Specialist & science victory help

[civnoob13]

I want to go for a science victory before 1950 on the 'normal' difficulty (the actual name escapes me). It doesn't sound like much of a task, but I simply cannot do it. By the year 2,000 I am sometimes still not done and the game is too slow to bother to continue.

Are tall or wide empires better for a science victory? I'd guess wide because you'd probably get more population out of it, but are tall empires with a very high population and all the science buildings a viable alternative?

Also, when should I use scientists? At what population? Under what growth conditions? etc etc

 

[aimlessgun]

Honestly you probably want to use Scientists 100% of the time until you don't think you'll get another Great Scientist from that city before the game ends.

I don't think empire size is of paramount important, you can do it with either (well don't get too wide), just make sure to get good city spots with lots of production to make spaceship parts quickly.

The really basic things to a science victory:
-Get to Education quickly.
-Build Hagia Sophia, choose a Great Engineer, and turn that into Porcelain Tower.
-Build Universities as fast as possible (save money to buy some). Staff your scientists slots to start making Great Scientists.
-Save your Great Scientists (and Oxford, possibly) until the end and grab the last bunch of expensive technologies needed for space. Don't research useless techs that you don't need for space victory, like Refrigeration or Atomic Theory.
-Sign as many research agreements as possible. Try to sign them on consecutive turns instead of all at once.
-Pick Rationalism as your 2nd policy branch.
-Save up money to buy Spaceship factories (remember to stop spending money on RA's when you're near the end!)


If you just do those few things, I'm absolutely sure you can get a launch before 1950

 

[civnoob13]

Thanks, a few more questions:

How many cities would be 'too wide'
Is there ever a benefit for building the GS improvement over waiting for a tech at the end? If so, about how many turns into the game is this a good idea?

Also, what priority should I give trading posts, considering their rationalism buff?

 

[aimlessgun]

I can't pretend to be an expert on optimal number of cities or whatnot. My impression is to grab all the nice city spots and then stop, which is probably around 5-6 cities? By 'nice' I mean luxury, river, good mix of food and production tiles. But if there were like 8 awesome city spots lying around I'd probably fill them up I guess that's not very wide at all haha.

As for settling the great scientist, I just did some math in this thread indicating that making the GS improvement is not even close to as good as using it for a tech.

 

[civnoob13]

Thanks - I have followed your advice and at the moment I am in 1840 with my spaceship parts nearly completed.

 

[Martin Alvito]

One other policy that is worth your time (especially on Quick speed) is the opening policy of Freedom. You want to take that before you go any further in than Secularism at the latest, and it can situationally be better to take Freedom after Rationalism but before Secularism.

At most you need six cities. Usually four or five can do the work of six on part construction, because a couple of cities will be far stronger in than the rest. Not having the full tech tree unlocked by the time Apollo is done is not such a problem any more, so five to six cities is probably your best bet if possible.

I never build Trading Posts. It might be more optimal to build them in high cities that won't be likely to be the limiting factor on parts construction, but I find that I usually have more stuff I want to build than to build the stuff with.

 

[LaminarFlow]

Do you do any puppeting when you normally go for a science victory? When I try to take the peaceful route I don't generate that much gold or science and I find myself falling behind.

Also, when is the approximate cutoff era where scientists should build academies vs save to pop techs?

 

[DaveMcW]

when is the approximate cutoff era where scientists should build academies vs save to pop techs?

Turn 30.

 

[aimlessgun]

Until someone gives me some convincing countermath, right now it looks like making Academies is never a good idea. Well maybe if you can magically create a GS on turn 30 like Dave is suggesting haha.

If you can efficiently grab some good land from your neighbors, I don't see why it wouldn't help. Keyword is efficiency of course, can't afford to go out of your way to build a large army. Also, you have to be careful not to incur any warmonger diplo penalties, not worth risking your RA's.

I don't have a lot of problems generating gold but I play a lot of Arabia so my perspective might be pretty skewed ;p

Thanks - I have followed your advice and at the moment I am in 1840 with my spaceship parts nearly completed.

Awesome

One other policy that is worth your time (especially on Quick speed) is the opening policy of Freedom. You want to take that before you go any further in than Secularism at the latest, and it can situationally be better to take Freedom after Rationalism but before Secularism.

Freedom opener is definitely nice, though you need the money to grab a cultural CS or two to get both it and Scientific Revolution (or actually you can get Sci Rev via Great Engineering a Sydney Opera House).

 

[joncnunn]

Too wide is actually civ & map specific.

With the Arabs prior to the patch that trimmed luxuries benefits it was almost impossible to be too wide thanks to their UB that gave them a spare copy of every luxury to sell.

An open luxury site will almost always pay for itself. Generally a strategic resource site will as well. But personally I like to be able to defend all my cities easily so I don't do things like colonize Australia from England.

Thanks, a few more questions:

How many cities would be 'too wide'
Is there ever a benefit for building the GS improvement over waiting for a tech at the end? If so, about how many turns into the game is this a good idea?

Also, what priority should I give trading posts, considering their rationalism buff?

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

I just want to try (again) to demonstrate that building academies is far from useless. People seem to just focus on raw beakers and miss the concept that academies are more versatile and their benefits snowball. The decision to bulb to me is not nearly as easy people make it out to be. Words don't seem to convince anyone so I ran an example instead.

