So, what IS actually the fastest way to jumpstart research?

[Aunty Herbert]

Just comparing my own playthroughs so far with other people playthroughs, and with a lot of rumours on this forum, it seems my research game is way behind the attainable maximum.

I could justify that by telling myself and others, that I have other priorities that I want to max towards, and that wouldn't be a lie. But, while it is completely compatible with my minmaxing instincts to dismiss one, even strong, option in favor of a different goal, just dismissing it out of hand, without even a proper cost-benefit analysis feels lazy to me.

And a good research base certainly is a strong option. Unlocking more tomes gives more and more choice in what to actually do on the map, with your units, cities and resources, and it also pushes up affinities, thus giving access to all the nice fruits of the imperium tree.

So, as my obsessive nature makes me a great friend of proper and complete lists, and I don't like threads becoming spammed by one sentence posts, that just read: "Btw, <single game term> is really strong, too. You should totally try that", let's give this debate a proper head start, by listing all the research options, that I am aware of, with at least a passing remark about their opportunity costs:

#1 The Throne gives 60 Research per turn as a head start. That's just the base line research everyone gets, no costs involved.

#2 Some provinces allow building a simple Research Post, which add a meek 5 Research per turn, further modified by city stability. There usually aren't a lot of spots for those in the vicinity of a city, they could always be Conduits instead, and usually a bunch of other useful province improvements as well.
Research Posts require population and erode city stability, like any other regular province improvement, and they don't boost a whole lot of construction options.

#3 Library/Arcane Institute/Academy add a total of 10/25/45 research per city, and Scholar's Guild adds 10 more research per Research post. Building all off them costs a whole lot of gold, though, and unless the city already has a lot of production, they can clog up the construction slot for quite a time. Scholar's guild also takes up the guild slot for the city.

#4 Shadow Affinity can give a few quick shots of Knowledge in the arm early on,
-Knowledge Extraction at 50 Knowledge per hero killed, for a bargain 10 accumulated Affinity (I'll abbreviate that as accA from now on) and 50 Imperium,
-All Seing at 20 accA//75 Imperium gives 10 Research per Whispering Stone,
-Shadow Empire at 120 accA/200 Imp gives 200 Knowledge/200 Mana per conquered city (which also makes it part of degenerate, meme-y and incredibly game-y self-harming tactics)
-Rite of Forbidden Knowledge at 160 accA/250 Imp gives just flat 500 Knowlege.

The cost involved is mostly to get into Shadow early on. Shadow has probably the weakest tier 1 tome in game (Souls) and one, that builds into a specific play style, but has troubles carrying it alone early on (Cryomancy)
Shadow's society traits (Silver Tongue, Powerful Evokers, Scion's of Evil, Shadow Walkers) range from a tad bit meme-y to actually quite strong, but they all dictate a very specific playstyle each, to get the most of them.
It's certainly an option to start with Dark culture, and I don't want to dunk on it, but that naturally doesn't allow to chose the benefits of any other culture.

#5 Astral Affinity has a bunch of Research and Knowledge perks, too, but...
-Astral Inspiration at 20 accA/ 75 Imp reduces the Knowledge cost by 25%, but also adds a lot of randomness to research (the reduced spell may not be one, you are actually interested in, or it might just not show up in the research options)
-Philosopher Soldiers, which gives Knowledge for ranking up units, already comes at 120 accA 200 Imp, which is already barely an early game option, unless you are really devoted to Astral, and the accA/Imp costs for the rest of the Astral perks just put them squarely into mid and end game.
To get there, you already want a strong research engine humming, you don't start with them.

#6 A bunch of tomes add Research Posts as special province improvements, or other SPI that none the less produce Knowledge, or even city structures or city spells that generate Knowledge.
Predictably, Shadow (Cryomancy, Doomherald, Necromancy, Cold Dark) and Astral (Amplification, Summoning, Teleportation, Convergence) have a strong showing, but again, Astral has a tendency to be quite late to the Research Party with mostly high level tomes.

