oedo´s unfinished

[Blaupanzer]

Whoa, DaveV, your test makes my head hurt. Does it answer my pottery question? The one about WC affecting later tech availability? Are these myths? Thanks for doing the research!

[DaveV]

I ran a quick test using a (no doubt less than optimal ) OCC tech path, since the anomaly reports seem to be coming mostly from OCCers. My results (barring a few inconsistencies which I'll chalk up to errors in recording the data) bear out my table above.

_ = not available or already discovered
a = available
* = researched
o = should be available, but is not
# = last digit of number of techs discovered

aa*3_____________________ Alphabet,
____________________a*2__ Astronomy,
__________*1_____________ Banking,
*1_______________________ Bronze Working,
a*2______________________ Ceremonial Burial,
_______________________aa Chemistry
___*4____________________ Code of Laws,
____________*3___________ Construction,
_oaaa*6__________________ Currency,
________________________a Economics
_________________a*9_____ Engineering,
aaoaaoaaaaaaa*4__________ Horseback Riding,
___________________aaaaaa Invention,
________*9_______________ Literacy,
____aaoaaoaaoaaaaaoaaoaao Map Making,
aoaaoaaoaao*2____________ Masonry,
_____________aaoaao*0____ Mathematics,
_________________*8______ Medicine,
____*5___________________ Monarchy,
__aaoaaoaaoaao*5_________ Mysticism,
_______________*6________ Philosophy,
______________aoaaooaoaao Polytheism,
aoaaoaaoaaoaaoaaaaaoaaoaa Pottery,
____________________*1___ Sanitation
_________*0______________ The Republic,
_______________________*4 Theory of Gravity,
______*7_________________ Trade,
____________________ao*3_ University
aoaaoaaoaaoaaoaaoaaoaaoa* Warrior Code,
_______________a*7_______ The Wheel,
____aao*8________________ Writing,
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited December 11, 2000).]

[Scouse Gits]

Interesting
If I am reading this thing correctly only Polytheism didn't show up on cue, but several techs did appear when raw oedo would suggest that they should not. This suggests that like Newton's Laws as modified by Einstein, the truth is a perturbation upon oedo's law.
Of course, it occurs to me that our complaints are of the nature of non-appearance of latish techs - this could be caused by our foolishly exchanging a couple of techs with other civs - and thereby cunningly moving on to the next gap in the oedo cycle...
Keep up the good work guys...


------------------
____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor
"The Great Library must be built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[Richard Bruns]

A good way to test this would be to make a game where you are the only civ on the planet, and then wipe all the huts. Then you can do this research without any distraction. I'll try this with my OCC 21 scenario and see what I get. I will follow a policy of always researching the "joker" tech at the top, no matter what it is. This way that anomaly won't creep in.

[DaveV]

SG1 - according to my analysis, the only tech which was available when it shouldn't have been was pottery, with 16 techs discovered. I think all the other cases of "aaa" are covered by the joker phenomenon. The two strange cases - pottery available with 16 techs discovered, polytheism not available with 19 techs discovered - may well be due to my error in recording the data.

Blaupanzer - pottery was never unavailable for more than one turn. I hope to play further on into this game; I'll see if anything strange happens.
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited December 12, 2000).]

[Richard Bruns]

I started my test, but found that it didn't give good results. Researching the top tech meant that many times, a tech was researched before I knew its pattern. Eventually the only techs available were three or four at the bottom. But the data I could gather matched oedo's theory exactly.

Maybe I'll try a test to see what happens when Warrior's Code is researched early. There was a question about that.

[Paul]

Richard, you can't test this theory in the OCC scenario because in a scenario you can always choose from all the advances for which you have the prerequisites.

[Blaupanzer]

Excellent! Oedo not only enlightens us but continues to kill myths as well. I hope you never get a life, brother civver.

Merc, the OCC path was expounded by Paul on one of these threads. Strongly suspect there are no gaps in availability in his proposed approach.

Oedo, does the level of development of rival civs affect availability? It apparently does affect the cost in lightbulbs for the next tech. (Two possibiities: 1)Their discoveries affect timing; 2) Their lagging behind affects availability.) From the material here, it appears their research is irrelevent to the player's research choices.

[Richard Bruns]

Paul: I know. I have a savegame from the scenario creation process that isn't a scenario. When I tested it, the techs went exactly according to oedo's table. Sorry for wording things wrong.

[oedo]

a tech not being available twice in a row is truly a strange thing. however Dave, I replayed your tech path and I cannot confirm your results. pottery and poly behaved normal.

