Hi everyone,

In this thread, I wish to highlight some of the points as to why many players experience difficulty in getting their science progression to match or catch up with their Era progression in Poe build.

For a start, I have discussed with a number of ppl on Discord exchanging ideas, read most of posts in Feedback: Economy and Pace (and Religion), and also checked out few of Reddit threads regarding this particular topic/issue. Anyway, let us dive into this issue. To start off, I will quote what I said on Discord, because it is already a simplified summary and easy to understand.

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(Copy and Paste from my post in Discord)

"Please allow me to present my opinion and take on the topic of parallel progression between Era and Science/Technological development.

There are 6 facts identified:

1. Majority of players do find it difficult to increase their science outputs in Poe build based on their feedbacks.

2. There is indeed a significant jump in science cost for techs in Classical Era.

3. It is hard to obtain all 3 Fame stars in Science starting from Classical Era. (Even best AI on Humankind difficulty did not manage it till very late in game as shown in Changlini screenshots.)

4. This Poe build is set up in such a way that players are forced to be more critical in how to manage their cities. (Pops eat more food, nerfs on stability, higher money buyout/force labour cost, etc..)

5. Era Progression still only need 7 Stars in order to progress. AIs on lower difficulty also tend to advance as soon as they can.

6. Back in Victor/Lucy build, all players were spoiled by abundance of lux rss and stability sources to the point that they could easily spam research quarters with little to no thought. (Which led to being able to get their research done easily. Not to mention the broken Religion tenet system.) As a result, Devs decided to straighten this issue up in Poe build.


With all these factors combined, I am actually inclined to agree with majority of others who do think Science cost should be lowered. At very least, we need a system where players who pick non-optimal set of cultures can still obtain all 3 Science Stars in a given Era. However, it should still be done in a certain way that players are still required to invest into Science.

IMHO, if Devs cannot tackle this issue properly, I fear this game will only suffer from negative first impression at launch."

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Okay, please allow me to show you some of screenshots to illustrate my point about even best AI on Humankind difficulty did have troubles achieving all 3 Fame Stars in Science till later Era. (As per point 3 above)


Credits to @Changlini for screenshots based on @FlamingKetchup game save.

As you can see, the best AI on highest difficulty did not obtain all 3 Science Fame Stars in Early Modern Era and Industrial Era but did so in the last Contemporary Era. Based on these, it seem to suggest that there is clearly something going on with economy model and limitation imposed in Poe build

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Next point regarding a jump in Science cost in Classical Era... Let us see the cost for Science cost for technologies in Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Era.

The cost for techonologies in Ancient Era start off simple with 35, 100, and 200 around the end of this period. Main method for increasing science outputs in this Era is also rather simple by assigning our pops to work as Researchers.

In Classical Era, however... The Science cost for technologies spike up starting from 400 to 1000 and ending with 2125 around end of this Era.

Methods for increasing science outputs in this Era start to differ from Ancient Era. Players are expected to build Research quarters and some Science infrastructures in addition to assigning some pops working as Researchers, if we are to keep up with Science Progression in the long run. Devs also expect players to do these by investing some resources into Science otherwise they will get left behind in this area.

However... What Devs may not have realised is players are already struggling to maintain their cities mainly due to stability issue as well as various other situations that do not allow them to invest into Science heavily or efficiently enough to keep up.

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(Copy and Paste from my post in Discord)

"We need to build Research quarters but are limited by heavy constraint on stability.

We need some pops to work as Researchers but each pops now eat significantly more food to maintain.

We need to build Science infrastructures but the industry and money cost for those increase significantly in each Era.

How are players supposed to keep up without being either Builder or Scientist cultures?"

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The main reason why I stated that Builder and Scientist cultures can potentially keep up with Science progression is mostly thanks to their unique affinity abilities. Without going into long details, I will just say their active abilities allow more flexibility in how we can manage our cities in relation to economy and technological advancement.

- Builder cultures can convert science outputs into industry allowing them to build specialised cities for research or scientific development only.

- Scientist cultures can convert industry outputs into science allowing any of their industrial cities to turn into research centers.

Please do understand that these 2 cultures are by no means overpowered. Their active abilities are double-edged swords that both have pros and cons for which I will not go into fine details here. The point I wish to make here is that it just so happen that they are more ideal to tackle the main issue of science progression presented in Poe Closed Beta build.

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Anyway, once we get past Classical Era, the Science cost for technologies slowly start to increase at a constant pace of about 1000 in value across all Era from Medieval onward.

This is based on an assumption that players have managed to establish or set up enough facilities for research purpose. However, again, this assumption is out of the picture mainly because of a number of limitation as highlight previously regarding new economic model based on Victor feedbacks.

