Help, what's the logic on what your wise men can research?

[Bert Pajou]

I did my own research on this several months ago.
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Just a quick run through, and it seems, in your game, you're missing 3 techs off the list: Writing, Ceremonial Burial, and Horseback Riding. Assuming Alphabet, at the top, is number 1, then the missing techs are numbers 23, 26, and 32. All three of those numbers have a remainder of 2 when divided by 3. Your list includes Bronze Working and Pottery, neither of which has remainder 2, and Masonry is included anyway because it's the first possible tech on the list.

On your next tech, you can expect techs with remainder zero to disappear, and after that remainder one will disappear. Then the cycle repeats.

A very interesting and educated reply, but it is still frustrating when it happens.

 

[Skybuck]

I think this is done so that not all civilizations invent the same technology and have actually something to exchange... also it might allow a lesser AI to maybe trade a lower tech versus a higher tech ! =D

 

[tupi]

I think this is done so that not all civilizations invent the same technology and have actually something to exchange... also it might allow a lesser AI to maybe trade a lower tech versus a higher tech ! =D

This logic is applied only to the human player (on diff. > 0). AI can discover any tech available (when its bulb counter is full), selection is random, but some techs have a better chance to be selected, depending on base "points" (how "good" this tech is for AI), and on additional "points" (which are added to the base score, if AI is civilized and distracted from it, if AI is militaristic). Pair "civilized civ/military civ" has a better chance to discover different advances, so they can exchange more often, if at peace.

Actually, exchange of technologies is a very important source of AI science advancement. Speed of this advancement is very unpredictable because of this random element. For example, if there are 5 different civs, which at peace with each other and have units to "talk", then, if they always will select different techs to discover, cumulative researching speed will increase 5 times! That's why there's always a chance for a very early Riflemen or something. But if they will always select the same tech, then their researching speed will be only x1 (very slow!)