In this guide I’ll discuss which of the infrastructure that helps with science yields is worth building. We’ll start with a general overview of how science infrastructure is helpful and then we’ll go through each of the eras and discuss each infrastructure individually.

First starting with an overview of science infrastructure. Science infrastructure boosts the science yields in a number of ways, adding more science to research quarters base yields as well as the adjacency bonus, giving more researcher slots and increasing the science per researcher, giving science per population, and providing percentage based science bonuses to cities. Watch out, some infrastructure also increases pollution which can impact the stability of your cities. Next, we’ll discuss each piece of infrastructure for each Era. We’ll consider whether the industry investment for the infrastructure is worth the yields it provides.

In the Ancient Era, most of your science will come from researchers, unless you picked the Zhou culture. This means that the House of Scribes is usually worth building to boost the science per researcher and giving you more researcher slots in your cities.

In the Classical Era, the Library is excellent, especially if you have cities with large populations. The School is among the best science infrastructure because it boosts the science per research quarter as well as based on adjacencies. Most of your science will come from research quarter yields, so in most cities you will want to build the School.

The Alchemist’s Workshop provides a percentage science boost. This is nice in the Medieval Era and also scales quite well over time. The Manuscript Atelier is not that good, unless you are still getting most of your science from researchers rather than research quarters.

In the Early Modern Era, the Cabinet of Curiosities is nice, but at this point will not be a huge boost to your science as it will likely be coming from research quarters. This makes the University again a must build in most cities. The Inventor’s Workshop is also excellent for the percentage bonus. The Printing House is again pretty weak because you are unlikely to have more than 10 or so researchers per city giving so it only provides marginal value.

The Academy in the Industrial Era is again worth building in most cities that have at least some research quarters.

In the contemporary Era, the Museum is not very good because you are likely to have thousands of not tens of thousands of science and you won’t notice the extra science per population, The Supercomputer Lab is good, although watch out for the pollution. You will need to have pollution under control for it to be worth it. The Tech Park is pretty weak, unless you have a huge amount of aluminium and again also have pollution on makers quarters under control.

In summary, the science infrastructure giving bonus to research quarters base yield and adjacency bonus is worth building in every city with at least some research quarters. The percentage based bonuses to science are quite strong, scaling nicely with other percentage bonuses. The infrastructure granting additional researchers and science per researcher is good in the early game but marginal in the mid to late game.