I will not go into details about point 5 (which is related to Era progression), because the length of this subject can be very long in terms of what factors contribute to quick pace of Era progression that may have cause Science Progression to lag behind. These process may require a lot of number tweaking or possibly moderate changes to Era Star milestones in order to make Era progression slower.

There is also a debate about fast Era progression pace that is main cause of this problem while Science progression is not seen as not the main cause or roots of slow Science progression. I also will not go into details about this particular subject but wish to address this point at least as food for thought for some people to consider.

As far as I am concerned, it is in my opinion that there are actually many different factors that contribute to this whole problem of Slow Science Progression. Some people might think the tweak in science cost in Classical Era is all that needed to help solving everything. However, I personally think it is a combination of many things that do require a compromise of many small changes to the game.

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In conclusion, there are 6 facts identified based on my observation of gameplay in Poe build and gathering information from across different social medias and forums. Evidences from best AI performance at highest difficulty suggested that they too cannot achieve the feat of obtaining 3 Science Stars easily till very late in game. There is a spike in Science cost in Classical Era. New economic model based on Victor feedbacks gave players a lot of problem in managing their cities resulting in being unable to invest into Science heavily where they were supposed to or efficiently enough to keep up their Science progression to match up with Era progression in time.

Thank you for reading.

(found this thread through discord) The high cost of infrastructures compared to districts didn't help the problem either. While some infrastructures, like the ones that grant 10% and 20% science, deserve the high costs others like the library and the school (infrastructures that are vital to the player not falling behind on tech) become structures that a player ends up making second thoughts on building due to their comparatively high cost. In the opendevs this was not an issue as stability could be worked around easily allowing a player to spam as many makers quarters as necessary to make these infrastructures inexpensive. To me it seems that both science progression and the use of infrastructures is hampered too much by stability management as there are too few ways of rebuilding stability after losing it (aside from expensive infrastructures and forts which also aren't time cheap as well). I hope this thread gets the attention that it needs for the devs to take notice so that tech progression isn't artificially slow in the full release. 

As a fellow member of Discord who joined the discussion, very much agree here.

In addition, a Classical Era tech cost jump would not only slow down players' tech progression in the Classical Era, but also the tech progression of all the Eras afterward, and contributed to the "Tech feels slower" complaints about the Poe Build.

This is mostly due to:

1. Once you fall behind, you will have a hard time catching up for a while, and continued to fall behind in that period;

2. The only effective Science catch up infrastructure, Inventor's Workshop (+20% S, +2% S per Saltpetre), unlocks in Early Modern Era. This means the player will fall behind in 3 Eras (Classical, Medieval, EM) before able to catch up, and a game of Humankind only has 7 Eras.

3. And if the player is not beelining the Science boosting infrastructures, but focuses on Industry or Units instead - which is completely reasonable - the player can fall behind even more. As Waper already pointed out, the player will also suffer from not enough stability as well, so "spamming Research Quarters" is not a viable solution.

If anything, I feel like the tech cost jump of the Classical Era should be reexamined. The rest of the tech increase feels more natural and not so unforgiving for keeping up.

I think part of the issues is that research is seldom worth the cost and thus the game discourage players to invest into it in the first place. If you research a tech you still need to build the infrastructure which get very expensive for often minimal improvements. Units are the same, their cost skyrocket but the improvements get less and less impressive. Right now a line infantry have only 1 more combat strength than a musketeer and cost like 2.5 times. To research them cost like 10k science, you pay alot and in return your armies actually can get weaker due to line infantry not being an real improvement over the musketeers. Yes there are a few exceptions like the colony plans and some passive bonuses such as increased city cap but these are exception and it is easy to get these while igoring much of the weak stuff in the tech tree.

One easy way to see this is to compare unit cost with tech cost, converting industry to science. In ancient era even the most expensive techs are at most twice as expensive as an average unit of the time like spearmen, some are even less expensive than the cheap scout. However in classical era tech cost is between 4 to over 20 times more expensive than an swordsman. Medieval tech cost reach levels of more than 25 times expensive than a pikman. Early modern tech cost decrease with the most expensive ones being less than 20 times more expensive than Halberdier. Industrial era techs also decline in price with the most expensive ones cost like 10 times as much as a partisan.
So in short, tech cost relative units increase in era two and three and then decline in era four and five.

This article uses material from the “Infrastructure”,  “Units” and “Technology” article on the Humankind wiki at Fandom.

In an economic free book summary, I have read that this has slowed down since the financial crisis, growing at less than 1% a year. They also draw from research on “the science of science" to measure scientific progress, which shows a decline on several different indicators. Large scientific teams make fewer path-breaking discoveries than small teams can. But anyway I am satisfied with what we have. On https://freebooksummary.com/category/the-sunflower my job is. So we have tremendous progress. I can work from home. It is so comfortable, and it saves so much time.