The basis on this article relies on this forum post:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146163
(research explained)

Definitions; prerequisite's tech: A tech that has prerequisite(s) and gain a 20-60% bonus on beakers. (Depending on how many prerequisite(s) techs it has) Tech jumping: the name of this trick. None prerequisite's tech: A tech without prerequisite(s) techs that has a 1.0 modifer. (you gain no bonus beakers.) Maximum carriover: Make sure you get as many possible beakers carried over from one tech to the next. Often done by adjusting the science slider the last turn down to the maximum that will give 2 turns left. Then next turn set science slider to 100%.

Basically the trick is this:
You may use the carryover effect of techs with prerequisite bonus (see the other article) more efficent if you carryover to a none prerequisite's tech for one turn, then switch back to a prerequisite's tech and do a maximum carryover on the none prerequisite's tech again. (And repeat until none prequiste's tech is finished)

To give a more "civ" example:
Pottery has a max of 2 prerequisites (fishing, the wheel, agriculture - the weel is required and you may have agriculture or fishing as an optional prerequisite) this will net a 40% bonus to your beakers if you research this after you have the prerequisites. You make sure to carryover as much as possible by adjusting the turn you can research it (1 turn left) so that it will be 2 turns left (switch to the maximum amount that still gives 2 turns). Then next turn you go 100% science. Now you get carryover of this 40% bonus to your next tech. Lets say we carryover to writing for a turn. Then after a turn of researching writing, we go to another tech with prerequisites. Lets say Monotheism (prerequisite:masonry) this will net you 20% beaker bonus while researching. Do the same steps for maximum carryover as last time. Then let the carriover go to writing. See where im heading here? You jump between techs with bonus and then back to techs without bonuses.

To see the effect in numbers we could say hypothetically you are researching at 100 beakers for the whole time of the example. this will net you 40 and then 20 extra beakers for a total of 60 free beakers. thats 60% of one turn of your research. Quite siginificant. In this situation we also think that you have so little left that you get to carryover the whole of the bonus. (WIth that i mean that if you gain 20% bonus you must have in this exampel 80 beakers max for your prerequisite tech the last turn so the 20 "bonus" beakers carryover to the none prerequisite tech. This bonus is even more pronounced in team games where in a 5v5 game you would earn 60x5=300 beakers for free!

You may improve your research speed somewhat by using this trick, but please remember strategic considerations also have to be taken. This tactic will delay some techs that may be vital for your strategic situation. (I wouldnt recommend delaying gunpowder if the enemy is knocking at your door.)

I can see how, if you're researching a tech anyway, you might micromanage the completion to gain a few beakers. And that's especially true early with the no-prereq techs which don't gain the 1.2 speedup that normal techs have. (No prereqs: Fishing, The Wheel, Agriculture, Hunting, Mysticism, Mining.)

But it could apply any time where you have optional prereqs with some techs, but not others. I'd guess that most techs have a 1.2 modifier. There's no gain to be had jumping between them. So one question here, what's the list of techs with 1.4+ modifiers?

This is an obvious exploit that should be fixed with a patch. The whole reason that firaxis came up with the carry over idea was to do away with micro managing your slider each time you had one turn left to discover a tech. You've found a way to exploit that with even more fine tuned micro managing. I don't believe this is a strategy at all. It's merely an exploit that takes away from the games objective to have fun. or maybe to some people it is fun to find a loophole to gain an imbalanced advantage that was never intended for the game

Man, what a waste of time.

Comments: First i have to comment the fact that someone says this is a waist of time. Well it might be for you but guess what there are actually people that find ways to improve they're gameplay usefull and interesting. This teqnique takes me maybe 2 seconds to do and infact it takes me more time to use teqniques like the cheesy circle etc... So i think that comment is just a waist of letters...

And for people thinking this is an explot- Firaxis put the modifiers into the game..if they didnt want people to use tricks like this they wouldnt have the modifiers there in the first place. I love the fact that i can discover new tricks for civ4 even after playing it intensivly for quite a period. This is really funny because the last time i posted a tip (The settler chop while growing) at once people tought it was a cheat but as time passed people accepted it and found it usefull in spesific situations.. just like this tip.. Oh and lastly there is allready an article about this modifier thing and nobody yelled cheat then..im just taking it one step further with a bit micro. So dont know why every time i find a usefull trick people yell cheat...

