Lightbulbing vs Settling

[Vaugula]

Split off from the Shrine vs settled prophet thread

Originally posted by supremebob
About lightbulbing, I dont know I never quite got around it. I do know one thing however: as difficulty levels go up, the advantages that the ai gets keeps ramping. You need to counter that advantage somewhat.

Lightbulbing is like a quick fix in that it gives you a temporary advantage for a strategic tech (which you dont really control unless you have a 100% GP emergence type). Is is useful for the early and mid early game where said tech can be discovered entirely.

I am not a lightbulbing expert (I am not an expert about anything in Civ). You seem to be thinking about it purely in a research vs research way whereas I think the better way to think about it is that if you pull out a research advantage early in the game you can then push that into an advantage in another part of the game. For example, you could turn it into a territory advantage. I think this is probably the best use because the one "easy" way to overcome the AI advantages is to be bigger than them.

Originally posted by supremebob
A settled GP says with you for the rest of the game and does increase your research and production so that with each one little by little you will attain tech and production parity with your opponents and eventually perhaps outclass them in both fields.

Early big advantage is often better than a very long term small advantage. I understand the theory of what you are saying but this game has a pretty serious "discount rate" on things like research and so adding up all of those beakers is not an accurate way to compare with the advantage of lightbulbing. Just to compare settling with lightbulbing, in one of obsolete's early games using the fortress strategy, he teched to Cav and murdered everyone else (from a base of 2 cities). You can use a lightbulding strategy to get to the same point and I believe you would do it faster with lightbulbing. Given the whole game was built around that move I think it would have been a stronger play.

I am not saying that settling is wrong, far from it. Sometimes settling is good, its just that some times it isn't.

Originally posted by supremebob
That is to say it all depends on your strategy. If you make your cap. into a GP/Wonder farm, then it is more advantageous to settle your early GP in because gold isn't as important.You get most or your gold in tech selling anyway.

I agree, it does depend on your strategy. However, I don't agree with you second statement. There are too many variables at play to be able to categorically say that it is always better to settle early GP. A far better statement to make (and one that we could all use to learn from your experiences in the AU game) would be one about the conditions under which it would be better to settle your GP.

[vilemerchant]

The main advantage of lightbulbing is you can use it as a shortcut to get a monopoly on key techs and then trade it to every other friendly civ. In a big game you might get 6 techs for your 1 and a truckload of gold, where researching normally another civ could beat you to it and already be sharing it around.

Not quite as effective on BtS however as the AI's now tech so slowly on Emperor they sometimes don't really have any decent techs to trade you.

[couerdelion]

Perhaps separate the early game/mid game lightbulb since they are probably aiming at different things.

The priority for early game lightbulb is to make a dramatic tech leap in such a way that the benefits from that leap will net you more than a meagre settled GP. Examples include

1) CoL or Theology with a Great Prophet should get you a religion and a new civic.
2) Philosophy and running Pacifism will mean that you allow you to drive your tech rate quickly over the classical-renaissance period of the game
3) Civil Service with a GM will probably give you more from bureaucracy than the settled GM

The trading benefits from getting a monopoly are much weaker, IMHO. For one thing, I never get into the situation where there are 6 decent techs out there that I want and that I can get a decent trade for. Maybe around the time of Alphabet there will be a four or five techs that I want but it is not always easy to get these (needing at least two AIs to possess the tech and one of them being willing to trade and the terms of trade being reasonable). I try to hold on to any monopoly I get as long as is practicable.

In the mid-game period, I prefer to use any GS to lightbulb. This is purely supplementary tech investment but it is often the best use I can have for them. Even if this only provides me around 3-5 turns worth of tech, it means that I get to every tech 3-5 turns more quickly (until another GS arrives to make this 6-10 turns faster research). Occasionally, one city might be screaming out for an academy but it’s rare that this will tempt me. Unless the academy nets me a clean 40 beakers per turn, I will take the 3500 beakers up front – thank you very much.

For GM and GE, their special skills are generally better than the lightbulb so it is only GA or Prophets which cause a potential problem. If I have no clear strategic use for them, I will probably store them up for a Golden Age

[Robert]

The 2 hammers of a Great Prophet are really valuable.
I only lightbulb Theology with a Great Prophet, and only if I don't have 1 or 2 religions yet.

