Science tips for Apollo?

[Alkaid]

(Firstly I apologize for the somewhat long winded thread )

I've always liked to play my Civ games on the highest difficulty, not sure why since I don't do that with all my other games. In Civ 5 I always struggled some against the AI on Deity but usually still pulled through. For BE's Apollo it's been much easier in comparison to Civ V's Deity. Up until the latest patch I'd been winning on Apollo pretty handily even when not making the all the optimal choices. I'm certainly not the best but I still consider myself a pretty good player, however, with the latest patch I've been having a much rougher time winning. Granted I still do, but man, it's a much bigger struggle with the AI. I'm glad they made it harder than it was, but in a way it feels they ramped it up a bit far with the AI advantages.

My real problem is the science race. It feels like the patch buffed the AI's advantages to a large degree. I'm not sure the specifics about all of their buffs, but aside from getting the free settler off the bat and the inherent 1 rank in each affinity, it seems like they have some major science buffs and now I have a very hard time keeping up.

Now I know the general strategies and I've seen the Apollo tips thread, 5 city science thread, etc. but they just don't really seem to help me up my game very much. And the general "expand a lot/x cities + beeline academies" core doesn't seem to be enough when it comes to keeping up to the Apollo AIs science.

Can I get some more advice about how to get ahead or at least on par with science? As I said I'm still winning my games, but I'm doing so at like turn 250's or sometimes 280's. Usually I have something like a Harmony AI pretty far away that's massing a ton of science and working on their Mindflower before I can even start on my victory wonder, and there's not much than can be done about that sort of thing before late game, as far as I can tell.

I expand to at least 5 cities(have 3 done by around turn 50-60) unless I'm crunched in by AI's, then I'll usually fight with one if I'm able to in order to expand that way. I rush for Cognition and usually get it about turn 80-90 then put as many academies as I can work/afford. I really can't give perfect specifics on my average science output, but an example is my last game around turn 200 I had like 250 science per turn, meanwhile most AIs were at 350-500. Late game (turn 250ish) I've seen leading AIs have like 600-800, even without a really massive empire, while I'm usually still at 350's max. And that's if I've managed to conquer a sizable territory from my neighbors. From what I've seen it seems like even if the AI left me alone and I could secure a huge empire covered in academies I still couldn't keep up with how fast and high their science rate rises mid-to-late game.

(Also when I've been able to take out a leading AI militarily in the late game, I usually see their lands are pretty junky improvement-wise, which is why I conclude the massive science leads they achieve must be an artificial difficulty element of the new Apollo AI "balancing.")

Even with Cognition beeline and expanding as much as I reasonably can, I just can't pump out the science to compete with the AI. Usually I get by with my sub-par science by getting AIs to fight each other or help me knock out a neighbor. When a cross-map AI builds the Mindflower, as my luck usually has it, I'm reduced to mounting a D-Day suicide run with some units to hopefully take it out. My last big Apollo game I took out Kavitha's Flower twice before I could finish my purity gate plus settle all my earthlings. I do best if I can get to at least 15 affinity by late game and I'm able to use my military to cripple AIs or sack their victory wonders since I can be on pretty even footing when it comes to late game war. That's part of why my games tend to run pretty long.


Here's some of my usual strategy that stays pretty consistent:

I prefer to play PAC because I just plain like them, but also go AU if I want to give myself the biggest advantage.

I do NOT have the Starships unlockable seeding options right now, so I go for Artists/Tectonic Scanner/ and bounce between free worker and free Pioneering.

My opening tech order since the patch has been:

Pioneering > Chemistry > Ecology(if there's not much miasma around I sometimes I get this after Cognition) > Genetics > Cognition > then it's situational the order I pick up my techs for affinity/buildings/etc I need. Basically it's not a set order like for the Cognition beeline.

Virtues is the 3 prosperity for the settler then down industry for Magnasanti. After the Industry opener I go left for +1 energy from basic resources followed by +25% production for buildings also in the cap, then use the free virtue to get the +1% of stockpiled energy. Besides rush buying recyclers in new cities, I usually stockpile my energy for a rainy day so that seems to help my energy throughout the game, especially when the academies start multiplying.

I know there's a number of good Apollo players here who win in the early 200's, and compared to them I'm pretty slow. My concern here isn't really for the sake of speeding up my games but rather doing whatever it is that can make me not lag behind the buffed AI so much. I'd like to catch up closer to the AI so I can feasibly slug it out with them not having a 3-5 affinity lead before the late-late game. So if being more optimal, whatever that may consist of, is what I need to not lag so much in science compared to the AI, then by all means.

 

[Ryika]

Sounds like your opener is rather solid, what's your science on turn 100?

