Less-coveted techs?

[ButSam]

The principle of researching techs less coveted by the AI seems to be the key to winning at Monarch or higher difficulty. As I am making the transition, could someone please inform me what these less-coveted techs are throughout the game?

Thanks,

Sam

 

[BretP]

I was under the impression that the more coveted techs were the way to go so that the AI would trade with you. If you have something they don't want, why would they give you anything for it?

 

[ButSam]

Well, if you are lucky enough to start with Alphabet, of course trade that, that is obvious...but the AI is going to research all the techs they most covet while you are still building Spearmen, so I guess what I mean is the coveted-but-still-tradable-and-researchable-before-the-AI techs.

Sam

 

[MajorFallout]

From what I've discovered when trying to play catch up on higher levels of difficulty (Regent and above), is that Military civs tend not to research 'Medicine' and 'Sanitation'. So you can often milk them for as much gold per turn as possible, with that one. I was got as much as 110 gold per turn for this particular tech advance.

I suppose it depends on the civ in question, and what their cultural tendencies are (forgotten word for this), as in, military, religious, scientific etc. The point being, some civs tend to go for either scientific, military or religious tech advances that coinside with their 'cultural tendencies'.

The only way to tell, is to keep trying to trade with em, and see if they want any of your techs - unfortunately this will probably happen in the industrial ages, unless you're really lucky.

 

[Bamspeedy]

You may want to read this article:

What will the AI research next?

The AI tends to favor some techs much more highly than other techs. This means what they want to research themselves. They will still like to obtain other techs and pay a normal price for them if someone else can acquire them. If you can be the first to one of the techs that the AI seems to avoid, then you can trade it for the other techs that they researched. This is partially random, but the higher the number for each tech (you'll see what I mean in that article), the greater the odds are a civ will research that tech. In the ancient era, the AI is usually slow at researching mathematics, polytheism, and currency, and in many games, I can beat the AI to these techs by going with 10% science (40 turns).