How to maximize science production?

[ZenFlakes56]

I feel as if I fully learned the game however I still lack behind in science most games, any good tips to help maximize science?

[grognardgary]

Cities and science districts properly placed for opener owe and lots of both.

[Aimee]

Population determines your science output. This means more and bigger cities give you more science, not just campus districts.
Make sure to get your population to 10+ in every city, and build a decent amount of them.

City states can give good science as well if you have enough envoys in them, if you get a trade route to a city state that is science focused that trade route gives another boost in science.

Other than that, there are many many ways to get science. Some in larger amounts than others. Take a look here;
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Science_(Civ6)

[SLG]

It also depends on who you play. Hammurabi is good to get 100% on technology when you get an euruka. You do need to build scientific wonders and campus districts.

[Cryten]

You want to build science and production districts until the mid game. And then pump science projects for the final 3rd when you do not need to build your economy. Also trying to pump for the synergistic great scientists can help a great deal. Settling near mountains, reefs and that science geyser tile can help get good science adjacency, if you have good adjacency you can get a good amount of science from the double adjacency card.

[bwhitejr]

Originally posted by ZenFlakes56:

I feel as if I fully learned the game however I still lack behind in science most games, any good tips to help maximize science?

Easy. Focus on campuses, build all the buildings in them as soon as you can, learn what policies cards and district adjacencies boost science, focus on scientific great people, and focus your government for boosting science, Communism is your government of choice for a space victory.
Science victory is, I think, the easiest win in the game, I can get it with any civ. Some civs, like Korea, can be tough to race with, but it's doable. And, if you play for world peace, it's a lot easier.
Get the mod Detailed Map tacks. It will show you how much science a tile will yield including adjacent districts and features (you can use other tacks,and it will calculate with those), and when you hover over the campus when placing it, it will show you what bonuses you can get from other districts and features.
The best thing about a science win, is you don't have to invade other players. You don't have to capture cities or convert them. You just make as much science as you can, and sprint towards the spaceports and start researching the space race missions. I play wide when I go for science, settle as much as I can, so get as many campuses generating science, and later, building a bunch of spaceports and protect them with spies to spam out the final laser launches. i just did that with Suleiman tonight - being sick on NYE, woo.

[plaguepenguin]

Others have already mentioned the ways you get more research point income, and those are clearly important. But the other side of the equation that determines how fast and effectively you climb the tech tree is how many research points the game charges you for the techs you unlock.

The obvious way to make techs cheaper is to get eurekas more consistently. Some of the eurekas you get almost automatically in the course of just about any sort of play, and some of them require you to go so far out of your way that it's not worth the discount -- so it's not as if they are a straight across the board 40%. There is a broad middle between those two extremes that lets you get more bang for your buck, but it requires careful balancing of the cost and timing of individual eurekas vs the benefit in terms of research points saved.

A bit less obvious is that there is an era discount in the cost in research points of a tech if you research it in a later era, and a premium if you beeline to research it before its era.

This certainly doesn't mean that you should never beeline ahead of the present era because you want to economize on research points, it just means you should avoid such beelining unless it serves a purpose that will compensate for the value of the extra research points. No point beelining iron-working while still in the ancient era to unlock swordsmen unless you have both the means (enough iron) and the intention to do a swordsman rush on your hapless neighbor and his pathetic warriors, but if you can pull off a swordsman rush, conquering that hapless neighbor is well worth paying a research point premium.

Similarly, you should put off researching any tech you don't need right now until you have passed to the next era, in order to benefit from the discount. Of course, the fact that techs are arranged in a tree that creates prerequisites for later techs limits your ability to delay researching a tech. Needing a tech right now of course includes needing it just to get the next tech, however little you need that first tech right now, or ever, for that matter.

[Maya-Neko]

Keep in mind, that districts doesn't just add yield to the city itself, but also allow citizens to work in these tiles for some extra yield. Though you've to obviously balance that properly, without limiting the growth of your city.

Also next to science you should also focus cultural, industrial and commercial districts.
- Culture, because it allows you to go through the culture tree faster, so you can reach the more valuable policy cards more easily (especially the one, which raises your science output based on your envoys, which you've send out so far).
- Money because it allows you to just buy some of the science buildings and especially helping newer cities to get those new campusses running
- And industrial districts mainly for electricity and more production on one hand, so that your spaceports produce their things faster, but on the other hand for great engineers as well, so that you can launch spaceport projects faster later on.

And obviously focus heavily on getting all the Eurekas. That's 40% science you're saving on each tech.

[ZenFlakes56]

MY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HEAD HURTS

[Aimee]

Originally posted by ZenFlakes56:

MY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HEAD HURTS

Take an aspirin.

[Exemplar]

Many times when an opponent seems to be rocketing up science early it is because they are doing campus research grant projects. You can do that, too, but in the long run spending that time smartly on other manner of infrastructure will keep you in a healthier position. Jockeying science is fun, but there are handicaps built into the game wherein techs behind or equal to the current world age require fewer "points", so unless the opponent knows exactly what they're aiming for and using it in an immediate fashion it is not difficult to effectively defend while you build other momentum.