Technical questions about Civ4

[kryszcztov]

I may use this new thread to ask technical questions about Civ4 when I'm left with no answer after thinking and talking with some people about it.

So I've just started my very first game of Civ4 tonight with the 1.09 patch (European DVD, English language), a solo game on Noble with everything standard, and picked Louis XIV. I founded Paris in 4000BC and started on Animal Husbandry. I'm not familiar with the game, so I'll precisely describe what I saw. According to the mousing-over effect, this tech costs 140 beakers. It costs 100 beakers in the standard Civilopedia (from the main menu), as well as in my French tech tree poster. I drew a start with the city on river grassland, and some pigs around. I put the citizen on the pigs (3 breads and 1 gold coin), and so it gave me 10 beakers (1 gold from pigs, 1 from city tile, and 8 from palace) at 100%. Oddly, the game says I need 11 turns to get the tech (I should need 14 turns obviously). Why ?

I hit Enter, and the citizen was remotely changed from the pigs to a 'citizen' specialist (the one adding 1 shield) during the IT, changing the math in the process. :mad: No growth at all ! Why ?

So I reloaded the turn, messed with some stuff in the city screen, and then hit Enter once again. This time the citizen was left on the pigs. ( and ). But I now have 13 beakers : 13/140 !?! It fits the math : 10*13 = 130, but 11*13 = 143 > 140, yeah, right. So, there are 3 additional beakers coming from somewhere, and I really have no clue about it. When I mouse over the city of Paris, it clearly says 10 beakers per turn. Any idea ?

Thanks to help me only if you know what I am missing... or if you really have the feeling it is a bug. I can provide a screenshot and a save by email (PM) if needed.

[Drasca]

I am guessing your estimated research accounts for potential city growth. Your city may grow a pop, then have additional commerce for the last few turns of research.

[Sirian]

I am guessing your estimated research accounts for potential city growth. Your city may grow a pop, then have additional commerce for the last few turns of research.

That doesn't sound right.

There might be tech deflation involved. (Someone else may have popped the tech from a hut. The more civs who know the tech, the cheaper it costs for others to learn it.)

If not that, then I'm not sure. If he kept a saved game, then maybe I'll take a look at that when I've got the time to spare.


- Sirian

[kryszcztov]

As said, I'm a total n00b in this game, and I apology. But I'm running into an oddity during my very 1st turn of the game ever, which leaves me in doubt about the future (and my online friends are not there to make me optimistic about it). I'm a MMer and, though I could have some fun already, I hate finding things I just can't understand. For the moment I decided not to understand if, for example, the figures about happiness and health in my city are right, since I'd need to know much more, as anyway I'm OK in both categories in 4000BC, thank you ! But this research oddity seems easy to understand, and I fail to find an explanation.

Turn 0, 4000BC : I decide to choose Animal Husbandry, a tech costing 100 by default, but 140 in this game (this is so Sirian can confirm it is the right figure under my game's settings). My city is harvesting the city tile (1 gold, right ?), and a grass with funny pigs (1 gold) ; I get an additional 8 gold from the palace, for a total of 10 gold per turn, as can be seen when I mouse over the name of the city. At that point it says I need 11 turns ! As far as I know, I'm player 1 in the roster, so no one has founded any city yet, nor moved any unit on the map (AIs...), and this tech shouldn't be one with which some civs start, right ? Anyway the mouse-over says 0/140. So, 11*10 = 140 ?

On turn 1, after this very annoying governor thingie, I'm now at 10 turns from discovery (OK...), and have gained 13 beakers : it says 13/140 ! Sure, at 13 beakers per turn, I'll need 11 turns total, that makes sense. Now, why do I get 3 more beakers each turn, and why doesn't it tell me like it should ? It's not even about tech deflation a la Civ3, it's that I get more stuff than it tells me beforehand.

I did some experimentation with the science slider. At 10% science, I should get 1 beaker (10% of 10), but it says 70 turns, like if I had 2 bpt ! At 20%, 47 turns IIRC, like if I had 3. I didn't do more, but I'm starting to see a pattern here : I get 1 more beaker when I have, say, 1-4 beakers, 2 more beakers with 5-8, and 3 with 9-12, or something along this line (to be confirmed of course). So it's not even a constant addition, it depends on my slider adjustment !