In fact I settle almost all Great People.
I used to lightbulb a lot...... but those days are over now.

Only the Great Engineer is being used early to finish some wonders. Though imagine 3 or 4 Great Engineers settled in a city with a force, a factory, electricity, iron works......

Settled GP together with Representation is a science boost.

[Blake]

I mostly settle.

And like Cybershy says, the hammers are valuable! They definitely shave turns off wonders.

I love settling GE's in an Ironworks city. It's lovely. You can easily boost the city production by like 30%, shaving a proportional amount of time off of every future wonder and project. Projects, can't be plonked, makes settled GP's even more useful.

I only go for very high yield instant-payoffs. GE to grab the Great Library is a good example, or a GE to guarantee a wonder like the Pentagon where you really don't want to leave things to chance.

I consider a few techs worth lightbulbing, Philosophy being the main candidate especially for Taoism. I usually don't bother with liberalism so academies and settled GS's better help me research the techs I actually want (gold and military).

With the first GS - you want to settle if you'll get another GS soon and your science rate is rubbish, you get more beakers and the free hammer. You want to build an Academy if the city is producing more than about 12 raw beakers, on average.

GP's obviously go to primary shrines asap. Later shrines is a case of whether you're going to bother spreading it to enough cities... I'd consider 12 cities to be enough, otherwise the concentrated hammers and gold in a highly suitable city will probably help more. Double-holy cities are always a no-brainer to fully shrine up .

Great Merchants give so much damn cash they're usually worth cash-bombing. The cash lets you buy a lot more tech than a GS lightbulb gives you directly.

In BTS you need to consider GA's too. This is an entire topic in and of itself... you get two free civic switches per GA. That's nice.
I think in some cases you might want to DELAY your GA, perhaps even to the point of keeping an artist on hand just in case you ever need an emergency GA (like a surprise DoW leading to the need for civic switches), of course you'll trigger the GA anyway once you've accumulated some "anarchy time"...
Overall, cheaper GA does not necessarily mean earlier GA, due to horrid later game anarchy times (why save 1 turn early, when you can save 6 turns later). Since anarchy shuts down your entire empire it kind of puts turn advantage on hold... so with GA's, the more anarchy you save, the better. There is still the usual turn advantage of a GA but the anarchy effect is very significant and sometimes justifies delaying GA's.
In short, I'm just saying you may want to settle earlier GP's and just save up your GA's for later game, rather than "taking advantage" of the low cost GA's earlier.
And I think the concept of an "Emergency Artist" which simply sits around for ages until a GA is needed is also a concept worth considering.

[Robert]

You also may keep a GS or GE back for the right corporation, later in the game.
Mining Inc. or Creative Constructions together with Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills is a very powerful combination.
Obviously you base both corporations in your Wall Street city (which should always be that double-shrine city )

Imagine cities with many many scientist specialists or engineer specialists (b/c of cereal mills or sid's sushi) that still produce heavy (b/c of mining inc or creative construction) and then you also make money b/c of Wall Street, Bank, Grocery and Market! If possible obviously also with the Mall!

[Ming]

Before BtS, I would pretty much use my first scientist to build an academy, and my first prophet to build a shrine. The rest I would settle, saving engineers for key wonders. I would maybe lightbulb a tech if it would give me a religion and I didn't have one yet, and if it saved me a bunch of turns. By the end of the game, my capital would have tons of GP. Not anymore.

While I will still use the first scientist and GP to build the needed buildings, and maybe save an engineer or two for a critical wonder, I save the rest for Golden Ages now. It's amazing how much you can jump start your civ with some nicely timed Golden Ages. If you have the wonder that doubles them... you can get on a real roll.

[couerdelion]

I’m quite surprised at all this settling going on – or perhaps my own approach is very unsettling

Part of the argument in favour of settling seems to be to reduce build times for late wonders and projects. With a very focussed settling strategy, this is believed to increase production by around 30% so that wonder/project times are reduced by around 20%. If I think of this in the context of my most recent Iron Works city (Epic speed) then the +30% would represent around 16 base hammers (or 2 GE and 5 Prophets). To me that seems like quite a large cost in GPP just for a return of 48 hammers per turn.

