setting a city to research?

[bootrick]

Im playing civ 4 with the warlords expansion, and I was woundering how effective it is to set yorur city to the research option instead of building something? I know you whould only do this is your trying to tech up but is it worth it?

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

It can be helpful. Alot of it depends on the city you are swithcing and what you want out of it. It will turn that cities hammers into beakers so you will get more beakers setting a city with decent production that a city with poor production.

Sometimes a high production city can take off 1 or 2 turns off the research time. Which might be worth it if you are in a tight race to get to a tech first for whatever reason like liberalism or something.

And the more cities you switch the more beakers you get. So if you have a huge empire and enough cities already building stuff you need you can have the other cities set to research to help your taching. Or just set you best cties temporarilay to get a tech sooner then switch em back to something else once you get it.

Kaytie

 

[johncross21]

or you could set the switch to wealth and notch up your slider towards research

 

[Quechua]

It's usually better to build wealth than research. But if you have a lot of markets etc. throughout your empire and not many science multipliers, it's better to build research directly.

 

[ButSam]

Actually...

If your city has a lot of wealth-related bonuses, it is likely more beneficial to set your city to produce wealth instead, even if you want to boost your research. Wealth-boosting buildings/wonders are more prevalent, and can be built a lot more places. And, now you get more gold AND more research.

Sam

 

[Quechua]

In warlords, wealth multiplying buildings don't affect building wealth, although production bonuses like forges do. I disagree that wealth boosting buildings are more prevalent - in fact it is because they are typically less prevalent that the common advice to build wealth rather research is true.

Even in vanilla, where buildings like markets and libraries do affect building wealth/research, the decision still depends on your empire as a whole.

I have a post about decisions like these in the strategy articles section, called 'Gold and deficit research,' or something like that, it explains my reasoning there.

 

[pholkhero]

or you could set the switch to wealth and notch up your slider towards research

Yup!

i've found the conversion to be only about 30 beakers for a city (maybe 50 or more for a high prod city). This is barely enough to get a turn or 2 closer in the mid-later game.

by going wealth, those same 50 hammers net 50 more gold per turn, which will let your raise the sci rate throughout the empire and improve your tech rate much more.

 

[ButSam]

I thought there was one time in the early industrial age (sorry, no save available, will try to reproduce) that I tried producing research, and it upped my science output reasonably well...but when I tried producing wealth, it upped my science output even more. I don't recall adjusting the slider, but I probably did. Since then, I have found other occasions.

So, my guess at what happens may be wrong, but the ultimate guideline is not... if you need research, be sure to check out building wealth before you commit to building research; you may be able to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.