And wrech i think you misunderstand the consept - fishing etc have no techs.. but all techs that have only one path also has a 1.0 modifier..but techs that has one path and a tech required for it (like wheel for pottery) gains 20% .. and techs that has two different paths and a tech required for it gained 40% etc.. That means there are a lot more techs gaining this advantage. (Like gunpowder for example.)

Oh well i guess if people are this happy about new tricks i should just stop posting new information like this.. Bleh.. Especially the waist of time comment got me..Guess what..i think your post is in fact the one that is a compleat waist of time..

I had a waist of letters once. They were F-A-T-B-A-S-T and I forget the rest.

maybe it qualifies as an exploit, but hardly gives such a big benefit. researching the optional techs just to get the 1.2 or 1.4 modifier is hardly compatible with a beeline that can give a bigger boost to research. more of a strategic decision like chopping.

It is an exploit and I agree with Aegis: it is a waste of time!

Oh and lastly there is allready an article about this modifier thing and nobody yelled cheat then..im just taking it one step further with a bit micro. So dont know why every time i find a usefull trick people yell cheat...

Nobody yelled cheat in that thread because it wasn't presented as a strategy but as one of the consequences of how research works (the article explains in detail how research works). However, a lot of posters complained about the overflow effect in that thread. Even the original posters of the thread who figured out the overflow bug (and every other detail about research) didn't like it and has said so in that thread.

A similar bug was present for the production overflow and has already been fixed in the last patch. They might fix this one too, although this one has less consequences as the bug for production overflow. If they know about the bug and it proves easy to patch, then it will probably be fixed. The fact that you posted another thread about this makes it a little bit more likely that it is fixed.

I don't care what you do with your own game by the way. So in my opinion, there is no reason to flame you. But on the other hand, if some people think that a certain aspect of the game is a bug, then it is understandable (but not excusable) that they flame someone who presents it as a strategy.

The fact that you posted another thread about this makes it a little bit more likely that it is fixed.

I didnt vomit up the same stuff I spesifically first mentioned the article and then mentioned a trick that can in some cases improve the research. This trick was not mentioned in the article. (Jumping between techs to max your beaker bonus)

Edit: I will just have to take all this piss (even from someone i did respect like roland) and grin my teeth together and focus on more articles. Im sure sometime in the future someone understands that im just trying to help out the community by offering information. Frankly i have no problem with fixing any of the bugs. But the modifiers isnt a bug per se - but the carryover is.

Something worth considering is the beaker decay on techs you aren't actively reserarching. I dont' know how substantial it is, but it could turn something like this into a waste of time.

That aside, with the early game example given, I'd say that your civ will probably benefit more greatly from having a technology like hunting, masonry, agriculture, or whatever, earlier than delaying to speed your research. On Marathon for sure. 40 beakers sounds pretty good, but that's about 4 turns of an ancient city.

Still, a good post, and I hope they patch this away so I don't feel like I'm playing a weaker game because I'm too lazy to adopt this.

I didnt vomit up the same stuff I spesifically first mentioned the article and then mentioned a trick that can in some cases improve the research. This trick was not mentioned in the article. (Jumping between techs to max your beaker bonus)

Edit: I will just have to take all this piss (even from someone i did respect like roland) and grin my teeth together and focus on more articles. Im sure sometime in the future someone understands that im just trying to help out the community by offering information. Frankly i have no problem with fixing any of the bugs. But the modifiers isnt a bug per se - but the carryover is.


Sorry, but I didn't want to insult you. The sentence that you quoted is trying to say the following: "the more we talk about the 'overflow effect', the bigger the chance that Firaxis will 'fix' it". You probably read it as saying something like:"you are talking about a strategy that was posted earlier" which was not the thing that I wanted to say. Whether you consider it a feature or some other people consider it a bug is not the issue. A very similar overflow effect for production was 'fixed' in the previous patch 1.52 by Firaxis. So it is likely that this will be 'fixed' if Firaxis reads more about it.

I don't think it is a bad thing that you post a strategy that will allow people to speed up their research. I was just trying to explain why people will sometimes flame you for posting about something that you consider to be a strategy and they perceive as being a bug. Your article is not for those posters but for the ones who see it as a strategy.

I must say that I don't like the strategy, but that's a personal thing. I also don't like Moonsingers deity anarchy strategy (also an article in this strategy articles forum). But it really doesn't matter what I think about these strategies. If some people like them and will use them, then it was a good thing that you posted it here. If lots of people flame you then the thread will stay in the top of the forum and be read by lot of people, so you could view it as an advantage and just laugh it away. ;)
I you felt attacked by my post, then I'm sorry for that. :sad:

edit: edited for further explanation.

