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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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% 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