Great Scientists

[anaxagoras]

I agree with Overseer. 90% of the time you pop a tech from a hut, the tech is already known by someone. You may not have contact with the Civ that has the tech, but they may well be out there, keeping you from getting a leader. You usually have popped all the huts by the time you are far enough along on the tree to be sure of popping a unique new tech.

 

[Chamnix]

In my test setup, there were no AI - all 100 times I popped a tech I was the first to reach it.

 

[DS_Legionary]

Potentially you could flip a coin 100 times and get tails everytime. Does that mean you have a 0% chance of getting heads? Factor in the crazy RNG......who knows. I'm not saying that you can for sure get one by popping a hut, but if my memory serves me you can get one that way. Just the likely hood of doing this in-game is so slim I really don't think it matters. If you can in fact get an SGL this way then the odds are like 1 in a million. Then you get that crazy RNG again........

 

[Chamnix]

If you flip a coin 100 times and get tails every time, it is not conclusive, but the most probable explanation is that both sides of that coin are tails.

 

[MAS]

As said, proving the non-existence of something is difficult.
With 100 tries at 2% chance each try, you have about 87% chance to get at least one SGL
With 5% each try you'll have about 99% chance to get at least one SGL.

I'd say the chance you just had bad luck in this one test is still fairly big, at least if we assume its always 2% chance with good huts.
You'd need 250 tries to get to 99% chance of at least 1 hit with 2% per try.

I'm assuming you un-checked "save random seed" of course. (you didn't mention it, so I bring it up, just to be sure)

That said, adding my own experience to it, I'm pretty sure you don't get SGL from goody hut techs.



A test that involves a saved seed (so you can save the proof, if you find it) can be set up to:
Just create a game with huge map, 60% water, pangea, sedentary barbs, 5 billion years, dry and cold, and play an expansionist civ in chieftain difficulty. (with only one civ, you, and all victories turned off to avoid auto victory) These conditions provide a map with lots of huts and land with the least obstacles that slow down your scout.

Set SCI to 0% and pump scouts, pop all huts, note how often you got a tech.
When you popped all huts, or all AA tech (whatever comes first) Generate a new game with the same settings.

Note that if you pop a tech, it will always be the cheapest available to you, except the one you are currently researching, (even if you generate 0 bpt) except again if that happens to be the last available tech left.
Once you reach the MA, all tech popping stops, including any missed optional techs.
To get all AA tech, make sure you set research to a non-optional tech each time, to ensure you'll pop all the optional ones before you end the AA.

There are 21 AA tech, you'll start with 2 so there are 19 chances to get a SGL each game. So you'll need about 13 or 14 games to get to 250 tries.

I've tried one game that way: Played the Inca to make mountains and hills easier and had AP on too.
Deserted 4
25 gold 8
50 gold 3
City 7
Settler 1
Tech 19 (of course)
Warrior 7
Horse 1
Map 9

And I still had lots of huts left. No SGL from the tech though.

 

[anaxagoras]

Just create a game with huge map, 60% water, pangea, sedentary barbs, 5 billion years, dry and cold, and play an expansionist civ in chieftain difficulty. (with only one civ, you, and all victories turned off to avoid auto victory).

Are you sure the code doesn't eliminate the check if you are the only civ on the board? Try it again with at least one other civ out there somewhere (just stick them on a one-tile island somewhere) and with VC enabled. To make it easy, make sure their starting techs are the same as yours (e.g. play the Greeks and start the Koreans on an island) so each hut pop still yields a new and unique tech.

If you do that a couple hundred times, I'll be convinced.

 

[Chamnix]

In my test, I was the only civ in existence as well. In the save I posted, I am 1 turn away from Ceremonial Burial. If you hit end turn, then you will occasionally get an SGL for Ceremonial Burial, but I never got an SGL in 100 tech pops from the hut.

So you can definitely get an SGL while being the only civ. I suppose it is theoretically possible that you can still get one from research but not from a hut if you are the only civ, but that really seems to be a stretch.