Skipping to advanced civics and techs?

[Gilgameshuggah]

Is it really feasible in almost any situation?

Playing a regular game that goes well, I'm looking usually at 4-8 turns development cycles depending on eurekas, inspirations and other circumstances. Whenever I go heavy on one development line, I soon see numbers from 20-30 turns and more. I can imagine going after one of those in special cases where some unique civ specific was to be available but other than that, I feel like I'm left behind in everything else.

My normal approach is that I don't even look at the trees but choose something I need from the ones with relatively short development time. If I need nothing really, I choose the quickest. Eventually everything becomes rather quick to develop. Is there generally any reason to do differently?

 

[Mahi]

I find it quite necessary, on domination victories to beeline certain techs that gives you an advantage, when battling runaway civs. In fact, in my opinion you need to beeline quite a lot in Civ 6 compared to earlier iterations of the game. There are alot of "useless" techs/civics that you can do without.

 

[Sostratus]

Think about it this way.
At the end of the day you want to get through the tech tree fast. To do that you need to generate however many thousands of science points.
How do you generate all those points quickly?
You need an empire that can produce it. That means you need cities with enough population to build and staff campuses and theater squares.
To that end, technology paths which improve those things- your ability to generate science and culture and grow your empire to do that- are hugely valuable over pretty much everything else.
A great example of this is the industrial and modern era technologies - there is a very strong split here, where the top branch of the tree gives industrialization, electricity, radio, plastics, replaceable parts... and the bottom branch gives you some military units.
Whenever you can sustain it it is better to snag that top branch ASAP because that means factories, power plants, tier 3 buildings for campuses and theater squares, better farms and mines, flood barriers...

Because the bottom branch does almost nothing to improve your empire’s output, it’s actually faster to research the top branch, improve your output, then do the bottom branch. And this logic extends to any time you have a very valuable tech or civic - it’s better to get that first and speed up your acquisition of everything else.
It’s also typically worthwhile to avoid finishing researching techs you don’t have eurekas for yet- you can leave them at ~60% and then you’ll get the rest once you get the eureka. Obviously sometimes you can’t do that and need the tech, but learning how to maximize your eurekas is very impactful.

*disclaimer- obviously in wartime etc you need to focus on the military units more. But in general the above holds.

 

[Victoria]

Playing a lot of Catherine at the moment. She is a classical example of the lower tech tree rush.
Getting to castles gives her an awesome spy that with the intelligence agency will give +6
Then there is Printing for another +3
You really need to go past these 2 to get to the Imperial Guard early. 65, +10 for on continent, +10 for Corps, +5 for general, +4 for Oligarchy... and typically +9 for intelligence... that's a strength 103 unit that you can get rather early if you beeline and push science. It sort of guarantees France will get her continent but you have to beeline it, especially on deity.

What are you missing from the top? Ships, a bit of production? a few wonders... meh.
It is the waiting game, the late bloomer and You need to tot up all these bonuses especially on deity. At lower levels you do not have to and it is just a steam roller... but with Catherine it feels just like a Napoleonic age attack with Muskets, Cuirassier's, Field Artillery, some light troops and the Old Guard. Talk about immersion.

 

[agonistes]

Playing a lot of Catherine at the moment. She is a classical example of the lower tech tree rush.
Getting to castles gives her an awesome spy that with the intelligence agency will give +6
Then there is Printing for another +3
You really need to go past these 2 to get to the Imperial Guard early. 65, +10 for on continent, +10 for Corps, +5 for general, +4 for Oligarchy... and typically +9 for intelligence... that's a strength 103 unit that you can get rather early if you beeline and push science. It sort of guarantees France will get her continent but you have to beeline it, especially on deity.

What are you missing from the top? Ships, a bit of production? a few wonders... meh.
It is the waiting game, the late bloomer and You need to tot up all these bonuses especially on deity. At lower levels you do not have to and it is just a steam roller... but with Catherine it feels just like a Napoleonic age attack with Muskets, Cuirassier's, Field Artillery, some light troops and the Old Guard. Talk about immersion.

103 mid unit that doesn't eat resources per turn. Yummy.

 

[Bangau]

I think the science and civic trees work very well at the moment: one game I'll beeline certain 'top' techs and the game doesn't suffer from missing out some of the 'bottom' ones. Another game, another civilization, another playstyle it might be the other way around. Sometimes it'll be more balanced on both techs and civics, another game I'll focus more on one than the other. Keeps stuff interesting. If you find you always make the same choices, I'd recommend playing other civs and other victory conditions.

 

[agonistes]

I think we'll get to a point where the whole tech/civic tree is invisible, and research is based on terrain and action choices

edit: pantheons should be based on these too, not picked by the player.

 

[cvb]

I think we'll get to a point where the whole tech/civic tree is invisible, and research is based on terrain and action choices

Maybe, but only by a mod - too many won't like that. In civ1 I used sometimes a dice to choose the next tech or wonder btw.

.

 

[Scaramanga]

I like to have a diversified civ so I do a lot of the eurekas rather than relying on raw science or culture. Bottom tree/top tree; whatever is the path of least resistance.