Darwin's Voyage Observation and Question

[Bird]

If this has already been discussed, too bad. I'm lazy.

How does Darwin's Voyage work? I know you get two advances, but how do they get manipulated?

This is why I ask. I was playing an OCC game and had so much money I decided to buy Darwin's for the advances. Sciences were steady at one every two turns. On the turn I rush built it, I already had half the science box filled. Next turn I got the wonder, which gave me the science I was working on plus another one. What puzzles me is that you don't appear to get the benefit of that turn's science, b/c I should have gotten another discovery just from plain, old fashioned research.

Perhaps this is an OCC phenomenon. Let's say I had more cities and had built it in a low science output city. Would I get the discoveries and then continue to accrue sciences from the other cities as the production rotates to them. I suspect that's the case, but would like confirmation if anyone knows for sure.

[Ribannah]

What happens is that you "lose" the beakers already accumulated before the completion of Darwin's Voyage. DV simply gives you the tech you're researching plus one more. After that, your new research points are added to the beaker bar.

So, in OCC, make sure you complete DV when your beaker count is zero (ie right after the last discovery).

If you have more cities, it pays to build DV in your youngest city if the beaker count is at zero, because all beakers from cities #20-#2 will be lost when #1 builds it. Things get more complicated when you are making a discovery in, say, city #9, then you want city #8 to build DV, but that's some work to make the calculations.

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Sieve Too]

Don't forget to turn your science rate to 0% once you start DV in one of your newer cities. Put all the money into taxes and you can probably buy DV outright in about 3 turns and still not be any poorer. 2 advances in 3 turns is a pretty good science rate in the mid game.

[Edward]

Bird,

I think you get to keep beakers from previous turns.

Cities are processed from youngest to oldest (age is determined by when the city was founded). On the Darwin building turn, you go merrily along gaining beakers as usual. You can even discover an advance if you get enough beakers from the early cities (in which case you get the advance, the beaker bar is reset to zero, and you start gaining beakers again). Then you hit the city that's building Darwin's Voyage. Darwin's gives you the tech you were researching (whether you almost discovered it or had no beakers) and then gives you a bonus tech. All the beakers you accumulated so far this turn are also lost ('though you get to keep any advances you discovered "naturally" before Darwin's this turn. If you didn't discover any advances this turn before processing the Darwin city, you're left with only the beakers you had at the end of your last turn.). The city that builds Darwin's Voyage contributes no beakers for this turn. You then continue earning beakers for cities that are processed after the Darwin city (i.e. older cities).

From this you can see that
1. Darwin's gives you more free beakers the further away from your next tech you are just before it's built.
2. You lose "unused" beakers earned on the Darwin building turn for the Darwin city and cities younger than the Darwin city.

Of course in OCC, there are never any cities "after" your first, so you lose all your research for the turn in which Darwin's Voyage is built.


Is this correct Ribannah?

[Paul]

It's very simple; here's how Darwin's Voyage works: you get the advance you are currently researching plus a second advance. You lose all beakers accumulated toward your current research (Edward, you don't keep beakers from previous turns). The city that built Darwin's and all cities processed after it contribute beakers to your next research goal. So, like Ribannah said, in OCC you should always complete Darwin's when you've just discovered an advance. In regular games this can also work, if you build Darwin's in your newest city.
[This message has been edited by Paul (edited March 27, 2001).]

[Knigget]

What I do is fill the beaker "box" using caravans the turn before I build Darwins. And I make sure I dont build it in the city that is processed first. What happens is that the first city completes the reaserch of my current advance and darwins give me two more.

Using this its best to build Darwins in the city that is processed as number two.

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What else floats?

[Bird]

Thanks for the clarification all. This confirms what I suspected were the consequences for OCC and regular play, although I didn't articulate them very well. To sum up, in all cases, you want to build it right after making a discovery, and in regular play you want to build it in as new a city as possible (unless you are anal enough to figure out that the 8th city, for example, will give you the next discovery and then 7th city will build the wonder). I'm not sure I fully understand the reason for setting your science rate to zero for the turn it is built so that you can collect the gold, though. If you do that, you'll have no beakers in the box after the turn is over, whereas I had half a box when my turn was over, presumably b/c wonder production precedes science accumulation during the city turns.

