Strongest civ so far?

I'm reading here that special civ districts such as the royal port don't count against the district limit and are quicker to build? Is that confirmed? Because if so the English are going to be one of the wealthiest civs so that has to be taken into account when gauging their power.

Why will they be richer? More trade routes than most, since a port give an extra trade route. But wait, the extra trade route is a function of any ports, not just the royal ports, so other civs can have as many ports and therefore trade routes, right? They could, but they won't.

Due to their mechanical incentive (and agenda for the AI) I suspect the vast majority of English cities will be coastal and they'll end up all having a royal port because there is almost no opportunity cost. A standard civ in comparison will surely have many landlocked cities and won't necessarily have ports in every cities that could have one because they might prefer other districts. Civs with bonus to trade routes such as Spain and Egypt will likely make more of an effort but in the end I expect an english civ to have more ports than anyone else and therefore more trade routes than most.

That means extra gold.
 
WHy is it +20% Research for China ?

At best, it is a +20% increase of the Eureka, but not of science itself. That bonus would be max. around +10%. ANd I doubt you get all Eurekas, especially if the Eureka effect helps for faster science.

It's simple math.

If a tech costs 100 beakers, then with eureka it costs 50 beakers. With Chinese's ability it costs 40 beakers.

50 -> 40 is a 20% discount.

Of course it assumes you get eurekas, but if you do on all techs it's a 20% discount to all techs.
 
Having made some more comprehensive comparisons between the 11 so far revealed, I think France will suit my style of play best; followed up by...Egypt! :blush: lol
I was thinking Germany before...
 
It's simple math.

If a tech costs 100 beakers, then with eureka it costs 50 beakers. With Chinese's ability it costs 40 beakers.

50 -> 40 is a 20% discount.

Of course it assumes you get eurekas, but if you do on all techs it's a 20% discount to all techs.

Ehm...no.

Its 10 less on a base of 100. Thats 10% better science (if Eurekas are always granted).
It is just a 20% better Eureka effect. Not 20% better science.
 
Ehm...no.

Its 10 less on a base of 100. Thats 10% better science (if Eurekas are always granted).
It is just a 20% better Eureka effect. Not 20% better science.

What you're not seeing, it seems, is that he's saying that functionally techs will often be half priced by eureka, and thus cost only 50%. He is then acting on the assumption that 50% will be a usual tech cost, thus is essentially 100%. With that in mind, it is a 20% difference, practically speaking.
 
I don't think it was anywhere close to 100%, I'd say something like 70% maybe.

But, I really think you guys underestimate simple fact that the stronger the eureka/inspiration boost is, the lower the number of gained eurekas/inspirations will be. An extreme example: if you could one turn each tech, how many eurekas would be possible to get? Almost none, since there just would be no time to gain them.

So, my rough estimate is: If a good player is able to get 70% of eurekas, then same player gets max ~60% of them playing as China.

Wow, I just made a calculation to find out what that means, and if I count correctly, in this example it is 1% science boost only! Obviously, my numbers may be off, but basic concept stays. If there are only couple of techs/civics which do not get boosted since player goes faster through specific tree, the value of bonus goes dramatically down. Because each boost is 10% gain, but each lost eureka is 50% lost.

Calculation: Lets say we have 10 techs worth 10 beakers each. Standard player needs 30 beakers for 3 unboosted techs, and 35 (7*5) beakers for 7 boosted techs, so 65 total. China needs 40 beakers for 4 unboosted techs, and 24 beakers (6*4) for boosted techs, so 64 total.

There are obviously other considerations, like additional gains from earlier access to certain techs, but I really don't think that this is as good as people seem to think.

I took this into account. In the playthrough we saw with the best decision-making regarding Eurekas/Inspirations (Marbozir), he got nearly all of them, still researched what he wanted when he wanted, and beelined through the trees.

I'm reading here that special civ districts such as the royal port don't count against the district limit and are quicker to build? Is that confirmed? Because if so the English are going to be one of the wealthiest civs so that has to be taken into account when gauging their power.

