Binary Research question

[Paperbag_Hobo]

Hit escape when it prompts you to begin researching a new tech. The choices will remain in icon form at the top where the progress bar usually is. I've never actually used it though, other than the few times I've forgotten to begin researching a tech after founding my first city. I'm pretty sure it does bank the beakers you get, can anyone confirm this? I believe you can do the same with a city's production and bank hammers, but again I'd need someone to confirm.

I'm so used to binary research now that I do it out of habit. There will probably be less than a dozen turns per game where my slider is set at anything other than 0% or 100%.

 

[Kid R]

At any time click on the tech bar at the top and it gets replaced with the row of icons, so you can change what you're working on. Just don't choose any of them and click next turn. You were researching no tech so your beakers get banked.

Unfortunately when the cheapest tech available is researchable in one turn, the game automatically chooses it and spends your beakers for you. So it's not a tactic that's usable very often because most of the time you're on some kind of beeline and there are several undesirable 1 turn techs there.

Which is a shame because it would obviously be very handy to be able to save up beakers and then always get things in one turn. You have to assume the game designers deliberately put the auto-choose in there to prevent players doing that

Edit: Well I just tried it and sometimes it happens like that, sometimes the game seems to not bank the beakers at all but invest them in some random tech. Maybe they changed it in a patch at some time. In any case it's even less of a useful idea if it's not even predictable what's going to happen. I apologise for wasting your time!

 

[z0wb13]

@kid_r: that only works for the first six turns, i think. i've tried it past then (clicking on the green research bar at the top of the screen to switch research to no tech) and think the was just vanishing into the aether.

 

[Kid R]

Yes, at the very start it certanly puts the beakers into a "bank" (i.e. no tech moves forwards in its xx/yy, but every tech shows as researchable in one less turn than before). Then for the most part they get put towards a seemingly-random tech (not lost though). The tech chosen to receive the beakers looks like it might be one of the ones that the adviser suggests (military/economy), but I wouldn't bet on that. I played around with it for quite a long time yesterday trying to work it out, and there were also definitely times later on that the beakers were banked too, so I don't know what's going on there. Don't you love a mystery...

 

[PieceOfMind]

It wouldn't be a mystery for long if someone checked the code. I think there's a function called something like doTurn() in one of the c++ files. Probably a reasonable spot to start.

 

[kossin]

The code, if I remember correctly, says that you can bank beakers until you have as much as the lowest-cost tech, afterwards it starts dumping the extra beakers in that tech - which is why you get techs regardless if you keep un-selecting a tech every turn.