A few questions.

[moof]

I play orginal Civ 2 on a Mac and since being recently laid up for a while with a broken leg I have started playing more to pass the time.

I have several questions but I will ask only a few at a time to be less confusing.

I used to play only OCC but evolved into playing Two cities since the game starts with two settlers on Diety which is all I play. I Play 7 Civs/Raging Hordes on a medium Map & usually Play Orange as I find the Orange usually very hostile as an AI.
Since I have had more time to play I wanted to try and find another level of play with more than two cities and I am trying a game where I stay at the amount of cities allowed without triggering the riot factor, 4 cities/despotism., 6/ Monarchy, 8/ Republic, & 10 / Demo..
I Deal with the Riot factor if I get an advanced city or if I have/need to bribe a rival city by eliminating an existing city or the new city ASAP so that the riot factor is only a short term issue.

Here are a few questions that I have run into since starting to play the more involved game.

1. What is the deciding factor for determining if any excess beakers are "Carried Forward " When a new Tech discovery is made.
Example - You have 8 beakers toward your first tech and are producing 4 beakers per turn. As only ten are needed for the first discovery, I get the two beakers extra " carried forward " toward the next tech that requires 22 beakers making research of only 20 beakers needed in the next turns for the second tech discovery. As the game goes on sometimes the excess beakers are carried forward and sometimes they are not.

?Any Help as to what determines if the excess beakers are kept or discarded ?

2. I have read Thunderfall's " Power Demo thread " as well as many other great threads on here on CF & I myself try to avoid certain techs like warrior code/feudalism till later in the game. In my games as certain techs become available to research they become very likely to appear as booty from hut tipping.

? Do most "better" players just not tip huts so as to avoid unwanted/off path tech advances ?

3. Related to huts, I find that there seems a bit of a pattern to the result depending on what terrain the hut is located on & when I make sure Dips are on hand to bribe the barbs which I suspect are going to appear they seldom do. Now I know most of the basic patterns on Barbs, but

? Are most people playing ICS and thus don't get barbs because they wait till the hut is in a city before tipping it or do they open huts with a stack of Dips later in the game because playing with a limited number of cities especially OCC makes hut tipping a very risky?

? Has anyone else had reduced barb appearances with Dips present ?

I have more, but these, especially the barbs questions are what leave me scratching my head after reading the threads here. If I tip every hut I see after I get Monarchy I soon find I have tons of out of path techs and nothing left to tip huts with.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Any Help as to what determines if the excess beakers are kept or discarded ?

Any excess beakers from the city that gets you to the next tech are lost. Any beakers from the cities processed after that are applied to the next tech. The cities are processed one at a time in reverse order of their creation. If you have 2 cities, if the newer city puts you over the top, the first city will roll into the next tech. If you need the beakers from the capital, you won't carry any over to the next tech.

 

[ElephantU]

1. As Tim mentioned each cities research is added to the box in reverse order, and if one city fills it up completely any remaining beakers from that city are lost, the tech is "discovered" and a new tech is started, then remaining cities are added to the new tech. This is why some people don't build their Super Science City as the first city founded - cities above it in the city list will add their research to the new tech. Note that any beakers received from caravan/freight delivers happen "between turns" and are applied only at the beginning of the turn cycle along with the lowest city on the list that makes a beaker, so if you delivered lots of freight you only get one tech from it.

2. Some players do avoid huts and Great Library in order to control their tech path, especially when they are close to a key tech like Monarchy or Trade. If you look at the tech paths there are some "off-path gaps" that you can reserve for hut-popping, like at the start when you cannot get Monarchy by just going Alp-CoL-Cer-Mon. Once you build up your research or get past 20 techs the amount of increase in tech costs becomes easier to handle and it becomes more a matter of choice.

3. Hut results patterns were analyzed by Samson a few years ago and the kind of results you think you are seeing were not noticable. See the General Discusssions Index thread for a links to his observations. I have noticed often that what seems to be a pattern is more likely my paying more attention to what is irritating than to the whole of the results, thus skewing my perception of the real patterns. Try keeping an exhaustive log (every result for dozens of games) and you will probably see things more in line with what Samson discovered. Note also that a while a randomizer is at work, there can still be short-term runs of unusual results. A larger collection of samples will counter-act this and show the true probabilities.

Over at Apolyton we tried a few comparison games without popping any huts and while some liked the idea (greater emphasis on skill rather than luck) others felt the overall results were better with huts than without them. When I play OCC I try to reserve an off-path slot so I can pop them early on, but just before Monarchy and Trade and just before the 20th tech I refrain from popping them. If I find several at those times I often leave a unit in the area to protect them and pop them right after the critical point has been passed.