A lot of people complain about this game (including myself) that it is too simplified not as good as the PC Civ games. Now, it is time to praise it a little for something I think is done better than in SMAC for example.
There is a fixed tech cost for each specific technology, higher techs on the tree costing more than lower ones. This is good and logical. In contrast SMAC has tech cost depending on the number of techs you have discovered, so if you are researching a level-1 tech late in the game after getting many higher level ones, then it costs a lot more -- which does not make much sense.
If you switch research part-way through, in SMAC you lose half of your accumulated points and use the other half for the new tech. In CivRev you do not use any of your research points you spent researching tech-A for tech-B, but you do not lose them either. Instead, the game remembers how much points you have already collected for tech-A, and if you return to research that again later, you continue from where you left off. This is again, far more logical to me. Why would research done into one tech help you discover something completely unrelated ? Also if you get a tech from other source (buy, get it conquering a city or from a friendly village) that you were currently researching, then your next tech research starts from 0 in CivRev, but in SMAC you keep all your research points and use them for the next technology.
There is a fixed tech cost for each specific technology, higher techs on the tree costing more than lower ones. This is good and logical. In contrast SMAC has tech cost depending on the number of techs you have discovered, so if you are researching a level-1 tech late in the game after getting many higher level ones, then it costs a lot more -- which does not make much sense.
If you switch research part-way through, in SMAC you lose half of your accumulated points and use the other half for the new tech. In CivRev you do not use any of your research points you spent researching tech-A for tech-B, but you do not lose them either. Instead, the game remembers how much points you have already collected for tech-A, and if you return to research that again later, you continue from where you left off. This is again, far more logical to me. Why would research done into one tech help you discover something completely unrelated ? Also if you get a tech from other source (buy, get it conquering a city or from a friendly village) that you were currently researching, then your next tech research starts from 0 in CivRev, but in SMAC you keep all your research points and use them for the next technology.