Tech Discussion

[Dreylin]

Do we actually have a State Religion yet? That's another turn of Anarchy if we want to get the production benefit from OrgRel.

Also, if we're proposing Drama as the third tech for CS, then we'd need to have that in ~8turns ... if we get Monarchy in 4t, how many additional to get to Drama?

[sunrise089]

As much as I don't like self-researching a tech available for trade, I agree with researching Monarchy next. That is subject to change if Imperio refuses to trade us Maths but will trade Mon.

[Dreylin]

Right; so with Sullla rejuvinated & leading the way, and Monarchy on deck as the next research target we're set for the next few turns.

However ... we still have a looming tech-trade for which we require two additional techs - one of which has to be self-researched, and if Imperio keep blocking us on Maths another.

PAL propsed trading on the turn they discover CS, but asked for Aesthetics now; how about we counter-propose this:

Turn X-5 - we give them Aesth
Turn X - CS Trade for Lit
Turn X+5 - we give them Drama

(using 5 as a nominal number). That way, both teams have beakers "in the bank" for an equivalent period, and it gives us time to research Maths to get CS, and then Drama for the other half of the trade.

[Sullla]

I really like that idea, Dreylin. It's a solid way of building trust between teams, as we both have to have some faith in the other to get the full value from the exchange. The fact that it helps us in our (likely slow!) transition to Drama doesn't hurt either.

Since we just sent off an email to PAL, we can consider proposing this, or some variation thereof, in our next message to them.

[Zeviz]

Dreylin's plan sounds good.

What are our longer term goals? After Drama, should we go for Music for a free Artist (probably used for a Golden Age), or go for Metal Casting -> Machinery for Maces? (IIRC, Music is on the way to Nationalism, and we need both Nationalism and Maces for the draft-attack.)

[Dreylin]

Just a note to say that +/-5 was the number of turns that popped into my head at the time; ideally we'd want to min/max that number depending on our goals for holding techs. i.e.:

If we want to hold Aesthetics for as long as possible, we want to minimise the number of turns.

If we want to hold a monopoly on Drama, we trade Aesth now and maximise the turns.

There's probably more value in the former I'd guess, so we need work out approximately when we will have Maths, and then Drama. Also, looking at Pal's 8t estimate for CS, they will have it before we have Maths to enable the trade.

Currently we are looking at ~T105/6 for Monarchy +1t Anarchy.

So starting Math on T107, when would it finish? (Turn B)
From there, when would we have Drama? (Turn C)

If we're aiming for equal exposure, we'd want to aim the first trade on Turn A = 2x(Turn B) - Turn C

[Swiss Pauli]

Would we be better off switching to Maths in order to trade in CS in 5 turns? This would require us to delay our civic switch to HR (and probably combine with a switch to BUR). I'm not sure that it would be worthwhile, but we probably want to consider all avenues at this point in the game.

[Swiss Pauli]

With PAL getting impatient at our lack of progress, I suggest that we switch the order of HBR and Maths in order to hold up our part of the bargain. They've already accepted that we give them fewer beakers than we receive, and I don't think we can afford to upset our only ally by being 5-6 turns late with HBR.

Assuming we finish Monarchy on the inter-turn, we should anyway go to 0% research with HBR selected, to give the last chance for Imperio to trade us Maths whilst we stockpile cash.

Thoughts?

[sooooo]

They may prefer us to get maths and CS first, so we can tech HBR quicker with bureaucracy.

[Zeviz]

PAL is offering us CS now to speed up research rate. We should accept their offer, which means researching Math first. Keeping us as a viable opponent to Imperio is in their best interests, so it shouldn't be a problem if we research techs in the order optimal for our survival.

[Swiss Pauli]

PAL is only making the offer they agreed to in the first place; the talk of speeding our reseearch is meaningless waffle. They don't realise that they can't make the trade as we won't have Maths in time.

[sunrise089]

Right - top priority is getting Civil. If PAL is impatient I would offer them a 100-beaker voucher or something.

[ruff_hi]

Here is a little trick that I just learnt today from obsolete at CFC ...

if you deselect the current research tech (click on the tech on the top of the page), then the beakers are stored against no tech at all.

For example ... I started a game, selected Animal Husbandry from the pop-up ...



... then clicked on the tech bar to get the list of techs I could research. I then did the following:

• Ended my turn
• nag pop up returns, select animal husbandry (now 9 turns)
• click on tech bar again to unselect AH
• Ended my turn
• nag pop up returns, select animal husbandry (now 8 turns)
• click on tech bar again to unselect AH
• Ended my turn
• nag pop up returns, select animal husbandry (now 7 turns)
• click on tech bar again
• etc

on the last go round, I selected mystisicm ...



So, this way - we can totally hide our research until we want to actually finish a tech. You just have to be sure to 'unselect' the tech on the tech bar and the beakers are stored.

[Sullla]

Clever! Just to make sure, does this method still preserve bonus beakers from the multipliers? As in, we currently get a 1.15x and 1.2x bonus for researching Math. If we don't select the tech for several turns, and then swap back, would we get the bonus research for EACH turn that we put beakers into nothing?

If so, then it's worth doing. If not, then we'd be giving up too many beakers.

[ruff_hi]

I'll set up a test and see.

Results:
Researching AH with Capital generating 10 beakers put 13 tech beakers into AH (13/130)
If I know an AI with AH, I got 14 tech beakers (27/130)
5 turns later, I have 99/130 for 14.4 beakers per turn.

It looks like we are getting the pre-req and known AI bonus included. I did notice that once my stored beaker count exceeded the value of a cheap tech (ie hunting) it wouldn't let the stored beakers flow into hunting - ie selecting hunting and the beaker count started at zero.