GalCiv3 Forums
If I create a race and give it the intuitive ability the hover tip says that it starts with free research. What does that mean exactly? On my first turn should I be able to select 1 or more cheap research items and get them right then and there?
Thanks
When you create a custom race with intuitive you will get free techs..usually two or one. I have it on my custom race. Go into your tech tree and pick a tech you want free, go OUT Of the tree and it will say no research..go back in and pick another tech..go back out..and it <may say> pick another. One tech you may not even get free is Orbital shipyards which may only get your 3/4ths of it completed.
I typically get the new sensors tech and the banking/happiness starter techs for free. Oh..SAVE The GAME..
The number of techs is flat but I have found if your homeworld has a research bonus tile and you build/buy a research building there before you go into the tech tree you will get more bang for your buck...you could get two techs AND 2/3rds done of a 3rd tech.
The XML data indicates you gain +250 research points, and not a flat number of technologies.
interesting, does the game tell you the number of research points a given tech uses? Also, is the +250 research points indicated anywhere in the UI?
thanks
No, nowhere does it tell you how many points are something. I can verify that if you start with a research tile you can get more than 2 techs. Whether the tile reduces the cost of the initial techs or you get extra ones in addition to your 250, I do not know
Note that tech becomes more expensive with wach tech you buy. The roots of the tech trees seem to count aswell, and a tech which has a base cost of 29, can easily cost 45 at the start, due to the game counting 4 or 5 techs as reasearched allready.
I'm not sure the +250 research points is even displayed in-game. As Larsenex has noted, this appears to modified based possibly on whether you have research tile resources or research building(s) on your starting planet(s). However, no access to game code = everything is observational inferences, and then some speculation & conjecture.
DISCLAIMER: Long post with math! You have been warned!
As for how to figure out how many research points a tech uses: you can plow through the XML data files to figure out what techs cost what. Based solely on the information displayed in-game however, you can estimate the possible range of the remaining cost, which will be equal to:
[(Total Research Point Generation) * (N - 1) + 1, (Total Research Point Generation) * (N)].
Range = (Research Per Turn) - 1.
where N is equal to the number of turns it takes to finish researching that technology, if your current research point generation remains static throughout the course of researching that technology (which it likely won't, but I digress).
For example:
Say the technology "I-Can-Build-A-DeathStar" (has a hidden cost of 3300 research points and we have not spent any research points towards yet) takes 9 (a.k.a. our 'N') turns to research, with a current research point generation of 390.
Therefore, we can estimate that the total remaining (but conveniently equal to the total cost because we have not started to research it!) cost of "I-Can-Build-A-DeathStar" to be in the range of:
= [(9 - 1) * 390 + 1, 9 * 390]
= [(8 * 390) + 1, 9 * 390]
= [3121, 3510]
Range = (390 - 1) = 389
Therefore, we can conclude that "I-Can-Build-A-DeathStar" costs between 3121 and 3510 research points. But what if you want a more accurate estimation of this? You would simply have to reduce your research output (temporarily of course, until you actually start researching! 
), with your sliders & whatnot (if you have a lot of planets with their custom sliders, I'd suggest making a save-file before trying this!).
For example, say if we reduced our research point generation to 86 research/turn (and causing the N number of turns needed to increase to 39, so N = 39), we can make a new, more accurate estimation at the total research cost of "I-Can-Build-A-DeathStar" to be in the range of:
= [(39- 1) * 86 + 1, 39 * 86]
= [(38 * 86) + 1, 39 * 86]
= [3269, 3354]
Range = (86 - 1) = 85.
You may have realized at this stage (as zuPloed pointed out in the previous post): "if we set our RPT to 1, we'd be able to perfectly calculate the research cost (N * RPT = Cost)! D'oh!". That is a perfectly correct assumption as well!
However, setting your RPT to exactly 1 with multiple planets may not always be easy and sometimes impossible (e.g. you built a Thulium Data Archive... which gives a flat, non-negatable bonus that ignores your production slider), so this method is a just a decent way to approximate the hidden, remaining, research cost, short of trying to find the corresponding XML entries in the game data files.
Interesting to note is that this is also very similar to the mechanism you may have used to approximate the slope of a curve in a pre-calculus class at school (e.g. before you learned to take derivatives).
You are missing one thing, I think. Tech gets more expensive with every other tech you research.
GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml :
<!--Each time you research a tech in any tree the cost of all techs are raised by this exponent-->
<TechInflationExponent_All>1.25</TechInflationExponent_All>
<!--Each time you research a tech in any tree all techs cost is increesed by this multipyer.-->
<TechInflationMultiplier_All>0.1</TechInflationMultiplier_All>
I tried to work out what exactly the formula is. My method was modding intuitive to give 25k research points and starting a new game. Then it is easy to set research to 1.0. I didn't figure out what the exponent does, but the multiplier is rather straight-forward:
base_cost*( 1 + N*multiplier)
With N being the number of techs you have researched. Keep in mind, that you start the game at 4(5?, the basic node of the entire techtree might count, too) techs researched: colonization tech, basic engineering tech, basic military tech and basic economy tech.
@zuPloed: Thanks for pointing that out. I'm also unsure if there's any sort of tech diffusion (e.g. a tech gets cheaper as more civilizations unlock it) mechanic present in GC3.
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