To see the effect in numbers we could say hypothetically you are researching at 100 beakers for the whole time of the example. this will net you 40 and then 20 extra beakers for a total of 60 free beakers.

But didn't you waste TWO turns to get this so-called 60% bonus? At the same time, you could've earned 200 beakers instead of 60.

For some reason I have serious doubts that this even works. It seems like you're speeding up the last of the three techs by 60% or 80% at best for only one turn. In order to do this, you moved the research slider to less than 100% two times, setting you back two turns. If you're lucky, you break even for all three techs. Regardless, you pushed the first two techs back one turn each just to save one turn on the third tech.

But didn't you waste TWO turns to get this so-called 60% bonus? At the same time, you could've earned 200 beakers instead of 60.

For some reason I have serious doubts that this even works. It seems like you're speeding up the last of the three techs by 60% or 80% at best for only one turn. In order to do this, you moved the research slider to less than 100% two times, setting you back two turns. If you're lucky, you break even for all three techs. Regardless, you pushed the first two techs back one turn each just to save one turn on the third tech.

This strategy assumes a difficulty level where you can't research at 100% the whole game. So the player using this strategy makes some money in the turn just before researching a technology, which can be used to research at 100% in the following turns. You don't lose research points in that way.

The gain is achieved by using the research bonus of the previous technology for first turn of research of the next technology.

The OP can probably explain it in more detail when he is online.

Yep as roland says. Also you can gain some even if your running 100% all the time by allways getting only one turn with teching for a tech without prequisites and then back to something else. Aka tech jumping. This will delay the tech your jumping back and forth to but it will earn it more beakers. So your delaying it for a more efficent reseach in the long run basically. Not often usefull but sometimes.

To try and simplify it if your running 100% all the time lets say you finish a tech with 40% bonus..the carryover will be 40% bonus and you research 1 turn on a tech with only 20% bonus.. This way you carryover the bonus and efficently earn 20% more beakers. Then you switch to another tech with 40% bonus.. research it finish and jump back to the 20% only bonus tech and gain another 20% more beakers for a turn. repeat until the 20% only tech is researched finished or you decided you need it fast.

On the subject of micromanaging production at high levels, I remember reading a tactic that was to always run science at either 100%, or 0%, due to the fact that Civ always rounds non-integers down. Doing this I guess you would save a small number of bulbs and gold in the long run for disappearing in the rounding black hole, does anyone have experience with it?

On the subject of micromanaging production at high levels, I remember reading a tactic that was to always run science at either 100%, or 0%, due to the fact that Civ always rounds non-integers down. Doing this I guess you would save a small number of bulbs and gold in the long run for disappearing in the rounding black hole, does anyone have experience with it?

My understanding is that any rounding goes into gold coins (i.e. cash) so I you're not really losing anything. I think the details are in the thread linked at the top of this one.

The commerce -> beakers conversion is not affected by rounding.

The beakers -> beaker_bonus conversion IS affected by rounding. So as soon as you build a library, it pays to run 0% or 100%.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOring

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOring

I must say that your contribution to this thread is very interesting indeed.:rolleyes:

I'm not sure I follow this logic. If the beaker to beaker bonus conversion is affected by rounding, why does it matter what I run my sciences at? If after the slider my beakers are at some number not divisible by 4 (in the case of a library, where divisibility by 4 would result in a whole number), don't I still lose the extra beaker regardless?

There is one setting that is not affected by rounding: 0%! You can minimize rounding by running 0% as often as possible.

I'm not going to try to prove that statement by logic, but if you crunch the numbers for any example you will find it is true. You may break even in the worst case, but you will never lose beakers.

Ah, I get it. Since the chance of there not being a rounding error is 1/4 with libraries (or worse in more complex situations), you could potentially save a beaker for every city you own in a given turn using this technique. At an average rate of science being 80%, you would run 0% 1/5 turns, and thus save at maximum (1/5 * cities * turns), or about 1/5 your number of cities in beakers per turn, as a rule. Is this correct?

If I might use an example to illustrate the effect:

A city has a commerce production of 20 and a gold bonus of 25% and a science bonus of 25%.

