Is it just me, or is devoting commerce to science pointless?

[stend]

I mean, I'm starting the game with the Russians, a Scientific civ, and I can either get Cerimonial Burial in 27 turns generating 3 science, or in 32 turns generating 1 science and 2 gold. It seems to me that that 54 gold can be used far better than getting an advance 5 turns earlier. Does the time to receive an advance have a better connection to the science generated later in the game, or does it remain imbalanced?

[HunterAssasin]

Once you get your empire established and have a good number of towns and improvments and such your science and taxes will get alot better.

Usually for me about halfway through the ancient times tech turns go down into single digits.

[Growler]

I agree with HunterAssasin, and meanwhile in the early game you can indeed benefit from micromanaging your commerce and science ratios as you discovered.

[Kissinger]

I generally try to use little science and instead puts lots into the treasury. I go straight for the expensive techs and trade them to the other civs for the ones I missed. This allows me to take over cities with my armies and quickly rush in cultural buildings so that they will not be taken over. I also have cash to trade for other techs/resources/luxuries. I play with the romans mainly. Legionaries just dominate the early game . As long as you stay with the AI tech wise and build up a massive army and use it well, you can dominate the game. Im playing on regent btw.

[stend]

Originally posted by HunterAssasin
Once you get your empire established and have a good number of towns and improvments and such your science and taxes will get alot better.

Usually for me about halfway through the ancient times tech turns go down into single digits.

Uh huh - I can get a tech for 5 science in 32 turns (160 science) or 5 turns with 75 science (375 science). That still seems like one heck of a premium for speeding up research.

[cirdan]

researching is capped at 4 turns and at 32 turns.

So in the beginning you only need minimum science for 32 turns. As long as you produce science you will never need more than 32 turns. You can even pick the most expensive tech to research.

In the end game you might have to reduce your science again to 80% or so because you can't go faster than 4 turns.

[FeathersMcGraw]

Originally posted by cirdan
researching is capped at 4 turns and at 32 turns.

[...]

In the end game you might have to reduce your science again to 80% or so because you can't go faster than 4 turns.

I've seen this claim made on these forums before, but more recently, I've seen quite a few posts debunking it. Unfortunately, my empire's never been in a position to generate that much research to independently verify it.