I think the main thing that staggers science output in the second part of the game is if one doesn't manage to get the population up fast enough, as 1 pop basically equals 4 science as soon as you have academies everywhere. Since the patch pop 10 is extremely important, so building farms in the early game is actually a thing if you can squeeze out the additional worker(s). Trade Route management itself (Connect big cities to small cities for maximum yields and don't use auto-renew) is the second big factor when it comes to city-growth. And of course you need to have enough workers to start spamming academies asap.

That alone won't bring you to turn 200 victories, but it should allow you to completely outperform the AI.

 

[Alkaid]

Sounds like your opener is rather solid, what's your science on turn 100?

I think the main thing that staggers science output in the second part of the game is if one doesn't manage to get the population up fast enough, as 1 pop basically equals 4 science as soon as you have academies everywhere. Since the patch pop 10 is extremely important, so building farms in the early game is actually a thing if you can squeeze out the additional worker(s). Trade Route management itself (Connect big cities to small cities for maximum yields and don't use auto-renew) is the second big factor when it comes to city-growth. And of course you need to have enough workers to start spamming academies asap.

That alone won't bring you to turn 200 victories, but it should allow you to completely outperform the AI.

I'd say turn 100 is usually like 60-ish? Since I've usually got just a handful of academies at best by then, and it depends on if the AI is trying to get in my business. If they are I'm probably making military units instead of more workers to help plop academies down.

I do try to build a bunch of farms until academies are researched, then I start filling in the good but empty tiles with academies followed be replacing most of my farms afterwards.

Are there any other important things to note for growing cities pretty fast, despite improvements mostly being academies? Perhaps I'm jumping the gun with placing academies and should instead focus on farms and other improvements for a while longer. I kinda get into the "Cognition is finished, I need to hurry to get my turn 100 science to look decent" mentality around that time. With just trade routes and vivariums I notice it still takes quite a while for my cities to start getting near size 10. My cap takes a while sometimes, but mainly just since I'm making all the settlers with it early game. I don't tend to get farms by my newest expansions since by then I've finished Cognition and I try to get straight to placing academies by my cap and biggest/nearest expansions with most of my workers.

 

[Ryika]

60 is a bit low, in a good area you can have up to around 100 science on turn 100 but of course that varies based on the situation you're in. Still, 80+ should always be quite doable.

You should not need military though, if you have a very close neighbor send the first trade route that your first expansion gets over to his capital for the positive diplo modifier (and, at that point, some nice science and energy) and gift him a few EpT for another positive modifier - that's enough to convince him that you're not a good target in probably about 97% of all cases (the exception being that there's no alternative target around). If he asks you to go to war with someone who's not your direct neighbor -> agree and he should not even think about attacking you until much later in the game.

But no, delaying Academies would not do you any good, once they become available you should spam as many as you can. If you think you need some farms to grow then you should absolutely build some workers with high priority very early on. If you don't need any farms, then workers become priority shortly before Cognition is done - you absolutely want to get as many up as soon as you can.

Other than that I don't really know why you're lacking in food. Are you manually managing your citizens? Because once you drop below -10 the automatic system will start ignoring food so you don't drop any lower. Or, a minor thing (but probably a common mistake) to look into may be that you're improving resources that give you +1 Production when improved. Those should be really low priority and only be improved once you're done with all (worked) tiles that get +1 Food.

About the capital: It's actually quite normal that it lags behind, but due to the bonus-food from the palace and (hopefully) a bunch of trade routes from other cities it should push ahead rather quickly. However, if the capital has no good food tiles, then moving the main production city to one of your expansions is also a good option. You just have to decide about that very early on, so you can send your trade routes to that city instead.

 

[Alkaid]

That's a great idea for the trade route and bribing the AI with a little gpt. I remember reading the discussion about the gifting gold a month or two ago but I never remembered to try it myself. I've also been keeping all my trade routes internal ever since the big trade route yield nerf, unless external is my only option.

So I'll definitely have to try that, since about 80% of the time I'm either attacked or wary of being attacked around turn 100 by somebody right next door or relatively close by and I'm building some units or other things instead of additional workers that could get more academies down.

I guess part of the food issue is also that since I don't have a good supply of workers until mid game. So aside from my capital and maybe first expansion early on, I'm not improving my later expansions with farms or anything yet. Then once academies come those couple workers are focusing on that at the cities that can work them right away. If I can get by with basically no army for a good while longer and make more workers hopefully that won't be as much of an issue. You're also right that I gotta keep up with manually assigning tiles. I was pretty on the ball with that in Civ V, but I've been lazy in BE and only do it every now and then. Maybe part of it is since Apollo pre-patch I was getting by pretty easily without remember to bother with it.

I really appreciate the responses. Hopefully I can get a smoother start to my games so I can start pummeling the AI earlier than the late-late game for a change (outside of joint wars with allies)! Thanks a lot