If you run at 100% tax on one turn and on 100% science another turn, then this city grants you 1.25* 20 = 25 gold and 1.25 * 20 = 25 science.
If you run at 50% tax and 50% science for two turns, then this city grants you 1.25 *10 = 12 gold and 1.25 * 10 = 12 science for two turns, for a total of 24 gold and 24 science.

A loss of 1/25 or 4% of your science + gold in this example (normally the loss will be less for a city with this amount of commerce production).

The effect of switching between 0 and 100% science is relatively bigger in the beginning of the game because cities have a lower output of commerce in the beginning of the game.

The original article that discusses this micromanagement can be found here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=159109).
It can be better discussed there as this thread contains a different strategy.

The effect of switching between 0 and 100% science is relatively bigger in the beginning of the game because cities have a lower output of commerce in the beginning of the game.I've found that too, but even later on, you can save yourself a turn or two this way, which, as you all know, in some games, this makes all the difference. Conversely, though, you really can only save a turn or two, and in the end, is that worth it? hmmm...well, figure this: 8 techs that all take 7 turns to research at the non-0-100% way = 56 turns, but if researched the 0-100% way, 49 turns...so maybe it does pay-off


but it is terribly tedious

The effect can't be that big. Not the difference between 56 and 49 turns. That's a far larger effect than what can be reached by this micromanagement.

I would expect an effect of up to 5% in the beginning of the game (after libraries) and an effect of up to 1% in the late game, or something like that. Mostly even less than those figures.

You could estimate its effect by looking at the tax output at 100% gold and the science output at 100% science. Add those two and compare it with the double of the tax + gold output of a 50% science, 50% gold setting.

I found that it reduces research by about a turn or so (for the *most* part). Therefore, if, instead of taking 56 turns to research 7 techs, you do the all-or-nothing approach, you save a turn for each tech (approx). So, you get 49 turns for 7 techs. OTOH, you could get 8 techs in 56 turns.

Thanks, Roland.

The reason I'm responding in this thread is because I'm responding to a specific argument which was made in this thread, which is that running a binary science rate is always preferable. I believe this statement to be erroneous, although I believe that it is in all practical cases preferable.

I'm not going to try to prove that statement by logic, but if you crunch the numbers for any example you will find it is true. You may break even in the worst case, but you will never lose beakers.

I believe it is possible to lose beakers this way if you have nothing but libraries in your cities and all of your cities produce 10 commerce (or some other number that makes the following calculation work):

Method 1: Run your sciences at 80% for 5 turns:

Turn 1: (10 * .8 * 1.25) = 10 science, (10 * .2) = 2 gold.
Turn 2: 10 science, 2 gold
Turn 3: 10 science, 2 gold
Turn 4: 10 science, 2 gold
Turn 5: 10 science, 2 gold
Total: 50 science, 10 gold

Method 2: Run your sciences at 100% for 4 turns, 0% for 1 turn:

Turn 1: (10 * 1 * 1.25) = 12 science, (10 * 0) = 0 gold
Turn 2: 12 science, 0 gold
Turn 3: 12 science, 0 gold
Turn 4: 12 science, 0 gold
Turn 5: (10 * 0 * 1.25) = 0 science, (10 * 1) = 10 gold
Total 48 science, 10 gold

Because in fact running at 100% is what did you in, in this limited scenario. On the average, any science level except 0% will cause 3/4 of your cities with libraries in them to run inefficiently, but in the worst case it is possible to lose beakers.

Ah, a very good counterexample, using the fact that you might lose a 25% bonus for a turn. You might want to repost that example in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=159109), because this trick of switching between 100% and 0% science was first posted there (AFAIK) and presented as an always working strategy.

I also agree that in most practical circumstances, the trick to switch between 0% and 100% science will provide a benefit.

Ah, a very good counterexample, using the fact that you might lose a 25% bonus for a turn.

Just to be pedantic, it isn't the loss of bonus that causing it, but rather the rounding. 10 * 1 * 1.25 is 12.5 and you lose this .5 every turn (for a total of 2 overall over the four turns).

It would be nice if some sort of 'dither' algorithm was used that meant that you would regain these fractions every so often. The city maintenance seems to do something like this becuase the total maintenance is spread around the cities in such a way that the empire's total comes out to the calculated amount.

With a library you will lose to rounding in 3/4 of your cities (all those producing science beakers that aren't a multiple of 4). I don't think there's any way that you could micromanage this without hurting yourself overall.