Paul will confirm that some OCC tables disprooved my xxxo theory at first. but it turned out it wasn´t a program error. the years were simply wrong recorded. on the other hand, we all know that civ2 is pretty buggy

the rule stands.

[Mercantile]

I am trying to follow this but it seems way too complicated now. What exactly is the joker tech? If this theory holds true, would someone be kind enough to post an entire tech tree and the preferred path to reach construction of a space ship so some of us newer players can plot their tech paths properly. I havnt' a clue how this thing works, i thought i did, but i don't

[SlowThinker]

Oedo, you should set the name of this thread more cleverly , I would not do the same work again. Fortunately, I started my research by changing rules.txt to "nil-only file" (all preqs set to nil) , so it was relatively easy. Result is the same as your formula, of course.

I started new topic (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...=&threadid=900) in Civ2-General/Help/Community couple days ago...I think I will move it here.

I made a program that helps to plan the scientific research: http://home-1.worldonline.cz/~cz0456...n.htm#civ2plan

I have just read all this thread, but I am confused. What is a result of this discussion? Is "oedo's law" correct everytime or not?


[This message has been edited by SlowThinker (edited December 18, 2000).]

[Scouse Gits]

Slowthinker, although many of us have a 'bad feeling' about such techs as Warrior Code and were previously convinced that it wrought havoc on later research paths (there seems to be some evidence of this in OCC logs in particular) since oedo published 'The Law' none of us have come up with reproducable evidence of any flaws ... so although we may still harbour private reservations we currently must accept that 'The Law' is the law. It is a heck of a lot better than anything we had previously!!!

Good civin' (and welcome)

------------------
____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor
"The Great Library must be built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[oedo]

SlowThinker, I downloaded your program (all three versions) but I don´t see any way to get it started. I always get a runtime error message. how does it work?

btw. anyone has been able to disproove my theory meanwhile?

[SlowThinker]

Oedo,
3rd version should be the best (if there are no new bugs).
Could you post me that error message?
What is your operating system?

[oedo]

win98se

each time I start the program I get

Runtime error 003 at 00CD:00DF

do I have to copy the program into a specific folder? do I need to start civ2 before I run it? I think I have no idea of how to use the program anyway. maybe a small readme.txt can help out here

[SlowThinker]

quote: <font size=1>Originally posted by oedo on 02-16-2001 03:07 PM</font> have no idea of how to use the program anyway. maybe a small readme.txt can help out here

I agree, I plan to put help into .txt file for version 0.4. But I am waiting for some bugs now (more reasons to do that new version).

Program
1. writes following message "This program helps to plan the research of advances for the game Civilization II"
2. searches for rules.txt in the "working folder/directory" (this folder is set in civ2plan.exe/properties/program). If the file is not found there then a message "Error: file RULES.TXT is missing" appears and the program halts. Otherwise program reads rules.txt and start to work. (Civ2 needn't run. Just rules.txt is needed.)

I am confused.
Theoretically, that runtime error cannot arise... (in version 0.3. I have no source code for old versions now).
Did a message "This program helps to plan the research of advances for the game Civilization II" appear?
Do you get the same runtime error for all versions?
Where do you start the program from? Explorer, windows commander...?

Edited:
Copy civ2plan.exe and rules.txt into one directory, then restart to pure DOS and try to run it under DOS...
[This message has been edited by SlowThinker (edited February 16, 2001).]

[oedo]

aargh, I know why! I have the german version where the rules.txt is called rules.ger. I tried with the old rules.txt from 2.42, now it works.

[Roman]

Good work, oedo, this was one of these things that mystified me for a long time.

[SlowThinker]

For all that the program behaves unexpectedly.
I would expect a message
"Error: file RULES.TXT is missing" in place of "Runtime error 003 at 00CD:00DF".
Could you find out situations when that runtime error occurs?

[Dry]

I discovered this topic only yesterday, that is why I react so late.

So, in the case you have Bronze Working from start, whatever you 2 first researches are (alphab.-Cerem or alpha.-CoL), then on the 3rd tech, the 'joker' will be CoL or Cerem, and the on the 4th monarchy will be available?
I tried yesterday... and it works! Don't care about which one you must research first, it works!!!!
Halleluya, praise the lord, a king is born, rejoice, good news in heaven and on earth !!!
Bronze Working, brothers and sisters, that's the way to kingdom... you just need to be lucky...

hmm, sorry, I think I was a little too enthusiastic, please apologize...sorry, really sorry.

[Bloody Monk]

bump

knowing what techs are available next is a key civ concept

Here is a cut and paste condensation that I use all the time. Sorry, I don't have in my notes where all of this is from.

