What's with AI science tree research?

[planetfall]

I don't understand how in all games one, or two, AI civs are always ahead of my team until the info age. An explanation of what I am seeing would be appreciated.

Some details: playing prince level, so AI sci bonus should be under 10% and vanilla game and currently fast speed. So in current game, I have 300+ sci/turn, China/QinShu Huang has 150 sci/turn. This gap has been consistent for at least one era of game play. Tech trading is not available, so don't know which techs he has. All I have is the timeline at the bottom of tech tree showing his civ 1/3rd ahead on the atomic era line. I have not been counting/recording bonuses in researching.

All I can think of is either the AI cheats, or all their techs are at half research cost.

comments

 

[planetfall]

More details: China has 11 cities, I have 21 with 10 scienced up to labs and one up to university.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I don't understand how in all games one, or two, AI civs are always ahead of my team until the info age. An explanation of what I am seeing would be appreciated.

Some details: playing prince level, so AI sci bonus should be under 10% and vanilla game and currently fast speed. So in current game, I have 300+ sci/turn, China/QinShu Huang has 150 sci/turn. This gap has been consistent for at least one era of game play. Tech trading is not available, so don't know which techs he has. All I have is the timeline at the bottom of tech tree showing his civ 1/3rd ahead on the atomic era line. I have not been counting/recording bonuses in researching.

All I can think of is either the AI cheats, or all their techs are at half research cost.

comments

Your mistake assuming the AI has all the techs, it doesn't.

The Tech Trees in Civ 6 encourage beelining, meaning they will often neglect other parts of the Tech Tree because they just rush. For example, to get to Medieval Tier 1 position you need 6 techs. That isn't a lot.

You can check how many techs each AI has by hovering over the Science Victory progress in the Victory Overiew (the one listing the placement of all the leaders, not the individual victory panels).

Another thing ot keep in mind is that the Tech Costs don't scale as high as in Civ 5. In fact, the difference are really obvious by looking at how many turns it takes to research the late game techs in early game. This means that with high enough Science, even the +20% Later Era penalty means nothing to anyone who has a high Science. The cost of Satellites is approximately 2,220 (with the 20% penalty added on, assuming I'm doing the correct math). This means that with a Science rate of 150, that tech would, without a boost, take 14 turns. Which is relatively not that much time (you'd take 7 turns to research it with double that science rate).

 

[MrRadar]

All I have is the timeline at the bottom of tech tree showing his civ 1/3rd ahead on the atomic era line.

For a civ to move onto the next era on that line it is enough for it to research one single tech from that era. That does not mean that that civ is ahead of you in tech. It may just have beelined to that tech from next era. It may have a lot of techs from earlier eras still unresearched.
If you want to see how many techs each known civ actually has researched atm, check in the World Rankings tabs, the Overall tab, Science victory section, where if you hower over the civs' emblems, the tooltip will show you the number of their researched techs.

 

[planetfall]

TY, I'm going to have to start a new game, as only domination victory was selected so sci info is not available.

 

[planetfall]

thank you, that is most helpful