Back in Civ II, the only reason I would get future techs was to maximise the score while I go for a space race victory. I'd build the ship and during its voyage crank up the science to build up a strong number of future techs. Then the turn before the ship lands near Alpha Centauri, I would then divert all funds into luxury, and get my engineers to build a heap of size 1 cities.
But the future tech part only really worked when you had to wait for your ship to land at its destination before you win the Space Race victory. In Civ III, as soon as you build the last component of your ship, you simply launch. Game over. It won't work then as you don't need every technology of the modern era to work on the components of the ship. Space Race victories don't give you enough of a score unless you have some future techs to go on the side. Since Civ III doesn't give you the time to actually get to the point where you work on future techs while waiting for your space race victory, future techs and space race have both become redundant.
If you play to score, your best bet is complete conquest of all enemies. You'll need to turn off Space Race, Diplomatic, Domination and Cultural victories though. And by that time, you won't have reached future tech yet (I got my modern armour just as I was sweeping through the last rival civ on the planet, so it didn't have much use to me). Sometimes, conquest is achievable before even the industrial age begins (one game as the Germans, I'd finished off the last enemy on the same turn I reached the Industrial age. Not much use for the free Nationalism tech I got then).
The way the game turned out on store shelves and amazon.com, future tech really is pointless. I hope that upcoming patches might do something to fix this (such as increase the amount of points a future tech adds to the score, make space ship components more expensive, etc.)
But the future tech part only really worked when you had to wait for your ship to land at its destination before you win the Space Race victory. In Civ III, as soon as you build the last component of your ship, you simply launch. Game over. It won't work then as you don't need every technology of the modern era to work on the components of the ship. Space Race victories don't give you enough of a score unless you have some future techs to go on the side. Since Civ III doesn't give you the time to actually get to the point where you work on future techs while waiting for your space race victory, future techs and space race have both become redundant.
If you play to score, your best bet is complete conquest of all enemies. You'll need to turn off Space Race, Diplomatic, Domination and Cultural victories though. And by that time, you won't have reached future tech yet (I got my modern armour just as I was sweeping through the last rival civ on the planet, so it didn't have much use to me). Sometimes, conquest is achievable before even the industrial age begins (one game as the Germans, I'd finished off the last enemy on the same turn I reached the Industrial age. Not much use for the free Nationalism tech I got then).
The way the game turned out on store shelves and amazon.com, future tech really is pointless. I hope that upcoming patches might do something to fix this (such as increase the amount of points a future tech adds to the score, make space ship components more expensive, etc.)
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