has anyone investigated a research heavy style of play?

[snuggleform]

Specifically with regards to cultural traits and culture, does anyone have insight into how to do a research focused build? I have experimented a lot with other stuff like rally of lieges, prolific swarmers, chosen destroyers, so on and on but one thing I never really got into is a super heavy research build.

My hypothesis is that you really want to get a lot of cities for this because a lot of research comes from city structures, but also owning magic materials and leaning into using the Astral empire research to farm more benefits from it.

So potentially I could see something like expert settlers + ancient wise ones being a good setup, perhaps with Dark just to not have to deal with happiness but also to use a lot of their special research structures.

Thoughts?

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

has anyone investigated a research heavy style of play?
Specifically with regards to cultural traits and culture, does anyone have insight into how to do a research focused build? I have experimented a lot with other stuff like rally of lieges, prolific swarmers, chosen destroyers, so on and on but one thing I never really got into is a super heavy research build.

My hypothesis is that you really want to get a lot of cities for this because a lot of research comes from city structures, but also owning magic materials and leaning into using the Astral empire research to farm more benefits from it.

So potentially I could see something like expert settlers + ancient wise ones being a good setup, perhaps with Dark just to not have to deal with happiness but also to use a lot of their special research structures.

Thoughts?

That is one way to do it. I personally think the game is currently lacking incentives, beyond the Magic Victory, to play a research focused build. And no matter what, you end up in combat sooner and later. That is why I personally prefer the research through combat method where you utilise the imperium perks boni which give you extra points for killing stuff and unit rank ups. Especially the latter feels comfortable in combination with other boni which gives auto-rank-ups.

But then ~ by the end of the day it still rather brings one back to Magic Victory, so you end up playing defensive/offensive which feel less "research-like".

In theory, I would say, a heavy research build would work great with chosen uniters and perfect artisans while putting the initial focus on Shadow/Astral before having some Chaos/Nature. It could work since some research boni are great multipliers, but you would still need a good economy to support the research while also keeping up a defense. So yeah, it is easier to lose the focus on that when it is just offense/defense again.

[CrUsHeR]

Yes, with like 1000 research by turn 49 and T5 tome completed, done that this weekend

Feudal and High are probably best for this, with some kind of vassal city spam on a massive/grand map.

May seem weird, but if you look at this:

- Mystic only has mana buildings, and really needs more conduits wherever possible
- Dark is constantly broke, needs to defeat heroes and take cities for the Shadow bonuses
- Industriuous also has 0 research-related buildings and super slow army (you have to play all battles yourself and it is super-boring)
- Barb isn't research specialist either, but probably can be made working


These are two builds i recently played


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2982626393
High


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2982626502
Feudal


The High version was more about fun with the Desert Adaptation. Don't do that because vassals are bugged and only build Huts on desert terrain.

First off, why Faith? Because you get the Abbey, which gets research from adjacent farms. So all you need is 1 abbey with a couple of farms to get like 50% more research from cities which also grow super-fast.
Additionally you get Whispers of Faith for very fast vassal relations, and diplomatic focus for +1 whispering stone.


Secondly, why Feudal or High? Feudal gets a huge 20% damage bonus for all units, which is much better for e.g. Evokers or whatever you want to use. While High can utilize armies of only Dusk Hunters. Nothing of this costs any gold or mana.
I'd personally lean towards Feudal because they get even more food from the Levy Camp, their basic units are powerful and stress-free and support any tome units very well.



So you quickly set up your three own expansion cities. Then you run across the map, plop down a city near any magic materials, mana node etc. and release them as vassal.
Don't forget to annex all possible nodes as research posts before releasing.

With Adept Settlers, you only pay 150 Imperium per founded city, but you get 100 back when you release them as vassal. Means you pay an average turn worth of imperium, and 25 gold.

Also take the Order perks, like +10 gold per vassal and such are no-brainers. Won't be long until you earn 300g+ alone from your vassals, and proportionate research.

[Seswatha]

Well, the vassal farming build takes the cake here atm, but it's definitely very cheesy/exploity (release vassals and kill them with knowledge extraction and later stolen power every turn or benevolent conquerors for as many times per turn as you have move points, basically).

Shadow even without exploits is pretty good, your governors give +2 research per affinity point, can be doubled with temple of the exalted if you go Shadow/Order but tbh bit too late for that.

But even just with that 10 shadow affinity = 20 research per city.

