Tech research

[andre.human@gma]

Hi

I am pretty new to this game and there is something that I dont quite understand.

I usually play Russian (Catherine) and in order to get the Russian unique unit (Cossack), I need to research Gunpowder and Military Tradition. However, I cant bee-line directly to those techs. If I select Gunpowder tech relatively early, for example, it will first research other earlier techs which are not even on the gunpowder line, and then eventually get to the right line and on to gunpowder. Why does it do that? Are there certain early techs that you must research first before you can research more advanced ones?

The same happens when I try and race to the spaceship techs. The computer first does a detour to a whole bunch of earlier techs- like the early religion techs - before it gets on with the serious advanced research.

Any explanation or advice would be appreciated.

A

 

[ori]

You cannot just tech for, say fission from 4000BC - you have to go through the prerequisites for each tech before that, e.g. in order to research Alphabet you have to have writing, in order to get writing you either need pottery or animal husbandry or priesthood, each of them again has some prerequisites (you can find them in the civilopedia). If you choose an advanced tech the game will try to choose the cheapest, i.e. fastest, path currently available.
Some of the beelines have been compiled by VoiceOfUnreason - have a look at it

 

[andre.human@gma]

Thanks Ori. I thought as much.