BtS Technology Eras?

[EditorRex]

Sorry the question was so broad, but if some of what was being said higher up on this thread was accurate, then it isn't an obscure question. Based on what you are telling me, Carboniferous, however, it is pretty obscure so I don't need to worry about it too much. Here's the key question I've got about all of this:
In a single-player game, is the AI's receipt of these bonuses based on each individual AI nation getting to the era, or is it based on the era of the human player?

 

[Rathelon]

'It's beautiful, man! It's beautiful.'

Was that Tom Cruise at the end of 'Taps'?

 

[shyuhe]

I believe a new era drops your WFYABTA ("We Fear You are Becoming Too Advanced") count by 1. So, non-friendly AIs will trade another tech to you.

Close but not quite. The AI has to advance by an era for their WFYABTA to go down by one. Your technological progress has no impact.

 

[EditorRex]

Close but not quite. The AI has to advance by an era for their WFYABTA to go down by one. Your technological progress has no impact.

A little unclear on what you mean by "go down by one," and this could be an important difference.

IF you mean it makes their status drop, then gifting them a Tech to make them go up to the next era would potentially open them up to trading something you want.

However, if you mean that it's a difference of 1 Tech, then gifting them a Tech would balance out.

If I'm not mistaken, it is possible to make a civ jump 2 eras. Theology, I believe, can make one skip Classical and go straight to Medieval. There might be others. If that happens, would the WFYABTA go down 1 or 2? If it's 2, then there might be a game situation where gifting to get around WFYABTA would be more viable. Don't suppose this comes up very often, though, since WFYABTA usually comes up later in the game.

Anyone know if WFYABTA gets adjusted for number of players? You could hit it pretty early if you have a lot of them.

 

[Carboniferous]

Sorry the question was so broad, but if some of what was being said higher up on this thread was accurate, then it isn't an obscure question. Based on what you are telling me, Carboniferous, however, it is pretty obscure so I don't need to worry about it too much. Here's the key question I've got about all of this:
In a single-player game, is the AI's receipt of these bonuses based on each individual AI nation getting to the era, or is it based on the era of the human player?

The AI's bonuses I mentioned are based upon the AI player's era, not yours. If you are playing deity, then it probably does matter. If someone has time to calculate the actual effect of the bonuses for a future era deity AI, I suspect the results are quite scary!

My comment about the broadness of the question was because the era has lots of little effects scattered throughout the game, and I've never seen it all pulled together into one article or guide.

Regarding jumping two eras at once - I don't think this has any special effect.

@Shyuhe - do you know where the code is for the AI 'forgetting' tech trades when advancing an era? I can't find it - in fact the only place I can see a call to AI_changeMemoryCount() which appears to decrement the counter for MEMORY_RECEIVED_TECH_FROM_ANY - (which I think is the one used) is in the code which has a chance of randomly decreasing various counters each turn, and is not tied to the era.

 

[shyuhe]

A little unclear on what you mean by "go down by one," and this could be an important difference.

IF you mean it makes their status drop, then gifting them a Tech to make them go up to the next era would potentially open them up to trading something you want.

However, if you mean that it's a difference of 1 Tech, then gifting them a Tech would balance out.

If I'm not mistaken, it is possible to make a civ jump 2 eras. Theology, I believe, can make one skip Classical and go straight to Medieval. There might be others. If that happens, would the WFYABTA go down 1 or 2? If it's 2, then there might be a game situation where gifting to get around WFYABTA would be more viable. Don't suppose this comes up very often, though, since WFYABTA usually comes up later in the game.

Anyone know if WFYABTA gets adjusted for number of players? You could hit it pretty early if you have a lot of them.

WFYABTA is a hard counter for each civ with the value depending on the AI's personality. For example, Mansa has 20. So once you make contact with him, you can trade 20 techs with ANYONE (even people Mansa doesn't know) before you hit WFYABTA with Mansa. Once you hit WFYABTA with Mansa, he won't trade with you unless either you're (a) friendly or (b) he forgets one of your past tech trades.

For (b), there's a random chance each turn that the AI will forget a past tech trade - I don't remember the exact percentage but it might be 5% or so. In addition, each time the AI progresses into a new era, it automatically deducts one from its WFYABTA counter. So gifting a tech to advance an AI will lower the counter by one to open up trading again, but I doubt that's really worth the beaker exchange since you're trading a more expensive tech for a less expensive tech.

WFYABTA gets modified by difficulty level (higher lower levels have a slightly higher cap) but I don't think it gets adjusted for the number of players. So WFYABTA is a big issue on pangaea maps but less so on continents since the second wave of AI you meet will start with a WFYABTA counter of 0.

There's a very exhaustive discussion of WFYABTA in a thread somewhere but I don't remember who authored that thread any more.

edit: here's the thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=206578