Research Prerequisites to increase research rate

i read somewhere in the forum that researching a prerequisite increases the research rate of researching the next tech. so now i have two questions:

if a tech requires one of two techs as prereqs, does having both of them increase the rate even further? e.g. will having agriculture and hunting make you research animal husbandry faster than simply having no hunting?

what about techs that are a few arrows behind what you are trying to research? e.g. meditation makes priesthood faster, but does it also make monarchy faster? (it is possible to skip meditation and go the poly-priesthood-monarchy or poly-mono-monarchy routes.

agc28 said:

if a tech requires one of two techs as prereqs, does having both of them increase the rate even further? e.g. will having agriculture and hunting make you research animal husbandry faster than simply having no hunting?

Click to expand...

Yes, taht's how it works. Priesthood will be researched faster if you have Polytheism and Meditaion. Pottery is researched faster if you have Fishing and Agriculture.

agc28 said:

meditation makes priesthood faster, but does it also make monarchy faster? (it is possible to skip meditation and go the poly-priesthood-monarchy or poly-mono-monarchy routes.

Click to expand...

I never payd any attention to it, but I don't think so.

Thought it had to do with the overflowing effect when you have put in extra money into the research.

how fast is this increase in rate? is it 20%? if you have both prereqs, does it make it 40%?

I think so. Easiest way to check would be to go into world builder, give yourself Animal Husbandry and see how long it will take to learn Writing. Then give yourself Pottery, and check again and then give yourself Priesthood and check a third time.

oddly enough, it doesn't matter whether prerequisites are optional or not to get the bonus. If you research meditation you always get a research bonus for having its prereq mysticism. Thus, techs with more prerequisites can be researched faster then techs with one or no prerequisite...

Can someone with some deeper insight into this explain?

Anything that could help document this little "feature" would move us one step closer to uberdom.

Someone posted in this section with the complete formula for research. It included factors like meeting other civs that already have the tech, and fulfilling both pre-requsites.

I don't recall right where that post is, but I would recommend running a search on this section, using "reasearch technology."