Great People Tech Prefences

You should Update this thread to include Techs Great Generals can Pop.
 
kniteowl said:
You should Update this thread to include Techs Great Generals can Pop.


Generals are unable to lightbulb any techs, but they do give access to special promotions if they are attached to a unit as a Warlord. I believe they have three possible actions: Military Instructor, build Military Academy, or Lead unit as Warlord.
 
This is sooo usefull. Made me able to find out what techs i should not trade to be able to get calendar with my GS(ironworking). Stupid happines.
 
After the warlords 2.08 Patch The Great Prophet see's mansonry have a high religious value so it looks like you have to update the lighbulbing for the great prophet.
 
Well my old method of using a prophet to get civil service is now obsolete.


Here is my new method.
If i had techs Meditation,polytheism, priesthood, mysticism, masonary, monotheism, theology and code of laws then a great prophet would give me civil service as divine right requires monarchy.

eg. (from the above list)
Great Prophet:

Meditation // Have it
Polytheism // Have it
Priesthood // Have it
Monotheism // Have it
Theology // Have it
Divine Right // Requires monarchy
Mysticism (??) // Have it
Code of Laws // Have it
Civil Service // Great prophet will be able to give me this
Monarchy
Literature
Music
 
It's also possible to slingshot Civil Service with the use of a Great Merchant, in any version of either vanilla or Warlords. Here's how:

- avoid Bronze Working so as to block Metal Casting
- avoid both Priesthood and Monotheism so as to block Monarchy
- beeline Pottery - Writing - Mathematics - Currency - Code of Laws
- also get Sailing and Mining
- either build the Great Lighthouse, or build a market and hire two Merchants to pop the Great one (while you research Code of Laws and the other techs)

Here's the full detail:

Great Merchant:

Currency (research it on the way to Code of Laws; you need Math anyway)
Banking (too late to matter)
Economics (late)
Corporation (late)
Metal Casting (block by avoiding Bronze Working)
Code of Laws (research)
Mining (research)
Constitution (late)
Wheel (research)
Pottery (research)
Sailing (research)
Paper (late)
Railroad (late)
Industrialism (late)
Monarchy (either research it, or avoid both Priesthood and Monotheism)
Civil Service (bingo!)


Pros:

This allows ignoring the religious section of the tech tree entirely, since you get to Code of Laws via Currency instead. As compared to the Oracle or Prophet versions of the slingshot, you're spending early research on key economic techs (Writing, Math, Currency) instead of religious junk.

It's a guaranteed slingshot; there's no risk of losing the Oracle to a competing civ.

It really doesn't take longer than the Prophet version. I rolled up a test game in vanilla 1.61, on Monarch difficulty, using Napoleon (Agg/Ind) to take favorable civ traits (Fin, Phi) out of the equation, and pulled off the slingshot in 200 BC. The limiting factor was threefold: first research to Currency, then time to build the market, then popping the Great Merchant itself. I haven't tried the Great Lighthouse version, though intuitively it seems good for an Ind or Phi leader, or if you want the wonder anyway.


Cons:

Skipping Bronze Working (slavery, copper) is definitely a heavy opportunity cost in the early game. If you get BW, you must also get Metal Casting.

You also have to skip the Oracle, because researching Priesthood means that you must also get Monarchy. (Although, an alternate approach is to use the Oracle for CoL, then research Monarchy, which is indeed cheaper than CoL. That also lets you use Caste System instead of a Market to pop the Great Merchant.)

Have at it, folks... :)
 
In the game great people have a list of techs and a preference for each tech (no techs have the same preference).
If I read the parentheses correctly it means that no Great People can give you the same tech but self-evidently from the table in the original article and as noted by T-hawk this is not true.
 
Perugia said:
If I read the parentheses correctly it means that no Great People can give you the same tech but self-evidently from the table in the original article and as noted by T-hawk this is not true.

No. It says that two techs never have the same priority for the same great person, so, of the available alternatives, there is always one that is "highest ranked", and that is the one you will get.