Another brilliant insight, oedo! Thanks for sharing it.

I think Sequoya is probably right, that the formula is just based on position in rules.txt. Here's a list of the techs, each marked with the turn when it's not available. Take the number of techs you've discovered (STARTING TECHS ARE NOT COUNTED), divide by 3, and take the remainder (modulus, for fellow programmer types). Any tech marked with that number in the following table is not available for research.

2 Advanced Flight, 0 Alphabet,
1 Amphibious Warfare, 2 Astronomy, 0 Atomic Theory,
1 Automobile, 2 Banking, 0 Bridge Building,
1 Bronze Working, 2 Ceremonial Burial, 0 Chemistry,
1 Chivalry, 2 Code of Laws, 0 Combined Arms,
1 Combustion, 2 Communism 0 Computers,
1 Conscription, 2 Construction, 0 The Corporation,
1 Currency, 2 Democracy, 0 Economics,
1 Electricity, 2 Electronics, 0 Engineering,
1 Environmentalism 2 Espionage, 0 Explosives,
1 Feudalism, 2 Flight, 0 Fundamentalism,
1 Fusion Power, 2 Genetic Engineering 0 Guerrilla Warfare,
1 Gunpowder, 2 Horseback Riding, 0 Industrialization,
1 Invention, 2 Iron Working, 0 Labor Union,
1 The Laser, 2 Leadership, 0 Literacy,
1 Machine Tools, 2 Magnetism, 0 Map Making,
1 Masonry, 2 Mass Production, 0 Mathematics,
1 Medicine, 2 Metallurgy, 0 Miniaturization,
1 Mobile Warfare, 2 Monarchy, 0 Monotheism,
1 Mysticism, 2 Navigation, 0 Nuclear Fission,
1 Nuclear Power, 2 Philosophy, 0 Physics,
1 Plastics, 2 Plumbing, 0 Polytheism,
1 Pottery, 2 Radio, 0 Railroad,
1 Recycling, 2 Refining, 0 Refrigeration,
1 The Republic, 2 Robotics, 0 Rocketry,
1 Sanitation, 2 Seafaring, 0 Space Flight,
1 Stealth, 2 Steam Engine, 0 Steel,
1 Superconductor, 2 Tactics, 0 Theology,
1 Theory of Gravity, 2 Trade, 0 University,
1 Warrior Code, 2 The Wheel, 0 Writing,

Monk

edit: getting the table to line up is hopeless

[Sparrowhawk]

For Bloody Monk (hopefully this works!

2 Advanced Flight	0 Alphabet	1 Amphibious Warfare
2 Astronomy	0 Atomic Theory	1 Automobile
2 Banking	0 Bridge Building	1 Bronze Working
2 Ceremonial Burial	0 Chemistry	1 Chivalry
2 Code of Laws	0 Combined Arms	1 Combustion
2 Communism	0 Computers	1 Conscription
2 Construction	0 The Corporation	1 Currency
2 Democracy	0 Economics	1 Electricity
2 Electronics	0 Engineering	1 Environmentalism
2 Espionage	0 Explosives	1 Feudalism
2 Flight	0 Fundamentalism	1 Fusion Power
2 Genetic Engineering	0 Guerrilla Warfare	1 Gunpowder
2 Horseback Riding	0 Industrialization	1 Invention
2 Iron Working	0 Labor Union	1 The Laser
2 Leadership	0 Literacy	1 Machine Tools
2 Magnetism	0 Map Making	1 Masonry
2 Mass Production	0 Mathematics	1 Medicine
2 Metallurgy	0 Miniaturization	1 Mobile Warfare
2 Monarchy	0 Monotheism	1 Mysticism
2 Navigation	0 Nuclear Fission	1 Nuclear Power
2 Philosophy	0 Physics	1 Plastics
2 Plumbing	0 Polytheism	1 Pottery
2 Radio	0 Railroad	1 Recycling
2 Refining	0 Refrigeration	1 The Republic
2 Robotics	0 Rocketry	1 Sanitation
2 Seafaring	0 Space Flight	1 Stealth
2 Steam Engine	0 Steel	1 Superconductor
2 Tactics	0 Theology	1 Theory of Gravity
2 Trade	0 University	1 Warrior Code
2 The Wheel	0 Writing

[Bloody Monk]

Well and wonderfully done, Sparrowhawk!!

Monk

[Elephant]

It always tickles me that Plumbing is a #2...

[Bloody Monk]

The things we notice!!

Monk