Science too tough ?

[xane]

I've just been playing my first game, Chieftain level to try it out, and one thing that struck me is my science rate is whoefully low, in fact I got to 1990 without discovering Electricity !

I never played Civ2 at lower than Prince because the game got boring when I just surged ahead in technology, but it now seems really difficult to build up science.

Any clues as to what I might be doing wrong ?

[Dry]

Originally posted by xane
Any clues as to what I might be doing wrong ?

I think that at chieftain level it should be possible to make the whole research without trading with others, so maybe you did not improve terrain the right way.
I noticed that terrain improvement was more important than in civ2.
Did you build enough roads? Improve gold hills/moutains?

Otherwise: make friends and share techs with them, this is a key for higher levels.