Order appears from nowhere, with Faith and Inquisition, and a strange indirect approach to use city stability to produce knowledge, which requires in turn more buildings dedicated to raising stability.
Order has the additional synergy, that it a) pushes up the branch that improves vassalization (see entry #7), and b) via the sales of divine Bacon recipees to vassals it has the only tome, that can push Imperium production, which in turn eases the collection of all those nice perks from the Imperium tree,.... (and building more cities, which add more spaces to put all those structures and special province improvements )

The knowledge gain for most of those buildings goes from 10 research to about 20-ish, edepending on circumstance (and ofc +10 on top for a scholar's guild)

#7 Vassals also contribute Knowledge as part of their tribute, according to their allegiance status.

#8 Especially in early game, there are unguarded or lightly guarded stashes of knowledge on the map, and Mystic Culture gets additional Astral Echoes to pick up. And once Mystic has collected enough of them, they get another really powerful city structure for their Throne city.

(#9 It isn't directly knowledge production, but eases the production of cities which can produce knowledge a lot, so my current prime suspect of being an actually overpowered game feature, the trait Adept Settlers, just has to be mentioned)

So, a) I hope I got all of the essential knowledge sources listed
b) I assume most of what I am still missing is somewhere in the huge and complicated section #6: stuff you get from tomes.
c) a whole lotta knowlege comes from building up cities, city structure and province improvements. The unsolved puzzle for me is, how much prep work do I have put into preparing additional cities or vassals and production and even gold income within those citys before I launch into actual Knowledge production.

There has to be an actual soft spot between pushing too hard into production first, but risking a late start, and ignoring the prep work to get things going earlier at the cost of slow overall progress.
And, there is an additional caveat, that has been mentioned on this forum several times before: At some time, you have just researched everything, that you actually want to use in your game. After that point, every additional research result just turns into another annoying system message, that you have to click away, and all the research infrastructure you built up essentially becomes worthless all at once.

[Tuidjy]

I do not push research particularly hard. Hell, in half my games I do not even try to get the higher tier tomes as soon as possible - I prefer to get the enchantments that help me roll over my enemies, and expand my Empire - quantity has a quality all of its own.

I am not sure how I rank compared to the average player, but i have had 11 city Empires by turn 60-70. That's a lot of research from basic buildings. As for the Early game, when I tried for Magic Victory, I build my Seed before turn 30. That was achieved through heavily discounted and RNG guided research (30% here, 60% there)

But I try to pick low hanging research sources. Some magic resources, when worked by an outpost give +10 research, +15 with the research post attached to the outpost.

Similarly, you can clear and annex Ancient Wonders, even Early game. Those sometimes come with +25 research, or even with bonuses for the city that annexes them.

Heroes in your jail can produce some research, especially if you build the necessary buildings, although those may be available only to the Dark factions.

And of course, research scales with city happiness. Depending on culture, this can be low hanging fruit even Early game.

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Sorry if my input pales compared to the treatise you offered. You solidly covered most basics, while I just offered how I play. Once again, I do not obsess over research. Early game is carried by my custom strengths. Few factions live and die by research.

[rumpelstiltskin]

cosmoflux elixir magic materials collection (+10 research, +10 mana per mana node) and farming enemy heroes with a shadow perk are great. heroes are 50 per level currently, but they are going to nerf it to 150 per hero.

[Aunty Herbert]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

Sorry if my input pales compared to the treatise you offered. You solidly covered most basics, while I just offered how I play. Once again, I do not obsess over research. Early game is carried by my custom strengths. Few factions live and die by research.

I am actually glad to get feedback. My nightmare was going to work (which I should do in the next half an hour or so), and then coming back and finding, that everyone just fell asleep before getting through my wall of text, and nobody answered at all, except to troll me.

[Aunty Herbert]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

Some magic resources, .... Ancient Wonders,

Originally posted by rumpelstiltskin:

cosmoflux elixir magic materials collection (+10 research, +10 mana per mana node)

See, there is one important aspect of research, that I actually missed. Which is especially interesting, as it adds a whole new lair of depth: scouting and hunting for specific outposts and materials plus quite a bit of trading and outpost placement.

