Speedy research

[Dwarven_Megalomaniac]

It seems to me, that even through I'm ahead of my computer competitors (at least a little bit)... I still seem to be way behind what I SHOULD be.

My latest game was Archipegalo with maximum land mass and to my surprise I had an entire large island to myself. I build cities like a madman. Once I had a good number, my outskirt cities took care of further colonization while my ever increasing # of cores started building up.

I jumped to Repub & Democ as soon as I could. I also kept science rate as high as possible and built libraries probably third (after temple and barracks). It still seems to me that advances are coming every 11-17 turns. Is this normal?

The reason I ask is because I see posts on these forums about people building space ship in like 1800's. The few games I played, I didn't even get through the tech tree before the end date.

What are the possibilities? Does every city have to have a library? Do I not have enough cities?

One thing to note is I generally built colosseums before acqueducts so I avoid disorder and such... so I do have a large number of size 6 cities not growing. Plus I guess corruption is eating up a lot of the trade points I would normally put into research...

Help me oh masters of Civ3. I beseach thee.

 

[AUDoc]

Well, I'm definately not a master of Civ 3, I'm not sure if anyone is yet. However, since you're ahead of your competition in tech, you could consider selling one advance to every other nation at a gold per turn. Remember to sell the same advance each time and all in one turn so they don't get to share your hard earned techs with each other.

If you can get enough, you could put your science spending all the way up to 100, giving you an advance every 4 or 5 turns. As for your opponents, they have to keep giving you their money for 20 turns, decreasing their research potential. When the trades run out, you could possibly have researched 3 or 4 techs in the time it took most of your competitors to research one at the most.

 

[eyrei]

What age are you in? The industrial age seems to fly by (turn wise anyway) so you may find yourself in the modern era before you know it.

 

[Dwarven_Megalomaniac]

I had two games where I couldn't get through modern before 2100.

This is my third game and its yet to be determined... but I was so frustrated that despite my best science efforts I was still behind the world's natural historical time line for technology. I ended up using an editor to bump the date back 1000 years just for aesthetic reasons.

Maybe I'm just stubborn and learned to enjoy a massive technological overpowering of the AI's like in Civ2.

The way I see it ... I almost NEED that in Civ3 though... since any confrontation in an archipegalo world (my fav) inevitably means plowing through the HUNDREDS of galleons the computer puts in the water.

PS... what age / tech level should I be getting techs in 4 turns in?

I MUST be doing something wrong... I mean... behind as I am... I must have scooped up like 10+ techs just from villages in my current game...

 

[curmudgeon42]

I am playing a game right now on the 2nd level of difficulty. There are about 4-5 big continents and some islands around. I started out with Rome and Egypt on my island. I killed Egypt around 600 AD or something like that. Rome was powerful so I let them be for several centuries. It is now 1900 and I just finished Rome's last city. China had settled on the outskirts of my continent and their culture was invading my borders, so I am going to kill them soon.

I stopped to take a breather, and realized that I was in the modern age. It is around the year 1900. This is faster than I've been able to do it before, and I think the reason is that I've had my science pegged to nearly 100% almost the entire game. The only time I didn't was when the war(s) started annoying my citizens, I would pump up entertainment a little. Despite this 100% output of funds, I am making 300+ gold per turn right now because of selling techs on a per-turn basis. AUDoc is definitely right, this forces the other civs to give you mad cash (some techs sold for like 60+ gold per turn) and thereby slow down their own science.

Anyways, I just wanted to post to prove that the technique AUDoc mentioned does indeed work, and quite well.

 

[Wislem]

The trick to going to Alpha Centauri before the 1800s? Trading with the computer. Yep, the computer has a massive research edge at the higher difficulty levels, rather than trying to fight it, use it to your advantage. Money and luxuries are produced by you at the same rate regardless of difficulty level, so trade those for the tech you need. Then go on to trade the tech you just traded for to all the other civs, in order to make back what you lost in the first trade. As you make back money and get money per turn from other civs take all your commerce and funnel it into research, since you don't need tax to maintain your cities anymore. That's really the only advice I can give you, but that's how I pulled it off. Oh and conquer your neighbors whenever possible, this makes them much more "agreeable", since they'll trade all their tech for peace sometimes.

 

[Dwarven_Megalomaniac]

On my next game I'm definitely going to try this ScienceBroker strategy.... it sounds very intriguing.

Are any cultures better at it than others?

Are any map types more suitable for the strategy? The reason I ask is I usually play archipegalo. I'm guessing pangea would best suit this strategy though... so you can make contact with more people earlier on.

Hell... I find it hard to get map making until like 1000BC

 

[AUDoc]

Any civ that is scientific should be pretty good -- Greece, Germany, China, Babylon, Russia (Why isn't America Scientific? We just cloned a human for goodness sakes...) -- because Science based city improvements are cheaper and you get a free tech at the beginning of every age, making it easier to get ahead of the AI.