I played on immortal, epic, large, pangaea, babylon, policy saving on. The goal was to get to Renaissance as fast as possible and see what condition the empire was in. I tried the same map both ways: 1) Saving GSes for key bulbs versus 2) founding academies with every GS. Every single other build order and city founding and policy choice was identical. I made sure to get the same wonders both times and tried my best to generally pick the same tiles to work even (though with academies it obviously changes a bit) I wrote down a few things I find as progress indicators... I entered Renaissance via Acoustics. I know most people don't but it just turned out that was the fastest for me as I had 0 use for Astronomy. Here's what I found:

Trial 1 - Bulbing

Completed by 700BC.
Generating: 54/turn, 29/turn, 13/turn
6 policies
Bulbed Techs: Education, Chivarly, and Acoustics

Notes:
I got Education around 1050BC, was able to rush buy university immediately and run scientists to generate an additional GS fast. I was just starting to build the PT but had no doubt that I would get it.

Trial 2 - Academies

Completed by 320BC
Generating: 137/turn, 36/turn, 23/turn
7 policies
Founded 3 academies

Notes:
Got Education around 1200BC, was able to rush buy a university immediate and run scientists. I was also able to rush buy soon after a second university and run scientists there too. Why this time and not the other? Because I was able to get currency faster, get markets up faster (the first I only had 1). Also was able to sell an additional resource because I had built some happy walls. Why could I build this? Because I was able to grab improvement techs earlier due to high science rate generally just accelerate my build order. Same reason for culture. In fact the culture shot up that turn because I bought an opera house. I has just finished the PT.

So yes the second trial was slower. But I was in one heck of a lot better position. I could tear through the Renaissance era techs like this and my empire was generally stonger. I know this is just one anecdotal example but I'd just trying to demonstrate that you can't just simply compare academy beakers to bulb beakers and make your decision on that alone.

Pre-renaissance I find it almost always better to use academies. From that point on it depends... if I tech is coming up that I could use right now I'll bulb it. Otherwise I academy it up. Industrial and up is usually a bulb.

I likely haven't changed the most stalwart minds but... maybe I've convinced someone to at least try it out. It's not Babylon specific and it isn't nearly as pointless as you might think

 

[aimlessgun]

Your example is highly Babylon specific though. For other civs, your first Great Scientist is from the Porcelain tower around turn 100. The difference between settling a GS on turn 100 vs settling one on turn 20 is massive. It's the difference between doubling your science and increasing it by maybe 10%. I would certainly settle the first GS for Babylon.

Secondly, I was talking about academy use in the context of winning the space race and bulbing techs at the far end of the tree which cost huge numbers of beakers. So bulbing stuff that I would never bulb, like Education, Chiv and Acoustics and then telling me bulbing isn't as good doesn't convince me What's needed is a comparison of spaceship finish times.

In any case, I can't speak to Babylon, since I don't have them. I'm sure settling that very first GS is better. If you're getting other GS's far before the Porcelain Tower (somehow? forget how Babs work exactly) then maybe they're worth settling as well.

In any case, maybe I will try out settling that first GS from PT and maybe one or two after, to compare

EDIT: Oh gosh looked it up, Babs generate GS twice as fast. In that case saving them all to the end would definitely not be a good idea. Pretty big gamechanger, not sure what I would do with a half dozen extra scientists.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

Babylon was changed in the most recent patch, with good reason. They now get 1 free GS @ Writing (same as before) and +50% GS production (was +100%). Before you could get +1GSP and it would be doubled to 2, which was very powerful early on. Now due to the way it is rounded I don't think it actually goes up to 2 either. Yes they do get a lot more GSes though for sure.

And yes I do agree with people that raw beaker cost of a late game tech versus making an early game academy is usually quite in favour of the late game tech. It's more beakers for your GS buck. However, I would argue that those early game academies provide more than just beakers. If you are in a fight for your survival, you need a powerful economy, happiness, and a good tech rate. So in other words you need that early game advantage that will put you in a better position to survive to the space race. That's what I use academies (and sometimes manufactories) for.

I'm not saying it's a win button or the only way to go. It's highly specific to how you play and the map and other environmental factors. I'm just saying it is worth a try for some people. Personally I found 3 academies (even not as Babylon) if I can as that usually can keep me in tech parity or superiority even on Deity.

As non-Babylon, you definitely have to focus to get those GS points. One of the early GS wonders is nice, but not critical, to generating 2-3 GSes before Renaissance. What is highly beneficial is sneaking in that National Epic and a Garden around the time you finish education and get that university up. I also often use the HS for a GS (I know, heresy ) and get an academy there too.

 

[Carnage04]

DaveMcW and Aimless Gun - I'm curious if you have any thoughts how many bpt an academy would have to produce for you to consider settling them as late as turn 100 or so. Note: This isn't me arguing for academies I am just trying to gauge how far off you think they are from bulbs.

 

[Hasire]

As Babylon prepatch I would save all my GS (if I was going for science) so that I could chain bulb from Biology to nanotechnology. I would go through 60,000 of beakers in one turn using about 12 GS (that might be more than 12 techs, I don't remember exactly.)

 

[aimlessgun]

DaveMcW and Aimless Gun - I'm curious if you have any thoughts how many bpt an academy would have to produce for you to consider settling them as late as turn 100 or so. Note: This isn't me arguing for academies I am just trying to gauge how far off you think they are from bulbs.

Well, I guess I really should try settling a GS around turn 100 just to see. Obviously asking for them to be the worth the same amount of beakers over 150 turns as a lategame tech is ridiculous, because those earlier beakers are worth more. But just gut feeling I would probably want an Academy to give 9 BPT and not replace the existing tile improvement.