Do science points carry over to next advance?

[origimist]

In Civ II, I could check how many science points I had in a certain advance at any given time, where as far as I can tell in Civ III, you can only see how many turns are left for a certain advance.

Say at 50% Science, I create 200 science points a turn. If I have 1 turn left for an advance, but I only need 10 more science points, what happens to the other 190 points? Are they put into the next advance, or are they lost?

If they're lost, I might as well move my Science slider to 10% and put the extra into my treasury.

[cort]

i didnot test it, but somehow i have the feeling that extra points are lost (as does the production points), so I lower my science bar as you suggest.

[Didymus]

I suspect that this is indeed the case, for two reasons.

1) when you change which tech you are researching, the research points do not move. I.e., lets say you can research either Cuisinart [12 turns]or Exploding Cigars [6 turns]. You choose Cuisinart, but after 3 turns you realize you urgently require Exploding Cigars to defend yourself from an invasion by Micro$oft Lawyer barbarian units. Your research time is still 6 turns for Exploding Cigars, and when you go back, you have 9 turns to go on Cuisinart.

2) More directly related, it closes a loophole. It has been noted elsewhere that the minimum research generated each turn is the amount required for the current advance divided by 32 turns.
It should also be noted that the MAXIMUM is COST/4 turns.
(Based on my experience in a recent game.) Since each advance costs a set amount, the research points left over from researching Stealth could give you Communism in less than four turns.

You may doubt that Firaxis would bother closing such a loophole, but they closed plenty of others. For example you can now switch production without penalty, but may not hurry a Wonder-class improvement by disbanding units. So why not hurry a Palace by disbanding units, then switch to, say, SunTzu's Art of War? Because the game won't let you. I tried, and apparantly it notes that that build has been 'tainted' and will not allow you to switch.

Hence, I also push my research slider as far left as possible to still get the tech in the next turn.