Can someone explain exactly how bulbing mechanics work ?

The 2 important things are.
Don't bulb techs that have too little left or you will hit the cap (anything with 3 or less turns left should be avoided, if your blb is low comared to the tech cost however you're fine).
All your overflow accumulated go into a pool, so beware before bulbing more in that turn.
Your overflow gets zeroed on the next turn if you can dump it on a tech.
 
Slightly confused on the second piece...

How does queuing up the next tech to research effect the overflow? If you have say 8000 overflow go onto a 9000 tech, can you then switch your research path to a new tech and bulb that? And say another 8000 overflow on another 9000 bulb tech. Any problems with that?
 
Queing doesn't matter at all, your overflow isn't emptied until you pass a turn, you can easily see that: after bulbing just select different techs, you'll see the same amount on all of them.

No problem in your example. As long as you spend time emptying your overflow in a tech.
 
Wait if I have the tech queued, doesn't the overflow get applied just to the next technology I'll be researching? Then on the same turn its okay to switch my tech path to another few techs and bulb those?

Edit: Okay, that's not correct that it is applied to the next technology. Perhaps I will experiment around and try to find out for myself.
 
The 2 important things are.
Don't bulb techs that have too little left or you will hit the cap (anything with 3 or less turns left should be avoided, if your blb is low comared to the tech cost however you're fine).
All your overflow accumulated go into a pool, so beware before bulbing more in that turn.
Your overflow gets zeroed on the next turn if you can dump it on a tech.
I am actually more interested in the mechanics of that separate pool for overflow. If you bulb multiple GSs in one turn you can get quite a lot of beakers in it.

Let's say for example at one point in game you can research 5 techs, 4 of them cost 400 beakers (A,B,C and D) and one costs 200 beakers (E). You are generating 100 beakers per turn and bulbing a scientist gives you 800 beakers. The numbers are unrealistic but that is not the point, just wanted to make calculations simpler.

The techs are queued in A->B->C->D->E order
At the beginning of the turn you will have 100 beakers in tech A. You bulb a scientist that will give you 800 beakers, + the original 100 that gives 900. 400 go to get tech A and you have a 500 overflow (you are safe since it does not go over the cap). From what I understand this goes into a separate pool and cannot (in any way) be used this turn. This is what generates the "maximum one tech per bulb" effect. So even though you have 500 science overflow and you have tech B queued up you will not get it from this bulb.

You pop another GS, you get B and now you will have 400 overflow. This will go in that pool to total at 900 beakers. You don't automatically get tech C for the same reasons you did not get B.

Fast forwarding you pop 2 more GSs (totaling 4 bulbs this turn) to get techs C and D. You are now left researching tech E, and with 1700 beakers in the separate overflow pool.

Now comes the interesting point, if you hit end turn. You will put in tech E: 100 beakers from BPT, and 1700 from your overflow pool. Since tech E costs 200, you are left with 1600 beakers overflow. Does this get capped at 500?

If not, then the overflow bug that let you exploit science was not fixed at all, and a player can still exploit this, but slightly harder: he needs to be careful not to overflow too much when bulbing, so basically he needs a situation with multiple techs that cost him no less than 3 turns and no more than 8 turns (in order optimum you need exactly 3 turns, the more you have the less overflow and at 8 turns there's little or no overflow), and also save a really cheap tech to queue first at the end of the turn.

I will assume that the overflow will get capped because if it doesn't, it is just ridiculous. I don't think the civ 5 developers came with such a lousy fix.

So, in my example you will research tech E and you will be left with 500 beakers, thus losing 1100 beakers (basically a scientist and 3 turns of research). In this situation the conclusion is that you CAN safely bulb multiple scientist in the same turn. You need to be careful not to have too much overflow in that separate pool, and at the end queue an expensive tech first. After each bulb you can check your overflow as Horseshoe_Hermi described in a previous post. You need to make some calculations in order to be sure you end the turn with a tech that costs you enough beakers so you don't overflow over the cap. You need to consider that your normal BPT will also be added next turn. So for example if you have 1700 in your overflow pool, and 100 BPT, you should queue a tech that costs at least 1300 beakers.

Is this right? I will try to test this tomorrow if I have the time.
 
Wait if I have the tech queued, doesn't the overflow get applied just to the next technology I'll be researching?...
Only when you click next turn will the overflow be applied to your selected tech.

...Then on the same turn its okay to switch my tech path to another few techs and bulb those?...
Just be mindful of the bulb amount, the tech cost, and how much overflow you already have. You don't want overflow to be capped. This will be apparent if you bulb a cheap tech.
 

You're mostly right but none of what you say is about the overflow exploit. Even without the current fix, bulbing multiple techs and increasing your overflow isn't an exploit in itself. What is is to then queue up some techs that have a modifier on them (scholar of residence) because it gets compounded on the overflow, increasing it. But the fix would make sure that this amount never gets above 5 turns your bpt which makes it not realistically usable.
So yeah the fix does its job kinda, but it's a convoluted one. The simple solution would have been to simply fix the mistake first where tech bonuses are applied to overflow. There's no logical reason for that to be.
 