[dbemont]

Maybe it's just me, but in my experience, the best way to get way ahead on research is prioritize other things first.

Win the land grab for city sites around magical materials and mana nodes, clear the enemy stacks around your young cities, and each will contribute in a big way to research by mid-game, no special angles required.

But prioritize research early, and you will lack the gold and mana and such required for the armies to make that come to pass.

In a game like Civ, technological advantage plays a big part in the initial land grab -- it happens more slowly while game changing tech advantages are being learned. Here, not nearly as much. A cheap summon spell like Summon Wild Animal and a cheap tactical spell like Mark as Prey will see you through most of the land grab.

Don't get me wrong, by mid-game, I agree that research is king. It just doesn't seem to be best acquired with early speed.

[CrUsHeR]

Did you read that thread about research heavy playstyle?
I posted 2 builds, feudal and high starting with Faith.

Faith because you get the Abbey which gives research from adjacent farms, and the farms let the cities grow decently fast. So a single abbey with 3 adjacent farms gives 19 research (before stability) just like that.

If you play High, you get the Sunshrine which gives another 10 plus 3 per adjacent research post, and the Abbey is a research post without needing a special node. So if possible squeeze it next to a mana / magic material node.

Feudal gets the Levy Camp instead which gives even more food, and counts as a farm for purposes of boosting the abbey (if necessary). In that method your cities simply grow faster and annex other provinces earlier, giving the "boost" for buildings and simply more provinces to work with.

Champion ruler can bridge the stability penalty from fast growth, and with Adept Settlers you bomb the map with vassals near any mana and magic resource nodes.


Edit: Here are two examples, not even really optimized.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2982626502
This one uses Evocation as first pick for the damage, then switches to Faith for 2nd tome. Evokers, Fulmination and Lightning Weapons work pretty well with Feudal to clear the area. Also T1 shock unit and lightning torrent.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2982626393
And this one has Desert Adaptation unnecessarily. From then on you'd just pick everything you want/need for the supercharged Dusk Hunters.


So the core is to get Adept Settlers, and i use Chosen Uniters for the vassal bonus and Order affinity. Feudal / High vassals produce quite a lot of taxes, and you'll be getting the Order affinity perk for +10 vassal gold too ASAP.

Wether you start with Tome of Faith isn't all that important since it takes some times to found 3 owned cities and a bunch of vassals, and have them grow until the central upgrade for special improvements.

[snuggleform]

To the OP first I want to say congratulations, you did a heck of a lot of homework so to speak. I don't really have too much to add, just a couple thoughts. I'm not on the bleeding edge like Crusher who can claim stuff like 1000 research income by turn 49, but I think I do OK. Here are some thoughts

- don't worry about going into any particular imperium branch for research. You can do fine without strong-arming Shadow or Astral. In fact they are nerfing one of Shadow's reserch bonuses in the next patch. In fact my favorite build now just goes more or less all in on materium because I just really love the cohesiveness of the whole branch from the early boosts to city income to the late game astounding world regeneration perks, I love how the tomes naturally go with zephyr archers.

- most of my research points just come from city structures. I wouldn't beeline towards them, but just try to weave in a cheap library shortly after your first couple structures. The first couple ones tend to be workshop and vendor. It should only take 3 turns or so with a workshop in place. You could consider annexing a forester to boost the library, but I get by fine without doing that. And any time I feel like gold is not a pressing issue, research gets a priority.

