Time Victory - Science for Discovery

This might be a stupid question but - on some of my games, when I don't need any more academies my scientists will happily discover future techs. On others, they don't, but if I change my economy I can run full-on wealth and still be running full-on science for a turn or two, as if my scientist has simply created a bank of research rather than discovering the tech.

I want the tech

So is there a rhyme to this ... or is it just game-dependent? I have had different results on the same difficulty level (I think - it's not like I've run a study here. Time games are a bit lengthy to do a load for testing purposes )

Misotu said:

This might be a stupid question but - on some of my games, when I don't need any more academies my scientists will happily discover future techs. On others, they don't, but if I change my economy I can run full-on wealth and still be running full-on science for a turn or two, as if my scientist has simply created a bank of research rather than discovering the tech.

I want the tech

So is there a rhyme to this ... or is it just game-dependent? I have had different results on the same difficulty level (I think - it's not like I've run a study here. Time games are a bit lengthy to do a load for testing purposes )

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Don't they discover the Future Tech - or don't they allow lightbulbing at all? One GS is only good for approx. 40% of the beakers needed for FT...

No they don't discover the future tech, even though they produce sufficient beakers. I have tested this aspect at least - waited until I was just below the tech level, a few beakers required, then call up the scientist. Instead of getting the "discover tech" message, I get "xxx for Future Tech". No lightbulb. Next turn, I am still just below a tech, and the turn after. (On low difficulty levels and late turns, great scientists are worth lots of tech). If I then run 100% money, I'm still getting a tech a turn, though I shouldn't. Which I suppose would be nice if I wanted money ... but I don't by then & I'm never running Universal Suffrage at that stage.

I've even tried blowing two great scientists at once when I'm just below discovering a tech. Same result.

I'm really confused.

Misotu said:

No they don't discover the future tech, even though they produce sufficient beakers. I have tested this aspect at least - waited until I was just below the tech level, a few beakers required, then call up the scientist. Instead of getting the "discover tech" message, I get "xxx for Future Tech". No lightbulb. Next turn, I am still just below a tech, and the turn after. (On low difficulty levels and late turns, great scientists are worth lots of tech). If I then run 100% money, I'm still getting a tech a turn, though I shouldn't. Which I suppose would be nice if I wanted money ... but I don't by then & I'm never running Universal Suffrage at that stage.

I've even tried blowing two great scientists at once when I'm just below discovering a tech. Same result.

I'm really confused.

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sounds weird - could you upload a save?

two things...

@ misotu i may be totally off-base here. "Instead of getting the "discover tech" message, I get "xxx for Future Tech". No lightbulb."
i'm reading that as "there is a lightbulb to push, but it doesn't read that he will discover future tech #78 just that he'll give xxx beakers" right? when you actually discover future tech the old-fashioned way, you don't get "you have discovered X tech" message and splash screen (maybe for the first one, i forget). maybe that's part of what's going on? could be the science bar moves from future tech (78) to future tech (79) if you pop him, but stays at about the same percentage that it was, and you're just not noticing the number of the future tech itself?

@ori "One GS is only good for approx. 40% of the beakers needed for FT..." you know how good i am at code (less than -40% good!). but i thought that the percentage of beakers that all great people would give varied by factors like difficulty level and i forget what else, if you're in a team that's a factor i thought, stuff like that. is that 40% a set in stone thing?

KMadCandy said:

two things...

@ori "One GS is only good for approx. 40% of the beakers needed for FT..." you know how good i am at code (less than -40% good!). but i thought that the percentage of beakers that all great people would give varied by factors like difficulty level and i forget what else, if you're in a team that's a factor i thought, stuff like that. is that 40% a set in stone thing?

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That was just an estimate from what I experienced during the games that went that far (i.e. those darn Time Victory gauntlets) - so that is not set in stone.

But since you asked for it

The number of beakers a Great Person produces is capped at the cost for the discovered tech (so there is no overflow). Otherwise it is:

(iBaseDiscovery + iDiscoveryMultiplyer*TotalTeamPopulation)*iUnitDiscoverPercent/100

iBaseDiscovery is: 1500 for Great Scientist, 1000 for other Great Persons
iDiscoveryMultiplyer is 3 for Great Scientist, 2 for other Great Persons
TotalTeamPopulation is number of population points in all cities that the team owns (in Single Player: you and your PA-partner)
iUniDiscoverPercent is 300 for Marathon, 150 for Epic, 100 for Normal and 67 for Quick

In other words the number of beakers you get depends on the Great Person and your population. From Game experience I thought that the city buildings also modify this (i.e. library, academy etc.) but I cannot find that in the code...
The Game Speed Modifier is the same for the beakers needed for any tech, so that the relative amount you get is not changed.

ori said:

But since you asked for it

TotalTeamPopulation is number of population points in all cities that the team owns (in Single Player: you and your PA-partner)

In other words the number of beakers you get depends on the Great Person and your population.

