Using more than one scientist

[wanhaiyang]

Please can some one tell me when is it appropriate and how to use more than one scientist to do research.

I know how to use a lone scientist. However often if I have more than one scientist my CivAssist tells me that I only need one scientist in my to do lone scientist research. Usually I set expenditure to 0% for research, so that might impact on things.

Is there some research item or city improvement or something else which I need to do so that I can effectively use more than one scientist?

Thanks

 

[Aabraxan]

City improvements have no effect on the beakers produced by scientists. If you're using the Lone Scientist method, then you get the tech in 50 turns, regardless of whether or not you've actually amassed enough beakers to actually reach its cost. If you're using 0% science, the question is whether the scientists you're using generate enough beakers to hit the tech in less than 50 turns. For example, assume that you're researching a 1000-beaker tech. One scientist produces 3 beakers per turn in C3C. You will get the tech in 50 turns at a total beaker cost of 150 beakers (3 bpt * 50 turns). On the other hand, to get enough scientists to get below 50 turns, you'd need to produce at least 20 bpt (20 bpt * 50 turns = 1000 beakers), so you need 7 scientists (21 bpt) and should get the tech in 48 turns. If you had 50 scientists, you'd get 150 bpt and get that tech in 7 turns.

 

[anaxagoras]

If you had 50 scientists, you'd get 150 bpt and get that tech in 7 turns.

And thus was born the so-called "science farm" technique, where highly corrupt cities outside the core of your empire are maximized for food and support almost exclusively scientist specialists. With a whole host of such towns (sometimes well over 100), each with 2-3 scientists, 4-turn research on 0% science is quite possible even in the late game when the tech costs are very large.