Research changes

[stagnate]

Have there been any changes to research selection?

I am playing an emporer game, and I made a beeline (with the help of lib) to get rifling. I have now had it for hundreds of years as a monopoly; the other civs have electricity now, but still haven't researched rifling (and hence can only build machine guns as 'modern units').

 

[Cybah]

try adding:

				<Flavor>
					<FlavorType>FLAVOR_MILITARY</FlavorType>
					<iFlavor>10</iFlavor>
				</Flavor>

to each leaderhead. works fine.

 

[stagnate]

Thanks for the information, but I'm mostly trying to provide feedback for better development. I generally think the changes are good (I've seen much better wars), but this is a fairly significant impact.

It appears that the AI is valuing some other techs more highly (the ones that provide free GL, and biology), which clusters them down the same research path and ignores the top path.

 

[Cybah]

It's not that easy. There will be AIs with more than enough military units. Those civilizations may research biology instead of physics for example.

Also if some paths had very high value, every AI would research in the same way, would use the same technology path.

 

[Yakk]

Both tech-trading and tech-picking should be improved.

For any two sufficiently friendly civilizations, it makes lots of sense to research different technologies then trade them to each other.

And if technology X is common, and you know many reasonably non-hostile civilizations with technology X, researching rare technology Y and selling it to multiple civilizations makes lots of sense.

Such a pattern (prefer to research technologies that are rarer among your friends and trading partners, then seek to trade off your rare technologies for the more common stuff) might generate a significant boost.

Now, another way this could be improved would be increased cash reserves (and possibly an incentive to keep cash reserves). Cash allows you to 'round up and down' trades nicely, so they are more even.

It is true that the AI keeps track of "excess traded value", so maybe this isn't needed (ie, the AI can be willing to extend credit to friendly civilizations, in which case you don't need to use cash?) There is some of that already in the trade AI: I don't understand it fully.

 

[Cybah]

Remember, you can disable tech trading like I always do.

 

[jdog5000]

There haven't been any direct changes to technology selection so far ... I don't think any of the other changes would have much if any of a trickle down effect either.

The AI should typically have a little more cash on hand now during peacetime due to the budgeting for unit upgrades, but it's not a dramatic change. I didn't know about the AI keeping track of excess trade value, thanks for the insight Yakk.