Again (without crunching any numbers) it seems to me that you will always lose from rounding in a number of your cities. At the early part of the game where every bit counts this may be important, but by the time you have the libraries I expect that there's too much commerce to make the few beaker difference that you may gain/lose be of much import.

Interesting stuff though, even if there seems little practical application.

Just to be pedantic, it isn't the loss of bonus that causing it, but rather the rounding. 10 * 1 * 1.25 is 12.5 and you lose this .5 every turn (for a total of 2 overall over the four turns).

It would be nice if some sort of 'dither' algorithm was used that meant that you would regain these fractions every so often. The city maintenance seems to do something like this becuase the total maintenance is spread around the cities in such a way that the empire's total comes out to the calculated amount.

With a library you will lose to rounding in 3/4 of your cities (all those producing science beakers that aren't a multiple of 4). I don't think there's any way that you could micromanage this without hurting yourself overall.

Again (without crunching any numbers) it seems to me that you will always lose from rounding in a number of your cities. At the early part of the game where every bit counts this may be important, but by the time you have the libraries I expect that there's too much commerce to make the few beaker difference that you may gain/lose be of much import.

Interesting stuff though, even if there seems little practical application.

In general the binary science rate is better. The intuitive reason is that when you have a 25% science bonus and a 25% gold bonus (or other percentages different from 0% or 100%) and a science rate other than 100% or 0%, then you can lose a fraction of gold on the 25% bonus of gold and a fraction of science on the 25% bonus of science. When you use a 0% or 100% science rate, then you can only lose a fraction of gold or a fraction of science, but not both at the same time.

Example: A city with 22 commerce production and a 25% bonus on gold and science.
The city does one turn of 100% gold and one turn of 100% science:
The gold output will be 1.25 * 22 = 27 and the science output will be 1.25 * 22 = 27. The city lost 0.5 gold in one turn and 0.5 science in the other turn.
The city does two turns of 50% gold, 50% science. The city will have an output of 1.25 * 11 = 13 gold and 13 science per turn for a total of 26 science and 26 gold. The city lost 0.75 gold and 0.75 science in every turn.

This is just an example but when you have a 25% bonus on gold and science, then the binary science rate will always be better then the balanced approach. You will not be able to construct a counterexample where there is a 25% bonus on science and tax.

The reason that the counterexample worked is that he used an example where there was only a science bonus of 25% and no bonus on gold income. In the balanced 80-20 science rate, the 25% bonus was applied each turn and in the binary science rate case, the 25% bonus is applied for 4 out ot 5 turns. The numbers are chosen in such a way that the 25% bonus is exactly the same when a 100% science rate is used, then when a 80% science rate is used. This way 5 turns of a 25% bonus are greater then 4 turns of a 25% bonus.

Of course, this has everything to do with the rounding. But the reason that the binary science rate is in general better is also based on the rounding. The reason that this counterexample worked is that Brazenheart chose his numbers in such a way that the 25% bonus of science was used fully in each turn when running an 80% science rate. I think he made the counterexample based on that idea. And that was what I wanted to say to Brazenheart in my short reply and was maybe a bit brief for other posters that were reading that statement.

Then again, most people were not waiting for this lengthy analysis...:crazyeye:

You will not be able to construct a counterexample where there is a 25% bonus on science and tax.

That depends on the formula. My guess is that the actual formula used by the game for beakers and culture must be:

floor( floor( commerce * rate ) * bonus )

And for gold it would be:

floor( celing( commerce * rate ) * bonus )

These aren't the formulas in Requis' analysis though. Given these formulae then the binary rates will give you at least a 10% bonus on total tech and gold output and maybe a lot more (around 40%) for some of them.

If on the other hand you use a more nieve formula for science:

floor( commerce * rate * bonus )

Then for low levels of commerce the binary rate is worse because the bonus rate will tip the scales back above 1 so you get a free science beaker.

I can't believe that the game does that though, but I haven't checked it. Requis' post seems to imply the first two formulae though. The bonus for binary science seems to be a lot more worthwhile than I expected it to be.

That depends on the formula. My guess is that the actual formula used by the game for beakers and culture must be:

floor( floor( commerce * rate ) * bonus )

And for gold it would be:

floor( celing( commerce * rate ) * bonus )

Almost. These are the formulas when you only have a tax and a science rate (which is actually the case that we're assuming here). If you also have a culture rate then it works in the following way:

Base Science: floor( commerce * rate )
Base Culture: floor( commerce * rate )
Base Gold: (commerce - Base Science - Base Culture)

The actual science/culture/gold is then calculated by
Science = floor (Base Science * bonus)

These aren't the formulas in Requis' analysis though.

