Post Short Single Player Tips Here

[need my speed]

I thought any overflow in Civilization III was wasted, regardless of that is from 'one turn remains to new technology' or from 'ten turns remain to nine turns remain' (otherwise I can't really imagine how this would work)? That is, it is optimal to adjust your sliders every single turn so long as it doesn't change the amount of turns a technology requires?

E.g., a technology costs 100 beakers, I currently produce 11 beakers and 1 gold with my science slider at 50% (simple calculation, not realistic). That means it will take me 10 turns (because 9*11=99, but I need 100), and I get 10 gold (10*1).
If I now lower my slider to, say, 40%, which will make me produce 10 beakers and 2 gold, that means it will still take me 10 turns (10*10=100), but now I get 20 gold (10*2).
On the other hand, if I move my slider up to 60%, which will make me produce 12 beakers and 0 gold, it will take me 9 turns (9*12=108) while I now get 0 gold (9*0).
Those 8 beakers are wasted overflow, however. And so you can calculate what the optimal flow is through your turns, at any turn, not only when a new technology starts with requiring only 4 turns (the minimum; it will never be lower than that, so indeed, if your technology requires 100 beakers and you produce 999999 beakers per turn, it will still require 4 turns, and thus you are better off putting your science slider at 10%).

 

[justanick]

I thought any overflow in Civilization III was wasted, regardless of that is from 'one turn remains to new technology' or from 'ten turns remain to nine turns remain' (otherwise I can't really imagine how this would work)? That is, it is optimal to adjust your sliders every single turn so long as it doesn't change the amount of turns a technology requires?

Usually it is not sensible to adjust the slider settings that you have when you end the turn every turn.

It can however make sense to play with the slider settings to estimate how many beakers are left for finishing the current tech. In practice it is often not a good idea to spend less than the available maximum on the tech. That is due to rounding and therefore not that big a thing. So if i need 20% lux slider, then the reserach slider would be at 80% for 2 turns. In the third turn i see that 60% research would suffice to finish the tech in 2 turns. Therefore i reduce it to 40% in the third turn and increase it back to 80% in the forth and last turn of that tech. The idea is to mitigate overflow, rounding losses and also loosing out on discounts. Also money might be tight, so i have little choice but to reduce spending on the third turn of a tech.

if your technology requires 100 beakers and you produce 999999 beakers per turn, it will still require 4 turns, and thus you are better off putting your science slider at 10%).

Or 0% and one scientist.

 

[need my speed]

Indeed, of course, binary research (either 0% or 100%) also deserves a mention with regards to rounding.

 

[Lanzelot]

Oh, absolutely, if I can afford to finish the research sooner, I'll increase the slider. But if I can't, isn't 5 turns the same irrespective of how much I spend on it? I.e., this turn I'm 5 turns away; next turn I'm 4 turns away; and so on. What am I missing?

You are missing, that both, the cost of the tech and your "maximum output" may change during the course of one tech. Here are a few points that need to be taken into the consideration:

• At the beginning of a new tech, you see that you can't make it in 4 turns, even at 100%. So you decide to go with 90%, as that will also suffice for finishing it in 5 turns. However, after two turns, a couple of Libraries or Universities get finished. Or an AI finishes the tech, lowering it's price. And with these factors counted in, you could have finished the tech in 4 turns, if you had started with 100% right from the first turn. But now on turn 3, it is no longer possible to do the tech in 4 turns total, even if you would now increase to 100%, because in turns 3 & 4, you can no longer make up the "lost beakers" from turns 1 & 2...
• Golden Age: Once I made the following instructive mistake: at the beginning of the tech, F1 told me I can easily finish it in 4 turns by running 80% science. So that's what I did... But after turn 2, my Golden Age was over, and the time required for the tech jumped up to 5 turns total. And I couldn't get it back down to 4 turns, even by raising the slider to 100% for the last turns... If I had run 100% science during my last two GA turns, the multipliers of my Libs&Unis would have been applied to all those "extra GA coins", and I would have accumulated enough beakers in those two turns to finish the tech even with my non-GA economy on the remaining two turns...!
• These two examples have taught me the lesson of always running 100% science, until CivAssistII tells me, I have reached the required beaker count for the current tech. Then is the time to lower the slider. (Which does not necessarily need to be on turn 4. E.g., in the late game, easier difficulty settings, it may happen that a tech costs 2500b, while my economy makes 1000bpt at 100%. Then I run 2 turns at 100%, 1 at 50% and 1 at 0% and a lone scientist somewhere in the tundra for 1000 + 1000 + 500 + 3 beakers.)
• Things become a bit more complicated, when you don't have enough luxury resources connected/traded yet, or when the AI is not yet paying your deficit, but the basic principles remain in place: just read "maximum affordable slider setting" instead of "100%".