Why will they be richer? More trade routes than most, since a port give an extra trade route. But wait, the extra trade route is a function of any ports, not just the royal ports, so other civs can have as many ports and therefore trade routes, right? They could, but they won't.

Due to their mechanical incentive (and agenda for the AI) I suspect the vast majority of English cities will be coastal and they'll end up all having a royal port because there is almost no opportunity cost. A standard civ in comparison will surely have many landlocked cities and won't necessarily have ports in every cities that could have one because they might prefer other districts. Civs with bonus to trade routes such as Spain and Egypt will likely make more of an effort but in the end I expect an english civ to have more ports than anyone else and therefore more trade routes than most.

That means extra gold.

That is true, and a good point. The Harbor will build in half time and doesn't count toward your district limit. That is a lot of trade routes, though we don't know how good routes are. I imagine this is still weaker than the Hanse, though.

Ehm...no.

Its 10 less on a base of 100. Thats 10% better science (if Eurekas are always granted).
It is just a 20% better Eureka effect. Not 20% better science.

If you always get the Eurekas/Inspirations, the "base" is basically 50. 10 less of 50 is 20% better Eureka AND 20% better science, because this math assumes all science research gets Eurekas. Eureka cost IS science cost, at this point.
 
Seems a little foolish to believe you can count on getting every Eureka/Inspiration every game. I know they look easy but some are geography based meaning you'd have to go pretty expansive early on. You also may have build units you may not otherwise need.

This is even more troublesome as Qin who's going to be rushing techs for specific wonders and cranking out builders to finish said wonders before leaving the Classical era.

I think his bonus is going to be OP on marathon and its strength will scale down as you increase game speed.
 
Seems a little foolish to believe you can count on getting every Eureka/Inspiration every game. I know they look easy but some are geography based meaning you'd have to go pretty expansive early on. You also may have build units you may not otherwise need.

This is even more troublesome as Qin who's going to be rushing techs for specific wonders and cranking out builders to finish said wonders before leaving the Classical era.

I think his bonus is going to be OP on marathon and its strength will scale down as you increase game speed.

The ones that are geography-based tend to only be needed if you have that geography, for the most part. And they're all the cheap early techs. Should be easy enough, as we've seen in gameplay of people who don't even know what they're doing. And ones that do purposely get the Eurekas/Inspirations for the techs/civics they wanted to research, so they aren't even wasting time in the wrong parts of the tree.

The biggest argument against eurekas is that as players get better they will go faster and faster giving you less and less time to fulfill the conditions.

How much it has an effect is hard to judge for now.

That is fair, perhaps people will get really good at knowing how to work the tree without Eurekas/Inspirations, and find a way to make it worthwhile. For now, though, some people (like Marbozir) have already shown excellent play using the Eurekas. So we can judge by that how easy (easy is the wrong word, consistent is better) it is to get them, we just can't judge how *good* a strategy it is to do that.
 
The ones that are geography-based tend to only be needed if you have that geography, for the most part. And they're all the cheap early techs. Should be easy enough, as we've seen in gameplay of people who don't even know what they're doing. And ones that do purposely get the Eurekas/Inspirations for the techs/civics they wanted to research, so they aren't even wasting time in the wrong parts of the tree.



That is fair, perhaps people will get really good at knowing how to work the tree without Eurekas/Inspirations, and find a way to make it worthwhile. For now, though, some people (like Marbozir) have already shown excellent play using the Eurekas. So we can judge by that how easy (easy is the wrong word, consistent is better) it is to get them, we just can't judge how *good* a strategy it is to do that.