You don't "lose" the beakers. When you build the voyage, the advance you are working on is auto-discovered and also the next. Then the beakers from the previous advance you were working on is tranferred to the one you are now working on.

Hope you understodd that.

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[Knigget]

The beakers are not carried over to the next advance.

But if you trade for the advance you are researching the beakers are carried over to the next advance. Although that has nothing to do with Darwins...

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What else floats?
[This message has been edited by Knigget (edited March 28, 2001).]

[Ribannah]

quote: Originally posted by Archangel MasterBob on 03-27-2001 11:26 PM You don't "lose" the beakers. When you build the voyage, the advance you are working on is auto-discovered and also the next. Then the beakers from the previous advance you were working on is tranferred to the one you are now working on.

No, that's not true. They are all lost.
However, the beakers you produced AFTER Darwin's Voyage was completed are added. This includes beakers produced by the city that built DV. Therefore, there is no point in setting the science rate at zero for the turn you're going to complete DV.



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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Edward]

Sorry for confusing things. I could have sworn it worked roughly as Archangel MasterBob describes it.

[Knigget]

Ribannah

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is how it works:

1) The cities processed before the DV-city adds their beakers.
2) DV gets build. All beakers are cleared and you gain two more advances.
3) The cities processed after the DV-city adds their beakers

If the cities in 1) doesn't produce enough beakers for the next advance the beakers are wasted, but if they do you will discover 3 techs in one turn.

[Ribannah]

The beakers produced by the city building DV are added in (3) as well.

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[La Fayette]

quote: Originally posted by Sieve Too on 03-26-2001 08:33 PM Don't forget to turn your science rate to 0% once you start DV in one of your newer cities. Put all the money into taxes and you can probably buy DV outright in about 3 turns and still not be any poorer. 2 advances in 3 turns is a pretty good science rate in the mid game.

Here are a few calculations and checkpoints about what you wrote:
1) Cost of DV: 1600 gold (rushbuilding it with 1 shield in the box when you start)
2) Cost of 1 tech: around 1000 beakers (depends upon your own way to climb up the tech tree; you can read it directly after 'killing' your Einsteins and setting science to 0).
3) Trading Gold against Beakers: 1gold=1beaker, if your LEVEL OF IMPROVEMENT is the same in the fields of tax and science (either nothing, or MP and Lib, or Bank and Univ).
4) In that case, what you wrote is right: setting science to zero, you gain 2 techs and lose 1600 beakers, which is probably slightly less than 2 techs.
5) In my case, researching railroad early and building more improvements in the field of science, I would gain 2 techs and lose 3000 or 4000 beakers (or more ). That's why I don't do it (though it happens that I build DV, but then I do it with help of caravans stacked somewhere and somewhat useless for the time being).

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aux bords mystérieux du monde occidental

[Blaupanzer]

Somehow, all of this has not made the answer less confusing. My impression is that the beakers accumulated previous to the DV build turn DO carryover. Beakers are added on the DV build turn only by cities that contribute AFTER the city that builds DV. (The potential beakers of the cities that process earlier in THAT turn are lost unless they add up to enough to allow another advance. That latter case would cause three advances in the same turn.) This supports Archangel Bob's contention.

[Paul]

My experience from my OCC games is that all beakers accumulated before DV was built are lost, not just the ones accumulated in that turn. When DV is finished you start with zero beakers towards your next advance. The city that built DV and all cities processed after that will contribute beakers to the new advance.

[Bird]

This certainly is easy enough to test. The next time someone has a single city cranking out a discovery every 2 turns, just save when the box is half filled and try building Darwin's (a) with the science still cranked up and (b) with the science set at zero. If you "lose" the beakers already in the box after building Darwin's and then accumulate beakers for that turn after constuction is complete, the box should be half full before advancing to the next turn in (a) and empty in (b). If the other way around (you keep the sciences already in the box but don't accumulate any for that turn), the results will be reversed. If it is the latter, it would then be advisable to set science to zero before building the wonder.