Requies analysis of technology research is mostly not about the production of beakers in a city. It considers that and then looks at how the game modifies the amount of beakers produced by all of your cities in your empire into a progress on the research bar. Your total amount of beaker production can be 1000, but the progress on the research bar 1200 per turn. He does give the above research beaker per city formula at the beginning of his thread but does not mention the rounding down after bonusses from buildings are added. There is a rounding down however.

Given these formulae then the binary rates will give you at least a 10% bonus on total tech and gold output and maybe a lot more (around 40%) for some of them.

The difference is really not that big. You can test it by comparing the gold + science at three settings, 100% science, 0% gold, 50% science, 50% gold and 0% science, 100% gold.

For instance, in my present game these numbers result in:
100% science, 0% gold: 1624 research, 76 gold, 1700 total output
50% science, 50% gold: 807 research, 910 gold, 1717 total output
0% science, 100% gold: 13 research, 1733 gold, 1746 total output

You would expect a 1723 total output when there was no rounding at the 50-50 setting. So the rounding leads to a relative loss of 6/1723 = 0.35%
Almost negligible. Now this is a late game save (1652AD) and in the beginning of the game the effect will be a lot bigger.

I did the same calculation at the various other timepoints in the game:
590 AD: 0% loss
860AD: 0.96% loss
1105 AD: 0.60% loss
1275 AD: 0.73% loss

Nothing very dramatic. Still, the binary science rate can be usefull, but it's not a miracle for the rate of technological development.

To Wilburn: sorry for hijacking your thread.:blush:

Base Science: floor( commerce * rate )
Base Culture: floor( commerce * rate )
Base Gold: (commerce - Base Science - Base Culture)

The actual science/culture/gold is then calculated by
Science = floor (Base Science * bonus)

I was taking the rate to be the effective rate. For science and culture it is what you set, but for gold it is the 100 - science - culture as you say. But, the gold is ceiling() because the remainder after divying up the science and culture goes as gold. If you use floor() for gold too then you will lose commerce points in rounding. Think of a city that produces one commerce and has no multipliers and you have the science set at 80% and culture set at 10%. This city will produce one gold not nothing.


The difference is really not that big. You can test it by comparing the gold + science at three settings, 100% science, 0% gold, 50% science, 50% gold and 0% science, 100% gold.

For instance, in my present game these numbers result in:
100% science, 0% gold: 1624 research, 76 gold, 1700 total output
50% science, 50% gold: 807 research, 910 gold, 1717 total output
0% science, 100% gold: 13 research, 1733 gold, 1746 total output

You would expect a 1723 total output when there was no rounding at the 50-50 setting. So the rounding leads to a relative loss of 6/1723 = 0.35%
Almost negligible. Now this is a late game save (1652AD) and in the beginning of the game the effect will be a lot bigger.

The higher numbers only come from having a library and market place in every city, which in a real game isn't going to happen. I think that at 50% you will see a minimum for the difference though because you're doing one turn at each extreme. The calculation for the difference though should be:

total with science @ 100% * number of turns
plus
total with science @ 0% * number of turns

So you would get 1717 * 2 versus 1700 + 1746. This actually makes it even closer in this case. What happens when you wanted to run the science at 90% or 10% though? I can't load a game right now to see. The difference is of course very dependant on the mix of improvements you have throughout your empire as well and for some situations the difference could be more, in others it may be less.

And yes, Wilburn, didn't mean to hijack the thread, just getting carried away in the details here...

I was taking the rate to be the effective rate. For science and culture it is what you set, but for gold it is the 100 - science - culture as you say. But, the gold is ceiling() because the remainder after divying up the science and culture goes as gold. If you use floor() for gold too then you will lose commerce points in rounding. Think of a city that produces one commerce and has no multipliers and you have the science set at 80% and culture set at 10%. This city will produce one gold not nothing.

In my calculation, the city would also get 1 gold.

However if you set culture and science at 30% in a city with a commerce production of 2, then the city will produce 2 gold, although 40% of 2 commerce is 1 gold rounded up.
The reason is that the game calculates 0 science and 0 culture (because of rounding down) and then calculates gold as 2-0-0=2.
Afterwards the various multipliers for the science, gold and culture rate are applied.


The higher numbers only come from having a library and market place in every city, which in a real game isn't going to happen.

