Exceptions to the Rule

What is the rule?
In a single turn, a city cannot both complete a unit or improvement and complete a discovery.
A city completing a unit or improvement will still contribute to a discovery, but if it happens to be the city that fills the research box, the disocvery will be delayed until the next city in line (that is not completing something).

This is almost true, but there are two exceptions

1) Some units (mostly naval) are built "silently". For example, during city check, you will never see the message "New York builds transport". When you start moving units around, you just see the transport appear in New York. Unless you remember to change it, you will just keep building transports. A city silently completing a unit can still complete a discovery.

2) A city can build improvements in automatic improvement construction mode. Type "A" in the city display and the "Change" button will say "Auto". (This is the only way to get city improvements built when you have the empty improvements menu syndrome.) A city completing an automatically selected improvement can still complete a discovery.

There is a common thread here. In both cases, the unit or improvement is completed without opening the city display. So, the real rule is : If a city display is opened during city check, the discovery display will not happen during the check of that city.

Valen said:

So, the real rule is : If a city display is opened during city check, the discovery display will not happen during the check of that city.

Click to expand...

Where and how did you come up with this idea? I thought this strange behavior of the CIV program, so I devised a test.

The test has 6 cities each one producing one light bulb and one shield. 25 light bulbs are need for the next advance. There are 23 light bulbs in the science box. Each city has 39 shields toward a temple. At the end of the turn you have 24 light bulbs in the science box and 6 new temples, but no advancement to Monarchy. If before you end your turn you change the item being built to Courthouse in each of the 6 cities. The result is advancement and 4 light bulbs in the science box.

So it seems if you don’t make the advancement because some item is finished (causing the city to open) you loose the excess light bulbs. I don’t plan on playing out the other permutations in this theory.
So Valen how did you notice this?

The type of game I've been playing lately I described in the "The World at Your Feet".
Basically, I build up one city and use it as the home for all caravans. When caravans start to pay off, they finance everything. The proceeds from one generation of caravans go toward buying the next. They also bring in science. While the colossus is still alive boosting my caravan values, I have the science rate set to zero. All discoveries from caravans.
So every city check starts with the research box full. The first city on the roster should always make the discovery. When the first city builds something, the discovery is delayed. In the test case where I ran through the permutations, I had something completing in the first 10 cities with the 7th on auto-construct.
In this configuration, the discovery came in the 7th city. After a few turns of this, I came to expect the pattern. Then I happened to build a sail in the 1st city. To my surprise, the discovery came in the first city. That's how I discovered the "silent build" exception.

The basic rule is something I noticed years ago. I had saved a game and gone through a practice city check. One city went into a disorder, so I built a cathedral there. Building that cathedral happened to make a noticeable diffence in the timing of a discovery.

By the way, excellent test case, Dack.

In this test case, it is possible to demonstrate at least one of the exceptions to the "no discovery" rule. If you open the Coventry city display and type "A", the citizens will automatically elect to build a barracks. Now when you go through city check, you will dicsover monarchy in Coventry. At the end of city check, you will see four bulbs in the box.
This shows that the bulbs are added to the box in spite of the fact that the game misses the "check for box full" when you build the temples.