Civilization V and the science curb

[galdon2004]

so, civilization V was on a steam sale a bit ago, and I bought it. After getting used to it in general, which was a painful process since I guess I was expected to already know everything before I begin. even though the game acts like I know nothing and my advisors keep repeating the same advice every game despite my repeatedly clicking the 'do not tell me again' button.

anyways, I decided that I wanted to try for a scientific advantage, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how. Every game seems to go one of two ways.

1: I take Babylon and make a beeline for writing, earning a bonus great scientist, and getting an early game +6 to science. I start blowing through the tech tree as I expand my empire.. I get the great LIbrary, earning s free library and tech, of which I choose the most expensive for efficiency. then a tally comes up to show that I am still either tied with 4 nations, or am only 1 ahead.

2: mostly the same as the first, except some jerk declares war on me early on, and surrenders the second my bowmen start pinging his soldiers entering my territory. the turns and gold spent causing me to miss important wonders; often with a rival nation claiming them one turn before me, wasting even more turns.

so, is getting a scientific lead really possible, or does the AI just rubber band to keep up if you aren't out destroying their stuff?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

1. What difficulty level are you playing at? The AI cheats like a ************ at the highest difficulty levels, it'll be all you can do just to keep up by using every exploit/trick you have.

2. Science does not exist in a vacuum. Like industry, science is very population dependent. The higher a population a city, the more science it will generate, and the more of a benefit you'll get from your science buildings, and the more specialists you'll produce. Probably the best way to slingshot out to a big advantage scientifically is to have a very strong food/industrial base, allowing you to grow your population quickly, expand quickly, and win some of the early wonder races, setting you up to snowball. Then around 0-500 AD you should start to see yourself pull ahead scientifically, and by the renaissance/industrial era you should be way ahead, maybe by as much as 1-2 epochs, especially over scientific laggards.

Frankly this is the major issue for me with CIV. At the Prince/King level, where the AI cheating is kept to a dull roar, I win way, way too easily. At higher levels, where the game presents a challenge, the flagrant cheating is just too irritating. Thus CIV is more of a sandbox empire building game for me now, rather than a robust strategic challenge. Online play would remedy that, if the multiplayer wasn't so extraordinarily glitchy and laggy.

so, is getting a scientific lead really possible, or does the AI just rubber band to keep up if you aren't out destroying their stuff?

There's a certain amount of rubber banding...I think techs get easier to research if someone else has already researched them (it was like this in previous versions, haven't really confirmed it for V), and if you have Gods and Kings (and you should) the stupid fucking espionage system will see the AI stealing techs from you like candy. I recommend turning it off.

 

[galdon2004]

yeah, I do try to prioritize food, followed by science.

at the moment I'm still on the default setting, as I'm still learning mostly.

also, how do you actually get city states to like you for the ally bonus? often I read that I should 'ally one' to grow better for a science win but I find that the quests are often either killing bandits, which nets me all of half of what I need to be friendly, which wears off before they need help again, or wiping out another cIty state whIch isn't exactly easy in the early game, and donating gold costs a prohibitive amount for early play as it takes forever to reach 250 gold.

I don't have G&K though, as I wasn't sure how I would like the game and didn't want to spent too much yet.

 

[sextus the crazy]

so, civilization V was on a steam sale a bit ago, and I bought it. After getting used to it in general, which was a painful process since I guess I was expected to already know everything before I begin. even though the game acts like I know nothing and my advisors keep repeating the same advice every game despite my repeatedly clicking the 'do not tell me again' button.

anyways, I decided that I wanted to try for a scientific advantage, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how. Every game seems to go one of two ways.

1: I take Babylon and make a beeline for writing, earning a bonus great scientist, and getting an early game +6 to science. I start blowing through the tech tree as I expand my empire.. I get the great LIbrary, earning s free library and tech, of which I choose the most expensive for efficiency. then a tally comes up to show that I am still either tied with 4 nations, or am only 1 ahead.

2: mostly the same as the first, except some jerk declares war on me early on, and surrenders the second my bowmen start pinging his soldiers entering my territory. the turns and gold spent causing me to miss important wonders; often with a rival nation claiming them one turn before me, wasting even more turns.

so, is getting a scientific lead really possible, or does the AI just rubber band to keep up if you aren't out destroying their stuff?

There are various ways to avoid this.

