One question though, does it really pay off to go at 100% research from the start on (first 10 turns or so)? I do not see any difference in research turns over the first 10 turns, whether the slider is at 20% or 100%. Or is this a rounding issue?
It may look like the research time is the same (50 turns in both cases), but the absolute number of beakers you accumulate over these 10 turns is of course higher, if you run 100% from the start, so the tech will in fact finish faster, once you have enough population to make enough beakers to finish the tech in under 50 turns.
Example: in this setup (Emperor, Standard, 7 opponents) Writing is 240 beakers. If you start at 10%, so that exactly 1 bpt is put into the box, it'll take 50 turns and you actually save 190 beakers. If you start at 100%, all 4 bpt will go into the box. Now 240/4 = 60, so it will still finish in 50 turns, if you can't get the beaker rate up soon. (In which case it would be a waste: why collect 2x50 = 200 beakers, if you can get the same for 50 beakers...)
But if you decide to do it in under 50, then it makes sense to go 100%. Let's say for the first 10 turns you make 4 bpt. Then there are only 200 beakers remaining. Whereas if you go 10% for the first 10 turns, you still have 230 beakers left and it will be much harder to make that in under 40 turns.
In general I think 38 turns instead of 50 is worth the extra gold invested. On Emperor these 12 turns may mean the difference between winning or loosing the race to Philosophy. However, on a large or huge map (or on Demigod/Deity), the price for Writing may be so high, that researching it full speed still takes 45 or 46 turns. In that case I would do it at 10% for 50 turns and save a big bag of gold during that time...
This gold will then either allow good tech trading opportunities or it will allow you to do deficit research for the next tech, catching up the lost turns that way.
(For an example of the trading approach see the test game attached to the following thread:
Ideas for SGOTM15 -- post #28
This was a Deity game with 16 opponents, so I did lone scientist for Writing. And despite the fact that I researched only 3 techs myself up to 1000BC, I had all ancient age techs (except for the optionals) and already Feudalism + Engineering at 1000BC. The extra cash and the many early contacts (ultra-early curraghs were key in that game!) allowed the perfect "tech broker" strategy.
A reference .sav from 1000BC is attached to post #30.)
Another key for fast early research is: you need to use scientists, whenever there is food-overrun in one of your towns. (For agricultural civs, who often have +3 fpt in many towns, this is often the case: in 3 turns you collect 9 food, and then you can take one citizen off of a 2-food tile, and the +1 food is still enough for growth next turns. Of course you sometimes need to balance this against the lost shield.) And in the next to last turn of a tech I often check, whether 2-3 scientists would shave a turn off.
Lanzelot
