Sages oddity

[modmyciv]

Hello,
Right, you turn a citizen into a sage and the city screen shows gold going into research increasing. Back to your domestic advisor screen and the amount of gold assigned to science shown at the top doesn't move. Your city shows the extra gold created under the appropriate city but if you add together all the gold going to research from your cities in the column of figures it doesn't equal the figure quoted. After a bit of experimenting I found the gold is added, but not shown. So you may find the number of turns to the next tech goes down. Which was a relief because I thought I might have broken something, somehow. A trifle annoying you can't see the results of your fiddling with citizens easily. Anway, caused a little panic when I first twigged. It's an 'issue' I wasn't aware of.

 

[Takhisis]

In Civ3 we have Scientists, not sages. Are you sure that this is the right forum?

 

[modmyciv]

Been playing modified fantasy versions for so long I had forgotton the original, thought they started as Sages too, but don't even in Ancient times. Scientists then. The ones that add to your research.

 

[Ozymandias]

Been playing modified fantasy versions for so long I had forgotton the original, thought they started as Sages too, but don't even in Ancient times. Scientists then. The ones that add to your research.

I've not had the time to go "spelunking" - Is that a simple change in labells.txt?

 

[tjs282]

Right, you turn a citizen into a sage and the city screen shows gold going into research increasing.

This is because when you turn a citizen into a Scientist (or other Specialist), they are not actually adding "gold" to a town's Tax/Science/Luxury-outputs per se, they are adding the output-unit directly: i.e. Gold-coins for Tax, Beakers for Science, and Happyfaces for Luxuries.

However, the city-screen is a little misleading, in that it uses the "Gold-coin" icons for every "Commerce-conversion-product", when it's actually showing the "Total uncorrupted Commerce * Slider setting * Building-booster" outputs, PLUS the Specialist-outputs (for which no Commerce has been converted at all; Specialists only "cost" food).

(Further adding to the confusion, the same coin-icon is also used to show the raw Commerce from the city's worked-tiles in the map-section of the city-screen)

Back to your domestic advisor screen and the amount of gold assigned to science shown at the top doesn't move.

Because this value is based purely on the conversion of "Total uncorrupted Commerce" from every town, multiplied by the current "Science-slider setting", i.e. it doesn't include the Geek-Beakers.

If the "City outputs" list had used the "Coin" icon (as shown under the Taxman Specialist) for Tax-gold, the Beaker-icon (as under the Scientist Specialist) for Science, and the Happyface-icon (as under the Clown) for Luxuries, it might have been more intuitive to understand, and it might also have been clearer why the Specialist-generated beakers are added to the individual city-output, but NOT included in the "Total science" spending on the Domestic Advisor screen.

CivAssist II does actually separate the two Beaker-sources (in the "Technology" tab), so you can see exactly what you're getting for your money (or your food).

I've not had the time to go "spelunking" - Is that a simple change in labells.txt?

In a .biq, you can design your own Specialist citizens, and call them whatever you want. So the generic Firaxis Beaker-producer is called a Scientist (as Takh notes) — but if you were designing a mod that took place purely during the Stone/ Bronze/ Iron Age (like TAM), or in a Fantasy world, you could call a similar Specialist a "Sage" or "Philosopher" instead.

But there's another point in the .biq (can't remember exactly where: maybe "Scenario properties"?) where you can also tell the game what to call the (abstract) people working in your Science-boosting buildings, as you progress through the ages. The generic research-related announcements/ questions from the Science Advisor — which are taken from the script.txt (IIRC) — contain placeholders/wildcards which the game replaces with an era-appropriate word from those listed in the .biq (I can't remember the exact format, but it's along the lines of "Our brilliant $ERA+WISEMEN have just discovered $NEW_TECH. What should they research next?") — allowing your Science Advisor to talk about "Our Sages ..." at the beginning of the game, but later on refer to "Our Scholars/ Naturalists/ Scientists/ Researchers ..."