Tech costs

[Method]

this is kinda weird and i've never seen this before. i'm looking through the datalinks at the tech costs for different factions' research. i look at my own, i'm the hive and researching field modulation. tech cost is 1028. roze is researching industrial economics, cost 289. domai and morgan are both researching adaptive economics, but domai's cost is 144, and morgan's is 334.

now its pretty early so nobody has cyberethics (and thus nobody is running knowlege). is this the game's way of giving the weaker players a little boost, while hindering the stronger players? Domai is the weakest faction i know of, so this might be why his cost is so much lower. or is it just some new AI "cheat"? being the hive i have enought energy problems already without this tech thing.

[Clear Skies]

I'm no expert, but depending on the difficulty level your tech costs can be a lot higher than the AI's. Also, every tech a faction researches pushes their tech cost up - those with lower costs are likely behind in the tech stakes, whereas those with higher costs are probably steaming ahead.

[Method]

ah that explains i then. i'm playing on thinker, which exlplains my high cost, and domai has only about 5 techs which explains that. im pretty sure that morgan's the tech leader so what you're saying makes sense. thanks

[Googlie]

Here's a copy of a Chowlett post to a thread 70 pages ago:

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Okay, the following formula is supplied by the Prima strat guide. It is, apparently, an approximation to an extremely complicated formula.

First, assign a value to your difficulty level: 0=citizen, 5=transcend. This is DIFF

TECHS=number of techs you have

MOSTTECHS = greatest number of techs owned by any one faction

TURNS = number of elapsed turns.

WORLDSIZE = 0.6 for Tiny, 0.8 for small, 1 for standard, 1.1 for large, 1.6 for huge.

then

Research cost = [11+(DIFFx4)+((TECHSx6)/5)-(TURNS/8)-(MOSTTECHS/5)]xTECHSxWORLDSIZE

for tech stagnation, divide TURNS by 8 not 12, and multiply final result by 1.5


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G.

[johndmuller]

Except for the time until you research your first tech, the tech cost only changes when you start researching a new tech after finishing the research on the old tech. That is, if you change research targets as a result of acquiring your current research target some other way (pod, gift, trade, theft, etc), your tech cost will remain the same, despite having more techs. Thus it is a good idea to delay new tech acquisition from just before you are going to finish research til just after you start out fresh on a new one (unless you are considering acquiring the tech you are about to finish researching, of course). Two or three techs can make a very substantial difference in your tech cost, expecially noticable in the early game, so it is well worth worrying about.

During that interval before your first research ship comes in, the game may bump up (or lower) your tech cost without your having to finish a research project first. This can be a very substantial downside to an early encounter with Zak or a run of luck at pod popping, say if you were just about to finish Cent Ecology, but now must wait 5 or 10 more turns to get it.

It can be a very sly strategem to trade or even give away a bunch of techs to an opponent in an MP game just prior to when they finish their research; they will be thanking you very gratefully while you ratchet up their tech costs.

BTW, I think that there is something wrong with that formula, unless one of the elements that were omitted in this "simplification" serves to keep costs lower at the very beginning of the game (like not counting the initial tech). According to this formula, your tech cost would roughly be about 30 or 31 with 1 tech assuming transcend/standard map (11+20) and 60 or so ((11+20)*2) with 2 techs and that seems to me to be way off compared to actual tech costs - by a factor of 2 at least, maybe 4 even.