Taking a typical wonder (and with the requisite resources), it would take something in the region of 11 turns to complete, say, Statue of Liberty. With the extra hammers it takes 9 turns or a saving of 2 turns.

Now my basic standpoint is that if we are particular want a particular wonder, we are likely to do far better if we lightbulb. Around the time when I might be aiming for liberalism, a GS will knock 8-12 turns of the research time for Education. By the time I might be researching the “industrial” sciences, it may only be saving 3 or 4 turns. Even later, a lightbulb may not get me much more than 1.5 turns of the research speed.

BUT…..

All of these jumps are incremental. I get Education 20 turns early so I get Oxford 20 turns earlier (well nearly). I means I get Liberalism more easily so then get another leap down the part to Industrialism (typically). In fact, rushing through these Renaissance techs is a much surer way of ramping up both research and production so that I will reach the wonder techs sooner and have a big headstart on anyone who wishes to race. In fact, I can often but a second-rate city onto a wonder build just because I am so far ahead.

There is also the other “booster” technique which is even more effective than the lightbulb. The “late-game/large-empire” Golden Age. This, in itself will probably net you an additional 5-7 turns research speed while the hammers will get you a lot more than a few settled GPs.

I suppose I should add one final pre-emptive counter to the argument that the science/gold benefits of settled GP gets you the research speed. With or without Representation, this is probably not true. A GS lightbulb can yield something in the region of 2500-4000 beakers. A settled GS will give you 31.5 beakers (Representation + all science improvements) so will need around 100 turns to recover that lost research. However, the settled GS does not get the boost that the lightbulb provides. So there is a fair chance that the tech advantage gained from the boost can be used to give a higher science than is the case for a non-settled GS. In other words, if we think of the two scenarios, Tortoise v Hare, with the steady reptile representing a settled approach then the sad news for the Tortoise is that the Hare does not simply sprint off ahead and then lie down to sleep: he rests for a while only to get up later and sprint even further ahead. In these two scenarios, the tortoise is not always catching up on the hare.

[darrelljs]

A lot of it depends on what kind of game you are playing. Lightbulbing is the best choice when you plan on an early Domination win, simply because there won't be enough turns in the game to make settling's delayed payoff worthwhile. Also, like others have mentioned lightbulbing is not just for the immediate tech, but all the other techs you leverage with trades. With a bad start or at a high difficulty level, you might have to lightbulb just to stay alive in the tech trading game. I think acid satyr's game remains the best example of the power of lightbulbing. He "wasted" GPs left and right, but his traits and playstyle devauled an individual GP to the point where he could afford to.

Darrell

[wodan11]

Couerdelion -- good analysis. One counter point is that the AIs get a research discount because we have the tech already (by lightbulbing); that's minor but somewhat significant.

Secondly, the analysis seems to be assuming that we don't ever trade techs to the AIs. Even if we don't trade the specific tech we lightbulbed, we trade other techs, which free up the AI to research the tech we lightbulbed. Net effect is that the relative tech gain of lightbulbing is only effective if we don't tech trade. And, if we don't do that while the AIs continue to trade amongst themselves, then we are denying ourselves the benefit of tech trading only to replace it with lightbulbing... which is simply an exchange of benefits.

Wodan

[Robert]

My settled scientists with representation give me:
9 beakers/turn
+ library + university + observatory + oxfort university = +175% = 21 beakers per turn

That means that after 100 turns I already got more beakers then a lightbulb would give me.
Then there are the additional +1 hammer per great scientist as well.

A typical civ game lasts about 450 turns.
Let's say that only 200 of them I can use (on avg) full 175% of those 21 beakers per specialist. That's 4x the lighbulb effect.

Now do that for 6-8 great scientists, then that means that I get 6-8 free hammers (+75% for factories, forge, electricity = 10-13 hammers.) and in addition I get 125-155 beakers per turn extra.

great Engineer:
+3 hammers per turn, that's +forge +factory +electricity + ironworks 8 hammers per turn. 3 settled engineers are 24 hammers per turn extra. That's about 2400 per 100 turns and thus 4800 for the avg 200 turns. That's 4 hurry jobs.

