Science, NC and tall questions

[Maxym]

Yep. I'm 99% sure it still scales like before. I'd prefer if it were changed. One of my biggest complaints about this game is you are better off using all the one-time-use abilities and completely ignore planting any great people. I'd love to have a bunch of factories in an industrial-heavy city, but you get way more hammers by rushing a wonder. If you are quick enough you can get by with an academy or two, but generally the same thing. I don't know of anyone who regularly uses planted merchants.

Well I don't know anyone who gets any merchants

But I wish they adopted the same mechanism for GS as for GMs. I rarely plant GEs but would do more at lower levels, as chances of missing key wonders diminish.

 

[Hippocrates]

You got it all backwards,

If you have bunch of RAs going it's even more important to plant GS as you get more bang from each RA as well as subsequent bulbs. If you only making two GS before labs you are doing it wrong. I would bulb to get labs if I had money for few of them. Or could get them out fast, other then that keep planting until labs. You can get four to six before then and they will pay for themselves.

It makes no sense to hoard GS at all now, it might make sense to delay some so you get lots of pops after labs are up.

Let me repeat that one more time:

It's flat out wrong, you get nothing by saving GS for later bulbs but will pay mintenenance on them. BNW mechanic sets bulb power at the time GS is spawned so the only thing you can do is manipulate spawn time and bpt leading up to it. Once they spawn what you got is what you have and you need to decide to either plant or burn as there is no reason to delay save for some spying or military considerations.

In my experience, this is not correct. I normally build 4 academies around what would be my top science city anyway and hoard the rest until the late Atomic/early Information for the endgame. I had one that I got in the industrial era with LToP and stashed it until using it to bulb computers. Had a strength of around 8500 and just barely under the 2 I got from Hubble.

 

[MarshalN]

If you play epic or marathon the math is all messed up and planting is almost always better until very late in the game.

 

[_invy_]

NC as fast as possible at any cost is counterproductive, and I believe that using GE on it is really a waste. NC fast is good, since science is good and that makes sense. After you do initial expansion to 3-4 cities, prioritize monuments and libraries and build NC. It should be done around turn 100, +- 10 or 15 turns. If one of the cities is too slow to build library, save 400 g and buy it. Anyway, overexpanding and delaying it later does delay science significantly and it can be felt ingame.