If there were ties in the preference values, then, it would be possible for two techs to be ranked the same, and you might not be able to predict which one you would get (depending on how the code is written).
 
DaviddesJ said:
No. It says that two techs never have the same priority for the same great person, so, of the available alternatives, there is always one that is "highest ranked", and that is the one you will get.

If there were ties in the preference values, then, it would be possible for two techs to be ranked the same, and you might not be able to predict which one you would get (depending on how the code is written).
What determines the preference? There are ties in the numbers in the original article and up to now I had always thought that in ties you got the cheapest but that's not always true eg for a Engineer the lowest (1) ranking techs are
Divine Right
Fishing
Mathematics
Flight
Fiber Optics
Hunting
Horseback Riding
Rifling
Future Tech

Why this order?
 
DaviddesJ said:
I think it's the order that they appear in CIV4TechInfos.XML.
Not unless it's changed since post#1 eg Fishing comes first there (or post one has been sorted). I'll have a look.
 
Perugia said:
Not unless it's changed since post#1 eg Fishing comes first there (or post one has been sorted). I'll have a look.

I don't understand your remark. What I said is: among techs that have the same numerical rating for a particular great person type, the preference goes to the one that appears first in the XML file.
 
T-hawk said:
It's also possible to slingshot Civil Service with the use of a Great Merchant, in any version of either vanilla or Warlords. Here's how:

<snip>

Have at it, folks... :)

I just tried this with the Great Lighthouse. It took so long to actually get the Great Merchant, I might as well have just have researched CS the hard way.

Not something I'm gonna try again soon, I don't think...
 
DaviddesJ said:
I don't understand your remark. What I said is: among techs that have the same numerical rating for a particular great person type, the preference goes to the one that appears first in the XML file.
Never mind, my mistake. I was just misinterpreting the order of numerical ratings in the spoiler in post #1 as a true reflection of those in CIV4TechInfos as I did not have the XML file to hand at the time.
 
made a minimod that colors techs in the techtree after their flavors:
See My GP Flavor (rainbow techtree)

every tech also has its "flavour" for its "advisor"-text, this is another variable than those value variables in the list above.
AITrade = The ai will NOT give you those techs and may give you more for them because they value them much higher.
Those "my precious" techs a are generally military techs for defense or offense such as horseback riding, gunpowder...
Since the ai just values them higher just research them yourrself.
 
Hmm. my first impression was that the variables in the xml table were not related to GP as to what the AI would choose to research next based on its priorities. hypothesis: the AI's have different strategies they give different weights to at different times. To choose which tech to research next, it compares the available techs scores with its important strategies; e.g. if production is its highest priority, and Assembly line is among the available choices (a 10 in production), it will definitely choose assembly line to research next. If an AI's 1st priority is religion, it will definitely pick a tech which founds a religion. I'm not sure if I can test this hypothesis, as I dont' know how the AI's will value each strategy when.
 
Pardon me if this is off topic, I happened to stumble across this, and I felt like answering these questions.

made a minimod that colors techs in the techtree after their flavors:
See My GP Flavor (rainbow techtree)

every tech also has its "flavour" for its "advisor"-text, this is another variable than those value variables in the list above.

Hmm. my first impression was that the variables in the xml table were not related to GP as to what the AI would choose to research next based on its priorities. hypothesis: the AI's have different strategies they give different weights to at different times. To choose which tech to research next, it compares the available techs scores with its important strategies; e.g. if production is its highest priority, and Assembly line is among the available choices (a 10 in production), it will definitely choose assembly line to research next. If an AI's 1st priority is religion, it will definitely pick a tech which founds a religion. I'm not sure if I can test this hypothesis, as I dont' know how the AI's will value each strategy when.

The flavor values in the Tech Tree are used as an add on bonus that leaders give to particular techs. This is the relavant code from CvPlayerAI.cpp:
Code:
for (iJ = 0; iJ < GC.getNumFlavorTypes(); iJ++)
{
	iValue += (AI_getFlavorValue((FlavorTypes)iJ) * GC.getTechInfo((TechTypes)iI).getFlavorValue(iJ) * 20);
}

The important thing to note here is the flavor value from a tech is mulitplied by the flavor value for a leader.

