high speed research

[La Fayette]

In the endgame, it is possible to combine fat delivery bonuses and a strong SSC in order to obtain 1 tech/turn.
Example:
I need 1500 beakers to get next tech. I deliver 1 freight, value 500, my 'helper' cities provide 200, I regulate my SSC in order to obtain 800+ beakers. This gives me 1 tech/turn.

Now, what happens if I try to research at a higher speed?
Question 1: If I have been able to stack a number of freights close to the target city, I might be able to get much more than 1500 beakers from delivery bonus. Can I get more than 1 tech from freights in one turn?
Question 2: If I have got 1499 beakers from freight delivery and my civ (SSC + helper cities) is able to produce 1501+ beakers, do I get 2 techs on that turn?
Question 3: May I research at a speed even higher than that? and how?

[Xin Yu]

1) no.
2) yes.
3) yes. If you build science improvements in multiple cities and hire 16 scientists in each of them (16x3x2.5=120 science each even at 0% tech, so 13 such cities gets you >1500).

[La Fayette]

concise and perfectly clear.
And within 9 minutes!

(La Fayette, wearing sunglasses in order to protect his blue eyes during high speed research)

[arii]

The problem is you loose all the beaker above the ones needed from the city that fill the science box. You may actually loose a lot of beakers if the science city feels up your box (which is often the case).

[Carolus Rex]

Which is why samson or solo suggested your SSC should be made to report after a discovery is made. Correct me if this is wrong (it probably is):

i) Your 7 or 8 supporting cities fill the box

ii) You get to choose a new tech

iii) The rest of your cities (including the SSC) report

iv) If you're lucky the SSC fills the box and you get two advances that turn

Or have I misunderstood completely (as usual)?

Carolus

[DaveV]

I thought the strategy for each turn was as follows:

1) Fill the beaker box to near capacity by delivering caravan/freight.
2) The first city to be processed generates a handful of beakers, filling the box and giving tech #1.
3) SSC fills the box completely, or nearly so.
4) More cities pump beakers into the box, generating 2nd tech if it wasn't acquired in step 3. After the second tech, they generate some beakers for step 1. In extreme cases, this could generate a 3rd tech.

So the key is to have a few cities processed before the SSC, and several afterwards. I think Samson was building the SSC as his eighth city.

[solo]

It works this way:

1) An advance can not be obtained just from caravan deliveries, even if their total beakers exceed the amount needed for the advance, so at least 1 beaker(or remaining needed if caravans come up a little short) must come from a city, to trigger an advance earned mostly by trade.

2) The last city founded contributes beakers first, so in the situation where caravan deliveries almost net the first advance, that last founded city should be a small one, and should NOT be your SSC, whose beakers are better used towards the next advance.

3) If beakers from the SSC and other remaining cities are enough for another advance, then 2 are possible in one turn.

Early on, it was my policy to establish the SSC later than most of the helpers, and then at least one more pint-sized city afterwards to use with caravans to trigger that first advance.

The reason for delaying founding the SSC after most helpers, was to avoid wasting helper city beakers, because in many games I was finding that if helpers contributed first, not all of the SSC's considerable capacity was needed to finish off an advance, and some and sometimes even most of it beakers ended up being wasted. With the SSC contributing earlier, not all helpers were needed to finish an advance, and left over beakers from helper cities gave a good head start on securing the next one.

After samson demonstrated how a railroad to a nearby AI city could push the SSC beakers high enough to make helper beakers pretty much superfluous after Railroad, it made sense to found the SSC first, or as early as possible, in order to make it grow and develop more quickly.

[La Fayette]

thanks to you all
... and welcome back, solo
( BTW would you like to have a try at '2.42 large world'? smash built a huge civ and landed quite early; I am busy trying to land quite as early as he did, with a much smaller civ ... and I'm quite sure that arii and a few others try to land even earlier than that)

(La Fayette, not quite sure to be able to land early, but almost sure to have understood what high speed research means)

[solo]

Thanks, La Fayette, and I may give large world a try if I have some time before CivIII comes out. I used some time on SimCity lately, which was fun, but nothing close to being as good or challenging as Civ.

[La Fayette]

bump