choosing your own tech to research problem

[MariOne]

All my observations deny the two rules reported there, thus also deny your statement that it works mostly like in CivII.

I don't know HOW it works, i.e. I can't answer to RF's million dollars question "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?".
But I know that it DOES NOT work *that* way (CivII/oedo's).

If you prepare a scenario from scratch, without setting anything except the techs known to a certain faction, it has no history.
The tech offer always matches the tech offers observed in several different actually played SP & MP games, absolutely regardless of the history (i.e. how you got there, in which order, following which path) and the context (i.e. the conditions of the other factions and any other I could imagine).

I'll go with my method.
When I need to know it, I'll put up the simulation, and will hold it as bible.
This is useful if you are contracting to get a (human) player's next discovered tech in a trade (leapfrogging, or boosting an arretrated player to get from him the single one tech you're still missing).
You can preview whether he'll be offered something interesting to you too, and if after getting something from you in advance, he tells you he wasn't offered what you were expecting from him, you'll know that he's lying to you.

[johndmuller]

Marione, I don't think that oedo's/CivII mechanism is necessarily inconsistent with your observations:

1) Given the same set of techs, the "joker" techs would be the same;

2) the on-on-off alternations which partially determines whether a tech is available or not changes with each new tech and thus seems to be essentially a counter of your techs and would therefore always have the same value given the same set of techs;

3) if the two statements above are true then the tech offerings would behave just as you observed.


(to account for the slight variations you noted w/r different factions, perhaps the "joker" techs vary slightly by factional and/or category preferences - a feature either new to SMAC, not relevant in CivII, or swept under the carpet by oedo)

Probably because I didn't really look at the algebra much (since he prefaced it with a disclaimer), I didn't really understand what the implications of the quote below would be, so there may be a fly in my ointment.

starting techs, however, behave like never researched techs. that´s why they play into the formula above.

[T-hawk]

The practical upshot of the system remains true in Alpha Centauri as it was in Civ 2. If a tech you want is unavailable for research, be careful about what you do while researching an alternate tech -- if you acquire a total of 3 technologies via research/trade/pods/artifacts, your desired tech will again be unavailable at your next research choice. I've confirmed this effect several times while playing.

[Fitz]

Actually Mario, I carefully read the Civ2 thread a few months ago and concluded that the basic premise could be applied to the AC system. I unfortunately don't have the time right this second to reread it and find my case in point, but I remember your prior comments on it being determined solely by faction/given techs, and took his basic premise that it also was determined by the tech order inside a file, and figured it was based on the alpha.txt tech order (or another txt file order) in addition to the given faction/techs, regardless of the order to arive at those techs. Try rereading it if you find the time and you'll probably see what I mean. That would make it a simple three part determination, fixed on those three variables (tech order in file, known techs, faction [or faction's free tech])

You can probably test that idea with your test simply be rearranging the tech order in the text file and see if you get discrepencies with two tests, one right after the other. If you do it a good ten-twenty times and find no changes despite significant reordering, I'll withdraw my hypothesis.

[Zaphod]

RedFred, this "bump" is for you!

[Chowlett]

unfortunately, the thread referred to above does not appear to exist anymore, either live or in the archives. If anyone has a copy, reposting could prove quite useful.

[RedFred]

Thanks Zaphod.

The reason that I wanted this bumped is that it has been determined that some PBEMs do not follow the correct tech rules for a given faction. I now know of two instances when tech that should have been available was not. In the first instance I was playing the Cult and I was unable to take the ultrafast beeline to SoHB that the Cult is known for. In the second instance Zaphod did not have the Datatech opening tech options normal for that faction.

We believe that this may be a CMN issue. Unfortunately I still haven't gotten up to speed on CMNing. But is it possible for this problem to occur if factions are somehow reslotted when setting up the game. Or is it something more simple like not distributing the normal techs given to a faction at the start of the game?

[Gregurabi]

I'd be interested in hearing about any strange PBEM tech choice results as well. In both of the PBEMs I've played so far -- one as Lal, one as Morgan -- I was not able to choose Centauri Ecology as my first tech. I've never had that experience in SP play.

