Wierd Science Problem in Early Game

[Mrdarklight]

I've got a weird problem. When I'm playing as Maya, the science slider doesn't seem to work right. I turn it all the way up and although my income goes down, the thing I'm researching does not research faster. Or I can slide it almost all the way to the left, and i get more money, but the research does not slow down. Sometimes it has more of an effect than other times. Right now, no matter what I do except turn it all the way off, nothing affects the time it takes to research. This is when I first start the game and only have 1 city of size 1.

Edit: OK, I've tried some other things. No matter what civ I choose it's like this. Some of them will give me a small decrease in research time if I max science out (from 50 turns to 45), but otherwise, if I am putting 1 gold into research, it researches at the slowest rate. If I put 6 gold in science, the time it takes to research goes down a little. This doesn't seem right. I used to play Byzantines on the same difficulty level (monarch) and sliding the science slider from the middle all the way to the right would cut the time by half.

 

[CommandoBob]

Not wierd, though it appears that way.

As you know, each tech has a cost in beakers. Commerce can be converted into beakers via the science slider. However, early in the game, especially when you have only a few cities and maybe fewer roads, and thus not much commerce, fiddling with the slider doesn't appear to have much affect. And it doesn't at that point. Zero times 100% is still zero.

If the tech cost 1000 beakers and you are only adding 15 beakers per turn and you are at 100% science, the time to learn will stay at 50 turns.

So what generates commerce. It is created by the tiles your citizens work in each city. It is the last icon; food first, then shields and lastly commerce. Roads add one to commerce in the tile, as do some resources and some terrain features, most notably rivers.

The free utility Civ Assist II can show you how both the beaker cost and how many beakers you are generating per turn.

 

[vmxa]

Yup, basically just look at how much the tech cost in beakers and divide by 50. If you need 4.8bpt for 240 beaker tech, you need to get above 4.8bpt to lower the time below the default 50 turns.

So if you are making 3bpt at 50% and you can only get to 4bpt at 100, it wil not lower the time. May as well set to the min till you get more towns down. You want to realize that at the start 20% is the min, not 10%.

 

[ThePrankMonkey]

i notice in my games very early in the game i notice that the turns left to research that tech would go down by a turn, maybe two because each city i settled instantly started putting out beakers. on some turns i would put down two or three cities and it would take a turn or two off the time left for the tech.

the downside to this is the bigger you get, the less effect you get from those couple of beakers. after all when you put down your first city not including your capital, that'd be like doubling your beakers. so with one city you wont see the research time go down very much. put down 4 cities and it will change quickly.

i crank science up to 100% at the start and let it stay that way for a few turns, depending how fast i can put down new cities and get my core established.

one city alone is not going to reduce the number of turns no matter how high you set it by very much.