So this means that at the beginning of the turn, the amount of beakers in the overflow pool can never exceed the cap and if you accumulated a lot of overflow in the previous turn by bulbing, or even having multiple RA's end at the same turn, you can lose beakers. Realistically this will only affect you when you start bulbing scientists. But still... what a lazy fix.

Regarding the overflow exploit, I never fully understood it until now (I wasn't even aware of it until they patched it). So what this means you can still exploit it but only slightly. You can bulb a tech when having 4-5 turns left. Then queue up some tech everyone has (and the scholar in residence is active), and you will get the modifier for 3-4 turns of research, basically gaining almost a free turn of research.

What I don't understand about the scholar in residence is why do the science beakers need to be increased instead of reducing the cost of the tech. That actually creates a lot of problems with the overflow, since even without bulbing, when researching a tech that gets the modifier you will get a 20% increase in overflow that you can use on any other tech (if you do use it on another tech that benefits from Scholar in Residence, you will further increase it). I know you are not gaining lots of science but still it is "free" science that came from nowhere, and it is not fair. This makes Scholar in Residence quite strong if you really need to catch up in tech, and if carefully bulbing some scientists you will catch up fast and save a lot of turns in science, you don't even need to have that big of a BPT.
 
You won't even get 3-4 turns. It takes multiple turns to accumulate to such an amount. And realistically it means you skipped some very cheap techs something that most likely has consequences in your game and will cost you more than 3-4 turns.

It's not practical to plan around it now.

Also I don't think RAs create overflow but that would have to be verified. From experience hey are directly applied on a tech which is why you can have an unwanted tech due to n RA if you forgot to queue up techs.
 
You will also lose beakers if you ignore cheap techs for too long, even with no bulbs or RAs. When a tech is 1 turn completion, get it done.

So this means that at the beginning of the turn, the amount of beakers in the overflow pool can never exceed the cap and if you accumulated a lot of overflow in the previous turn by bulbing, or even having multiple RA's end at the same turn, you can lose beakers. Realistically this will only affect you when you start bulbing scientists. But still... what a lazy fix.

Regarding the overflow exploit, I never fully understood it until now (I wasn't even aware of it until they patched it). So what this means you can still exploit it but only slightly. You can bulb a tech when having 4-5 turns left. Then queue up some tech everyone has (and the scholar in residence is active), and you will get the modifier for 3-4 turns of research, basically gaining almost a free turn of research.

What I don't understand about the scholar in residence is why do the science beakers need to be increased instead of reducing the cost of the tech. That actually creates a lot of problems with the overflow, since even without bulbing, when researching a tech that gets the modifier you will get a 20% increase in overflow that you can use on any other tech (if you do use it on another tech that benefits from Scholar in Residence, you will further increase it). I know you are not gaining lots of science but still it is "free" science that came from nowhere, and it is not fair. This makes Scholar in Residence quite strong if you really need to catch up in tech, and if carefully bulbing some scientists you will catch up fast and save a lot of turns in science, you don't even need to have that big of a BPT.

There is almost everything wrong with this post.

By popular demand, I will be putting up a pictorial representation of the process! I am sketching it right now. Then I will use an overqualified diagramming software to draw rectangles and arrows.
 
So what's the conclusion? I definitely noticed that myself, and it seems to heavily change turn times to victory for me because I get confused and mistime my bulbs all the time. Recently, I just decided to bulb 1 GS for 1 tech and then wait out until I finish researching it.


You will also lose beakers if you ignore cheap techs for too long, even with no bulbs or RAs. When a tech is 1 turn completion, get it done.
Interesting. So basically if I want to beeline Acoustics, but Sailing is only 1 turn, I am better off getting Sailing first? Sometimes, I ignore the cheap techs (at the bottom of the tree especially), and then I wonder if I did the right thing. If, say, the tech is 80 beakers but I produce 100, then I still research it in one turn because it can't be fewer than 1 turn. On the other hand, that one turn could be used to beeline a more important tech and reach it faster?
 
Moderator Action: BNW prefix added to thread title.
 
I think i got it. Overshoot is value of excess beakers you have after researching the tech this turn. Overflow is the sum of the overshoots for this turn. Overflow is not capped and can be much more than just 5xbpt. Example:

Say we decided to bulb two techs on the same turn. One costs 2000 beakers and another costs 2500 beakers and we have research rate of 500bpt and two GS. First we bulb 2000 beaker tech we got it researched this turn and we get overshoot of 4000-2000=2000 beakers. Then we bulb 2500 beaker tech and got it researched the same turn and we got overshoot of 4000-2500=1500 beakers. So the first overshoot is 2000 beakers what is less than 500bptx5 and the second overshoot is 1500 what is also less than 500bptx5. So we are not capped when bulbed those tech because amount of overshoot in every case is less than the current bptx5. But overflow is the sum of overshoot and in our case it is: 1500+2000 = 3500 beakers what is greater than 500bptx5 (what is 2500 beakers) by 1000 beakers, but since overflow is not capped all of those beakers will be passed to new tech next turn.

