Question about researching

[cumi]

Hi,

I have some questions about researching:

1. Can you CHANGE the technology currently researching? Let's say you choose something, then a turn later you make up your mind...

2. How does the game choose the next tech to research, when you buy the currently researching one?

3. Where can I find the description, how the research (turn-cost of the tech, science output of my empire) is calculated?

4. I've experienced the following: I have a city with lot of food surplus. It grows to size 3, before it produced a settler. At size 3, I would had a civil disorder so I made from 1 worker scientist. Suddenly the turn-cost of the next tech (writing) was halved (instead of c.a.40 -> 20). In later game when I had a lot of cities, of course, this kind of trick didn't worked.

5. Is anybody making scientist from their workers?



cumi

[Dr. A. Cula]

1. Yes, but you lose some or all of the research done in the field you abandoned.

2. I think it's either the tech with the least number of turns to discover or it's random, I don't remember right now.

3. I don't know.

4. What was the question, again?

5. Yes, but usually late in the game , and only in cities > size 21. If I have 5 or 6 such cities, each with 2 or 3 scientists, I can usually decrease research time by 1 or 2 turns.

[Catt]

1. You can change anytime you like, but you lose the accumlated research.

2. I can't find the link right now, but alexman did a thread entitled "What will the AI research next?" in which he deciphered, for the most part, how the AI values undiscovered techs, and therefore how the AI choses its research path. It was assumed in that thread that AI tech choices and the human player's tech advisor represent the same decision algorithm -- if true, then applying the lessons of alexman's thread should probably tell you which tech your advisor will choose for you if you buy tech inter-turn. I usually avoid buying AI techs until it is my turn - so I don't waste a turn of research, and so I have a chance to both accumulate slightly more beakers towards my tech (which should lower the price and so I can resell the tech (tech whoring) if appropriate.

3. I don't know where you can find it all in one place and it is pretty complex.

Very quickly, each tech has a "base research cost" -- this factor is found in the editor. The base cost is modified by difficulty level and map size. The modified base is then also modified by how many known civs have discovered the tech -- the more that know the tech, the easier it is to research it.

Note that there is a separate "trade cost" for techs. When one civ knows a tech, the trade cost actualy goes up, before it again devalues when more than one civ knows the tech.

You decide how much of your income goes towards your research. You do this with the science slider and through the use of scientists. Each city produces a certain amount of gold from city laborers working city tiles. Assume a city is producing 12 gold, 2 lost to corruption for a net of 10 gold. If your science slider is set to 50%, then 5 of your ten gold goes towards science -- with a library in the city that 5 would become either 7 or 8 (rounding). Another city might produce 10 gold, with 6 lost to corruption, leaving a net 4. This city would contribute 2 gold to science, 3 with a library (again, your slider is set at 50%). Each individual gold going to science is usually referred to as a "beaker" after the little science symbol the game uses. Each scientist you create generates one beaker per turn. Each turn, all of the beakers (science gold) from each of your cities, and each beaker from a scientist, is added to your research total -- when you reach the total cost of the technology, it is "discovered" and you lose any excess beakers -- your research total starts again at 0 and you proceed on to the next project.

4. Early techs are very cheap -- you don't have the population to produce a lot of gold, so an expensive tech would take forever in the early game. Becase the early techs are so cheap, adding just one scientist or playing with your slider a lot can dramatically affect the number of trns need to complete a project -- if you're only producing one beaker towards science and then add another scientist, you just doubled your total science and ct the research time in half (always subject to the 4 - 40 turn minimum - maximum science limits).

5. I sometimes do, principally in heavily corrupt cities where the slider means nothing since al is lost to corruption. I rarely want my aborers in the early game to be specialists -- they should be working the land if at all possible and I will raise the luxury slider to keep them hapy instead of turning them into specialists.

Catt

[cumi]

Thanx for the nice explanations. I would have, actually one more thing to my 1st question: how do you change it actually? I am really bad in reading some documentations....

[MrWhereItsAt]

Go to the Science Advisor (F6 on the keyboard) and click on what you want to research. You can Shift-click (IIRC) to choose a tech to research once you are done with your current one, much like you can by setting a queue for cities to build.

You can also select a tech that you can't research directly just yet and the game will show you all the techs it will research to get there (automatically) and in which order it will research them.

[OPD]

As I understand it (I could be very wrong) you have a map size factor.

160, 200, 240, 320 and 400

and a base tech cost eg pottery is 2.

You multiply these two together then divide by a number depending on difficulty level.

chieftan is 10 and I think it's 9,8,7,6,6.

This gives you the beaker cost. for example.

pottery on small map on chieftan would be
(2 * 200)/ 10 = 40 beakers

Then I think but am not sure that if another civ that you have contact with has the tech then you only need 2/3's the beakers. Don't know about more than one civ you know having the tech.

[GarP2]

Quick related question: Sometimes when I turn down to 0% science, it says some number of turns to complete researching the tech and sometimes it has something like "--". It seems as though the times I had a number of turns shown, that it might be because I had scientist specialists. 1) Is this correct?, and 2) when it shows "--" is it 40 turns to complete or is it never?

Thanks,
GarP

[OPD]

1 yes
2 never

[MrWhereItsAt]

Hmm... can anyone tell me if OPD's figures are all accurate here?

It has been reported that, for a Regent difficulty Normal map, the base cost x 24 gives you the "beaker" cost.

This is at odds with OPD's post, whcih would give us base cost x 32.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Can anyone answer this?

[Nor Me]

I can't get 32 out of OPDs post. Using the cost factor which on cheiftain-deity is 20,12,10,9,8,6 works on cheiftain,regent and deity on a standard map so is probably right.