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i love asking you for stuff! you have no idea how often i'm tempted to send you PMs saying "hey ori come look at this thread we could use you" *giggle*

i didn't know that even the beakers are modified by your population, in all cities. it makes sense, given that the hammers a GE will give for a wonder are dependent on the population of a city. question about that one: i found out recently that some things i'd not expected to be handled in a "team-like" manner are in fact handled that way for vassal situations (as in, someone at "friendly" won't trade with you since they consider your vassal as on your team and they don't like your vassal enough, although this isn't shown on the foreign advisor). do you know if that's part of this too? my vassals usually don't have a ton of population points of course, but that whole concept is recent in my mind and not something i'm 100% pleased about.

i found out about the discovery by lightbulb being capped, with no overflow, the hard way early on. so now i'm izzy-type religious about checking what they'll research next and deciding whether it's worth wasting some beakers or settling or waiting on the next tech. i really do wonder whether future tech is an exception to that tho, since i've had cases where according to the F2 screen my total beaker output is less than what F6 is telling me that future tech will cost me, but at 100% gold 0% science i get it in 1 turn, multiple turns in a row, so it seems like it's been banked for a while, even without popping scientists. kind of like Misotu mentioned, but in a good way, rather than a bad way as he(?) seemed to view it. but it's been a while since i ran into it.

thank you ori. and sorry about the semi-threadjack Misotu.

KMadCandy said:

do you know if that's part of this too? my vassals usually don't have a ton of population points of course, but that whole concept is recent in my mind and not something i'm 100% pleased about.

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the Vassal population is a bit dificult, since the game keeps the Master's and Vassal's population separate when it comes to determining whether the Vassal is allowed to break free. However it seems that for all other purposes half of the vassal's population are counted towards the master's pop-points (which is the same as the one for the master's area).

KMadCandy said:

could be the science bar moves from future tech (78) to future tech (79) if you pop him, but stays at about the same percentage that it was, and you're just not noticing the number of the future tech itself?

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No, that's exactly what does happen when it goes right. The bar itself, in appearance, might remain the same late-game if the scientist is worth a lot of beakers (at easy difficulties), but the number of techs discovered increases by one, and that's exactly what I'm wanting to happen.

There is no new tech discovered when I have the problem, even though the scientist is worth more than enough to discover it. What happens is that the bar is full, no new tech, then I discover a tech at the end of the turn as usual. I'm talking the situation where I'm discovering a tech per turn of course, without the use of any great scientist. So the scientist is *no* use unless it pushes the beakers over the threshhold for a new tech (in other words, when I use him I get TWO techs that turn, one when he's popped, one when I hit end turn).

@ori I'm sorry, I don't have any saves as I've deleted them all. But it will happen again I'm sure, and I'll definitely post one. Just out of interest, is it theoretically possible to discover more than one tech per turn just in the course of normal play, or does the game cap it at one?

Thanks for the replies guys.

Misotu said:

@ori I'm sorry, I don't have any saves as I've deleted them all. But it will happen again I'm sure, and I'll definitely post one. Just out of interest, is it theoretically possible to discover more than one tech per turn just in the course of normal play, or does the game cap it at one?

Thanks for the replies guys.

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You can only research/lightbulb one tech/turn - that is different from the techs you pop from a hut/buy from other Civs/get gifted/extort - those are not capped

Yes, I thought that must be the case with researching techs. I would have had two per turn late-game sometimes otherwise, I think.

But I've definitely had two future techs in a turn, one from a scientist and one from research, in some games.

So perhaps the "problem" is not a problem but is game function ... whereas when I've had two techs that's the anolmaly?

ori said:

You can only research/lightbulb one tech/turn - that is different from the techs you pop from a hut/buy from other Civs/get gifted/extort - those are not capped

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looking through the code, this is not exactly correct:

you can only research one tech/turn - any overflow is given to the next tech, but even if that would make you discover this tech immediately, you'll only discover it next turn.

when you lightbulb a tech and it is not completed by the lighbulb alone, then the beakers are simply added to the ResearchProgress and all is as above.

when you lightbulb a tech and it is enough for you to complete a tech it is completed immediately and the research of this round is put into the next tech. Now you could in theory have enough research power to research the next tech the same turn and/or lightbulb more techs.

So: you can lightbulb as many techs as you like per turn, but only if you actually complete those techs with lightbulbing. You can only research one tech per turn though.

What is happening in your games I do not know (a save game would really be helpful, since one could watch what happens...).

Yes, that fits with what I've seen in the game.

I will definitely be able to produce a save, but of course it's not a quick process because you can only see it in the late turns of a time victory. It happens regularly though, so shouldn't be a problem to reproduce.