- the remainder of my research comes from a point which I want to make. You sort of vaguely hit on it, but strangely I don't see it in your admittedly impressive list, which is.... go out and conquer other cities. You indirectly mention this by stating vassals, but you don't really get into how do you get vassals. IMO a healthy style of play is to try to go bully and capture your neighbor's ♥♥♥♥ fairly early after you bulk up to about 2 full stacks and get to roughly level 5. And you could easily be more aggressive than that if you put your mind to it. There are certainly other ways to go about getting vassals, and in fact that's how Crusher does it with his colonize/release method which I personally as a bit...exploitative and reliant on being a Far distance map, but anyways the point I'm really trying to make is don't be so passive about getting vassals. Don't just hope to plop a whispering stone on some cities your scouts found and expect to get good research like that. Either go out and be a hunter and hunt your neighboring allies, or just go ahead and participate in the meta that Crusher hit on which is settle + release to lean into vassals.

[glamour]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

I do not push research particularly hard. Hell, in half my games I do not even try to get the higher tier tomes as soon as possible - I prefer to get the enchantments that help me roll over my enemies, and expand my Empire - quantity has a quality all of its own.

I am not sure how I rank compared to the average player, but i have had 11 city Empires by turn 60-70. That's a lot of research from basic buildings. As for the Early game, when I tried for Magic Victory, I build my Seed before turn 30. That was achieved through heavily discounted and RNG guided research (30% here, 60% there)

But I try to pick low hanging research sources. Some magic resources, when worked by an outpost give +10 research, +15 with the research post attached to the outpost.

Similarly, you can clear and annex Ancient Wonders, even Early game. Those sometimes come with +25 research, or even with bonuses for the city that annexes them.

Heroes in your jail can produce some research, especially if you build the necessary buildings, although those may be available only to the Dark factions.

And of course, research scales with city happiness. Depending on culture, this can be low hanging fruit even Early game.

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Sorry if my input pales compared to the treatise you offered. You solidly covered most basics, while I just offered how I play. Once again, I do not obsess over research. Early game is carried by my custom strengths. Few factions live and die by research.

11 major cities? that doesnt include ur province? how did u get that many city caps?

[yuzhonglu]

Get as much Astral affinity as possible and spam cities which you release as vassal. The vassal cities take over the magic material nearby. Then you get the Astral affinity trait that gives 15 research per magic material.

[Motherball]

For some reason research is the one currency I never feel I have to work at. Maybe because it is never actually spent, just accumulated. With gold and mana, I feel I have to constantly reflect and balance my choices, because without them, it’s not really possible to function at all.

But with research, I can still play the game even if I’m behind. I have to actively work at increasing gold and mana, but research seems to sort itself out with a few provinces and structures. I’ve yet to be near turn 70 with anything less than 150-200 research per turn with minimal effort. By turn 100 I’m getting new tomes every fourth or fifth turn.

[Seswatha]

It depends on how exploit-y you want to get.

1. Full exploit mode (will be nerfed next patch)
Go Dark with Adept Settlers and Scions of Evil (High is also an option)

Settle and release 4-5 vassals, kill them every turn for Knowledge Extraction bonus + eventually get to Stolen Power or alternatively Benevolent Conquerors. With the latter, you can kill a vassal as many times as you have movement points, e.g. 100 times per turn. Sell hero corpses and items for gold, Knowledge Extraction gives research, Stolen power gives more research and mana.

Tome of Souls in NOT weak btw, just don't start with it if you want to autocombat and don't research the spells, at least early on (Soulfire never). Use it to spam armies of Skeletons 10 souls a pop for nearly nothing.

2. Lite exploit mode, still gonna work next patch, needs lots of space and passive enemies
Go whatever with Adept Settlers and Silver tongue, get your base cities, then spam and release vassals getting free trade deals with them

3. Honest tryhard mode (might be the next OP thing if Adaptive Research is fixed cause -80% research building cost with boosting)
Tbh I don't know what the fastest build here is but it's possibly a combo of Astral and Shadow, culture is ???, Industrial is actually very good for fast Prospecting start, High may be good with Neutral Agenda since you want to go high stability and convents early game and they get an extra unique research post, which is a big deal.

Good traits are Adept Settlers, Imperialists (specifically for High, shame can't combo with Settlers), Ancient Wise Ones, Great Builers (fast special research post construction), Wonder Architects (just all around goog), Runesmiths (???)

