[BNW] Research Agreements (BNW)

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Research Agreements - Research Agreements

Research Agreements
How research agreements work​

Introduction
"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination" - John Dewey

Research agreements are a gold costing investment between two civilizations, which upon resolution provide a boost in beakers to both civilizations. They are useful for any fast peaceful victory, with optimal usage allowing the launch of your spaceship...

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Another great article, thank you Browd.

Browd said:

f the player is technologically ahead of the AI, the AI will require an additional 100 gold (or equivalent value, e.g., two strategic resources and 10 gold) per era they are are behind; this penalty is not modified by game speed.

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I would caution players to be cautions about using strategic resources (or luxes) as part of RA. There is always the possibly of a strategic resource getting pillaged — which would result in the RA being cancelled and the funds lost. I have gotten burned a couple of times by that, so I only ever use gold nowadays.

beetle said:

I would caution players to be cautions about using strategic resources (or luxes) as part of RA. There is always the possibly of a strategic resource getting pillaged — which would result in the RA being cancelled and the funds lost. I have gotten burned a couple of times by that, so I only ever use gold nowadays.

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That's a good point, but probably moot given how little beakers you are likely to get from an RA with an AI that's an era (or more) behind you.
I end up applying Morton's fork against an AI that is in the previous era in my own gameplay:

If they have a decent science rate, then they'll catch up to my era in a few turns, and therefore its better to NOT sign an RA right now (but instead wait for them to catch up)

If they don't have a decent science rate (and so they won't catch up to my era in a few turns), then the beakers I'd get from the RA would be too few to be worth signing an RA.

That issue of lost RA with resources attached was most significant to the G&K version, which is still using the median value (but was after the DOF requirement)

You mentioned it but I think it warrants stressing: Another thing that is important, especially when playing tech catch-up or OCC, is to make sure to set a technology goal a couple of techs away by the time the RA finishes. I had to reload a number of times when I forgot this and the RA beakers went to a tech I really did not need at the time.

Also, since wide play leads to "beaker inflation" (more beakers generated but tech cost also goes up) while RA gains are often limited by the AI partner's raw number of beakers, this means that (1) RAs are especially interesting for tall play (since beakers have more value) and (2) RAs with backwards but very large empires (think typical Shaka) can still be worth it since they will generate a lot of raw beakers even if they don't tech very fast with their 24 cities.

Two questions...

First: To sum up, in BNW if you are equal or behind in tech, an RA gives you 5 extra turns worth of science in exchange for gold.

Second, Is this typical? In a recent Prince BNW game I was tech leader, but other civs would offer an RA that wanted me to kick in extra gold or resources. I thought it strange since I had much less to gain.

The extra gold required is the era differential. It may may not be worth paying the era differential, particularly on Prince, since you are unlikely to be behind the AI's rate of beaker generation and, therefore, probably won't get even a full 5 turns of beakers. The era differential is some evidence that your beaker rate greatly exceeds that of the AI, since if they were on par with you they would presumably not be an era or more behind you.