Working the tech tree- need advice

[Smokeybear]

Ok, so I'll admit I've mostly just played the game for fun up to this point, and not gotten all that much into the technical 'maximizing your win speed' aspect... but I guess it's never too late to learn some of the finer points.

I play on King, and while I usually beat the AI, I'm curious about how to best 'work' the tech trees, to speed up your progression through them. I always try to sign RA's as often and early as possible, to get a leg up that way, and to keep them from going to competing civs, of course.

I remember back when the game was young, you could often ignore whole sections of the tech trees for an extremely long time, if not for the whole game. But some patches later, it's gotten to the point where you pretty much have to keep bringing all of the branches along fairly evenly, or you quickly end up in situations where you can't go any farther towards the techs you're 'lining for, until you bring up ALL of the tail-end-charlie techs too. Not until the Modern era, can you really start to totally ignore any branches until endgame (well, maybe Industrial, if you're going for Diplo win).

So, with that reality in mind, and assuming you are building up your science as efficiently and quickly as you can for the strat you've chosen, what is the best method of choosing techs so that you can move up the trees as rapidly as possible?

Is it better to research each era's techs more-or-less evenly, so that they are all pretty much done by the time you break into the next era? Does the cost of tech research stay cheaper, or more expensive, if you play it that way? Or is it better to beeline through a more critical tech tree until you break into the next era, leaving as many techs behind and unresearched as you can, up to the point of that breakthrough? Does that strategy make all of the still-unresearched techs cheaper?

For the most part, I've been playing it conservative, bringing techs up fairly evenly, and I'm often one of the last civs to pop into the next era, at least in the early going, until my civ really gets rolling and expanding. Have I been teching inefficiently? Spending more research points than I needed to, due to not rushing to each new era as fast as possible??

 

[wobuffet]

If you sign lots of Research Agreements, you want to maximize the beaker value of your median "researchable" tech by the time your RAs expire. This entails making uneven progress along the tech tree in a certain way (trying to "block"/bottleneck tech progress by not researching a tech that is a prereq for lots of others, like The Wheel). I don't do this too much myself though, because I don't like the way RAs work at all. Also, just before they expire, queue up the techs you want the boosts applied to by Shift-selecting techs in the order that you want.

Other than that, go for the Science-boosting techs (Writing, Education, Astronomy [if you have a City by a mountain], Scientific Theory, Plastics) early.

You do know that beakers overflow, right? If you only need 3 more beakers for a tech but are producing 150 a turn, you don't lose the leftover 147; they apply automagically to the next tech you choose.

 

[Smokeybear]

If you sign lots of Research Agreements, you want to maximize the beaker value of your median "researchable" tech by the time your RAs expire. This entails making uneven progress along the tech tree in a certain way (trying to "block"/bottleneck tech progress by not researching a tech that is a prereq for lots of others, like The Wheel). I don't do this too much myself though, because I don't like the way RAs work at all. Also, just before they expire, queue up the techs you want the boosts applied to by Shift-selecting techs in the order that you want.

Other than that, go for the Science-boosting techs (Writing, Education, Astronomy [if you have a City by a mountain], Scientific Theory, Plastics) early.

You do know that beakers overflow, right? If you only need 3 more beakers for a tech but are producing 150 a turn, you don't lose the leftover 147; they apply automagically to the next tech you choose.

Great info, thanks! So, just before your RA is about to expire, you can shift-select the techs you want the boost applied to? Even to the exclusion of the tech you are currently researching? So all the RA boost will be applied to your shift-selected tech(s), and none to the one still partially completed?

Also, RA's completely aside, I'm still curious what the possible tech cost/discount affects are, when you are moving up from one tech era to another- once you break over into a new era, do all the as-yet unreasearched techs in the previous era become discounted then, to some extent? Do you get more of a cost discount on the next era's tech if you completely finish researching all the ones in the previous era, first? Or is there no cost/discount connection at all between how fast you get to the next era, and whether you get there 'evenly', or with a lot of leftover earlier techs still?

As I move well past any unresearched tech (usually in the seafaring tree... heh), those lowbie techs do seem to get cheaper and cheaper in cost, until I finally learn them- versus those techs I can jusssst stretch way out ahead of myself to learn, which are WAY more expensive than the median tech I've learned so far. I'm curious about those cost/discount affects, mainly.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Great info, thanks! So, just before your RA is about to expire, you can shift-select the techs you want the boost applied to? Even to the exclusion of the tech you are currently researching? So all the RA boost will be applied to your shift-selected tech(s), and none to the one still partially completed?

Also, RA's completely aside, I'm still curious what the possible tech cost/discount affects are, when you are moving up from one tech era to another- once you break over into a new era, do all the as-yet unreasearched techs in the previous era become discounted then, to some extent? Do you get more of a cost discount on the next era's tech if you completely finish researching all the ones in the previous era, first? Or is there no cost/discount connection at all between how fast you get to the next era, and whether you get there 'evenly', or with a lot of leftover earlier techs still?

As I move well past any unresearched tech (usually in the seafaring tree... heh), those lowbie techs do seem to get cheaper and cheaper in cost, until I finally learn them- versus those techs I can jusssst stretch way out ahead of myself to learn, which are WAY more expensive than the median tech I've learned so far. I'm curious about those cost/discount affects, mainly.

The only "tech discount" is a discount for techs that other players know.

So the more other players know Bronze working.. the cheaper it is for you.

This does mean that the later in the game you go the more a tech will get discounted (up to the point where everyone else knows it.)

So it doesn't depend on what techs you know, it depends on where everyone else knows. (so holding off on researching a tech you don't need is worthwhile)

 

[Smokeybear]

The only "tech discount" is a discount for techs that other players know.

So the more other players know Bronze working.. the cheaper it is for you.

This does mean that the later in the game you go the more a tech will get discounted (up to the point where everyone else knows it.)

So it doesn't depend on what techs you know, it depends on where everyone else knows. (so holding off on researching a tech you don't need is worthwhile)

Ah, that explains it! Thanks.