I'm also using the Linux version of SMAX. I don't know if that's relevant here.

[Mongoose]

RedFred, I wdon't think it would be a reslotting issue because you can out any faction in any slot in SMAX. I've not ever seen what you describe while playing SP; factions have been in every which slot during those.

I am sure that missing the starting tech would have an effect. I suspect that is the reason for the alternate choices. I wouldn't care to argue that the missing starting techs are the SOLE reason, though.

I have determined that what other factions are in the game, or were in the game, affects the choices offered later in the tree. That might be part of the problem here.

[Capt Dizle]

Wow, a whole nother subject I'd not thought to think about. This game makes my head hurt!

[Fitz]

RedFred, if I may further hypothesise:

If the tech order is determined by the three points I made before, ie - tech order in file, known techs, faction [or faction's free tech], maybe there is a fourth factor I missed. That factor would be # of tech choices made so far.

Thus, if you have a seven player game, the 7th player would be getting options based on the alogithm that would apply to the first player in the 7th turn of a single player game.

This could easily explain how strange results pop up in MP that you would never see in SP. If I recall the "missing" thread properly, it went through a 3 turn iteration of options every time you discovered a new tech. If this is the case, perhaps that iteration is not seperate for every player in MP, but instead occurs as you move from player to player.

The real test (or first test, I should say) of this would be to see if the first player always recieves the first set of tech choices that he would recieve in SP.

[big_canuk]

Furthermore then, a 3 player PBEM would give the same results as in SP. 3 player PBEMs are along with 4 player, probably the most common. MariO, any idea if your testing was mostly with 3 player PBEMs? Were any of the suspicious results with games with other #'s of players?

bc

[Straybow]

Careful about re-ordering the techs in alpha.txt. Some of them have functions that are not assigned via lines in alpha.txt, and those assigned functions may go to the [i]slot]/i] rather than the tech name or preqs. Now, wouldn't that be an odd surprise.

[johndmuller]

I performed the search that T-Hawk suggested and found the thread with no difficulty (today at least) - it was apparently repathed or whatever in one of those upgrades it is now located at: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hlight=Heureka
the "&highlight=Heureka" part is probably optional and doesn't seem to work in any event, but if you scroll down the thread a good bit there is a post by oedo that is the jumping off point to the theories in question.

As to CMN'ing (I'm taking that to mean using a Scenario) having an effect, that would be quite possible as the CMN needs to add in each faciton's starting tech manually as the game does not do so automatically. If there is a special "starting tech" routine or flag that a game started in the normal way would experience, it is entirely possible that a Scenario-started game would not execute that routine or set the flag. Further, it would most likely not increment the counter that is implied by the 1-out-of-3 withholding mechanism postulated in the theory, which could also lead to a different bee-line pattern. (In the same fashion, Actual in-game construction vs Scenario Editor placement of "goodfacs" led to a lot of confusion viz-a-viz clean minerals and the ED calculations - apparently due to the SE's failure to increment the >pop< counter when goodfacs were inserted by would-be theory testers.)

As to the 1-out-of-3 withholding theory, I have been assuming that to be true in my PBEMs for a while now (in fact because of this thread), and have not experienced any disappointments. In practice, it comes down to assuming that the tech will not be withheld twice in a row, for the most part, which is easy enough to deal with. The added consideration of making sure that you don't get exactly 2,5,8,... new techs in between by other means is also useful to keep in mind.

I've never gotten any deeper than that into this theory, but insofar as I have tested it in play, it hasn't done wrong by me that I noticed. For sure this is not a proof of anything, but it has worked well enough that I have on several risked pactmate relations (and ridicule / nerd accusations) by engaging in complicated manouvers to get to Industrial Auto relying on this theory as an underpinning - no egg on my face yet .

[RedFred]

b_c, in both cases I know of where early game tech choices weren't as they should be, were four player games. I have not played enough PBEM to know if this is merely coincidence or if there is some special magic to games involving more than three players.