerce that is devoted to research is sent through the library for multiplication. Specialist/scientist beakers are not. In the capital, the library makes sense, as you're essentially paying the upkeep for increased scientific production (but only on the commerce part). In the outliers, you still have to pay the upkeep, but there's not enough commerce to warrant the cost. So when you get to high-corruption cities, pack cities in as tightly as you can, build no improvements (except maybe an aque in a few cases), water everything in sight, build roads and rails to increase food production, and hire as many geeks as you can. I don't recall exactly how the numbers work out, but if you can hire 3 scientists in a size 5 town, that's 9 bpt, straight into research, uncorrupted. If you build 100 of them, that's 900 bpt.

For more in-depth information, see Bede's "The Role of the Specialist Citizen." There's also a link in my signature to "Multiplier Buildings: A Practical Primer," which might prove useful. Finally, if you browse through some of the old Training Day Games, we did some experiments with micromanaging the empire in "Aabra01: Training for Mid-Level Micromanagers." The results of a small micromanagement competition are posted on page 58 of that game.
 
I don't know if the terminology has changed but a few years back, we referred to them as "science farms.".

I think they're still called science farms. The research labs that I meant in that post was what it is - a building built in cities (which Takhisis wrongly called science Labs. Also I know how valuable science farms are but I guess I was too lazy to reassign so many specialists and the fact that I'd need hundreds of them to actually gain a few turns further put me down.
 
It takes a while to get the science farms stabilized and running, and you'll never get all of them at 0 net food per turn. However, the more you can get to that point, the less you have to fiddle with them. At least until the last turn of research, when you'd want to go through and switch bunches of scientists to tax collectors.

Whether or not you want to put in that amount of effort to work them . . . that's a different question.
 
In the outliers, you still have to pay the upkeep, but there's not enough commerce to warrant the cost.

One can argue about that. Combined with courthouse and policestation the research buildings do still pay off. It only takes longer. If one aims at maximizing research output one will not pack cities as tight as possible but as wide as possible without losing any tile. If you build cities up and then irrigate everything for scientist expert the research output will be maximal. The substancial investment required for this method quite means that some time has to pass till it becomes a rational choice. Therefore it often is the smarter choice to create many small science farms as you have described so well.
 
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