Tech Questions

[Sashie VII]

In order to get that, you need 12 or so hospitals, right?

Actually, in order to be able to build Battlefield Medicine, you need at least 5 hospitals in your cities. It's useful even on higher difficulties, too.

Personally, I don't usually go researching Medicine->Sanitation. I play with slightly looser placement, CxxxC with some CxxC in the mix, so some cities can have more than 12 tiles and hospitals is of great benefit. If I do get Sanitation, I'll build hospitals in cities that can grow productively. But if I don't get it, then I don't.

I believe most people don't go for Sanitation due to the nature of CxxC spacing that doesn't allow a city to be able to grow past size 12 without some food bonuses. A hospital is no good if the city can't produce enough food to support 13+ population. Plus metropolises produce pollution, and I can imagine some players would rather not be bothered with pollution popping up every turn. Being able to grow past size 12 is a boost to commerce and production, but with that growth you'll need to pay attention to happiness issues; bigger cities are harder to keep happy. Battlefield Medicine is nice (very nice) but is by no means a gamebreaker IMHO.

 

[Taras Bulba]

Personally, I don't usually go researching Medicine->Sanitation. I play with slightly looser placement, CxxxC with some CxxC in the mix

Now I don't feel soo alone

I believe most people don't go for Sanitation due to the nature of CxxC spacing that doesn't allow a city to be able to grow past size 12 without some food bonuses

I don't go for it just because I like using the turns for other things (i.e.-rushing toward the ToE, then getting replaceable parts before its built, getting Atomic Energy and Electronics, and then I must go straight for Coorperation/Refining/Steel line.)

I usually just buy it when I can and when it gets cheap (or if I really need it, from a quick war)

so personally, I dont' find a need for researching Sanitation

 

[Sashie VII]

I don't go for it just because I like using the turns for other things

Now that you mentioned it, same here There's ToE to grab, then Replacable Parts, getting stock exchanges, Industrialization for factories, Hoover...then rushing to tanks, or being first to bombers...

 

[capnvonbaron]

I usually just buy it when I can and when it gets cheap (or if I really need it, from a quick war)

Which I was wondering about... does your civ "learn" techs when you capture enemy cities? I seem to remember somehow acquiring "espionage" from a civ I was at war with recently and don't remember bartering for it or seeing any pop-ups saying I even had it, it just kinda showed up... or maybe it's just my imagination

 

[Aabraxan]

No, it's probably not your imagination, but I suspect there was a popup. With the GLib and under certain other circumstances (which, frankly, aren't very clear to me), you'll occasionally get a popup that says, "We have learned X from Civ Y." It is not, however, connected to capturing cities.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Yeah I know the deal with the GLib and EvoThry, but I am equally likely to believe it was indeed my imagination. Or maybe I was drinkin that night, who knows.

IMO any enemy city you capture with a library or university should automatically "gift" you with one of that civ's techs, assuming they have something that you don't.

 

[darski]

I know that you could get a tech from a destroyed Civ in Civ1 and I believe Civ 2 but I have never seen it in Civ III. I think it would be a reasonable thing to have happen still but the programmers give and the programmers take away.

 

[Sharwood]

In Civ I and II, if you captured, or destroyed an enemy city you got to choose which of their techs you didn't have to steal. It was fun, but easily exploitable, which is why they took it out of Civ III I guess.

 

[capnvonbaron]

I know that you could get a tech from a destroyed Civ in Civ1 and I believe Civ 2 but I have never seen it in Civ III. I think it would be a reasonable thing to have happen still but the programmers give and the programmers take away.

More like...

"What the Sid giveth, the Sid taketh away"

 

[Aabraxan]

Yeah I know the deal with the GLib and EvoThry, but I am equally likely to believe it was indeed my imagination. Or maybe I was drinkin that night, who knows.

Well, I mentioned the GLib, but the "other circumstances" to which I was referring was not the ToE. It's a little foggy at this point, but I seem to recall having a game a while back and I got a popup that said that I had learned a tech from someone. I seem to recall: (1) it was sometime in the Middle Ages (so no ToE); and (2) it was a tech that I already had, which I found odd. I almost never build the GLib and if that had been the case, I probably wouldn't remember that instance as strange. I'll see if I can dig up a save, but I'm not sure I'll be able to.

IMO any enemy city you capture with a library or university should automatically "gift" you with one of that civ's techs, assuming they have something that you don't.

Not any city and not every time you capture a city. Otherwise, I'd probably never research past swordsmen. Master of Orion 2 had some % chance that you would get a tech when you captured a colony. You couldn't choose when you got them and you couldn't choose which tech, but I liked that system because you could get a tech now and again, but it was rare enough that conquest didn't become a reliable research system.