Going Dark culture wise also has its perks, you have some extra research buildings and can use stuff like Amplified Minds without drawbacks.

But High may be potentially better, you get a unique research post and if you stick to Neutral and maxing stability you're going to get a lot of mileage from Convents for research and Neutral Agenda to just build stuff up faster.

Mystic ain't bad either if you go scout heavy and grab enough Astral Echoes pickups. Astral affinity also has a lot of perks that help research.

[Ichthyic]

high research development is good if you plan to use a LOT of unit enchantments. like say, you are going for a tier one uber archer build. the more unit enchants, the better, and there are a LOT of good low level enchants you can cast on your archers, all across different spell schools. so it's a kind of zerg, but with science! I'm doing it right as I write this, and my tier 1 archers have 9 range and over 90 damage per combat turn. I pair that with animal kinship and summon wild animal and I have cheap, endlessly spammable, powerful teams of units all over the map in less than 2 weeks.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by Ichthyic:

high research development is good if you plan to use a LOT of unit enchantments. like say, you are going for a tier one uber archer build. the more unit enchants, the better, and there are a LOT of good low level enchants you can cast on your archers, all across different spell schools. so it's a kind of zerg, but with science! I'm doing it right as I write this, and my tier 1 archers have 9 range and over 90 damage per combat turn. I pair that with animal kinship and summon wild animal and I have cheap, endlessly spammable, powerful teams of units all over the map in less than 2 weeks.

What do you mean as less than 2 weeks? I don't think it is possible on turn 13.

[Ichthyic]

all level 1 spells.

ok, that's just for the archers, and only to 7 range instead of 9, but you're pretty well settled by two weeks. at the end of a month, you've easily added the rest.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Shadow even without exploits is pretty good, your governors give +2 research per affinity point, can be doubled with temple of the exalted if you go Shadow/Order but tbh bit too late for that.

But even just with that 10 shadow affinity = 20 research per city.

Going Dark culture wise also has its perks, you have some extra research buildings and can use stuff like Amplified Minds without drawbacks.

Well i just tried a build with vassal spam + dark, basically doing the same as with the high/feudal builds above.


Played until turn 90:

Total research - 1500

6 owned cities

~15 or so vassal cities, all having 8+ pops minimum


All my vassals produced were 66 gold, 120 mana, 180 research.

This is total crap and shows how poor the Dark economy really is.

[Wlerin]

I'd probably go with Runesmiths + Ancient Wise Ones. Runesmiths is already a huge economic buff if you're using a lot of enchantments, and why wouldn't you be with a research focused build. But it also reduces the cost of researching those enchantments by 30%. Add that to the random -60% from Ancient Wise Ones, and the -25% to a random research skill from Astral Perk 2, and you'll be flying through the Tomes.

As far as the culture? The two main affinity trees you'll need to pursue are Astral and Shadow, and Shadow you only need to get up to Stolen Power (Perk 6). Astral... you do kinda need Perk 10. Or at least it will help. So, Mystics are an obviously strong choice here. Mana and Research production go well together. You can build Research Posts on Mana Nodes, and once you get Cosmoflux Elixir those nodes will produce +10 more of each. So, get as many of those as you can. Then Altar of the All-Seers gives mana and research income based on how many astral echoes you found. And Mystic culture is pretty strong all around.

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Shadow even without exploits is pretty good, your governors give +2 research per affinity point, can be doubled with temple of the exalted if you go Shadow/Order but tbh bit too late for that.

But even just with that 10 shadow affinity = 20 research per city.

Going Dark culture wise also has its perks, you have some extra research buildings and can use stuff like Amplified Minds without drawbacks.

Well i just tried a build with vassal spam + dark, basically doing the same as with the high/feudal builds above.


Played until turn 90:

Total research - 1500

6 owned cities

~15 or so vassal cities, all having 8+ pops minimum


All my vassals produced were 66 gold, 120 mana, 180 research.

This is total crap and shows how poor the Dark economy really is.

Honestly I'm not sure how you play for 90 turns and not win the game. I haven't attempted a vassal build with Shadow, maybe Ai doesn't know how to build cities with them or smth, the only vassal build I did with them was the stolen power farming one.

But with a standard Adept Settlers eco build without exploits you can do pretty decent magic win times with them (I did sub 60 and it could've been optimised more).

