Vaulters science focus, but how?

[Hebereke]

I'm picking vaulters for this example
they are supposed to be very good (or the best, I think) on science.
I've seen some "guides" telling to build your first city on tundra
how are you supposed to grow that city without a decent amount of food? isn't it better to make a science focused city after the first ones?

thanks!

[Khardinal]

Vaulters science advantage comes more from their boosters and buildings.
The +1 on tiles is nice but I would not go out of my way to get it in my first city.

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If you worry about the food:

First four levels of a city grow quite easy on all areas.

If later on in game a city should come to a halt, you can always boost it with stock piles.
Best to research the techs before buying piles from the market.

Also no shame in assigning workers to food.

Heroes with food boost can help out also.

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If you really want to go nuts on science, Ardent Mages dwarf anything else.
Give their main quest priority, plan your city so your pillars hit most of the tiles.
You could get 35000 science per turn in your city around turn 100 without much effort or luck.

Edit: I had a game with Ardent Mages where my ERA VI techs finished in 4 turns.

[Hebereke]

well I usually put workers on food when starting a city until I have 10 or so workers (I'm still a newbie, so I don't know if this is the best idea), changing them between influence, industry, or dust if I have the need to do so for a turn or two.

also I don't usually use stockpiles since I'm using my resources on other stuff.

so you aren't supposed to put all your workers on science on your cities?

[Gilmoy]

Depends on your overall plan/strategy, how many other cities you have, governor accessory bonuses, etc.

In the mainline strategy (all factions can use it), I find that I shift pop around for many reasons.

- Empire plan tiers are game-changers, so you plan your entire 20-turn chunk to earn enough influence to afford your next plan. Sometimes this means all pop into influence for ~6 turns before a multiple of 20 turns for the next plan.

- If you're building in a hurry (esp. racing for a legendary building, or building enough new troops to fill out 2 groups of 6), all pop into industry.

- I usually game the breakpoints, i.e. start by dumping everybody into dust, then move them one by one into food/ind/sci and see exactly where the breakpoints are.

- Your capital city will usually (of necessity) be a jack-of-all-trades. After you get 2-5 cities, you can afford to specialize a couple of them. In particular, some techs and accessories give +ind or +sci per pop, and so they work only if you expect to actually leave all pop there. If you plan to follow another strategy that will require all pop elsewhere, then skip those techs.

Faction-specific play styles supercede this. Cultists live on using influence to convert villages, so they soon send all pop into influence ASAP (and then shift a few over to industry et al. to hit the next breakpoint).

The buyout economy strategy changes much of this. All factions can get Era II Prisoners, Slaves and Volunteers and economy empire plan tier 2, after which it becomes cheaper (in pop-turns of work) to just buy out most things. So you put almost everybody into dust, and go on shopping sprees. Broken Lords are best at this because they don't use food, and other factions can't buy their way around low food (except by using stockpiles, which requires two techs and a more reliable way to create stockpiles than waiting for the marketplace), but all factions can do it.

Oddly, most of these strategies agree: I almost never have a city with all pop in science. Sometimes it does make sense, e.g. I capture a city that already has the +4 sci/pop unique building, and I have so many other cities that I basically don't care how fast they grow. Then I might go all-out science for that city only: hire an Ardent Mage governor (Vaulters/Mezari would be good, too) and equip the +2 sci/pop titanium ring, activate food and industry stockpiles in that city to grow more pop and build more science improvements. A similar gambit works for an all-industry city with Canal Locks.

The essential problem of an all-science city is that it gets stranded in build-capability limbo. If it was a good builder, you'd want it to just keep building stuff instead. If it's not, then you can't even build the expensive late-era improvements in decent time. Vaulters/Mezari's best solution to this is ... to use the buyout economy themselves, and rely on other cities to generate dust.

[Hebereke]

that's some really useful info man, thanks
specifically the +resource per pop, I thought it was for total pop on the city, not for total pop assigned to the resource!