Science allocation elf

[Blindman]

You have 1000bpa, how do you allocate?

[Natsu]

For any race you should focus heavily on Tools science. The reason is as follows:

Alchemy - Effects income but you need a good base income for it to be effective
Tools - This science effects everything on your province from food production, income, and increases your building effects due to raising your BE which gives same result at lower % acre wise
Housing - Good to keep around 8% population but shouldn't focus on going beyond this
Food - Good for shaving acres required on Farms for most races (Space saver science). Undead don't need this science.
Military - This should be another focused science if attacker as you want best gains possible
Crime - Any pure or hybrid thief should put points into this as it magnifies thievery effects
Channeling - Any pure or hybrid mage should put points into this as it magnifies magic effects and rune production (another spot to free up some acres)

Hope this helps but everyone should pump Tools as you can tweak your province better doing this.

[nooblet]

when in the age are we talking? game isn't static.

anything but late-age, housing is top priority, especially for Elf to account for their higher wpa and weaker army. channeling is an obvious pick. crime is something that elf shouldn't neglect either.

prolly something like 80:80:320:40:80:100:300 if i had 1000bpa. when those sciences are pumped is important, but generally around mid-age your channeling and housing science should be equal, or channeling better than housing. early age science would have almost no investment in tools+food+military, as getting the big two econ sciences and your primary action sci running is too high a priority. very early age is the best time to get good alchemy science, and alchemy is likely the first place to dump war win science along with housing. alchemy should never get much over 100 bpa, and later in the age alchemy investment is pointless if it doesn't pay off significantly by eoa.

[gergnub]

nooblet is on track. Tools/alch science shouldnt be focused on too much, pop is always better.

[nooblet]

tools - good with a lot of reduction buildings that have no equivalent (barracks, gs, wt, hospitals, dens, and to a lesser extent schools). better on dynamic provinces that can't always be at maximum population, particularly heavy attackers. reasonably good on ubs, though housing is better for getting into ub position in the first place.
housing - way better for econ, good for static provinces and provinces that need to train heavy defense+tpa+wpa without tanking their economy. good for having a strong starting position with military strength, and somewhat useful during a chain for reducing the amount of desertions suffered - especially for provinces that want to retain their wpa and tpa afterwards as much as possible. elf is almost always this by far, so housing wins out most of the time.

mostly though, housing first is best for getting the other sciences sooner, especially for a race that is weak at stealing and plundering. after about 400 bpa in housing it might make sense to focus more on the active sciences, since the gains from further housing science become increasingly infinitesimal, and it is likely that a 1k+ bpa province will be Learned sooner or later anyway.

there are a couple serious alternatives to housing science for elf. one is to go straight for channeling and minimal investment in everything, coupled with a plan for early war. even then, eventually the elf would want to balance their housing science to be effective in the long term. the other is for elf t/m to go for crime/channeling right away, and steal like a mofo to get an early science lead with a plan to convert to attacker when it's convenient.

[Ari]

Formula for a specific science is K*sqrt(bpa)
K is adapted to be more or less equal, thats how they built it; of course BE is more important then food - that's why food K is larger.
Bottom line - science is maxed when pretty much even between all sciences. If you like math you can run equations on all your stats and compare build strat's that nutralise the differences, but it RARELY add's up to max science allocation is more then 30% of a baseline+- and almost never comes to say double science in one then other (think of it this way, to double the effect in a particular science you get from 25 BPA = 1/2 of 100 BPA = 1/2 of 400 BPA)

[squazzie]

at this point of the age
in order of importance

magic,
thievery,
housing,
food,
tools,
alchemy (age ends soon so this is poop)
military ( i put zero here )

[Budlightyear]

One thing I've noticed about science is that a little bit of everything goes a long way and a lot of one thing should only be done if you know what you're doing.

As nooblet said, pop science is great. No matter your role. It allows you to stretch your draft and raw TPA/WPA further.

But be careful investing too much in one thing and neglecting others... for example, if you're an A/M, don't invest too much in pop while neglecting channeling. Don't invest too much in tools while neglecting military. Since science has diminishing returns, it's a safe bet to balance out your to what you need rather than going overboard on any one particular type. With this said, generally you need less food science and more Pop/Tools/Income, in that order. Military science is entirely up to how much of an attacker role you play... the higher your attacker ability, the more military science you should focus on. Thief science is almost always useful but it should be measured against what other sciences you could put it in... generally as a non-sage in a warring kingdom I end up having around 40-60% increased thief effectiveness by the end of the age when I run A/M. But the important thing is that it's balanced against your other options.

