One turn I thought I could keep up with the Emperor AI....

[Solver]

The no cheating option makes it impossible to load the save if the XML files are different from the ones that the save was started under. If CyberShy modded the XML at all himself or has something else done to his Assets folder, no one else will open the file, AFAIK.

[ulyanov]

I've noticed the AI getting techs he couldn't possibly have researched before me on Prince.

Some of the "key" techs seems to just appear the very same turn you get them, just when you wanted to trade for something else.

[MattPilot]

What most likely happened......

The techs didn't "magically" appear. THey had them all along. YOU just couldn't see them, because you didn't have the pre-req for that tech BEFORE the turn started.

Hard to explain, so let me give you an example...

I had a huge tech lead over this backward civ. SO i decided to give all my tech to this one civ so it could catch up with the rest of the world. It turned out, i could only gift tech to this civ for which IT had the pre-req for. Once gifted, i could gift no more techs at that turn. it "said" it had them all. Of course, next turn comes around, and i can now gift another round of techs to the backward civ.


Make sense? It's possible the devs put such a check in place so you couldn't 'rape' the AI civs for all techs.

[Solver]

That is how tech trades work, yes. You can only buy techs that you have the pre-reqs for and you can only sell techs that the other civ has pre-reqs for.

[solo]

Originally posted by Axxaer


Either that's the wrong way around or it's not the issue, because I'm certainly using NTFS:

Perhaps not the issue for you, but this is for sure one known cause of this error. I don't know if it works the other way around, but my guess would be yes.

[solo]

Originally posted by ulyanov
I've noticed the AI getting techs he couldn't possibly have researched before me on Prince.

Some of the "key" techs seems to just appear the very same turn you get them, just when you wanted to trade for something else.

I thought I had noticed the same thing in one game. I had researched Electricity, Radio and Computers ahead of all of the AI, and then traded Physics to the Americans, one of the AI.

To me this meant that that the Americans still lacked Electricity, Radio and Computers, but when I checked the tech screen the next turn, it appeared that my tech lead over the Americans had disappeared, even though every other AI still lacked Physics.

It looked fishy to me, that the Americans could make up that many techs in one turn, so I kept checking the tech screen every turn, and 6 turns later saw that the Amercians still lacked Electricity.

My conclusion was that the tech screen may not always be updated when it should be, and that the Americans were in fact missing the techs I thought they had acquired all at once.

Since then, I've seen this happen again many times, a lag of more than one turn before the tech screen is properly updated.

I am also very familiar with the fact that available techs will not show up on that screen until the prerequisites are known and that at least one turn has to take place before the effects of a newly acquired tech are displayed.

The added delay I experienced, as described above, was something new to me when I first saw it, and this might have also happened in your game.

[Hauptman]

I have no idea what's going on right now

[Gueron]

Is it possible that the AI is concealing techs it has. Maybe a spy would be able to root it out, or is that too dangerous at Emperor+ level?

[solo]

Originally posted by Gueron
Is it possible that the AI is concealing techs it has. Maybe a spy would be able to root it out, or is that too dangerous at Emperor+ level?

No, I don't think so. Almost every time the tech screen is updated correctly the turn right after a tech trade or acquisition. Also, I have observed this in games before any spies are available.

I think it is a small programming bug, because the information in the tech screen is not updated immediately after a tech trade or tech acquisition. The update is deferred until the following turn, which is when we can usually see which techs are now available for trade and which ones the AI lack that we have. I think this is done so that all of the AI tech trades and/or acquisitions that happened during their own turns can also be accounted for.

I think that an event that should trigger the update of of this information is sometimes overlooked. In my situation, I was almost certain that there were no other tech changes for any of the AI during their turns. Perhaps at least one tech event for one of them on their own turn(s) is needed to trigger the update, which is why I had to wait several turns before seeing the changes caused by my own trade.

When my update finally occurred, it coincided with a new tech acquisition by one of the AI, which was probably the triggering event.

[solo]

I thought I might provide a save file illustrating a situation in one of my games where tech updating was delayed.

In this game, the year is 1250 AD, and I have Astronomy, which I have just traded to Alexander. If the Foreign Advisor tech screen is checked, and if you click on each AI icon, it can be seen that everyone except Alexander still lacks Astronomy.

Notice that I am now learning Radio and already have several techs preceding it, such as Electricity, which all of the AI should lack, since Electricity needs Physics, and Physics needs Astronomy.

Now check Alexander, and you’ll see he appears to lack nothing that I have. Hmm, did the game instantly present him with Physics and Electricity, not to mention Scientific Method? It would seem so.

Now press enter to check on the next turn. Notice that Alexander still appears to lack nothing and that Capac has also joined the same club. When you click on either, I do not appear to have any techs they lack. Apparently, my big tech lead over another AI has instantly vanished, too!

Well it turns out the proper updates were not made until quite a few turns later. When I continued playing onwards, I did not notice a change until 1290, when all of sudden Alexander appeared to be lacking Physics. Now things make sense. He was not given this tech and the following one, Electricity, for free, as it might have appeared earlier.

A few turns later, in 1340, Capac’s lack of Electricity shows up. This also makes sense. He could have acquired Physics in the meantime after trading for Astronomy with Alexander following my own trade of that tech. Now it appears the tech screen is back to normal, and that all of the necessary updates to the tech situation have been processed.

So, it can appear at times that the AI are given several techs at once without trades or research, but I don’t think this is the case, even on the higher levels such as my Deity OCC game used in this example.

I think it’s just a minor programming bug making it seem like the AI are given free techs during the game and am posting a zip file with the save that provides my example, above.

[Robert]

It's amazing how something got solved within 6 posts and after that 15 people come in a thread to give the same answer

[solo]

The answers are not all the same.

The delayed update of the tech situation as I described is not the same thing as not seeing techs because of a lack of prerequisites described by earlier posters.

[Common Sensei]

I've noticed the AI likes to hoard its Great People. Does the AI only use them for Golden Ages, or do they use them to for technology quickening?

I have a hunch that they sometimes use them for the latter, because when a rival leader makes a leap to catch up, its usually a Philosophical one like Mao.