The importance of the science lead seems greatly diminished

[HottiePippen]

One of the biggest problems with G&K, in my opinion, was that the metagame was so science focused. It was extremely difficult to stray from the science/growth oriented techs and remain competitive far into the game, as other civs would simply be able to outproduce you.

Science hasn't been discussed much for BNW as there aren't new science features being added, but I actually think the initial problem is going to be largely alleviated through the new focus on culture. In G&K, policies could be powerful, but they didn't come often enough to really balance out falling behind in tech. It seems like in the policy cost has been lowered in BNW, though, and I actually think policies and especially ideologies may now be able to act as a viable alternative to science, which is awesome!

I think of it this way... in G&K, if you fell behind by an era, even if you were a few social policies ahead you had essentially already lost. But looking over the ideologies, I feel like being behind an era but having an extra policy tree and half an ideology filled out, you could still be roughly tied or even ahead.

Anyways, I think this is great. More paths to victory is always a good thing. If you can still realistically win with only a minimal contribution to science, it will greatly enhance the variety of gameplay and tech paths. Hopefully, we won't have to focus only on the top half of the research tree!

Thoughts on this? Does anyone agree/disagree?

 

[Louis XXIV]

I think it certainly helps alleviate it. Also, establishing trade routes will help you keep parity as well.

That being said, I still think there's no real substitute for science. An insurmountable lead is still very dangerous to play against, but you'll at least have culture and diplo as viable options now.

 

[HottiePippen]

True. But it seems like maybe a military that is ahead in tech could be ~ equal to a military that is ahead in ideology, for instance. Or an economy that is ahead in tech might be matched by an economy that has filled out the exploration policy.

 

[Crafty Bison]

Beyond reduced SP cost, there are a couple of new mechanics to further balance out science. The trade routes have a technology dissemination factor which will transfer beakers from the tech leader to the tech follower. Furthermore the rationalism opener and finisher have both been nerfed a little.

 

[kaspergm]

One of the biggest problems with G&K, in my opinion, was that the metagame was so science focused. It was extremely difficult to stray from the science/growth oriented techs and remain competitive far into the game, as other civs would simply be able to outproduce you.

Absolutely!

I have myself brought the Rationalism tree up a couple of times, which is one of my pet peeves exactly because of the reasons you list above. Where most of the other policy trees will help you with one or at best two victory conditions, Rationalism will by default help you with all victory conditions, because scientific progress is in G&K, as you say, vital to any victory type, even Cultural.

Now BNW Cultural system seems to help with this at least to some extent, and there seems to be taken other meassure to help this problem a little (like Piety apparently no longer excludes Rationalism, and Rationalism opener seems to be scaled down from 15 % science to 10 % science).

I think it's something that's extremely hard to balance, because on the other hand, we want scientific progress to offer you advantages, but they certainly didn't get it right in G&K, and personally I would prefer Rationalism and Science Victory to be decoupled from just naked science progress.

 

[Zango]

I think the (oddly undiscussed) Rationalism nerf also does a lot to help this. As previously mentioned, Rationalism only grants 10% more science and the finisher now only grants 1 technology as opposed to two, though we'll have to see if the actual policies within the tree itself are altered much.

 

[Gali]

A science lead is still very powerful. The leakage is not all that strong and there are even more goodies to unlock in the tech tree for those that get there first. Also being the first to get to open an ideology, which a tech lead would greatly facilitate, is quite strong. 2 free tenets in the ideology of your choice. Of course on Immortal or higher that'll rarely if ever happen. There you need every science point to keep up with mammoth AI bonuses. I hope policies being a bit cheaper will at least allow more diversity will in policy choices. Yeah you'll have to take Rationalism anyway and finishing that tree is more important than ever with faith buying moved to the finisher. If you can open an extra tree worth of stuff though you can really explore the options. They did add some badly needed catch up mechanics though.

 

[kaspergm]

I think the (oddly undiscussed) Rationalism nerf also does a lot to help this. As previously mentioned, Rationalism only grants 10% more science and the finisher now only grants 1 technology as opposed to two, though we'll have to see if the actual policies within the tree itself are altered much.

