Why am I always backward in tech?

FrosTi

Indépendantiste Québécois
Joined
Jun 21, 2001
Messages
155
Location
Montréal, Québec
In all games I play it seems I'm backward in tech... even if i'm investing 100% (if my income support it...) of my money in science... I played a game as Greeks... built some cities then I met the russians... I looked at his techs and he had 8 more techs than me! How is it possible I'm investing 100% in science and I get such backward! Does the AI cheat in science at Regent? BTW, I was a Emperor player of Civ2... But now I'm such a newbie in Civ3 lol! It's so unbelievable! Do you have a clue?
 
You answered your own question - THE AI CHEATS, and AI tech-whoring is notorious.


Keep your Science slider way up high, and be sure your population increases, which I admit is difficult as the AI initially engages in Settler Diarrhea building and sending out settlers everywhere. You have to also build settlers.

If you go for Literature directly, you will end up way behind as the techs in that line take longer. If you do go for Literature, start building the Great Library, but then some other civ on another continent beats you to the punch with it, well, you're in trouble, but other techs, such as Philosophy, will come quickly as by then you should have a larger population.

All the above relates to Regent. Too much AI cheating beyond that.
 
Don't be an isolationnist. Trade as much tech as you can.

Maybe you could put your research at 0% and buy all techs (or stealing, sometime, it's cheaper).

Library, university and research lab in each cities will help (Newton, Galilea and Seti too).
 
Yea, that's another option: keep Science at zero and buy techs.
Exorbitant costs for techs from other civs would worry me though.

If the governor is controlling citizen moods, I don't think he builds too many scientists. But I'm not sure of that. Check it out.
 
Your 100% science investment equates to 100% of the gold generated by your cities. There are several ways to increase your income (of course, you may be doing all of these).

1. Build more cities - if AI has more then all things being equal he will generate tech faster.

2. Build roads on every square that is being worked to increase commerce.

3. Work squares with gold bonuses where possible, i.e. luxuries, hills with gold, build harbors to work coast squares.

4. Get out of depotism/monarchy and go to republic or democracy instead.

The government can have a profound effect. The net income per turn may appear to be no better or even worse in an advanced government, because the unit support costs increase. However, the gross income increases quite a bit even between monarchy and republic, and the gross income determines your available science spending.
 
Originally posted by Zouave
You answered your own question - THE AI CHEATS, and AI tech-whoring is notorious.


.

I thought Firaxis promised us that the Ai would not cheat like hell, but would be **the most efficient player**:confused:
 
You would not believe all the concessions you can get from an opponent who's been "tech whoring" once you get an advantage in war.

I was tackling an Emperor game and was down about 7-8 techs. Being at war didn't help either because I had to build units, not libraries or markets or anything to help. Then I got the upper hand and forced a peace treaty. In the peace treaty I got to reclaim about 5 of the 6 lowest level techs in my demands. (Couldn't claim higher techs for which I didn't have the prereq's.) That caught me up with everyone else.

Also as a bonus the Great Leader I got from the warring allowed me to quickly build a Great Library. Then I could safely turn my tech down to zero until the middle of the next age, and procrastinate building the libraries while I beefed up in units and temples and the like.

Good luck!
--Yelof
 
But even if you are bigger than the computer he gets tech faster... Does he have a preference for trading tech with other CPU instead of player? :confused:
 
Originally posted by Zouave
You answered your own question - THE AI CHEATS, and AI tech-whoring is notorious.
If you want AI to play a fair game, try the Regent or Warlord level. Anyway, AI cheating is actually a good thing. If they don't cheat, there is no way we can get to the modern age around 100 A.D. You just have to find a way to beat them up for tech. Why research it yourself, when it's faster to beat someone up for it?

I'm sorry...that sound a little mean, but I'm at war and my enemies are cheating like crazy, therefore, I think it's ok for me to beat them up for techs.

PS: It's not that easy to beat them up anyway, especially at Deity level. It does require a lot of planning and timing.;)
 
Originally posted by FrosTi
But even if you are bigger than the computer he gets tech faster... Does he have a preference for trading tech with other CPU instead of player? :confused:

The Ai never, or not very often, ask you for a trade. You must ask. But they trade every turn with each others if they have cash.
 
When the AI cheats at such a high outlandish level it takes away the fun. They don't even need to build factories - and don't!
 
If you are playing regent and you are,then the ai isn't cheating you are both equal!!!! so stop whining that the ai is cheating because on regent and it is a fair game, appart from that your intelligence should be higher then the ai's so you should win easy!!:lol:
 
I-iZ-l337, J00'z 8&nn3d!

What a flippin' ******.
 
Originally posted by LaRo


You

This guy thinks he is cool because he is writing this way but some people don't understand him.

I don't think even HE has any idea what he's writing. Looks mostly like randon gibberish, like he longs for the days of manually connecting with 300 baud modems, and stuff like that.

Despite Zouave's complaint, the AI isn't cheating... much. The other civs often sort of work together. They don't need as much money to make a tech trade, plus they'll have the best techs under research by the top civs, and they'll crack them at the same time and share them with each other. So while it takes a minimum of 4 turns to get a new tech, they wind up with 2 or 3 or 4 from sharing with each other.

It's not easy to keep up with this. About the only thing you can do is set your science slider low and be behind the curve, buying up those new techs, and selling them for whatever you can get for them from the poor civs. You can also try going to war, swiftly taking a city or two, and sue for peace, demanding most or all of their techs.

Later on, if you are the big kid on the block, it's not too hard to stay at the top of the heap with your science spending. As you gain a tech, you can sell one that's a couple notches down to each of the civs. Some will pay big bucks and multi-turn for the tech, basically allowing you to set your slider even higher and still make a lot of money.
 
The AI does not cheat(more than usual) when it comes to techs.
What he does is to trade more between themselves. It's like one advanced civ has one tech and in the next turn every other civ has it, because the AI trades the techs away.
To fix this go to the editor, the part about difficulty, and change the AI to AI trade to 100.
Now it at least seems like a fair game.
 
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