The Compromise of 210 BC *Everyone Read*

[Shiber]

It's not wasted cash. Researching a technology makes it cheaper and saves you a lot more money than you invested in researching it.
As for actually researching whole techs ourselves, I think we should enter a building period after we finish the Americans and build libraries in cities with a high science output while we establish a mobile defense force of knights to defend us in case there's trouble.

[Reddawg]

Apocalypse proves once again that he is one of the most able minister's Apolyton has even seen!

[MrWhereItsAt]

Well if it is a rate of 10% there is as little cash waste as possible whilst still making the tech cheaper. A rate higher than that and we'd need to factor in the fact that we're losing out on GPT for a very slight chance of actually researching something ourselves.

I agree with the building libraries phase, too.

[vulture]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
Well if it is a rate of 10% there is as little cash waste as possible whilst still making the tech cheaper. A rate higher than that and we'd need to factor in the fact that we're losing out on GPT for a very slight chance of actually researching something ourselves.

I agree with the building libraries phase, too.

I'm not part of the Demo game offically, but I just though I'd interject here. Setting to research a tech in 40 turns isn't going to make it any cheaper to buy, in my experience. I may be wrong, but the way it seems to work is that the Ai charges you based on how many beakers you need to get the tech, not how many turns. With science at a minimum to get the tech in 40 turns, there is a good chance that after 39 turns you will still have made very little progress in terms of how many beakers are needed. Hence, although you will get the tech in 1 turn, you still need to pay almost full price to buy it from the AI. Only if your tech rate at 10% is enough to make a significant impact on the beaker cost in 40 turns will you be able to buy at a discount (and if you do that, you could research it in 20-30 turns with science at 20%). If with science at 20% you would need more than 30 turns to research the tech, then there is a good chance that running at 10% won't make any significant impact on the price of buying it from the AI.

I may be wrong, but that's the way it has seemed to work in my games.

[Sheik]

This is a good plan.

Apocalypse, good work on this. I am happy to see that you are getting the people involved as much as possible.

[civman2000]

Sounds good. I think with a period of building after the war ends we could be in good enough shape to actually research techs ourselves.

[Shiber]

Vulture, it's true, only you missed one fact: the minimum rate of progress in tech research every turn (unless you're in anarchy or the tech slider is at 0%) is 1/40 of the amount of beakers needed for completing the tech.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Shiber
Vulture, it's true, only you missed one fact: the minimum rate of progress in tech research every turn (unless you're in anarchy or the tech slider is at 0%) is 1/40 of the amount of beakers needed for completing the tech.

I'm not convinced that's true. You can't take more than 40 turns to get a tech certainly. But, for instance, I have sometimes set my tech rate to zero and made one citizen a scientist (one beaker per turn) to get the tech in 40 turns. If what you say is true, the effect is that that scientist generates 1/40 the cost of the tech every turn, due to the lower tech rate limit. What I've seen stronly suggests something different, namely that the scientist does indeed produce 1 beaker per turn, and that after 40 turns you just get the tech depsite having only 40 beakers of research for it.

Consider the situation after 30 turns. If I am right, then you have 30 beakers of research, which is basically nothing compared to the cost of the tech. So buying it off the AI will cost nearly full price, and changing your tech rate wont gain you any benefit unless you change it to a level where you could have researched the tech in less than 10 turns initially (say you set science o 100% and are told you will get the tech in 7 turns instead of the 10 it would take with 1 scientist; that only happens if your science production could get you the tech in 7 turns staring from zero beakers). If you are right (assuming I haven't misunderstood your point) any change in the tech rate will give you an improvement, since you already have 75% of the required beakers, rather than a mere 30.

As I said, I've looked at the price of buying techs when I'm 38 turns into researching them with one scientist, and the cost has been basically the full price for the tech, not the price of a tech for which I have 95% of the research done. Obviously the effect of this is going to vary depending just how far below the 40 turn limit you fall - 10% might actually be giving you 1/40th of the required beakers every turn, or it might be giving you a lot less (which is why you look at the time needed with science at 20%). I've not seen any evidence that you always get at least 1/40th of the total beakers needed per turn - if you have any thing to support this I'd be interested to hear about it; my experience has been the opposite.

