Introduction & Minimal number of turns to research a tech

[TheIncredible]

Since I'm new as I poster on this forum I might as well give a small introduction of myself. Please scroll down to my question if not interested.

When I was 10(?) years old I got a wonderfull game called Civilization II from a coworker of my dad. I played it and loved it, although at that age I wasn't able to tackle the higher difficulty levels. I bought Civilization III and IV as soon as I could, even bought an new PC for CIV. Enjoyed playing both. Haven't bought a new PC for Civilization V though.

Thing is I'm in a hospital right now for a longer period of time. The computer here will only run CivIII, so a few weeks ago I started playing C3C for about 14 hours a day. I was able to tackle the difficulty levels up to Deity on small map sizes, and have read the War Academy and most recent posts on CivFanatics. I'm still looking to improve my C3C abilities.

I think I'll be posting a few questions the coming weeks starting with this one:
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I noticed that in the game there seems to be some kind of minimum research time for techs. I've never researched a tech in less than 4 turns. Also when playing with the research slider I often see something like this IIRC:

50% -- 9 turns
60% -- 8 turns
70% -- 7 turns
80% -- 6 turns
90% -- 6 turns
100% -- 6 turns

It seems to me that 6 turns is the minimal required for reseaching the tech, although I never bothered to calculate the BPT (beakers per turn?) at 80% times 6 turns, which would be an upper limit to the beakers required for the tech, and compare it with BPT at 100% times 5 or 4 turns. Such a calculation could show a minimal number of turns required to research the tech.

I quickly looked in the game editor, with which I'm not familiar, but could not find anything.

My question is twofold:

1) Is there a minimal number of turns required for researching a tech?

And if so:

2) Does this number depend on the tech, and where can I find the numbers?

I want to know this because I want to know if it could be rewarding to throw in some additional scientist specialist to reduce research time if I'm researching at 100%.

If no one knows I'll try to figure it out, but I hope you can help.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Buttercup]

The Civ standard is 4 turns per tech minimum. This is most apparent when one leaves Horseback Riding as the last Ancient Age tech to research in that no matter how many Beakers one produces Horseback Riding still takes 4 turns to learn, even if you just learned Construction in 4 turns.

Where Civ3 differs from Civ2 is that in Civ3 the number of Beakers required for a tech is determined by how many people have already discovered it, so there is no specific number of Beakers required for each tech unless one is the first to learn it and even if one is the first to learn it then one is paying over the odds for it.

This is another reason Civ2 fans took immediate dislike to Civ3 in its early days but it is something one can get used to.

The layout of the techs in the Science Advisor screen is also deceptive in that techs even on the same 'row' can have vastly different Beaker costs.

 

[Spoonwood]

The map size, and difficulty level also affect the cost of the tech (in addition to the number of other tribes that know a tech as Buttercup pointed out).

 

[vmxa]

CAII has a tab for technology that will tell you how many beakers a tech cost. How many beakers you make that turn and keep a running count of the beakers aquired. You can do this for yourself and we used to do just that.

This lets you consider tweaking things to get a tech sooner, if you see you need only a few more beakers per turn.

 

[CommandoBob]

I quickly looked in the game editor, with which I'm not familiar, but could not find anything.

There is a place in the game editor that will allow you to change the number of turns needed to research a tech.

However, no one seems to do so.

In game terms, if you are able to research stuff in 4 turns, you probably have the game well under control and will so win (depending on difficultly level and map size, of course).

CivAssistII (CAII mentioned earlier) is a free down load from the Civ III Mod section. It was created by people from the forum. It and MapStat (part of the CivReplay Suite) are the two best all around utilites to help you keep track of things in the game. Their default installation is non-spoiler, so they won't tell you anythng you could not figure out on your own. Like CivAssist II, MapStat was created by forum members.

For instance, you could check with everyone you've met every turn to see how much gold they and what techs they may have learned. That is a lot of work to do each turn when it really doesn't change that much. Both programs will do that work for you.

Another thing they do is alert you to cities that are about to revolt, so that you can fix that before the turn ends. Several times I have examined each city and misread content people as happy people and had problems the next turn when the cities went into unrest. Both programs will alert you to that problem.

Depending on you machine, if it is very old, MapStat will work better when the game is going. I was playing C3C on a Win98 Pentium II 500 MHz 128 RAM box. CivAssist and C3C was too big a drain on resources, but MapStat and C3C worked fine. Not as pretty, but very functional.

Oh,

Welcome to the Forum!

 

[Civinator]

Hi TheIncredible,

in the editor you can change the number of turns needed to research a tech in the general settings. In standard C3C the research time here is set to 4 turns minimum and 50 turns maximum. There are reasons to chnage these settings. For example in a big WW III scenario I´m currently working on, the minimum and maximum research time is set to one turn, transforming the techtree into a calendar.

Spoiler :

You can fin the thread to CivAssist here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=118540

If you have Civ 2 ToT on your pc, you can find a very good SciFi-mod that doesn´t need a lot of resources, here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=421505

At present there are two minor errors in that mod, that don´t stop the mod from working, but that I would fix for you, if you want to run it. It was the first mod ever done for Civ 2 ToT with (simple) animated units and provides tons of fun.

Normally at present I don´t post here a lot, but in your case things are different. I hope you fully regain your health and can leave the hospital as soon as possible.