Yeah, I don't think I noticed any change in icons, but wasn't the +1 Happiness from scientic buildings now a tennet in Order or something? So maybe they have changed that one (unless they are just identical and stack). I also really hope that they have moved the effects around, so that Sovereignty doesn't sit at the end of the branch, that policy is completely worthless, which makes it cost-free to save it for very late in the game to cash in on the free tech(s) when in the space race. If instead one of the major policies were in the finishing spot (say, Scientific Revolution requiring all of the other 4 policies for instance, similar to how the layout in Autocracy is) this would make it costly to withhold the free techs because you would then miss out on a major bonus during the entire game.

 

[Inhalaattori]

I think the (oddly undiscussed) Rationalism nerf also does a lot to help this. As previously mentioned, Rationalism only grants 10% more science and the finisher now only grants 1 technology as opposed to two, though we'll have to see if the actual policies within the tree itself are altered much.

I really liked this change. It also seems they have altered it in some other ways. At least they have switched the places of Sovereignty and Free Thought.

 

[kaspergm]

At least they have switched the places of Sovereignty and Free Thought.

Great, that will also solve the problem! I wonder whether they have cut Secularism down from 2 Science to 1 Science per specialist also, that was another extremely strong policy. But perhaps the other changes will be enough to make Rationalism not a default pick but still useful.

 

[elder abuser]

I would also love to see some alternatives to the early-game education beeline. On immortal difficulty in GnK it feels necessary to start cranking those universities out; National College by turn 75, education by turn 110 or else the outlook is bleak.

 

[flairin]

This is good news cause recently I have been far less focused on science than building, expanding early, growing, and going straight to Civil Service!! Haven't worried about Ntl. College or Universities till after t100... shortly before then I am focused on taking my first few enemy cities

 

[EEE_BOY]

Great, that will also solve the problem! I wonder whether they have cut Secularism down from 2 Science to 1 Science per specialist also, that was another extremely strong policy. But perhaps the other changes will be enough to make Rationalism not a default pick but still useful.

That will make specialist economy worse to play.

a better approach may be split the +2 science to two policies, each with +1 science.

 

[Luckystrike77]

I just hope all these new cultural bonuses will not make science going even faster. Combined with the research gain we now will see from trade routes too.... I really hope they have slowed down how fast you gain new tech's in general. Pretty boring when you can win Tech. victory halfway into the game I think.

I play multiplayer only, and we most often play on fast speed. Fast speed has a turn/time limit on 330 turns. It's not unusual to see people win Tech-win arround turn 170. Some games get pretty boring runs for rationalism first, who can start to gain great scientists first and then get the Hubble first..... Boring...... ZZZzzzzzz. This is specially true when it comes to all other maps then a Pangaea map where all players can easely get to eachother. All other maps then Pangaea, or Pangaea maps that are very snaky, are almost unplayable now (like in unfun), because all the games will be about is the tech race.

 

[adwcta]

It obviously changes depending on the start.... but I've found more success going for aqueducts first (and going tradition, while quick-expanding to 4 cities), rather than bee-lining for NC/University in my immortal playthroughs. Even currently on immortal, it's viable to get consistent culture/diplomacy victories without science parity with the runaway. In that sense, I don't see the new victory conditions being a huge game-changer in terms of how important science is. I've always felt these forums over-valued science and NC starts.

That being said, it's nice that rationalism got a nerf. It's initial bonus was just too powerful (and so was the finisher, which is more of an issue if they're lowering policy costs). I don't know how they thought +17% globally was on par with +25% in capital (commerce), even for a tall empire, much less a wide one.

 

[kaspergm]

That will make specialist economy worse to play.

a better approach may be split the +2 science to two policies, each with +1 science.

Whether the bonus should be +1 or +2 should come down to playtesting, all I can say is the +2 bonus is a very strong bonus - just look at how Korea will runaway in every game they are in. I don't think splitting the bonus over two policies would be a good solution, that'd be sort of meh to have two policies in the same tree giving the same bonus.