Oh, I also moused-over the other techs in F6. I get the same oddity on Animal Husbandry (13/140, 10 turns to go from there). The other techs seem to be OK (though I do not click on them, so as to keep my research on Animal, but now I really should experiment it all, I guess), they give me the number of turns fitting with 10 beakers per turn (to be confirmed though). So, to sum up, I get an additional bunch of beakers for researching Animal only, depending on the science slider, and the game doesn't tell me why.

This is where I am at the moment. As said, I can provide a save of the end of 4000BC. And BTW, I already sent it to an online friend who first told me he hit Enter and saw the tile assignment being messed up, as told in my 1st post, so you may encounter it as well (maybe good to debug later ?), but if you reload and mess with it and then set it right, it works. Anyone interested to see that can send his email address to me by PM.

Thanks for reading.

EDIT : More info in my thread about this game : http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/topic....IC_ID=3262

[kryszcztov]

If anyone is still interested, I'm back with more experimentation.

First off, I don't know if it's intended to work that way, but the 'citizen' specialist at the right of the city screen had a '-' next to him (with still the pigs circled in white), and that may be the reason why my citizen was changed from the pigs to a 'citizen' specialist during the IT, annihilating growth. If I click on the '-', it changes to a '+', and then the IT is fine. Still, a bit of a bugger...

These are the results for Animal Husbandry in 4000BC (I have 10 gold per turn, so it is easy to know how many beakers per turn I get if I tell you the % science) :
% science (displayed), # turns to discovery (displayed), # corresponding beakers per turn (displayed in 3960BC : x/140), # additional beakers per turn (compared to # beakers per turn displayed ; computed by myself)
0%, 140t, 1, +1
10%, 70t, 2, +1
20%, 47t, 3, +1
30%, 35t, 4, +1
40%, 24t, 6, +2
50%, 20t, 7, +2
60%, 18t, 8, +2
70%, 16t, 9, +2
80%, 14t, 10, +2
90%, 12t, 12, +3
100%, 11t, 13, +3
If my calculations are correct, there is only one unique solution for each % science for this tech's cost.
Conclusions : I get 1 more beaker at 0%-30%, 2 more beakers at 40%-80%, and 3 more beakers at 90%-100%.

I also tested what happened with the other techs I can immediately research with Louis XIV (he starts with Agriculture and the Wheel). Surprising results there too.
Pottery (112 beakers) : I get 13 beakers at 100% (that's +3 ).
Mysticism & Mining (both 70 beakers) : I get 11 beakers at 100% (that's +1).
Fishing & Hunting (both 56 beakers) : I get 11 beakers at 100% (that's +1).
I seem to always get 1 beaker at 0%, though I didn't go through all the testing done with Animal Husbandry.
The techs at 70 and 56 beakers are a bit tricky, since the # of turns displayed in 4000BC is correct : respectively 7 turns and 6 turns, which fits with 10 beakers per turn, but also with 11 !! So I had to play 1 turn to find the error there.
I also moused-over a tech also costing 140 beakers (Sailing) that I couldn't research right away, and it said 13 turns (to AH's 11).
Conclusions : Not only Animal Husbandry is "broken", but every tech (which in itself is more normal). The # of additional beakers doesn't only depend on the % science, but also on the tech's cost !! The # of turns to discovery displayed in the tech bar always fits with the # of beakers per turn you actually get, at least for the techs I could research first. Since I believe that the former is computed from the latter, I think that fixing the latter will also fix the former, so that everything is back to normal.

Now I don't know if it's a bug or a feature (I'm a n00b). But I'd welcome any explanation, of course.

Anyway, here is a pic of my Civ4 version :



And here is the infamous save from my game (beware, the citizen is badly assigned there !) :
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/upload...4000BC.zip

[kryszcztov]

Here is an interesting link that should explain my weird observations :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146163

Some of it makes sense (gameplay speaking), but some of it also doesn't make sense.