1. play as eygpt. They get a sizeable bonus to wonder construction, meaning that you'll always be ahead of your opponents.
2. keep as sizeable military around. It doesn't have to be effective, it just has to look effective. Having 3 or 4 warriors is a better deterrent than 1 or 2 archers, as the AI can't take human strategy into account. As long as you have a large standing army most civs won't fuck with you, especially if there is space between you or another, weaker civ nearby.

3. tech advancement as important as it seems. having highly populated city(-ies) with good production and cash output should be your focus. Even if you get libraries, their science output is population dependent, so having a large city is important. Also, if you have bad production, researching a tech in advance doesn't guarentee you'll get the wonder, when it takes 50 turns to research.
4. get as many great engineers as possible. they essentially allow you to instantly acquire any wonder you want.
5. When you get to espionage, if you're farther ahead than everyone else, set your spies to counter-intelligence in your capital and your largest cities.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

yeah, I do try to prioritize food, followed by science.

at the moment I'm still on the default setting, as I'm still learning mostly.

also, how do you actually get city states to like you for the ally bonus? often I read that I should 'ally one' to grow better for a science win but I find that the quests are often either killing bandits, which nets me all of half of what I need to be friendly, which wears off before they need help again, or wiping out another cIty state whIch isn't exactly easy in the early game, and donating gold costs a prohibitive amount for early play as it takes forever to reach 250 gold.

I don't have G&K though, as I wasn't sure how I would like the game and didn't want to spent too much yet.

Early game, food + industry. Science will take care of itself. You want to be growing that city FAST, and you want to be cranking out wonders FAST. If you're quick about it and have a good starting spot, you can beat the AI to almost every single wonder, which will slingshot you dramatically. Don't build settlers. Buy settlers. Build a scout and then a worker, and then straight into your first wonder.

Don't worry about city states early on. If you can kill a Barbarian camp for them, do it, but don't be feeding them cash until much later. You need it for Settlers.

Focus on food and production buildings early. Granary, workshop, water mill, that kind of thing. Expand to good luxury spots, you'll need the happiness for your expanding. Don't be afraid to get duplicate luxuries, this is actually very desirable. You can sell them to the AI for 700-800 gold, and use that gold for settlers.

Once you have 4-5 cities and have locked up all the good expansion slots and have a strong industrial base and strong income, now you can focus on science and poaching city states.

At that point, nothing left to do but coast to victory.

Egypt is indeed a strong beginner faction if you want to empire build/rush wonders. I don't recommend much of an army though, unless you have a dangerously militaristic neighbor. A single archer + the city itself is usually more than sufficient to ward off early aggression.

PS - Gods and Kings was $4 during the Christmas sale, on GMG. =\

 

[CAPTCHA]

As the fish said, population is key to getting a good rate of beakers per turn. A few high population cities will help out a lot, but to give yourself an extra boost, try to get the Great Library (impossible to do on Emperor or higher), then double-down your lead by building the National College while your number of cities is still low and you can get full library coverage (buy them if you have to).

Settle any great scientists you get early on, but start thinking about bulbing them once you get to late industrial.

If you've got G&K, the 'Path of the Gods' pantheon is excelent for science. Grab it then spread as wide as you can. Each city you found will produce the equivelent of 4 population extra.

Jungle tiles are the best tiles in the game and really come into their own once you can build universities.

The rationalism policy tree is OP. You should plan your development around getting as much of it as soon as you can for most of your games.

Research agreements give you beakers equal to the median of what you produced throughout the duration of the RA. With that in mind, it's best to make them once you hit a large improvement to get the most out of them.

 

[galdon2004]

Got home and tried a few more times; ran into a lot of bad luck. Something odd though that happened, was that one of my scouts ran across an encampment next to two ruins, at the same time as running into a rival nation (Napolean)

The barbarians stood on one of the ruins, and I took the further off one which turned my scout into an archer. Then the wierdest thing happened.. the barbarians moved one space over directly beside Napolean's soldiers but did NOT attack, then another group of barbarians spawned, and attacked my archer. I finished them off the following turn. Napolean's army did NOT attack the barbarian on his turn, but instead moved aside, and then the barbarian ran to my archer and got the world's luckiest roll, because only one barbarian was left after being vollied (my scout had some experience before becoming an archer, and the honor perk) and yet kept attacking one after the next until the scout was dead.

Its like the AI is conspiring against me in ways that completely destroy the feeling of immersion. Is this going to be a common occurring, or is it just some one off bad luck?