However, I should add that the point I approved of was not so much the moving of the specialist bonus with Secularism as the moving of the Gold bonus with Sovereignty. For all I cared, they could have moved another bonus to the end of the tree just as well. The point is that having the worst policy (Sovereignty) sit at the very end in a tree that also has a finisher with no per-turn effect but only a single-shot bonus that will grow better the longer you wait is mindblowingly bad game-design.

 

[joncnunn]

Korean AI runs away with the science game compared to the other AIs (when its not dogpiled upon) since it's just about the only AI whose flavors are set decently for peaceful science.
An honorable mention though to the Persian AI flavors; which appears second best in this category, but their science game in hands of the AI is assisted by taking over some weak cities from other AI.

Reducing the closer's benefit was a good idea. And likely a good idea to delay all faith based people to the closer, but let's hope that buying a faith based Enginner in BNW increases the cost of all faith buys and not just faith engineers or else the Tradition-Rationalism (both completed) combo will be just as over powered as opening Order any time after starting Rationalism is in G&K. (Instead of the G&K buying a cheap GE after having bought a few GS, in BNW it would be buy a cheap GS after having brought a few GE.)

One of Statue of Liberty or PT would be the first faith GE buy (the other provided by manually building Leaning Tower), second faith GE buy would be used for Hubble.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Korean AI runs away with the science game compared to the other AIs (when its not dogpiled upon) since it's just about the only AI whose flavors are set decently for peaceful science.

Yes, I've noticed this in my current game I've just entered the Modern Era, whilst Korea is currently in the Atomic Era ;-).

Aussie.

 

[Gdown94]

The World Congress should go a long way towards balancing things as well, as tech/beakers disseminate throughout its members. So if one member has a tech lead, the other members research those techs faster.

 

[ahawk]

Science/Food/Gold is the best way to go in G&K, so I agree with the OP on that. This was also true of vanilla, however, as Food is equivalent to extra science since libraries add science per every 2 citizens. Essentially, Food is important for everything, but especially science once you have libraries up, which is pretty early on. The importance of gold, then, is to be able to buy happiness (from CSes, from paying for an AI's extra lux that you can't trade for, etc.) and to upgrade units rather than build new ones from scratch.

BNW, I agree, is going to alleviate this issue, at least somewhat. First of all, gold is now not going to be tied to starting terrain (rivers), meaning that everybody should hopefully be able to get gold if they so choose, via trade routes. With science/food, trade routes will allow a city with mediocre Food tiles to get shipments from another city you own that is producing plenty. That will go a long ways to allowing a city that is mostly on hills or in forests to not fall behind in population, which means that the city will also have enough population to have science (or other) specialists, as well as enough citizens to really make use of the library.

Trade routes fix many problems this way. No longer will low-Food-yielding terrain (tundra, or hills, or jungle without river, or forest without river, or plains without river) be worthless, so long as that isn't the starting terrain. No longer will a start with no rivers in sight be a reason to re-roll or plan on losing.

The major issue regarding growth and science is still happiness, though, and this worries me a bit concerning BNW. For one, BNW's ideology mechanic incorporates a happiness hit for having low defensive culture when a competing ideology is spreading to you. This hit, at higher levels, would seem to be far more severe for the human player than for the AI, since the AI gets extra happiness for free at those levels. In turn, this sort of hit could absolutely cripple your science program and population growth. After all, it sounds as though you may actually lose possession of cities this way (though I'm not sure this is confirmed yet). That would certainly kill your science and growth!

All-in-all, BNW may resolve some problems and lessen others, but I doubt it's going to totally rectify the current problem in G&K where the lower half of the early tech tree has now become a very low priority. For that to be rectified, I'd say we'd need to see Civil Service put on the lower half (not the half leading to Education), and I'd think we'd need to see swords and Iron made relevant again. For some reason, I don't think both of those will happen. And that means that yes, if you deviate from science in the first several eras, you may get far behind already by the mid game.