Actually, at the higher difficulty levels, you typically have a marketplace in every city that has a library, because a city that has a high commerce rate is good for gold as well as for science. And at these levels, the maintenance costs are so high, that you can't get away without building the gold multiplying buildings (except for military rushing type games on small maps that typically are finished so early that none of this is important).

The game from which the numbers stem had about an equal amount of gold as science increasing buildings. That can be seen by that fact that the science production at 100% science is close to the gold production at 100% gold.

I think that at 50% you will see a minimum for the difference though because you're doing one turn at each extreme. The calculation for the difference though should be:

total with science @ 100% * number of turns
plus
total with science @ 0% * number of turns

So you would get 1717 * 2 versus 1700 + 1746. This actually makes it even closer in this case. What happens when you wanted to run the science at 90% or 10% though? I can't load a game right now to see. The difference is of course very dependant on the mix of improvements you have throughout your empire as well and for some situations the difference could be more, in others it may be less.

And yes, Wilburn, didn't mean to hijack the thread, just getting carried away in the details here...

Okay, you're multiplying everything by a factor of 2. That will make no difference for the percentage, i.e. 100/1000=200/2000.

hehe i dont have any problems with the thread beeing "hijacked" as you say it since its fairly on topic. Also ive been quite busy preparing and playing the Clan Cup Championship of civ4 so I havent had much time to check on this thread.

Interesting observation that you sometimes may earn on not going for 100% with a only a libary. Will keep that in mind.

Whohoo, I have permission to batter this a bit more :blush:

The game from which the numbers stem had about an equal amount of gold as science increasing buildings. That can be seen by that fact that the science production at 100% science is close to the gold production at 100% gold.

I think you're right and that means that I have a mistake in my model. I haven't seen the actual formula that is used in any other thread (but I've probably missed it). I can think of two ways of doing it and which they actually did seems as much a matter of programming convenience as anything else.

For science and culture you could have one of these two:

floor( floor( commerce * rate ) * bonus )

floor( commerce * rate * bonus )

Clearly the second formula gives a better return on bonus multipliers than the first.

As for gold, my first guess with ceiling() is clearly flawed as you point out. Given that I think the only way it can be done is:

floor( commerce - floor( commerce * scienc_rate ) - floor( commerce * culture_rate ) * bonus )

or

floor( floor( commerce - floor( commerce * science_rate ) - floor( commerce * culture_rate ) ) * bonus )

I'm not being that clear with my terms, but I hope that the context makes it obvious what I mean.

Okay, you're multiplying everything by a factor of 2. That will make no difference for the percentage, i.e. 100/1000=200/2000.

At 50% percent it won't, but I think at every other percentage it will squew the result somewhat, but not by the amounts I had initially.

I think I shall have to go back to the game and see what it does on some of these edge conditions. Unfortunately these days I have more time to talk about playing than I actually have to play as the game is not stable enough to play on my normal login.

I guess, you'd want to change the way the formula works so that rounding has a lesser effect. I agree that in that case, you'd want to postpone the rounding until the latest possible moment. That would lessen the effect of the binary science rate.

At 10% gold, 90% science you could compare the gold + science output with 0.1 times the 100% gold output + 0.9 times the 100% science output (or alternatively 10 turns of 10% gold, 90% science compared to 1 turn 100% gold + 9 turns 100% science). The percentage loss at 10% gold, 90% science might be a little higher than at 50% gold, 50% science. But I don't think it will make a big difference.

At 10% gold, 90% science you could compare the gold + science output with 0.1 times the 100% gold output + 0.9 times the 100% science output (or alternatively 10 turns of 10% gold, 90% science compared to 1 turn 100% gold + 9 turns 100% science). The percentage loss at 10% gold, 90% science might be a little higher than at 50% gold, 50% science. But I don't think it will make a big difference.

Quite. At the early part of the game it's possible that it will be worth worrying about, but later on? If that's a concern then you should be playing at a higher level.

Nice!!! now I can research up too military tradition faster, turn off my science, save my money and upgrade 50 knights into Cavalry/Cossaks and go take the frontline out.

Lol sorry for going a bit out of topic but wow hi leexp nice to see you here on the civfanatics boards too :) Havent seen too many of us "good" ladder players on the civfanatics boards. Maybe we should write a guide for the multiplayer community here on civfanatics if we get a lot of the good ladder players to comment etc...

