Science vs Culture

[oPunchDrunko]

How do you balance Science and Culture?

In my current game on Prince I’m going for a science victory and I’m tied with 3 other civs. On the flip side, I’m one of the lowest producers of culture/ civics since I literally have no ways to produce culture. China is currently in the lead in culture and he beelined to Synthetic Technocracy while everyone else is in the industrial era for civics!

Honestly it’s either one or the other for me. Other districts beside campus and theater district are very important for me like commercial hub/ harbor and industrial zone.

How could I balance this so I’m not severely lacking science or culture?

 

[XplosiveLun]

My way of doing this is building as many cities as I can. For colonies or satellite cities (above 8 cities), I always build monuments as 2nd or 3rd choice. Population always contribute small amount of culture and science, I think it is a straightforward way to make science and culture

 

[Ownsya]

1) don't try to compete with china for culture. They build wonders like crazy.

If you're going for a science victory, you'll want to focus on campuses with strong adjacency bonuses in your first few cities. Also industrial zones are important for sv, and of course gold is always important. I don't think it's important to "keep up" with culture if you're going for a SV, you just need enough to not fall too far behind. After your core setup for the SV is in place then you can dedicate more for catching up

One option is that once you have enough gold generation you can purchase/build monuments in all your cities. That alone will be a decent boost to culture. And try as much as possible to trigger Inspirations to move you along the civics faster.

Another important option is to use Pingala since he boosts both culture and science. If your science production is good, get his culture boost promotion first and have him in your highest population city (I'm assuming you're playing with GS expansion).

After you have your good core of science/gold/production cities, only then would I start building a few theater squares to help catch up in culture. Alternatively, high science can also give you a military edge, you could capture some neighboring cities that have already built theater squares and wonders.

Pantheon selection can also be a nice culture boost depending on resources available to you.

Finally, I think you'd benefit from reading the below quoted answer to a different question that is quite relevant:

It's a fairly straightforward thing if you think like an AI:
The most powerful thing a city has is districts. You want as many copies of the "winningest" districts as you can get. Districts (and their buildings) are where our profits are!
For pretty much any empire, the marginal city located in an arbitrary location best serves the empire by possessing a campus, Theater, and commercial hub. Why? Because it boosts research, civic, and gold, which are all universal, plus we get our trade route. Further, with card support, these districts get the biggest boosts of any. (A faith empire would want Holy sites too.) Assume you cannot guarantee adjacency because you're an Ai and therefore you suck at that.

Okay, so for any given amount of space, the way to maximize the great number of campuses is to maximize the # of cities in that space. But wait! every district is tied to # of cities, and # of districts per city is tied to pop, which means at the cost of 6 food, 3 housing, and 1.5 amenities, we can make a city pull extra weight with more district capacity. Population is where all our costs are!
Packing more cities into a given space will eventually lead to a trade off food+housing per city to allow for a greater number of cities. This is because districts take up space. At maximum pack, cities have ~12 workable tiles each, less any terrain problems. 12 tiles is obviously enough to support 1 pop, every district we add drops the workable tiles by 1 by raises the global resource outputs we care about. So there's a trade off in how many pops we can support tied into how many districts we make.
The optimal population point will always end up being either a district unlock point or some external factor like the +50% from cards bonus, which conveniently overlaps with your 4th district. The 3 pops from 7->10 are worth a TON because they give you a massive reward from the card. In fact, pop 8, 9, are worth basically zero, pop 10 brings a district slot AND the +50% boost.
More pops than contribute little to your science, culture, and gold per amenity spent, since you can't get more campuses or theaters in that city, so we'd prefer to invest those amenities into pops in cities that do have very high per citizen returns on sci/culture/gold. Being over 10 pops intentionally isn't really something you want. Contributing more food/production by working a new tile is generally not going to speed up your win as much as if you had those pops in a new city that could deploy its own campus. If the food is there and you have stadiums its not the end of the world though.

Things have gotten more complex now that there's power in the game, and the game lasts longer. But in a simple analysis of getting the most profit and paying the lowest cost, we want to maximize # districts per empire population, which means many smaller cities. And size 10 essentially makes several districts worth 1.5x more, so that magic number also increases our effective districts per pop as well. (A size 10 city with 3 districts under card support really has 4.5 districts, the unbuilt district slot doesn't matter much since globally we only care about sci, culture, gold, in this instance.)

Going to 13 pops is pointless because the yet additional district won't do much for our gold/science/culture, and 17, 20, etc, do nothing either. So we are stuck at 10. For production needs the obvious workaround is a core of larger cities that are very good at that, and then you spam as many of these pop efficient settlements as you possibly can. It is absolutely abusing the math of civ6 but since we know the math/ the outcomes of our actions, it's solvable without ever playing an actual game.

 

[LMT]

If you're playing on Prince, you should be able to get a religion. Choral Music is a follower belief that I almost always chose as it allows for some nice culture output without having to invest heavily in theater districts. At least enough to not fall too far behind in culture.

And faith is really important in a SV in order to buy the Great Scientists that provide 1500 & 3000 production toward space race projects.