[DAVOUT]

The Minister of Science is taking over by his provision 3 and 5 the whole General Policy of the Nation. These two points should be assomptions or official policy, not Science Ministry policy.

The Minister of science should not define which tech is traded and which is internally researched ; he should establish the prioritized list of the techs he find desirable to acquire ; then the Minister of Economy should determine the amount of gold available for internal research and trade of techs, after due consideration given to units upgrade, money rushing and minimum treasury authorised; then the Minister of Foreign Affairs should look after a potential seller of tech according to the Science Minister list, and within the limitations edicted by le Minister of Economy.

My personnel choice by order of priority is :
Chivalry
Theology
Education

Chivalry should be internally researched and at the same time externally looked after. Then, when traded, Theology would be internally researched, etc. All that with the cursor at zero.

I am not far from being in agreement with the compromise you offered, with the few adjustments suggested.

[Shiber]

Well, this whole debate made me curious so I began crunching some numbers and this is what I got:
Let's take Feudalism for example. The cost of a tech is the tech's cost factor (24 in Feudalism's case) times the tech cost factor for the size of map we're playing at (we're playing in huge, meaning 400) divided by ten. Therefore Feudalism costs 960 beakers.
Now, when we bought Feudalism from France we were 13 turns away from Feudalism and we paid 371 gold + 10 gpt to get the tech. Supposing that 1 gpt = 15 g (based on my own experience) we paid 5w1 gold for Feudalism, which is ~54% of the cost of the tech.
We were 13 turns away from Feudalism, and at a rate of one tech every 40 turns we've completed 67.5% of the research and we needed to finish the remaining 32.5%.
If my theory is correct then 32.5% of the research (the part we needed to complete) equals ~54% of the price of the tech (which we paid in gold), or one beaker is worth 1+2/3 gold. I think this makes some sense... the cost of buying a tech is naturally higher than the cost of researching it ourselves.
However, if we pit your theory against the numbers it would mean that buying a tech costs less than researching it yourself (MUCH less, in fact) and IMHO that doesn't make any sense (no offense).
So far I'm sticking with my theory unless someone can propose a better one. Also, if you find any mistakes in my calculations please bring it to my attention so I can mend my theory.

[vulture]

Shiber: I thought it was pretty much given that buying techs was cheaper than researching them yourself, at least from civs that are on good terms with you. I assume from your example that France was the only other civ to have Feudalism, since the cost goes down as the number of civs increase.

I'll go and trawl through the forums to see if anyone has done any definitive tests on this. I know that some strategies are based on the belief that buying tech is cheaper than researching it yourself, and these strategies seem to work very well. Presumably they have some support from studying the game mechanics...

[DAVOUT]

Shiber,

You assume 1 beaker = 1 gold ?

[Shiber]

Vulture, when a certain AI is the only civ that has a certain tech the price they demand for it is very high, practically rediculous. Later, when a few more civs have the tech (like in our case with France) the price drops to a reasonable level.

Originally posted by vulture
Shiber: I thought it was pretty much given that buying techs was cheaper than researching them yourself

Don't be rediculous. When we bought Feudalism we got it immediately, whereas if we continued to research we would have gotten it in 13 turns. Of course buying a tech is more expensive than researching it, you pay extra to get it now instead of wait for your scientists to complete the research.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
Shiber,

You assume 1 beaker = 1 gold ?

I'm assuming that every gold coin you spend on science is transformed into 1 beaker. The outcome of my calculations was that when you buy a tech you pay roughly 1.66 gold for every beaker you're missing. Of course the price varies depending on the relations between your civ and whoever you're buying from and how many civs already have this tech.

[DAVOUT]

I agree with the calculations, I would like to be sure of the conversion rate of gold into beakers. Ill check this night, unless you can do it immediately