Agreed!! this forum needs a better strat section for multiplayer, Nice too see you too Willburn. Ohyea, so this stays a strat thread....
Tech jumping plus letting your population grow while making a worker/settler equals your opponent bringing a sword to a gunfight.

Ladder player cleanup on thread 5! I don't know how all these civfanatics people play so much singleplayer without getting bored.

The trick is we play it in 1 hour installments. :D Good luck trying that on ladder!

@Willburn and LeExp.: What is this ladder you are talking about? ;)

Lol speaker..Nice to see all of you guys here :)

Hey speaker can't wait for the next ip game was real funny.. BTW nice site you have there

I definitely see the merits of tech jumping, and, while it's kind of annoying, there are lots of little details that aren't going to be patched away. So, if you want to be good at Civ IV, you're gonna need to know this stuff.

Here's a new can of worms: Since the proposed idea is to situationally cut back on your tech rate so you get a lot of overflow (probably from tech that is being researched with a 1.4 or 1.6 modifier) which gives you a boost in your first turn of researching your next tech, how about having no (or less) overflow so you don't dump "1.0" or "1.2" overflow into a "1.4" or "1.6" tech?

Example time. You have researched Fishing and The Wheel, are about to finish Agriculture, and plan on researching Pottery next. Fish, Wheel and Agr are all prereqs to Pottery, making it (in this situation) a 1.6 tech. If you just plow on through Agriculture at 100% and have some overflow, your first turn of 1.6 Pottery research will be cluttered with 1.0 (or maybe 1.2 if techs without prereqs are still "1.2s") overflow.

I can't test this out yet (waiting on video card and RAM) but it seems feasible. If you can slingshot for more overflow then can't you line it up for less? This would be really doable if you can figure out how many beakers you need to finish a tech. I know city screens at least show how many beakers each city is pumping out but I don't know if there is an empire-wide beaker count.

Also, since we're on the topic of crappiness at this forum (although it's the best one I've found so far), does anybody recommend any other forums?

On the subject of micromanaging production at high levels, I remember reading a tactic that was to always run science at either 100%, or 0%, due to the fact that Civ always rounds non-integers down. Doing this I guess you would save a small number of bulbs and gold in the long run for disappearing in the rounding black hole, does anyone have experience with it?

I am trying it for my first time on a Monarch Earth game playing the Chinese and it *appears* to have made a substantial difference. I also like the fact that you usually have a ton of money in your treasury using this method (since you build up a large number running at 0% science then run 100% science for a long period as that money spends down).

As for this strategy, it does seem like a bug (especially given that they fixed a similar problem with production carry over) but a relatively minor one. Most people probably derive this benefit accidentally every game so the amount of additional benefit you would get from focusing on the strategy is probably negligible.

Here's a new can of worms: Since the proposed idea is to situationally cut back on your tech rate so you get a lot of overflow (probably from tech that is being researched with a 1.4 or 1.6 modifier) which gives you a boost in your first turn of researching your next tech, how about having no (or less) overflow so you don't dump "1.0" or "1.2" overflow into a "1.4" or "1.6" tech?

Example time. You have researched Fishing and The Wheel, are about to finish Agriculture, and plan on researching Pottery next. Fish, Wheel and Agr are all prereqs to Pottery, making it (in this situation) a 1.6 tech. If you just plow on through Agriculture at 100% and have some overflow, your first turn of 1.6 Pottery research will be cluttered with 1.0 (or maybe 1.2 if techs without prereqs are still "1.2s") overflow.

I can't test this out yet (waiting on video card and RAM) but it seems feasible. If you can slingshot for more overflow then can't you line it up for less? This would be really doable if you can figure out how many beakers you need to finish a tech. I know city screens at least show how many beakers each city is pumping out but I don't know if there is an empire-wide beaker count.
Just like the OP idea, this is of benefit if you are not maintaining 100% science continually. On the turn you research a tech which doesn't have a bonus, you should cut back the slider as per CIV3 to divert as much commerce as you can to the treasury to fund your deficit research on your techs with higher bonused that follow.

Basically the trick is this:
You may use the carryover effect of techs with prerequisite bonus (see the other article) more efficent if you carryover to a none prerequisite's tech for one turn, then switch back to a prerequisite's tech and do a maximum carryover on the none prerequisite's tech again. (And repeat until none prequiste's tech is finished)

This bug has been fixed in patch 1.61.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOring
i would expect the geek knight to be facinated with integers and beakers...