 

[Chefofrats]

If you're playing on Prince, you should be able to get a religion. Choral Music is a belief that I almost always chose as it allows for some nice culture output without having to invest heavily in theater districts. At least enough to not fall too far behind in culture.

And faith is really important in a SV in order to buy the Great Scientists that provide 1500 & 3000 production toward space race projects.

- Choral music being the belief that makes your shrines and temples generate culture equal to their faith output. I usually go for it since it provides a really good boost to culture without having to build Theatre squares. If you get a religion with Choral music, you will also generate a lot of faith, which always helps, especially with Classical-Renaissance Monumentality golden age bonuses that allow you to buy workers, settlers, and traders with faith. This means being able to found more cities and develop them quicker, which boosts science, and culture (if you keep building Holy sites, with Choral music).

I usually end up building some Theatre squares, but not before the medieval or renaissance eras.

Oh, and this all relates to King difficutly, which is what I play at.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Science first.
But above all i'd define initial span of my civ first. First thing to do is don't let your capitol being border land even if your neighbour seat is literally next to you.

 

[LMT]

- Choral music being the belief that makes your shrines and temples generate culture equal to their faith output. I usually go for it since it provides a really good boost to culture without having to build Theatre squares. If you get a religion with Choral music, you will also generate a lot of faith, which always helps, especially with Classical-Renaissance Monumentality golden age bonuses that allow you to buy workers, settlers, and traders with faith. This means being able to found more cities and develop them quicker, which boosts science, and culture (if you keep building Holy sites, with Choral music).

I usually end up building some Theatre squares, but not before the medieval or renaissance eras.

Oh, and this all relates to King difficutly, which is what I play at.

This works for me on Emperor for a SV. I do the same thing--build a few Theater squares, but not until mid-game. On Immortal, getting a religion can set you back too far sometimes in terms of rapid, early expansion (although usually it can work).

I rarely play on Deity. Getting a religion is too costly, if you can even get one. And I love having a religion (even though it's not the optimal way to play).

 

[Tech Osen]

Build a theater in some of your cities instead of a campus. Even on Emperor it's pretty easy to catch up in science later on. You will want some archaeological museums anyway to get rid of antiquity sites.

 

[Abaxial]

Advancing in science aids any sort of victory. If China is building wonders, once you have more advanced armed forces it shouldn't be hard to take them off him.

 

[Scaramanga]

You can balance things out in the trees by getting a lot of eurekas and inspirations. Even doing them retroactively like building two campuses after researching recorded history.

 

[MrRadar]

How do you balance Science and Culture?

In my current game on Prince I’m going for a science victory and I’m tied with 3 other civs. On the flip side, I’m one of the lowest producers of culture/ civics since I literally have no ways to produce culture. China is currently in the lead in culture and he beelined to Synthetic Technocracy while everyone else is in the industrial era for civics!

Honestly it’s either one or the other for me. Other districts beside campus and theater district are very important for me like commercial hub/ harbor and industrial zone.

How could I balance this so I’m not severely lacking science or culture?

As I see it in general, early science is to be wielded like a rapier – a light, quick, maneuverable weapon and able to hit with precision strikes your immediate and mid-term goals in a large wall of options. You are not to yearn for a machine gun at once to hit them all from the start, you're aiming for little birds first, the time for Big Bertha will come later. Culture, on the other hand, is that 18-wheeler big rig ensuring you're really moving when you get it going, but it needs to pick up speed to gain that unstoppable inertia, so better start early.

Don't be upset if you're lagging in science at first. Early on you only need some science to hit what you need first in your game - a growth tech, a luxury tech or a military tech to deal with close opposition. If you overdo science at the beginning, you'll be researching faster and with every new faster tech your districts will also become more expensive faster. If your early science overtakes your settling and growth of your cities, you'll only be slowing yourself in getting further districts - they will take more production to build. Build a couple of campus districts for the eureka, then you can make a pause with science - target your research more carefully and only place further campus districts to lock in their costs, but switch to build something else.

And on the contrary, you can't really overdo culture. The more of it early, the better. More culture early means you'll be moving faster through the civics tree and get to more advanced governments earlier, which will allow you to use more policy cards. It will also expand your territory faster, meaning you'll be spending less money for buying tiles. And you'll need to buy some tiles to preplace those districts in planned spots for good adjacency. Also, you'll be getting additional spy slots and start leveling them up earlier. It is not only Theatre districts that can bring you culture, certain pantheons and religion can bring a fair share as well.

Then, when the core of your cities have been settled and grew, when your culture truck is well rolling, you can chop in all those pre-placed campus districts with their buildings, put in science specialists and catapult yourself past everybody else, leaving them in the dust.

Somewhere in between culture building and finishing preplaced campus districts should come a few commercial hubs. Industrial zones can be postponed for later. As with campus, you can place them when you can, but finish building last.

So my view would be a bit of science first and all out culture with sprinkled in commercial and military if needed. If you play your diplomacy well, you won't need much military, though, and if you trade well, that will compensate for a bit later commercial hubs. Then all out science again and industry to consolidate your domination.