Go grab all of most of special research posts (Shadow tomes) and rush Scholar Guilds. Get some Astral affinity for -25% random tech cost, it does help a lot.
Smth like Faith, Cryo, Amplification, Doomherald, Cold Dark, Teleportation (?) and the last 3 shadow with the Seed of Shadow for -20% Shadow tech cost (seed is important to build at t3 ASAP for any fast tech strategy unless you're trying to hide the fact that you're ahead in tech in MP, together with Astral empire perk you have -45% cost techs, free techs with Ancient Wise Ones?).

Improvement wise you mostly want to spam (special) research posts and quarries to build stuff faster, but get the boosts for the buildings you want with farms and forresters and replace them with quarries or research posts later. You also need like conduits, and they often buff each other when combined with research posts. Great Builders saves tons of prod on special improvements and provides you with some gold from quarries, so I rate it higher than it might look like initially here.

Backteching t1 Astral tomes may be viable, they're cheap and will get you faster to the important perks of the Astral tree you'll never get otherwise, such as Ingredient experimentation (grab every magic resource you can, an later there's a ritual to spam some more).

Going Astral heavy first and Mystic is also an option and Mystic Astral/Shadow build is actually something I've played in practice. You get most of the unique research posts plus Astral research perks early, and quite a bit of mana. If you're playing WK and power level your ruler you can just delete enemy stacks invading you by spamming Blizzard and Lightning Torrent (store 1 cast of each ahead). MP viable.

E.g. Evocation, Cryo, Doomherald, Amplification, Cold Dark, Teleportation (?), remaining Shadow or Astral tomes depending the way you decided to go. Backtech Faith at some point, it most likely will pay off if you take it not super later.

One strat I haven't tried but may be quite good with Astral is going Transmutation on t3 and using conversion of your mana income to build up your cities super fast (turn off later). So long as you also have conduits.

All of the above can be combined with "exploity" strats, though the vassal farming one does not need it, you can produce 0 research from cities and still tech everything instantly.

[Unrealtairo]

This topic is just like managing real life money honestly

Its not about how much R you’re making its about what youre doing with it. And keep your city cap at its cap, immediately when starting. Get 3 cities before turn 10-15 is ideal.

Are you staying focused on raising just one unit type to its max first?
Or, are you picking spells and tomes like a spinning monkey in the zoo making your effective spending on R kinda useless.

If you’re spending R on a ranged, then also on tank units, well youre already behind now, and if youre doing something like ranged, a tank, support and town spells, aka spinning monkey in a zoo spending, then youre definitely going to get your A handed to you.

Even with just a little R, keep all researched focused into one thing and youll be fine. Obviously this changes late game, or easier than on brutal difficulty, but the point still mostly stands. Dont spread your Research all different kinds of ways so early, and maybe not even midgame depending the situation

[Aimstrong]

Farming enemy heroes + Knowledge Extraction (Shadow Affinity) = 50 knowledge per hero lvl. In a run I kill/capture ~100 heroes of different lvls.
This is OP and it's going to be patched next patch so use it while you can.

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by Glamour:

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

I am ... i have had 11 city Empires by turn 60-70.

11 major cities? that doesnt include ur province? how did u get that many city caps?

I am not sure what you mean by 'major' cities. Some were big, some were still small. Let me see if I have a save....

Yeah, turn 70, 11 cities, 6 vassals, and 2 cities being vassalized.[i.imgur.com]
(I'm green, obviously)

Where do I get the cap? There is a repeatable Empire skill, with a cost that grows with use. In this particular run, the Imperium came from celebrations after defeating enemy Empires, the right choices after clearing Wonders, and from some quest/events.

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More in keeping with the theme of the thread, you can see from the screenshot that at turn 70, I am pulling 1337 research per turn. I never focused on it, but with an Empire of this size, it adds up.

[Tuidjy]

Heh. I just realized that the screenshot above does not show the turn, and could be from turn 150 for all you know.

Here[i.imgur.com] is a screenshot from the same save, showing my throne city.