Mutineer said:
Sorry Ruff I just checked my previous post and found it is contain a gross Erro, I corrected it.
But no, breakers from commerce do not treated independently from specialists.
(Beaker due % + beakers from specialists) * (all other effects) *(burocracy effect)
They were independed in previous civ, but no any longer.
Actually, Bureaucracy does NOT affect beakers, Gold, culture from specialists (or buildings like Shrines) it ONLY affects commerce (and so it affects how many Beakers , Gold, etc. you get from the %. (all other effects DO apply to Specialists, Buildings, and Commerce)
The Fact is that for any One city, there are 'ideal levels' of Research, to alternate between. (not necessarily 0, 100, but wherever gives minimal rounding error from bonuses)
However when dealing with one city, there are also roundings from empirewide bonuses (prerequisites+others knowing the tech) So it becomes yet more complicated, and depends on the tech you are researching.
When dealing with multiple cities, the idea is that 0% is always 'ideal' for the research and 100% is always 'ideal' for the gold because there are no rounding errors. That way the rounding errors Only take place when You have that at 100%.
Note: this is ONLY true if you have NO specialists, if you have a city with 1 Scientist and a Library, at 0% science you will be losing ~0.75 research per turn from that city.... so actually it does matter, the more of a specialist economy you are running, the less 0/100% is a safe bet, and its back to calculating each individual city.
So it is Not better in All circumstances, but it is statistically better unless you want to count the commerce in each individual city and figue out the losses at each individual level. (which is the true way MM is alive and well in Civ 4).
Which is why the rounding system causes innumerable problems, that could be solved if they stored even 1 more decimal place... but that's programming efficiency v. game design.