It is a juggling game, with changing priorities and a number of cases apart. General plans may be one thing, but the game may roll you some neighbour who will dictate otherwise. Start a game and get Pericles as a neigbour, for example. Or Peter. You'll still have to get enough culture to get to Political philosophy and Oligarchy quick enough, but the emphasis will be on science/military, to get better troops than them to take over their nice little empires with all those new and shiny theatre districts or holy sites for your own use, sparing you the effort of building them yourself.

Prince is forgiving enough difficulty, so you can experiment as much as you want.

 

[kaspergm]

If you're playing on Prince, you should be able to get a religion. Choral Music is a follower belief that I almost always chose as it allows for some nice culture output without having to invest heavily in theater districts. At least enough to not fall too far behind in culture.

And faith is really important in a SV in order to buy the Great Scientists that provide 1500 & 3000 production toward space race projects.

This is my go-to strategy also on Immortal. Choral Music is simply too good to pass under most circumstances, if you don't go hardcore culture. Of course it means missing out on GPP for culture, but in case Greece (x2), Russia or Kongo is in game, those GPP would be wasted anyway.

 

[NukeAJS]

Culture really isn't that important in a science victory. As you pointed out, production, gold, and trade routes take priority (and, obviously, science). That being said, culture is still good. Getting democracy is important because it's a tier 3 government and it enables the royal society (the government plaza building that let's you rush projects with workers). The discount on gold purchases and insane yields you can get from trading with allies make it just amazing.

Someone also mentioned faith. I'd argue that faith is more important for a science victory than culture for two reasons: faith buying the great people you want/need as well as jesuit education (faith buying education buildings). While there's an opportunity cost for faith buying education buildings (not using that faith to faith-buy great people later), they can make poor cities make a decent amount of science -- it might just take awhile to get that campus district up first. As a kicker, those faith-bought buildings produce great scientist points, so it's not that big of an opportunity cost in the long run.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I fee

Culture really isn't that important in a science victory. As you pointed out, production, gold, and trade routes take priority (and, obviously, science). That being said, culture is still good. Getting democracy is important because it's a tier 3 government and it enables the royal society (the government plaza building that let's you rush projects with workers). The discount on gold purchases and insane yields you can get from trading with allies make it just amazing.

Someone also mentioned faith. I'd argue that faith is more important for a science victory than culture for two reasons: faith buying the great people you want/need as well as jesuit education (faith buying education buildings). While there's an opportunity cost for faith buying education buildings (not using that faith to faith-buy great people later), they can make poor cities make a decent amount of science -- it might just take awhile to get that campus district up first. As a kicker, those faith-bought buildings produce great scientist points, so it's not that big of an opportunity cost in the long run.

I feel like a lot of the culture is important for science otherwise too though, as so many of the science breakthroughs count on culture things.

 

[Atlas627]

You can balance things out in the trees by getting a lot of eurekas and inspirations. Even doing them retroactively like building two campuses after researching recorded history.

As far as I am aware, this doesn't do anything.

As far as answering the original question, I find that Monuments go a long way to evening out Science and Culture, and if you find your production is uneven you can always focus on different Eurekas/Inspirations to make up for the difference.

 

[Scaramanga]

As far as I am aware, this doesn't do anything.

As far as answering the original question, I find that Monuments go a long way to evening out Science and Culture, and if you find your production is uneven you can always focus on different Eurekas/Inspirations to make up for the difference.

No, but it's taking the hint that if you don't have two campuses by recorded history you're doing something wrong and should get two as soon as possible.

 

[Victoria]

Ideally you want to be on roughly 50 culture by T100 unless going for a CV based on what the AI manages by that time. Even a little less can be fine but culture is important for many reasons so you must try to get some even though those theatres come late, often with little adjacency.

Monuments at 2 each are a good early producer but not nearly enough by themselves as 7 cities at T100 would be 14 culture
A Coliseum will get you 2 culture per close city so typically 12-18 culture which is a good chunk. It is harder to get since the last patch but worth pushing for.
7 cities at pop5 by T100 is only 10 culture
There are a few UI that can give some and natural wonders and tile but no more than 10 unless you can really set off Rapa Nui.
So all of the above with the coliseum will get you 50, no Coli means you do need a couple of theatres, adjacent to wonders helps a little but it is also getting the great writers than really helps. Slotting the +2 writer card early is an option.
Naturally culture CS help and especially suze of Kumasi or Nan Madol

Naturally it is not just about culture, it is about inspiration so push your inspirations that are a little harder like a pop10 city and celebrate when someone declares an early war as you just got a great chunk of inspiration to be defensive.

 

[oPunchDrunko]

Just a little update on my game: China (my neighbor) just attacked me with about 15 units and they were all upgraded to army!! I ended up losing a city only to get it back later. I somehow managed to successfully repel all of China’s units, which was a miracle.

This is, in my eyes, why it’s important to have a balance of science and culture. I didn’t even have the civic for corps while China had the civic for armies.

 

[kb27787]

Always get culture... It is easy enough to slot policy cards to increase either parameter but those very same cards are in the culture tree.