Tech defecit, how do you close the gap?

[Cheesemonkey]

So I've been playing on Prince and been the no.1 civ by score yet there are always a few civs who take the lead on tech by 5 or 6 techs and i can never catch them up.

What do you do in this situation to close that gap? is it possible?

 

[Dragonlor]

So I've been playing on Prince and been the no.1 civ by score yet there are always a few civs who take the lead on tech by 5 or 6 techs and i can never catch them up.

What do you do in this situation to close that gap? is it possible?

Pillage the heck out of them and destroy them if you can. In my current game on Prince one AI had a bit of an advantage over me so I send several knights and riflemen over to their land and proceeded to burn every square in their empire to the ground, roads and all. Took the wind right out of them.

 

[Silver Marmot]

Yeah, I've found pillaging to work extremely well. There is almost no risk involved unless they attack your units, in which case they lose the bonuses of defending the city. If you're just looking to halt progress and not gain new territory you don't need to bother with bombardment and stuff, which is great. Be sure to gets the towns - those things take centuries to create (literally).

 

[Napo981]

Some of my tips...

1) research the most advanced tech you can, if you feel you could exchange it later.
2) provoke war between your rivals, if you can. That will force them to abandon their commerce civics and swith their production to military units.
3) look for alliances, often, two or three civs will exchange their hightech science, keeping themselves above everyone else. They somewhat "gang research". Concentrate on one or two of these people and look for allies to bring a deadly blow to your rival.

 

[cleverhandle]

The above comments are all valid, but if you're hitting #1 in score in the middle part of the game but still losing 5+ techs in the race then you've got underlying problems with your economy that you need to sort out. The score is based mostly on tech, land, and population, so if you're #1 and behind in tech that means you've got a lot of land and/or population - which is exactly what should guarantee your ultimate tech advantage. If you're picking up score late in the game through conquest, then it's a different story because you may not have enough time to build the infrastructure to take advantage of your space. But otherwise, look more closely at your economy. Are you building enough cottages? Are you spreading a religion if you founded one? Are you taking advantage of Oxford/Wall Street? Do you have harbors built in coastal cities? Open Borders agreements with big, rich civs?

 

[Harry Haller]

I have found that one way to overcome falling behind in technology is to identify early which civs are outpacing you, and crush them. Do fast attacks and withdrawals focused on razing their top 2 or 3 cities. You don't necessarily want to try to capture and hold these cities, because of cultural borders that may make it hard for you to hold on to them or use them productively. If you do this early enough, it will put them out of action for the rest of the game and you will catch up.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

I never attack or crumble any civs really to slow them down on prince but i completely dominate tech rates.

The three tricks are
1) good starts and well placed cities (i chop everything insight)
2) lots of cottages. (this is why well placed cities are important)
3) trade at a loss.

The (3) is this. And this is the big difference between moving to noble and prince imo. You go to the trade screen early and everyone is offering you a trade at a loss. Usually its about 1/2 to 3/4s the value of your tech. But if 2+ civs are offering you that you come out ahead to trade it to both. And thats what i do. I trade trade trade. Eventually there comes a point where im just thrusting out into the lead.

Even when i start on an isolated continent im able to trade into the lead when i meet people on the strength of lots of cottages. Its not uncommon to see me with double the coin production of the average of the other civs on prince.


Attached is my most recent save. Its pretty much typical.
I took out a couple of ghandi's cities just cause one of my neighbors wanted me to war him and im going for a diplomatic victory. I figured ehh i out tech him why not go for those couple of cities. I might give one away to isabella i havent decided.

But other then that i havent really molested the AI to slow it down. You dont need to. Just do your thing and trade and you will blast right through the AIs tech rate.

I attached the 4000bc save too

 

[Puzzlinon]

Specialists help, if you're too overextended to research competitively. Picking a few cities to staff with a Scientist and/or a Merchant can boost your tech rate and patch some economic holes. The much-maligned Mercantilism can help (free specialist.) I find Mercantilism in the early Middle Ages is usually a good stopgap while recovering from Classical expansion. It might look pricey as a choice in the Civics screen, but it pays itself back with just a few merchants.

Popping useful Great People, instead of all noisy Prophets, is a nice plus from that. (They can really help with the research gap.)

3) trade at a loss.

Hear, hear. This is key. If you beeline expensive techs, you can quickly backfill all your old-tech gaps this way, as well as trading for singleton newer stuff . As much as possible, find civs with money for the backfill trades, since they'll routinely give you all their cash as well as the older techs, in return for one new innovation. That cash lets you keep running research at a loss. Rinse, repeat.

Once you've backfilled, you can occasionally resell that older stuff to the real backwater military civs for a chunk of cash. But you have to check each round, since AI's don't hold on to cash for very long. Those pools of cash go straight into deficit spending (unless you need a quick border upgrade, like a few longbows out of archers or somesuch.)

An important side effect of using loss-trades to backfill is that you quickly pick all the worker and city upgrades you might be missing (everything from Cottages to Plantations to whatever else you skipped) and that itself starts helping get you back on your feet.

(I have a Metal Working fetish. I always reach for Metal Working very early; Forges are lovely, and you can trade MetalWorking for all the ancient/classical techs you skipped to get to it, even after waiting a bit.)

There are usually a cluster of second-tier civs furiously boosting one another up the tech tree this way; join them.

Typically the civs you don't want to tech trade with are runaway tech leaders - don't help them - and your nearest Montezuma-style neighbor.

The rejiggered relationship between cash and techs put me off tech trading for a while, but it's still essential, and you can still use it to play catchup, not unlike the way you did in CivIII.