Originally posted by Wlerin:

I'd probably go with Runesmiths + Ancient Wise Ones. Runesmiths is already a huge economic buff if you're using a lot of enchantments, and why wouldn't you be with a research focused build. But it also reduces the cost of researching those enchantments by 30%. Add that to the random -60% from Ancient Wise Ones, and the -25% to a random research skill from Astral Perk 2, and you'll be flying through the Tomes.

As far as the culture? The two main affinity trees you'll need to pursue are Astral and Shadow, and Shadow you only need to get up to Stolen Power (Perk 6). Astral... you do kinda need Perk 10. Or at least it will help. So, Mystics are an obviously strong choice here. Mana and Research production go well together. You can build Research Posts on Mana Nodes, and once you get Cosmoflux Elixir those nodes will produce +10 more of each. So, get as many of those as you can. Then Altar of the All-Seers gives mana and research income based on how many astral echoes you found. And Mystic culture is pretty strong all around.

I think Adept Settlers will give you more extra research than the price reductions of Runesmiths or Ancient Wise Ones. One of these could be a decent 2nd pick though (Ancient Wise Ones, most likely, but if you want better armies Runesmiths can be ok, I guess). I like Great Builders or Wonder Architects as well just for pumping out research posts and buildings faster.

Adept Settlers + Wonder Architects is just an all around solid eco start no matter what you want to do next.

[snuggleform]

When you guys do adept settler builds, how do you do it well on standard distance maps? I tried spamming cities in a standard distance map and man you just running into all kinds of rulers all the time, no space to "spam" cities.

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

When you guys do adept settler builds, how do you do it well on standard distance maps? I tried spamming cities in a standard distance map and man you just running into all kinds of rulers all the time, no space to "spam" cities.

I place my cities pretty close, I guess. I rarely grow them to more than 12 pop before I win. Also define "spamming". Standard Adept Settlers build is 5 cities, you can do 4 if the map is really bad or 6 if you get a good chunk of imperium from a wonder.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Originally posted by snuggleform:

When you guys do adept settler builds, how do you do it well on standard distance maps? I tried spamming cities in a standard distance map and man you just running into all kinds of rulers all the time, no space to "spam" cities.

I place my cities pretty close, I guess. I rarely grow them to more than 12 pop before I win. Also define "spamming". Standard Adept Settlers build is 5 cities, you can do 4 if the map is really bad or 6 if you get a good chunk of imperium from a wonder.

"spamming" to me loosely refers to this style of play I've seen promoted a lot recently where you just plop down cities anywhere you can and release them as vassals, where the end result is something like 1k research income by turn 50.

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

Originally posted by Seswatha:

I place my cities pretty close, I guess. I rarely grow them to more than 12 pop before I win. Also define "spamming". Standard Adept Settlers build is 5 cities, you can do 4 if the map is really bad or 6 if you get a good chunk of imperium from a wonder.

"spamming" to me loosely refers to this style of play I've seen promoted a lot recently where you just plop down cities anywhere you can and release them as vassals, where the end result is something like 1k research income by turn 50.

Ah, that's not the only way to go about it and in many cases not the best way.

1000+ research you can also make with just 5 cities no probs, just go for research posts & Scholar Guilds + max stability, High culture with Convents and eventually Tome of Paradise most likely.

[CrUsHeR]

Honestly I'm not sure how you play for 90 turns and not win the game. I haven't attempted a vassal build with Shadow, maybe Ai doesn't know how to build cities with them or smth, the only vassal build I did with them was the stolen power farming one.

That isn't the question of "how2win the game"

The topic is about making an efficient research-heavy build, and i've demonstrated this with the Feudal / High builds above.

Now i've done the same with a Dark build using Adept Settlers, and the numbers show how twice as many vassals only contributed 10% of my total research, after almost twice as many turns. And almost nothing in gold, which is what you lack the most with Dark economy.

So in fact i would have been just the same without the hassle of building all those vassal towns.

[CrUsHeR]

Another thing to add, it really isn't fun to push so much research.

Yes you want to unlock to quickly, but then you get into this death spiral. The game doesn't stop asking you for new tomes, and with 1-2k research you can complete one tome in 1-2 turns.

There is no reason to stop researching, but there's some kind of memory leak in the process of rolling new research topics. So the game just lags after every completed topic, and your spellbook eventually has every single spell.

And after you have all the stuff you actually need, research production is just dead weight in this game. No idea why they replaced the repeatable Planetfall research with this everyone-has-everything tome system. It's just BS