Late-game Specialized City: Wonder/SS pump.

[Diadem]

If you're going for a spaceship Free Speech isn't very useful anymore at the end. You don't care about culture much (including culture in newly conquested cities, since there won't be any newly conquered cities, since you are trying to avoid wars when you go for a SS victory).

And once you have The Internet the commerce bonus isn't very important anymore either.

Bureaucracy is then simply better.

[Krill]

Diadem, How do you research Fibre Optics if you aren't bothering to research? So how do you build the Internet?

The Term "Beeline" implies that you are racing for an objective. You aren't exactly beelining if you are say "Ah, forget commerce, it won't let me build the SS parts any faster" as you need that commerce to actually research the techs that let you build the SS Components.

And even then, the Internet is worthless if there is one AI ahead of the main pack in tech, so you have to research to get the techs instead of simply sitting on your laurels. And even then, you may have to invade that AI to slow it down, and in that case, you are going to have multiple newly conquered cities...

...There is no one correct answer here. It will vary depending on the situation. There are times when Bureaucracy is best, but there are going to be times when it is not.

[Blake]

The other thing is, as I calculated, Bureaucracy is only a 16.6% increase. That might shave 1 turn off a component.

Maybe for Spiritual civs..

And I can see how it would be useful if doing the Internet Gambit, because you need one city to have absolutely maxed production to speed-build the last component. But in most cases it would probably be best to move the capital, unless your capital has very few water tiles.

[Hauptman]

You CANNOT rely on the internet to give you the last tech, as it requires 2 other civs to have it, so likely someone has it for a while BEFORE the other gets it so he has the head start. you cannot give up beaker production. ever.

[Quillan]

Actually, you can, but it depends on the circumstances (that sure seems to be the rule in Civ 4). One game, I got into a space race at the end of the game. I had gone straight for fusion (for the GEngineer) and started building the Internet as soon as I finished Fiber Optics. I then went for Robotics to build the Space Elevator, and this is all before I'd gotten Rocketry and built the Apollo Program. Needless to say, by the time I'd gotten all that, the other participants in the space race had grabbed quite a number of different things, all had the Apollo Program built, and most had completely finished the Casing and some of the Thruster modules by this time. When I finished Internet, I got every single tech that I hadn't already researched. So at that point, I was quite capable of turning science down to 0%.

[Diadem]

Originally posted by Krill
Diadem, How do you research Fibre Optics if you aren't bothering to research? So how do you build the Internet?

The Term "Beeline" implies that you are racing for an objective. You aren't exactly beelining if you are say "Ah, forget commerce, it won't let me build the SS parts any faster" as you need that commerce to actually research the techs that let you build the SS Components.

You misunderstood me.

You research Fiber Optics first, and *then* you drop your research rate. And I'm not saying you drop it to zero, but you can relax it a bit. By increasing hammers over commerce, and switching to bureaucracy, for example.

And even then, the Internet is worthless if there is one AI ahead of the main pack in tech, so you have to research to get the techs instead of simply sitting on your laurels. And even then, you may have to invade that AI to slow it down, and in that case, you are going to have multiple newly conquered cities...

Usually the AIs will be pretty close together. If they aren't you can always change that by strategic trading. In fact it's a good strategy to gift a lot of techs away to the technologicly weaker AIs. This will increase relations a lot, and with the internet it gives a real boost to research

I find that after you research Fiber Optics the best beeline is for Fusion. This is only 2 more techs, in a direction the AI usually doesn't take at first. So while you research these techs, leisurely, the AI fills in your other SS techs via the internet. You'll be first to fusion, for a free great engineer, but more importantly, for a jumpstart on that final SS part.

[Diadem]

Originally posted by Blake
The other thing is, as I calculated, Bureaucracy is only a 16.6% increase. That might shave 1 turn off a component.

Well if you have 10 cities producing SS components it obviously isn't going to matter much. But if you have one huge production powerhouse, with Ironworks etc, it will produce most of your ss parts, and then a 16.6% increase in overall building speed can shave off quite a few turns.

I have found that on the highest difficulties you will often be only a few turns ahead - or behind. I've lost spaceraces on a single turn. Time is really of the essence when you're trying a SS victory, so a 16.6% increase in production is not to be sneezed at.

[Blake]

I didn't mean to belittle the value of maybe 1 turn of production. But mainly it would be offset by the 1 turn of Anarchy in many (but not all) situations. As I said, Spiritual - go for it. Otherwise you lose a turn of research which would take you right back to square-1, unless you're relying on Internet. And if you're relying on Internet I assume the only safe way is to research deep to one tech (say fusion) then rely on the Internet to get the other (say genetics), again 1 turn isn't likely to change the outcome because you'll probably either get both techs considerably earlier, or the gamble will fail completely...

And in any case you WILL be moving your capital, unless you saved your original capital for the Ironworks, which frankly, I think is a silly thing to do. In nearly all cases you'll want to put one of Heroic or National Epic in your capital and later Oxfords, Wallstreet or both. The most compelling reason to have IW in the capital is with a "Great Profits" strategy and Buddhism/Hinduism, making it IW/Wall Street. But I think the Heroic Epic/Wallstreet combo is just as compelling, firstly for turn advantage (getting that extra +100% for so much longer), but secondly because a good optimized State Property city may have even higher production than a less optimized Great Profit city.

Bureaucracy would ofcourse be more critical when you DON'T have a full powered ironworks...

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Diadem
If you're going for a spaceship Free Speech isn't very useful anymore at the end. You don't care about culture much (including culture in newly conquested cities, since there won't be any newly conquered cities, since you are trying to avoid wars when you go for a SS victory).

And once you have The Internet the commerce bonus isn't very important anymore either.

Bureaucracy is then simply better.

Rarely play as spiritual...can't hit the one-turn production sac-fly that late for a small production boost. Generally I stick with the civics that brought me once it gets into the last few turns as a consequence.

Also remember that Free Speech is good for two coins per city, as I recall. Big empire = lotta coins = all you're giving up is the hammers anyway.