Research beaker count

I've noticed that sometimes the number of beakers required for a tech divided by my current research rate is not equal to the number of turns the tech says it will take to finish. Why does this happen?

Usually I wouldn't bother to check, but sometimes it is obvious. For example, in my current game I was trying to decide whether I should research Industrialism or Flight - then I noticed that they both said they would take the same number of turns.. which is weird because Industrialism needs significantly more beakers. I dropped my research % down to zero to make sure.. here are the numbers:

Research rate: 325 per turn.
Industrialism: 15210. 44 turns. (but 15210 / 325 = 46.8)
Flight: 11700. 44 turns. (but 11700 / 325 = 36)

That's a pretty large discrepancy. So I'm interested in why this happens. Also, does it mean that I should research Industrialism, so that I get a discount; as opposed to Flight where it looks like I'd be getting ripped off?

You can turn the slider down when it gets close to the end of research. turn those 'extra' beakers into cash.

you get ripped off equally in all research. doesn't matter what you are researching.

I'm not sure that you are talking about the same thing. What 'extra beakers' do you mean? The discrepancy in my example this couldn't possibly be due to just some beaker overflow. The number of turns for Industrialism and Flight were the same regardless of what I set my research rate to. Neither of them had been started yet; and the overflow from my previous tech was fairly small. (Also, regarding the overflow from the previous tech, that should make the next tech take slightly _less_ time than total_beaker/beakers_per_turn, but the number of turns for Flight is more than that.)

It could possibly be due to having all of the pre-reqs for Industrialism and not so for Flight perhaps? Or maybe because other civs have the more expensive tech? I'm not sure how the math works but I could swear I remember reading somewhere that if several civs have the same tech, it becomes "faster" to research for those behind the curve to research. Take this with a grain of salt because I can't find where I got this.

The game gives you extra beakers:
- when you have prerequisites for a tech (pottery has 3 "or" prerequisites; if you have all three of them when you research pottery you get twice the extra beakers)
- when other civ know the tech
- you also get 1 free beaker all the time

As for the overflow of beakers, they always go into the next tech, so no need to lower the slider when you're near completion of a tech (unless in some specific situations)

Interesting...
So presumably the prereq bonus is actually a multiplier rather than an additive bonus - that's what would be needed to explain what I'm seeing. I had heard before that techs research slightly faster if more civs have them, but I've never noticed the effect. In this particularly game no one else has either Industrialism or Flight; so that's probably not it.

In the case of Industrialism and Flight, there is only one tech path to each of them; but Industrialism has an "arrow" path while Flight does not - I suppose that's why Ind. is relatively cheaper. -- So does this mean that it normal for Ind. and Flight to take the same amount of time, despite Ind. costing more?

Ok... so regarding overflow of beakers. I've never worried about it much because they carry over to the next tech. But... if there is a multiplier effect for researching techs that have more than one 'arrow prerequisite', then maybe it is possible to get some bonus beakers by trying to maximize the overflow when finishing those techs, so that you get as much use out of the multiplier as possible. Does this work? Or is the game clever enough to not apply the multiplier to the overflowing beakers?

Anyway. Thanks for the information. Now that I know I'm not _really_ getting ripped off by Flight (because it's normal for it to get a research penalty due to not having any arrow prereqs), I'm going to go with Flight as my next tech.

karadoc said:

Does this work? Or is the game clever enough to not apply the multiplier to the overflowing beakers?

Click to expand...

No, the overflow scales down/up to the next tech being researched. No gimmicking here.

However, techs with few prereqs (mathematics, etc) are best researched to no overflow as to maximize gold to be used on a better multiplier tech.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146163

And since many of these formulas floor, it is often better to run binary research (0% or 100%) to minimize fractal beaker losses per city.

Lots of good info there. Thanks for that. I've just skimmed through it, but I might have a closer look a bit later.

I don't see why it would help to minimize overflow on mathematics if the overflow is scaled based on what it overflows into.

Actually, that article that you linked to says "The overflow is calculated by the modifiers from the PREVIOUS Technology", and then goes on to advocate the overflow boosting technique that I suggested - but you are now saying that that technique doesn't work. Was it fixed in a patch or something? (I would consider it a bug if the trick actually did work.) Also, I was under the impression that fractal beakers for each city are all added together before rounded down. I think they used to be rounded for each city in some previous version, but it was corrected in BTS or something.

Maybe I should do some testing to work these things out.

JujuLautre said:

pottery has 3 "or" prerequisites

Click to expand...

Actually, Pottery has one required tech and 2 "or" prerequisites.

karadoc said:

"The overflow is calculated by the modifiers from the PREVIOUS Technology",... but you are now saying that that technique doesn't work. Was it fixed in a patch or something? Also, I was under the impression that fractal beakers for each city are all added together before rounded down. I think they used to be rounded for each city in some previous version, but it was corrected in BTS or something.

Click to expand...

It used to be that way when the article was written but yes, I was told it was fixed in a patch some time ago.

As for the fractal beakers, maybe you're right. somebody should test it out