Blind research

[Urban Ranger]

I prefer blind research. I tried a couple of timed with blind research, though I couldn't seem to direct it much.

[Urban Ranger]

T-hawk,

Hobroken! A friend of mine went there.

[Wojit]

Is it just me, or does Blind Research make the AI more willing to trade tech with you?

I might just be going insane, but I played a whole lot of games about a month ago, and the AI never wanted to trade tech - They'd always ask for cash. Eventually, after fiddling around with various rules and switching from SMACX to the original, I turned on Blind Research, and they seemed more willing to trade...

But, anyway, yeah, I like Blind Research more anyway. Means I occasionally don't get all the mid-late game projects I want...

[thelordofcheese]

Originally posted by Hercules
I just wonder how blind it really is. Just as you can beeline with directed research , I wonder does blind research follow similar rules.

For instance I choose 'Conquer' but the discoveries just seem to fill in the lower level undiscovered techs regardless.

Has anyone disovered MMI early with Blind research on?

as far as i can tell its a simple AI that governs what comes next

each tech has four values in the alpha.txt
ai-mil, ai-build ai-know and ai-disc (or something like that)

showing the techs weighting in that area.

so what i reckon happens is:

you choose your area to research (we'll say military)

the game then takes all the available techs, then takes the techs that each will lead onto .

it for each of the current techs it adds the four areas score with the score of the tech it leads onto
then the tech with the highest military score is chosen to be researched.

which might explain why the lower levels get filled out eventually (they lead onto techs with a high military score, or they are just the higest ranked of whats left)



of course i could be wrong.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Double blind is even more fun - you set it up on Blind Research, but then you scrupulously force yourself to research ONLY the faction priorities you start off with.

So playing as the Hive, you can ONLY research priority BUILD and CONQUER techs.

[Skanky Burns]

I agree, that is fun. I'm doing that as University on a huge map with tech stagnation on. Fun fun fun.

[Starfarer]

Wojit, my best answer to this is simple....

The AI is more willing to trade techs because you're working the tech tree entirely differently.

If you're like me when you play Directed, you prefer to keep things somewhat even. But if yiou're not, then you'll tend to learn things in specific areas, getting higher techs, but missing out on some lower techs due to the fact that you're ignoring them entirely.

Thus, the AI sees your techs, and sees you have one they want, and you're missing, say, Social Psych... perfect for a tech trade.

But if you already have all theirs, or vice versa, they rewally can't offer a trade.