Free techs and palace improvements

[Kevin Ar18]

In a number of my CivIII games I'll start research on a new techonology and instantly it says they discovered the secrete of it and then I go on to select another tech. Also, a numbers of times when I get to improve my palace I am able to change two different things (one after the other).

Are these "features" a part of the game or bugs?

[notyoueither]

You have a beauty version of the game dude.

Treasure it.

Seriously, I have not observed this behaviour, except... I have seen the magic disappearing Palace improvement, once. After my first improvement, the second time the builder came up, the first improvement was gone. What the???...

Redid the cave. Can't live in a cave. Damn Vandals. Hmmm, it still wants to do more... OK, plant the lawn. Can't stand weeds.

So in my case I was able to do 2 for 1, once. But it wasn't really 2 for 1, because I still only had the right number of improvements.

Never happened again.

Salve

[Ironikinit]

I don't know about the instant tech deal, but with the palace I think it's just that your advisor is slow in telling you about the upgrade. If you look at your palace sometimes an upgrade will be available even though you haven't been alerted. Maybe the designers did it that way so you wouldn't be interrupted so often.

About the palace, the whole deal seems odd to me. My current game I don't think I was alerted to the upgrade until after 1 AD and it's still not really all that great, even though I'm doing really well. In other games I get a palace upgrade just for founding my second city. I should probably do like I did with Civ 2 and just turn it off. It does look pretty to fix it up, though.

[Akka]

It happens often to me that I have the option to build two improvement to my palace in a row. Strange, but well...

For the tech thing, isn't it that you just build the Theory of Evolution ? It gives you two free tech. I know you can't choose them, but I'm just wondering.

[Kevin Ar18]

Originally posted by Akka le Vil
It happens often to me that I have the option to build two improvement to my palace in a row. Strange, but well...

That's what I'm talking about.... That's what happens to me.

Originally posted by Akka le Vil
For the tech thing, isn't it that you just build the Theory of Evolution ? It gives you two free tech. I know you can't choose them, but I'm just wondering.

No, this happens at other times as well. For instance it happened when I first got into the Middle Ages one time and it happened when I first got into the Modern or Industrial Ages one time. And it's probably happened at other places. Unlike the Theory of Evolution which gives you 2 free technologies after building the wonder, I get 1 free tech radomly during a number of games.

I've thought that maybe it was because I was behind in tech, but I wasn't that far behind. Later in the game I was sometimes even with the computer and sometimes I was ahead.

[Trey]

It might be because your tribe is Scientifit. That means they get 2 (?) free techs everytime then enter into a new era.

[Ecthy]

Scientific civs get 1 free tech when they enter a new era.

Non-scientific civs get none.

[Grrr]

If you choose to ignore the palace upgrade popup, you get an extra upgrade next time! Also, for some reason the popup does not always appear.

As for you science, it can be one of several things:
-Theory of Evolution (2 free sciences)
-Scientific Civ (free science at begining of each era)
-Great Library (free science once two people have discovered it)