And in addition you get +3 beakers if you run representation.

Now there are the wonders that add extra stuff to specialists. (like culture).

It's just a lot. Maybe one settled great person doesn't do the trick, but many settled GP create super cities.
I have had capitals that generate 700 beakers per turn!

700!!! I'm sure that there are avg civ players that don't even get that out of their entire empire.

Lightbulbing a tech is worth it if you can get something very special out of it (ie. a religion), otherwise it's better to research the tech, imho.
Since I settle all my specialist I became able to beat the Emperor BtS AI.

[couerdelion]

Cybershy – You forgot the Academy (for shame).

But I also think you analysis falls down because you are not allowing for the effect of the boost that the lightbulb gives. A typical sort of game might see me get the following (I’ll throw in a few wonders to mix it up)

Oracle built and take Code of Laws for religion (Prophet points begin)
1st GP is a GS who generates an Academy in the Capital
2nd GP is a Prophet who builds the shrine
By now I’ve built the Great Library in the capital and the scene is set for Great Scientists to pop on regular occasions so

GP 3 – Scientist used to lightbulb Philosophy (convert to Pacifism)
Did I mention that I will probably have built National Epic in the capital so 27 GPP/turn without ANY specialists appointed. If I’m generating a decent number of GPP then I might as well generate some more.

If I make sure Civil Service is early on my research list then my path is nicely set. We now leave the liberalism path at Civil Service (cause our GS can do that) and research through the military/exploration/trade/gold path towards Banking

GP 4 – Lightbulb Paper.
GP 5 – Lightbulb Education (maybe 50-70%)
Hurry up with Education because this clears a space for another Scientist lightbulb while also allowing me to build OU in the capital.

So to date, I’ve used three GS to lightbulb my way to Education AND got myself more GP from the choice of civics. In this timeframe, the settled GS have only a library and academy so would now be generating just 21 beakers per turn so perhaps enough to have made up the research on Philosophy.

GP 6 – Lightbulb Printing Press (not a bad one if we are still on the Banking line of the tech tree because it will mean that we can finish this quickly and open Replaceable Parts for the Liberalism sling)

By this time, the military options will probably have led me away from Pacifism so things slow down on the GP front. Even so, they will still appear at regular enough intervals and can be used for Scientific Method, Physics, Biology when they turn up. All of these will help to further drive the science rate.

But all of these lightbulbs are designed not to generate the incremental benefits of a settled GP to one city but to hurl our civilisation rapidly into a new technological era where we will be adequately compensated for the lost benefits of the settled GS

[Robert]

The academy, how could I forget it

No, you're wrong.
I'm almost always the first to liberalism and education.
I'm on an avg of 175 gpp/turn.
Because I'm a fast researcher I can most of the time broker many techs for the leading techs I get anyway.

[darrelljs]

Originally posted by wodan11
Even if we don't trade the specific tech we lightbulbed, we trade other techs, which free up the AI to research the tech we lightbulbed. Net effect is that the relative tech gain of lightbulbing is only effective if we don't tech trade.

Hmm...I'm not sure I understand this . If I lightbulb Philosophy and trade it for Machinery and Civil Service, I've gained three techs for the price of one GS, while the AIs have gained one tech from my GS. I'm up two techs net.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Originally posted by CyberShy
My settled scientists with representation give me:
9 beakers/turn
+ library + university + observatory + oxfort university = +175% = 21 beakers per turn

That means that after 100 turns I already got more beakers then a lightbulb would give me.

Except that early in the game you aren't likely to have Representation, a University, an Observatory, or Oxford University.

Anyway, I don't think anyone is questioning the fact that given enough turns, settling generates more beakers than bulbing (although the number of turns is certainly a matter for debate). What's difficult to quantify is whether the short term advantages you gain from bulbing can be parlayed into other advantages which will more than overcome the numerical settling edge. It will come down to how you are playing a specific game, i.e. what victory condition you are shooting for, what type of economy you are running, what your traits are, etc. That's why these debates never end .

Darrell