 

[Spoonwood]

Oh, absolutely, if I can afford to finish the research sooner, I'll increase the slider. But if I can't, isn't 5 turns the same irrespective of how much I spend on it? I.e., this turn I'm 5 turns away; next turn I'm 4 turns away; and so on. What am I missing?

You're missing the possibility of growth decreasing the amount of research time it takes to complete a technology. For example, if a tech takes 600 beakers to complete and you have 0 beakers starting, and your research input is 149 beakers per turn, it will say 5 turns, since you get (5 x 149) = 745 beakers, while (4 x 149) = 596 beakers. You probably could lower the science slider and it still says 5 turns. But, if you do so, you end up investing fewer beakers by turn 2 or 3 than if you had kept the research slider higher. If you keep the science slider higher though, you might get 149 beakers this turn, and the next turn, but then because of growth you get 153 beakers total from the beakers per turn you had previously and 2 cities growing. (149 + 149 + 153 + 153) = 404 beakers, which means you can get the technology in 4 turns. But, if you lower it to say getting 125 beakers per turn then you might get something like 125 beakers, then 125 beakers, then 129 beakers, and on the fourth turn, 129 beakers. That's 508 beakers, and you are 82 beakers short. If you had checked after 3 turns, having 379 beakers accumulated, you would need 281 beakers to complete the technology, which is likely impossible, because you didn't accumulate enough beakers early.
Of course though, if you don't have any motivation to get the technology any faster than as suggested by the initial projected time, then going for the maximum rate doesn't matter.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

You're missing the possibility of growth decreasing the amount of research time it takes to complete a technology. For example, if a tech takes 600 beakers to complete and you have 0 beakers starting, and your research input is 149 beakers per turn, it will say 5 turns, since you get (5 x 149) = 745 beakers, while (4 x 149) = 596 beakers. You probably could lower the science slider and it still says 5 turns. But, if you do so, you end up investing fewer beakers by turn 2 or 3 than if you had kept the research slider higher. If you keep the science slider higher though, you might get 149 beakers this turn, and the next turn, but then because of growth you get 153 beakers total from the beakers per turn you had previously and 2 cities growing. (149 + 149 + 153 + 153) = 404 beakers, which means you can get the technology in 4 turns. But, if you lower it to say getting 125 beakers per turn then you might get something like 125 beakers, then 125 beakers, then 129 beakers, and on the fourth turn, 129 beakers. That's 508 beakers, and you are 82 beakers short. If you had checked after 3 turns, having 379 beakers accumulated, you would need 281 beakers to complete the technology, which is likely impossible, because you didn't accumulate enough beakers early.
Of course though, if you don't have any motivation to get the technology any faster than as suggested by the initial projected time, then going for the maximum rate doesn't matter.

And now that I've found where in CAII I can find the beakers information easily, I can probably start doing the math on this, checking in every turn just like with diplomacy (though sometimes I forget to do this).

 

[tjs282]

Was surprised to discover a couple of days ago that the Dromon (and presumably also the Man-O-War) can start a GA by sinking a Privateer -- even though Privateers have Hidden Nationality, like Barbs.

 

[justanick]

In standard C3C Barbs have no hidden nationality. If you use the Maya UU to enslave barbs and make them join a city, then the citizen will be angry because you wage war against its home civilization.