Now, in the default Civ4LeaderheadInfos.xml, each leader has either one or two flavors, with values of 2, 5, or 10. For example, Asoka has a religion flavor of 5, and a science flavor of 2. (All flavors not specified are zero).
Spoiler Asoka's flavors :
Code:
<Flavors>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RELIGION</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>5</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_SCIENCE</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>2</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
</Flavors>

In the default Civ4TechInfos.xml, Meditation has a religion flavor of 10, a science flavor of 2 (and a culture flavor of 7). This means that Meditation will have a boost of (10*5 + 2*2) * 20 = 54 * 20 = 1080 bonus points for Asoka. This is at the same scale that a random number from 0-1999 is added to each value, so is a significant, but not overpowering amount.
Spoiler Meditation flavors :

Code:
<Flavors>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RELIGION</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>10</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_SCIENCE</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>2</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CULTURE</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>7</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
</Flavors>

Now looking at Polytheism, it has a religious flavor of 10, (and a culture flavor of 9). For Asoka, this gives us 5 * 10 * 20 = 1000 bonus. So for Asoka, these two have almost the same bonus.
Spoiler Polytheism's flavors :

Code:
<Flavors>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RELIGION</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>10</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CULTURE</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>9</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
</Flavors>

Now, if you compare this with, say Peter, who has a science flavor of 5, and a growth flavor of 2, you get that Peter gives Meditation a boost of 2 * 5 * 20 = 200, while giving Polytheism no boost at all. 200 is not a very large number compared to other factors however.
Spoiler Peter's flavors :

Code:
<Flavors>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_SCIENCE</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>5</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_GROWTH</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>2</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
</Flavors>

On the extreme end, you could look for someone with a flavor of 10 in something (Ragnar has a 10 flavor in Military), and a tech with a high flavor in the same thing (Military Tradition has a 10 flavor in military) for a high synergy. Ragnar gets a 10 * 10 * 20 = +2000 bonus with military tradition, so he is very likely to research that tech as soon as it makes sense to do so.
Spoiler Ragnar's flavors :

Code:
<Flavors>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_MILITARY</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>10</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
</Flavors>
Spoiler Military Tradition's flavors :

Code:
<Flavors>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_MILITARY</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>10</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CULTURE</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>3</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
	<Flavor>
		<FlavorType>FLAVOR_GROWTH</FlavorType>
		<iFlavor>1</iFlavor>
	</Flavor>
</Flavors>

The advisor type of a tech (or a unit) is only used for human players, for giving suggestions on what to research (or build) next. The popup wants to give two suggestions for techs, so it finds the best choice (including the large random factor), then finds the next best choice, ignoring all techs which have the same advisor as the best choice. This way, you will always be given two 'best' choices that use different advisors.

AITrade = The ai will NOT give you those techs and may give you more for them because they value them much higher.
Those "my precious" techs a are generally military techs for defense or offense such as horseback riding, gunpowder...
Since the ai just values them higher just research them yourrself.

This is not entirely accurate. Actually, the number in the "iAITradeModifier" field is a percentage increase in the value of that tech, based on its calculated value (basically its research cost). In the default Civ4TechInfos.xml, a tech only has a value of 0, (or 100&#37; value), or 10 (110% value). There is nothing about not gifting these techs.

Now you know more than you ever wanted to know about flavors and advisors :)

-Iustus
 
Now you know more than you ever wanted to know about flavors and advisors :), but still not quite enough...? :confused:

-Iustus
Well, I find this info you added great, but it doesn't answer all my questions on the subject, if anything it raises more than it answers...;).

Such as: What are those other (non-bonus) factors and how do I get a handle on them so I can come as close as possible to guessing what the AI will research next, and even maybe manipulate his choice to my advantage?
 
this guide is so usefull(that i have to bump it up top again so i dont have to search for it every time:p).
 
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