choosing your own tech to research problem

[mrdynamic]

Doea this ever happen to anyone else ? I turn blind research off so that I may bee-line to a particular tech, say, synthetic fossil fuels. I'll currently have reasearched both High Energy Chem AND Gene Splicing, but the of the techs shown to select what can be researched next, Synthetic Fossil Fuels will not be on of them. So Ill just pick somthing arbritary say Polymorphic Software. One my next tech selection, there will be Synthetic Fossil Fuels to choose from. This happens to on several techs as I try to beeline somewhere. What causes that ?? Is it normal or what ?

[bondetamp]

You usually don't get all the choices when playing on advanced difficulties, so there is still an element of chance involved even if it is a good bit smaller.

[mrdynamic]

Sooo... even if blind reasearch is off it is still blind reasearch in a way. You can say I would like better weapons you just dont know if the techs to choose from will allow you to follow your desired oatn. I think that is BS. Reason being is because even though I have the 2 pre-terchs required for mind machine interface, somtimes I have to choose and research up to 3 other techs before I have the MMI option. Which would not be all bad except there are already other factions researching the 2 SPs the MMI tech allows. It seems to happen mostly when I am doing better then the other factions as far is the bar chart goes. Perhaps that is the games way of keeping you from getting to far ahead ? Well, maybe I try blind research and see how things turn out.

[TresXF]

I think that is BS.

do you really want an easy game? i need the challenge and the chance to master the unexpected.
artificial intelligence is still miles beyond human brains - so what to do? give the ai some advantages and the human some obstacles.
no offense - but if you can't accept that you have to go playing with your model railroad

[Kirnwaffen]

I seem to remember a thread a while back about research selections being designed to prevent beelines up certain paths. I'll dig around for a bit and see what I can find.

[mrdynamic]

My question is just a query of, given blind research off, is the game supposed to provide randoms techs to choose from or not. Based on my experience it does provide randomness sometimes, and having blind research on ... definitely is more random.


TresXF , if I was worried about playing an easy game I know I could win I would challenge you to a game of multiplayer ........

[vitamin j]

Now, now, gentlemen, be nice. I remember the thread Kirnwaffen is thinking of. It was very educational. IIRC, I don't think the techs available are actually chosen randomly, it has to do with the highest techs you have in the various categories (build, explore, etc.).

[Flubber]

At any given time you will usually be given a research choice that does not include all available techs. I just accept that sometimes my desired tech will not come up. If you are beelining heavily, the best strat might be to pick some low level non-SP tech that the AI is trading/selling. You will usually get your preferred tech choice on the next tech lotto and carry forward your accumulated tech points and maintain the same tech cost (for that tech). The result is that you get your preferred tech this time just as fast but then have an extra tech that increases the cost of the NEXT tech.

[TresXF]

@ mrdynamic:
i thought the "no offense" and the " " would disable the possibility of any insult.

to make it clear - i was just making fun. i know that those random techs are wanted by the programmers. imho it's pretty boring if you have a 'golden way' to succeeding every game (like in many scripted rts for example).
btw, it's essential to make clear on what level you play - the game preferences are extremely different.

[knowhow2]

to be allowed to research a level 5 tech you need a bounch of level 4s, even more level 3, and almost all the 2s and 1s. So Beeline still require more tech than necessary for that peticular tech.

[MariOne]

Originally posted by TresXF
...the chance to master the unexpected...

...and following posts.

I remember a thread too, long time ago, where several "more or less" sound hypothesys were made about the rule/algorythm determining the techs to be withheld.
The more self-assured was MtG, but I have never verified his assumptions neither.

There is one way tho:
the mechanism with which the techs are withheld is DETERMINISTIC.
After several tests, I could not devise a formula, but I determined that if you put up a basic scenario, in which you just need to:
- use the SAME FACTION you are using in the game
- give it the SAME TECHS you currently know in the game (use Ctrl+F2)
Those are the only variables determining the techs that the game will actually offer you to pick, as far as I could tell.
Then, using Shift+R, you will ALWAYS see exactly the same techs portfolio that you would be offered in the game in the same situation. Of course remember to assign yourself also the tech that you are about to discover in-game (you will have it in the bag when you pick the next).

That is, you can't "calculate" which techs you will be offered or not.
But you can TEST it in advance, thus you can "know it" in advance, with 100% certainty.

If you had time, from a scenario, using F2, Ctrl+F2, Shift+F2 & Shift+R, you could attempt to devise a formula to be expressed in general terms.

[johndmuller]

I must have seen one of those threads because I have been operating on the assumption that given the same set of techs, you will get offered the same collections of new research targets. I have been basing tech-planning discussions with allies in MP on this theory (although without awareness that the 'same faction' was supposed to be a requirement also) and have not noticed any contradictions. While this is hardly a definitive study, it seems to point to a veryl high expectation of consistency at least.

Another theory I heard somewhere is that any withheld techs would come from the same category as the last tech researched. I can't say that I've checked this out - I suppose because it seems to be too much trouble to figure out all the techs you are qualified for - and I can't say that I have ever made any research target decisions on this basis, but it is all too easy to remember this theory, so I always think of it when I wonder what techs I might not get and it may have some influence on my tech selection even though I have no idea whether or not it is true.

[MariOne]

If the set of known techs determines the offer, then the theory that the witheld ones are determined by the category of last one discovered is easily proven false.
Just put up a test where you get to the same "status" from different discoveries, and you see that the offer will be the same.
The offered set is NOT dynamically determined, as I also had initially & erroneously thought.

Mostly, different factions are offered the same techs in the same situations. But sometimes not. I too was at first overlooking factions, and a couple of times (out of 30-40), some player I was trading techs with by leapfrogging reported that he wasn't offered the techs I previewed. I thought that he was lying to me (in-game deception...), but actually the theory proved to be incomplete.
IIRC you can verify it very early, something like give Mobility to Gaia and Ecology to Sparta, and they get a different offer for next tech (just an example, it might be some other factions couple), while most other factions get the same of one of the two.

Personally, I have verified the theory with over 200 observations throughout my pbems, and in some singleplayer test game, and it never failed once.
I agree that scientifically this is not a proof... as the fact that all humans died sooner or later... "SO FAR"... is not a proof that "a human" MUST statistically die...

[RedFred]

While it may be difficult to prove MariOne's hypothesis, you can play two parallel games. Make sure to turn pod-popping off and never trade or probe for tech. Play the same faction in both games. If you play Aki, don't capture bases from factions that have tech that you don't have. Research the same tech in the same order. Compare. I believe that most of us agree (I know I do) that in both games the tech choices you will be offered at every advance will be the same.

So there is no randomness. Question is, how does the program determine what to offer you. Is there hard coding every step of the way for every faction a set of tech choices or is there a simple algorithim to determine what will be offered based on what the given faction has already? If it is the algorithim option, what is that algorithim?

[T-hawk]

Solution Here

See here for Oedo's explanation of how it works in Civ 2. (it's about halfway down the page, or search in the page for 'Heureka')

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001533.html

It works mostly the same way in SMAC.