As an Elf/Mystic A/M running an aggressive (high offense/WPA as possible) build in a warring kingdom I would do something like:

12-15% alchemy
12-15% tools
20% housing
8% food
10% military
10% crime
22+% Channeling

That distribution is focused on maxing out WPA/Draft numbers and then being poised for economic growth later in wars. There are other ways to tweak the numbers.

[nooblet]

housing > alchemy for generating money, except at really low draft rates or if running high banks - or both, as is more often the case.

[Bishop]

I typically boost my alc sci early so i can afford to run a higher sci base rate, but after that its pop sci that gets the most.

[squazzie]

12-15% alchemy
12-15% tools
20% housing
8% food
10% military
10% crime
22+% Channeling

ur going to be running 9-10% farms instead of 7% with food that low.

[nooblet]

the thing is... 1000 bpa is such an arbitrary point. if you're going to 1k bpa, you might as well aim higher, and with further investment start to balance out sciences. also at that point, learn attacking for science becomes very profitable against similarly pumped targets, but that is contingent on having an offense that can learn attack in the first place and being in a position where you can afford to Learn.

splitting sciences seems like a good thing, but not all sciences are equal. the effects of tools science are quite marginal unless running reduction buildings, since stuff like forts, guilds, and towers - buildings elf typically relies on - can be accounted for with better population, or aren't 100% important. military science might be useless for elf beyond the bare minimum, since elf offenses in the best of conditions are rather horrid.

[Blindman]

I ended up with

28% pop
28% channeling
10% alchemy
10% tool
10% military
10% thievery
4% food

Not sure what I would change for next age.

[Natsu]

I have the following on my province:

14.5% Alchemy
21% Tools
19.55% Population
11.4% Food
16.62% Crime
16.45% Channeling

People might argue this but to me hitting the wall on all key sciences is more important than blowing some out of the water for minimum value. Yes, As you grow the higher books will help but I prefer to run 3~5% Farms than 7~9% Farms that other people need to run. Using sciences to improve space allocation on every level is the key.

Also, Last I checked is that Forts are a % based building which gets affected with DBE meaning the lower your BE the less effective they are. Yes you can counter the defense loss with more defense specs but at a cost of a higher military cost. For runes you could build more towers but that would be a worse building allocation, you could steal runes but that is wasted thievery ops in the larger picture, and the only way you can work around the Guilds effect is by going Rogue and stealing them. All buildings are effected by BE in some way even if it's only a minor cost. Mystic gets hit harder with a BE loss on Guilds and Towers since these are doubled just like Rogue will get hit harder on Thieves Dens than other personalities. If you don't believe me regarding Towers and Guilds then look at the wizards trained per day in your Building Advisory page when you have 100% BE vs 95% BE for example.

[nooblet]

housing indirectly improves BE, unless a province is not at maximum population.
housing does three, maybe four things for your province...
- it gives an income bonus based on your draft, equal to total population / peasant population you would have without any popsci. given a base ppa of 26 (baron level honor and no homes), having 13 military per acre means that 10% housing science is giving +20% income. most provinces run a lot more than 13 non-peasants/acre, especially elf.
- it gives a less noticeable but still present bonus to BE under the same conditions
- ultimately those peasants are converted into military units more easily, and at exceptionally high draft rates it gives you more military period. while any province can get soldier aid or lose acres/homes to get a high draft rate, housing science makes this a lot easier.
- housing science saves some of your troops from overpopulation during a chain, though the effect of this is not very noticeable imo and isn't a very good reason to emphasize pop science.

with the forts example - i crunched numbers earlier in this age to determine where tools science would be worth it as halfer/rogue, and the benefit of jacking my tools sci to 400 bpa from about 80 was maybe 2% more defense. even though it's nw-free defense, it wasn't very significant. the same can be said of any other booster building (tg in particular), or flat-rate buildings. with reduction buildings, the effect of tools is more noticeable... most dramatically, my thief losses would have been cut in half under ideal conditions, running nearly maxed TD.

note that anything that messes with BE will also make tools science much less effective, while non-peasant population is a lot more difficult to get rid of. also note that tools science does very little for economy, so it makes it harder to get the other sciences sooner. if i had more than 1000 bpa, i'd probably start raising tools, but with that little science i'm looking at setting up my economy and covering the bases before worrying about BE. i also run a much higher draft rate so housing science is worth a lot more to me in BE.