Does the AI Know Which Tech You Are Researching?

I think they do.

In my current game I was pissed because on a number of occasions the AI was beating me by a few turns to techs. For most techs this is not a big deal, but for founding religions and techs like Writing, Drama, Military Strategy, Engineering, etc. that give a bonus GP for the first to discover, it is annoying.

I was thinking, maybe, just maybe the AI knew what tech I was researching and maybe even how many turns I was taking to research the tech.

Conspiracy Theory? Perhaps, but consider this:

You are kicking the butt of Alexis in a war. You offer a peace treaty but ask for Alteration, a 'minor' tech, to seal the deal. Alexis insults you and says no. However, you are just 2 turns away from discovering Animal Mastery, a 'major' tech. You ask for this instead with the peace treaty. Alexis accepts. Why?

Maybe Alexis knows you are researching Animal Mastery and are only a few turns away from discovering it. This has happened enough to me in my games to not write it off to coincidence.

Or, how about this:

Don't you often get requests during a game to trade for techs you are just a few turns away from discovering anyway? I do.

Again, does the AI know what you are researching and that you are only a few turns away?

If the AI has this capability, surely this is a game (civ vanilla) design flaw or at least a balance problem AI vs. Human player.

I don't think there is any way (including cheating ) the human player could identify the techs the AI is researching with the number of turns needed.

Comments are welcome.

Yes, when trading AI propose a price for tech in accordance to research points LEFT for you. The same is for map - AI knows the percentage of the map revealed by you. But in my experience this knowledge is not used anywhere else, e.g. in research strategy.

In any case it is a feature of vanilla civ.

And sometimes human can find out which tech AI is researching. You can propose all techs you have for trade, see how much AI gives for each and make some conclusions.

Sarisin said:

I was thinking, maybe, just maybe the AI knew what tech I was researching and maybe even how many turns I was taking to research the tech.
[...]
Comments are welcome.

Click to expand...

This is a good feature IMO. Because it lets you trade fairly with the AI, which otherwise would ask too much for a tech that you're only a coupla turns away to research. Note that this also works the other way around: if you propose a fair or good deal and the AI refuses, then it's most probably because it has almost completed that research.