Longturn Forum

Howdy y'all.

I'd like to check what is the real effect of the tech-leakage option that has been activated in this game. Specifically, I'm interested in how much it helps players who lag behind to not lag behind too much. This is why I need some hard data.

I understand that some may want to keep their stats confidential. Some don't care, but still. If you like, feel free to put information here, as a follow-up in this thread. However, if you'd like to keep it anonymous, send it to my e-mail:
p_dalibor (the weird sign whose history it would be worth investigating, too) net (a teeny tiny dot) hr

I don't need anyone's name or to know who you are, I just need the data.

If you are willing to take part in this research, please send me the following information:
- number of cities
- Settled Area (Menu: Civilization -> Demographics)
- Economics (Demographics again)
- current government and a rough timeline of your government changes (if you remember)
- your overall average science percentage since the start of the game (your estimate)
- HOW MANY techs you have discovered so far

To make data more comparable, please send your data on the NEXT turn - T78.

To make things more fair, I will not release full data here, but only send it by e-mail to people who send it to me. Here I will only share my general conclusion (which doesn't necessarily have to be correct )

Discretion is guaranteed, especially if you send the data anonymously, but even if not, this is only for the feature investigation purposes.

Thank you.

Do you also want our locations and number of units in border cities?

Would you like to explain your research methodolgy a little bit? What kind of conclusions will you be making out of above descried data to determine the effect of tech leakage?

I want to compare the overall size of the civilization to the number of techs researched to see how they relate to each other. If I am right, large difference in size shouldn't reflect on the difference in research. What I want to see is how much is a *typical* smaller nation behind in research behind a *typical* large nation and does it have a chance for survival in a direct conflict. In other words, I'm trying to see 1. if not-spreading and staying on your island and building up is a viable strategy, and 2. how newbie-friendly is this tech-leakage feature.

For example, I have one comparison already. In this case, a 1:2 ratio in number of cities and 5:8 in Settled Area resulted in falling behind for only *two* techs (out of ~30). Now I'm trying to get a wider view, trying to weed out data noise created by potential bad decisions, different sequence of governments, shifting the sci/tax priorities and so on.

xandr wrote:Do you also want our locations and number of units in border cities?

I find your lack of faith disturbing. *breathes heavily*

Which value do we have for tech_leakage: 1, 2 or 3?
If 1, than tech leakage is very neglecting: say, if you have embassy on 2 neighbours out of 40 players (i.e. 5% of players),
it will reduce tech price by only 5%, and only for those techs already known by neighbours with embassies?
I've noticed this 5% boost around T40...
But now I'm also see a large difference in some top-tech prices of the same level, don't know if they are really leaked from ALL other nations?

; Technology leak from other civilizations
; 0 - No reduction of the technology cost.
; 1 - Technology cost is reduced depending on the number of players
; which already know the tech and you have an embassy with.
; 2 - Technology cost is reduced depending on the number of all players
; (human, AI and barbarians) which already know the tech.
; 3 - Technology cost is reduced depending on the number of normal
; players (human and AI) which already know the tech.
tech_leakage = 1

We have this.

; 2 - Technology cost is reduced depending on the number of all players
; (human, AI and barbarians) which already know the tech.

here is formula it uses to calculate it:

base_cost *= (double) (players - players_with_tech);
base_cost /= (double) players;

so for example, if tech costs 1000 bulbs and you are 2nd out of 50 to research:
1000 * (45 - 1) / 45 = 978 bulbs
or if you are last to research:
1000 * (45 - 44) / 45 = 22 bulbs

so decrease of 2.22% for each player who has tech already...