...Marbozir specifically pointed out in his play through several times that he couldn't get all the Eurekas and Inspirations. He got more than everyone else, probably like 75 or 80% but thats not the same as all of them
 
...Marbozir specifically pointed out in his play through several times that he couldn't get all the Eurekas and Inspirations. He got more than everyone else, probably like 75 or 80% but thats not the same as all of them

Yes, but that also isn't perfect play either. And most of the Eurekas/Inspirations he missed weren't even on his intended teching paths. It also seemed more like 90% IIRC
 
Yes, but that also isn't perfect play either. And most of the Eurekas/Inspirations he missed weren't even on his intended teching paths. It also seemed more like 90% IIRC

Tighter gameplay will make Eurekas harder, not easier IMO. Every turn you shave off of reaching a tech is one less turn to get the Eureka. Also, I'd be curious to see if difficulty affected costs at all... or the size of Eureka bonuses
 
Do we know anything about how eureka bonuses are tied to game speed? I like to play on marathon and if the eurekas don't require more things in marathon you'll get almost all of them for sure. Or will the marathon eureka bonus be less than 50%?
 
Tighter gameplay will make Eurekas harder, not easier IMO. Every turn you shave off of reaching a tech is one less turn to get the Eureka. Also, I'd be curious to see if difficulty affected costs at all... or the size of Eureka bonuses

I said that tighter overall gameplay will make Eurekas harder in the post right before yours. But it is also possible to have tighter Eureka gameplay, which makes them easier.
 
That is true, and a good point. The Harbor will build in half time and doesn't count toward your district limit. That is a lot of trade routes, though we don't know how good routes are. I imagine this is still weaker than the Hanse, though.

We don't know that, though I'm mostly playing devil's advocate because I'm probably playing Germany before England.

Still, wealth is power, it means being more competitive for this new Great Person mechanic for example.

Of course, production has always been pretty central to success too, so...
 
The biggest argument against eurekas is that as players get better they will go faster and faster giving you less and less time to fulfill the conditions.

How much it has an effect is hard to judge for now.

This is what I said on page 2 of this thread but it went unnoticed first time. I agree that it is hard to judge now, but it is very likely this will be an important factor. Any eureka "lost" as a result of faster movement through science tree offsets 5 bigger boosts that China gets (purely from science point of view). That is huge. I'd say it will not be even possible to get 10 boosts without losing at least one eureka, so science bonus won't be higher than 10%. In reality, I expect it to be max. 5% faster science overall.

However, even if China was actually losing every 6th eureka due to its research speed, it will still be ahead of everyone else, since it would get first 5 techs (and each subsequent set of 5 techs) sooner (and get even with other on every 6th, 12th, etc.)
 
The biggest argument against eurekas is that as players get better they will go faster and faster giving you less and less time to fulfill the conditions.

How much it has an effect is hard to judge for now.

It may be better to think of Eurekas/Inspirations being the "normal cost" and the lack of them being a sort of disadvantage based on your civ's conditions (IE a landlocked civ struggling to understand boats rather than a seaside civ being naturally inspired).

If the techs are priced accordingly I think it'll be okay. Fulfilling very many Eurekas isn't necessarily bad if that is what is intended.
 
Do we know anything about how eureka bonuses are tied to game speed? I like to play on marathon and if the eurekas don't require more things in marathon you'll get almost all of them for sure. Or will the marathon eureka bonus be less than 50%?

I'm a marathon player too. I'm sure they will be scaled for the differing game speeds, one way or another...

It may be better to think of Eurekas/Inspirations being the "normal cost" and the lack of them being a sort of disadvantage based on your civ's conditions (IE a landlocked civ struggling to understand boats rather than a seaside civ being naturally inspired).

If the techs are priced accordingly I think it'll be okay. Fulfilling very many Eurekas isn't necessarily bad if that is what is intended.

I'd agree with that...
 
No, I knew that. That's why I guessed there might be 2 continents close together, but getting continents 3 and 4 would come much later.

It's possible I'm misinterpreting part of the ability. Is it a free unit every time you settle on a foreign continent, not just the first time you do it? That would be somewhat better. The way I read it, it looked like a bonus the first time you settle, which would mean on average 3 additional units per game.

The exact quote is:
When you settle on a continent other than your home continent, receive a free melee unit
It looks like 1 unit for each city.
 
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