Science Runoff?

[maxcavsm]

When you're about ready to discover a new tech, do you have to manually go up top and move the slider to get back the "wasted" science beakers into gold, or does the overage get translated into your next scientific endeavor?

Thx!

[gus_smedstad]

The designers explicitly state that they went out of their way to avoid the overflow problem in all areas of the game. It's highly visible in city production, but it's true in research as well.

- Gus

[Willem]

So was that a yes or a no?

You should go into politics, you're a natural.

[The_Paladin]

Originally posted by Willem
So was that a yes or a no?

You should go into politics, you're a natural.

Beakers do overflow to the next tech so I don't manually go and adjust it. I only adjust it if I want more gold or something.

[ben_sphynx]

There is overflow, however....

If you want to maximise your cash/research, then when going from researching a tech with few known prerequisites, or that isnt known by other known civilisations (both of which make your research less efficient), to one where you know multiple requisites and is already known by multiple civs (both of which increase your research output), then you should reduce your research so that it takes exactly 1 turn.
When going the other way, one wants to have as much overflow as possible - this gets you further into the harder to research tech that you will be researching next.

[Crossfire]

Why?

[tetley]

I've seen the game do negative adjustments to my shield overflow if I'm building a "bonus building" (e.g. bank and you're Financial) and the recipient of overflow shields doesn't have that bonus. So I wouldn't be surprised if the overflow trick you're doing with beakers gets the same negative adjustment.

I've always adjusted the big beaker anyway, just because if I have gold, I have options. But if I have beakers, my only option is what tech to apply them towards. And I never know when I may have to emergency upgrade my Archer.

[axisworks]

Yeah, I tend to pull the research down as far as I can on the last turn, keeping it still at one turn away from completion. Then I save up the extra gold and use it to rush production on wonders

[Shaka II]

It took me a while to figure out how the overflow was handled, but it appears as partial addition in the color bar of any given tech you happen to choose. It doesn't appear to get allocated until the first turn goes by, so you have time to make a change before then.

As far as techs getting easier to research if others have already acquired them, I'm not sure how civ4 handles it. In civ3, the greater number of civs who had discovered a tech, the cheaper it got to research, and the less valuable it was to trade. In civ4, tech trading doesn't seem to devalue with the number of times a trade occurs, so I think that they made tech research beakers fixed.

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by Shaka II
As far as techs getting easier to research if others have already acquired them, I'm not sure how civ4 handles it.

I saw a thread with a detailed breakdown - I think it was on Civ Fanatics. While the price remains the same, there's a multiplier to effective beakers. You might be generating 100 beakers a turn, but if the modifier for the tech you're researching is x1.2, you actually generate 120 beakers per turn for that tech.

The significant factors are the number of civs you've met who already researched it, and whether you have extra prerequisites researched. I.e. Pottery requires The Wheel and either Fishing or Agriculture. If you have The Wheel and Fishing, or the Wheel and Agriculture, you get no bonus. If you have both Fishing and Agriculture, you get a research bonus for Pottery.

Neither effect is huge. I think it tops out at maybe +10% or so for each.

- Gus

[Shaka II]

Thanks gus, one more mystery explained.