[vanilla] Research Agreements (vanilla)

[vexing]

vexing submitted a new resource:

Research Agreements - Research Agreements

Research Agreements
How research agreements work​

Introduction

Classical era research agreement​

"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination" - John Dewey

Research agreements are a gold costing investment between two...

Read more about this resource...

 

[tommynt]

its a good post but still demonstrates how brokken and dumb civ sp is.

goal is not to beat ai but to shift medians best for you.
Its just dumb, as long as AI is horrible and is NOT playing to win (see Dilpo win f.e.) every human with a brain and love to civ should play multiplayer - where he got opponents to beat not get freewin shifted

 

[binhthuy71]

its a good post but still demonstrates how brokken and dumb civ sp is.

goal is not to beat ai but to shift medians best for you.
Its just dumb, as long as AI is horrible and is NOT playing to win (see Dilpo win f.e.) every human with a brain and love to civ should play multiplayer - where he got opponents to beat not get freewin shifted

Not all of us have the free time or the proper time zone to play MP. I'd add that some MP players are subject to "cookbook" strategies that are as predictable as the AI.

 

[ense7en]

Thank you very much for explaining this in depth!
It's one of the things i didn't understand the math behind, but hopefully will after reading through the OP

 

[Camikaze]

its a good post but still demonstrates how brokken and dumb civ sp is.

goal is not to beat ai but to shift medians best for you.
Its just dumb, as long as AI is horrible and is NOT playing to win (see Dilpo win f.e.) every human with a brain and love to civ should play multiplayer - where he got opponents to beat not get freewin shifted

Moderator Action: Nice to know your opinion, but not relevant to the Civ5 War Academy forum. Please limit comments to asking questions about the article or discussing Research Agreement strategy.

 

[Thresian]

Is there a bug or something with the time RAs complete? I'm currently playing a game on epic duration (Earth map, immortal difficulty, if it matters), and the RAs state that they last for 45 turns. But for a while they were completing in 40 turns, which somewhat messed with my medians. Then after a certain point (industrial era?) they completed after 45 turns.

 

[Tabarnak]

Is there a bug or something with the time RAs complete? I'm currently playing a game on epic duration (Earth map, immortal difficulty, if it matters), and the RAs state that they last for 45 turns. But for a while they were completing in 40 turns, which somewhat messed with my medians. Then after a certain point (industrial era?) they completed after 45 turns.

It shouldn't be. Always been 25 turns for quick, 30 for standard, 45 for epic and 90 for marathon for me(well i never played marathon duh).

 

[JDR]

In your example, if I had researched Compass for a couple of turns, would that lessen the value received?

Oh, and nice article.

 

[vexing]

In your example, if I had researched Compass for a couple of turns, would that lessen the value received?

no. you receive the full value of the tech in beakers, not how much you have remaining.

 

[Mesix]

Thanks for taking the time to share your expertise at abusing the RA mechanic to its maximum benefit.

 

[JDR]

no. you receive the full value of the tech in beakers, not how much you have remaining.

Thanks

 

[binhthuy71]

The AI will always be willing to sign a research agreement for this price if they have the funds and are not hostile. If the player is technologically ahead of the AI, the AI will require an additional 100 gold (or equivalent worth, eg two strategic resources and 10 gold) per era they are are behind; this penalty is not modified by game speed.

Thanks for explaining the additional costs of signing an RA with a civ that is technologically behind. Is the AI constrained to prioritize Gold and then, if necessary, to make up any remaining balance with strategic resources? Does a resource-starved AI have the option of requesting some Gold and needed resources?

 

[vexing]

Is the AI constrained to prioritize Gold and then, if necessary, to make up any remaining balance with strategic resources? Does a resource-starved AI have the option of requesting some Gold and needed resources?

it follows the standard AI trading algorithm. my memory may be incorrect on this, but i think they will initially request open borders if available, and then gold for any excess (eg open borders + 50 gold). that might only apply to friendly civs. they'll request strategics to make up the difference if you don't have enough gold available. they are never smart about requesting things they need, eg they'll happily take aluminum even if they're still in the medieval era.

regardless of what they request you can put stuff in the window, and say what will make this work, and if it's at or above to the value they desire and close they'll say "that'll work," or if it's slightly below the value they'll add however much gold needed to meet their min value expectation. eg if you put in two strategics they'll request 10 more gold. if it's not close the algorithm will find whatever combination of things will work that it can.

as a bonus, you can get full value for gpt or strategics for any partner above hostile specifically for this excess gold. this means while they may only be willing to give you 40 gold for two strategics outright, they'll still accept two stategics + 10 gold instead of 100 gold. this is an effective way to "trade" with guarded civs. the value of open borders doesn't fall under this rule

 

[binhthuy71]

Thanks for the clarification, vexing.

 

[tommynt]

Dont think your early teching plan is optimal.

teched both CS and Theo to 1 turn to go before rushing for education.

this gave me time to sign classical RAs with 6 or 7 civs. In like turn 70 I went into medi age
Got PT up with HS engi just before 1. RA came in in like turn 90.
with 1. two Ras I went for compass - bulb astro with PT scientist and full gain with next 5 RAs.

this is from GOTM24 (OCC turn 216 win)

and I m very sure that this is the way to go - your posted plan let some of the early agreements end before both PT and rationalism is up.

what you should do is tech CS and theo to 1 turn before finish and start RAs with like 20-25 turn to tech for education. while teching education build hagia and prebuilt oracle (oracle to make sure to get rationalism right when u bulb astro).

edit well reread your posts - maybe you try do something same - but u act like u d RA education what u definatle should not

 

[Raven-sb]

Thank you for posting this. I'm not very good at strategy games but I love the Civ series. This article helps me understand the Research Agreement game mechanic. The time you spent putting this together is appreciated.

 

[Gimasag3]

ugh. This made my head hurt

 

[avdale]

If the beakers granted by a research agreement exceed the cost of the technology being researched, overflow is applied to the next technology queued (via control clicking on the technology tree) or applied randomly if no technology is selected. At most two technologies can be completed on a turn, and any overflow beyond completing two technologies is saved for the next turn.

A question about this. Lets say I had 4 RA's all resolve themselves on the same turn. Is the median value for the beaker counted calculated at the start of the turn and all 4 RA's receive that amount or is the median calculated for the first RA, beakers are applied to your tech progress, median for the next RA is calculated, beakers are applied, etc.

Also is the two techs per turn outdated? I recently had a situation where 4 RA's resolved themselves on 1 turn and I popped Banking, Acoustics, Engineering and Physics all on the same turn iirc.

 

[vexing]

i double checked on the two techs per turn, and it is incorrect: you can get techs equal to the number of RAs signed + 1. i will adjust the article accordingly

 

[James T]

This article is great! I would love to see a video with commentary that takes you through the concepts and shows the planning, timing, etc. Not a full-on "LP", but more like a brief video tutorial. My brain gets fuzzy as I try to mentally map the commentary to the screen shots.