Help With Tech Tree Landmarks

[Helium Pond]

I remember reading in someone's thread the incidental comment that after discovering Secrets of the Human Brain, D2, research cost per tech goes up. This is extremely valuable information! Is it true? Where did they find this information?

And what are the other "landmark" techs that increase overall tech cost? Can anyone share with me the way in which the game calculates tech cost? If one knows this, one can strategize about how to get high-level techs really cheaply...

--missing zsozso already....

[Chowlett]

Okay, the following formula is supplied by the Prima strat guide. It is, apparently, an approximation to an extremely complicated formula.

First, assign a value to your difficulty level: 0=citizen, 5=transcend. This is DIFF

TECHS=number of techs you have

MOSTTECHS = greatest number of techs owned by any one faction

TURNS = number of elapsed turns.

WORLDSIZE = 0.6 for Tiny, 0.8 for small, 1 for standard, 1.1 for large, 1.6 for huge.

then

Research cost = [11+(DIFFx4)+((TECHSx6)/5)-(TURNS/8)-(MOSTTECHS/5)]xTECHSxWORLDSIZE

for tech stagnation, divide TURNS by 8 not 12, and multiply final result by 1.5

[MichaeltheGreat]

There are additional factors, which are frankly bizarre, but I've observed and repeated them several times in multiplayer games.

First, when you exchange techs, in some games the increased tech cost will not show up until after you discover your next tech. In other games, I've seen it show up immediately at the end of the same turn. (If you exchange techs in the diplomacy screen, then discover a tech that turn, the discover won't be pushed off. But I've made trades where a tech due in two turns is suddenly due in five, since the labs per tech value is updated. There is no apparent consistency in this that I can find, but whatever the cause, it is set at the start of the game, and doesn't change.

Also, if you check the SMAC multiplaying threads here, for the ACT010 game, there was an unsolvable problem where the three factions we pre-issued all level one techs, and have a labs per tech cost of 149, except the UoP, which has 128. This is not the same as the UoP's +2 bonus, which takes the total labs produced per turn and multiplies them by 1.2. It is an entirely separate and undocumented bonus for the UoP.

Receiving multiple techs on the same turn, at transcend level, may also cause more of a burden than receiving techs one per turn, but the difference is slight. Still, I've verified it in scenarios, and why it works only sometimes is not at all apparent.

Single player games are totally different, especially with the AI. If you are planetary governor, and monitor the AI, you can watch the AI's required labs per tech decrease as you pull ahead. I've seen AI researching Advanced Spaceflight with a labs per tech requirement of 313, which I passed while still researching level two techs. That is part of the cheating that substitutes for AI.

So there are a couple of busts in the formula, and the one given by Prima doesn't work a good portion of the time.

[Helium Pond]

So, there's *no* increase in tech cost hard-wired into discovering Secrets of the Human Brain? The reason I ask is that I'm trying to be really sneaky in a multiplayer game, by trading Secrets to everybody to slow their tech research down.

[Tau Ceti]

Helium Pond: I do not think there is anything special about SotHB that increases your tech cost. I think the comment you referred to may have been one from David Byron that when he is trying to get energy restrictions lifted as quickly as possible, the free tech from SotHB is not really free, because it increases the cost of later researches. But I think that is simply because having more techs increases your tech cost.

MtG: In my experience, getting techs through trading, artifacts or pods before you have made your first 'normal' breakthrough will increase your tech cost immediately, while getting them after that will increase it once you make your next breakthrough. In some Yang games I have made my first breakthrough more than 60 years into the game because of this effect and constant tech trading with the AI (they all want DocLoy and none of them want to trade it to anyone else).

The UoP tech cost bonus is probably a function of their research rating, for the Cyborgs also get the same price, and the Drones and Believers are about 20 higher than the standard again.

[TigToad]

In a multi player game, its perfectly okay to be 'sneaky' by trading or even giving away techs that are 'useless' to that faction.. (or of low use) because if nothing else it does slow their research down.

Tig

[Garth Vader]

I don't think of any tech as useless. So what if getting a tech slows your current research down by one turn. That's like getting a tech in one turn! You can't complain about that.