Please correct me if i'm wrong.

Then about modifiers: If i have 500bpt and i have unresearched tech with the cost of 50 beakers and that tech is already researched by every other civ (say there are 7 civs) then what we get when we got this tech reseached (we do normal research without bulbing) is overshoot of 500-50= 450 beakers. Those 450 beakers is then multiplied by 1,07 (1% per civ) and we got 481 beakers of overflow. And here we have 31 beaker appeared from nowhere. If we have greater bpt then we greater amount of free beakers. Also if we have other modifiers applied then we also have greater amount of free beakers.

Again correct me if i;m wrong here.
 
I've done some testing
In IGE I gave myself 18 academies and 18 GS, and rushed GL/NC leaving me with 270bpt and a bulb amount of 2160 beakers. Once all the GS were exhausted I gave myself the prerequisite techs for Particle Physics leaving me with an apparent overflow of 25000 beakers and a bpt of 378.
I can confirm:
As long as your bulb amount is greater than the tech cost you get it(already knew this). This can be done Ad infinitum so when your bpt exceeds ~1300 bpt(4 city) you can bulb and get a tech each turn.
Overshoot is capped at bpt*5(whether this is last 5 turns or not I don't know).
Overflow is emptied when you click next turn(already knew this) but the cap amount is fuzzy. When I selected PP with an overflow of 25k I expected 15k when I clicked next turn but got 8.8k(Mobile tactics perhaps).
When clicking 'next turn' the "last" tech is not the one you are about to get(assuming you are dumping your overflow into a tech which you'll get), but the one before it. Again the numbers don't quite add up here.
 
I've done some testing
In IGE I gave myself 18 academies and 18 GS, and rushed GL/NC leaving me with 270bpt and a bulb amount of 2160 beakers. Once all the GS were exhausted I gave myself the prerequisite techs for Particle Physics leaving me with an apparent overflow of 25000 beakers and a bpt of 378.
I can confirm:
As long as your bulb amount is greater than the tech cost you get it(already knew this). This can be done Ad infinitum so when your bpt exceeds ~1300 bpt(4 city) you can bulb and get a tech each turn.
Overshoot is capped at bpt*5(whether this is last 5 turns or not I don't know).
Overflow is emptied when you click next turn(already knew this) but the cap amount is fuzzy. When I selected PP with an overflow of 25k I expected 15k when I clicked next turn but got 8.8k(Mobile tactics perhaps).
When clicking 'next turn' the "last" tech is not the one you are about to get(assuming you are dumping your overflow into a tech which you'll get), but the one before it. Again the numbers don't quite add up here.

How many cities did you have?

Interesting. So basically if I want to beeline Acoustics, but Sailing is only 1 turn, I am better off getting Sailing first? Sometimes, I ignore the cheap techs (at the bottom of the tree especially), and then I wonder if I did the right thing. If, say, the tech is 80 beakers but I produce 100, then I still research it in one turn because it can't be fewer than 1 turn. On the other hand, that one turn could be used to beeline a more important tech and reach it faster?

No. My point was that beakers will be lost. But to know whether you'll get Acoustics faster by actually going straight for Acoustics or by exploiting overflow inflation, would depend on the math. And if the tech or techs in question are all "very cheap" ones, that math can't grow fast enough.

If, by exploiting overflow, you would obtain free research of an amount equal to or greater than the amount by which you "miss" completion of Acoustics on the next-to-last turn (in ACTUAL BEAKERS, ignoring overflow on that turn), in the case of teching it by some other route, then switching to an overflow path will reduce your turns to Acoustics by 1 or more turns. And not otherwise.

Any single tech you exploit, in this scenario has cost nearly half your bpt or less, so you won't gain more than ... half your bpt by exploiting it, which couldn't possibly equal the missing quantity of research from literally beelining Acoustics with your full bpt. Exploiting multiple cheap techs requires a whole turn to get half a turn's worth for free. So even though you still get free beakers, which is more research, it can't get Acoustics faster.
 
I'm definitely 'stupid' in the context of this thread. When I have Labs and I want to reach my destination tech as quickly as possible, what should I do?

Bulb 1 GS a turn? Or bulb and change techs multiple times in the same turn?

I don't get it :(
 
...
Overflow is emptied when you click next turn(already knew this) but the cap amount is fuzzy. When I selected PP with an overflow of 25k I expected 15k when I clicked next turn but got 8.8k(Mobile tactics perhaps).
When clicking 'next turn' the "last" tech is not the one you are about to get(assuming you are dumping your overflow into a tech which you'll get), but the one before it. Again the numbers don't quite add up here.
Not done further testing but on reflection perhaps my overflow in this case was capped at the last tech researched. In my example it was PP which has a base cost of 8800 beakers. This will need to be verified in code but perhaps the mechanics when you click 'next turn' is this:
Empty all overflow into selected tech, and if the tech is gotten that turn determine the new overflow(old_overflow + bpt -tech_cost). Decide based on base tech costs what the capping amount will be(either 5*bpt or last tech base cost, whatever is greater).
 
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