Research Trading

Here's how it is suppose to work:

Whenever you research a tech, you get 10% of its value in knowledge (in the same tree as the tech you researched). When you trade the tree knowledge away, you lose those points. You basically have an effective research rate of 110%, but you can only get that last 10% by trading (or you can trade it for something else). When you trade FOR knowledge, you gain those points in a random tech in that tree. Sometimes, if you're late in a game, a couple of points barely makes an impact.

Note that, there is some odd discrepancy on how the AI is generating its knowledge. Several people have reported that the AI is generating way more than it should. I honestly haven't noticed it myself, because I tend to mind my own business in most games... but I'm sure there's a bug in the system somewhere.

Wow noone else responds...*crickets*...?

The AI will have many TENS of thousands of points sometimes to my hundred or so.

I don't get it. Obviously some of you do. I was just curious if I was doing something wrong?

Well, I only have 2 games under my belt. But in each game I was fairly active in the diplomatic screen, and the AI never had thousands of knowledge to trade in any category. The most I saw was low hundreds (like 182, for example).

If the AI has tens of thousands of points in your game, I'd say something wonky is going on. Silly question, but are you on the current patch/no mods? Going by the "Knowledge is generated by 10% of a techs research" rule outlined above, it doesn't seem possible for the AI to have tens of thousands of points. There just isn't enough tech in the game!

Unless your totals are coming from the super-late game? I don't know how much research the endless optimization techs require. If you are seeing such totals before turn 100, I'd definitely say something isn't working as intended.

OK the last game I played was on a mod. A huge map. 2 teams of 9 v 9. So 18 players. My teammates each have around 95,000 points in civiliation, 15,000 in magic and 10,000 in warfare so I guess the enemy must be similar. I have been getting tributes and trade offers, etc. I thought I was doing well and when the enemies declared war on my they were advanced comparitively.

I think I am going to go back and have my allies declare war on them so help me out!

As far as I am concerned, the AI research trade points are buggy.

I know for a fact that even with three AIs in the game, the trade points exceed 10% of the research, sometimes by about 5-6 times.

I have also noticed that the more numerous the AIs, the more the trade points exceed expectations.

Given that everyone who has reported trade points in the hundreds has been playing with 10+ races, if I had to guess, I'd say that AIs do not lose their trade points when they trade them away, and can re-trade them.  Get over 10 AIs, and you get a positive feedback loop.  Let me explain.

Assume 21 AIs.   Each has research 10, which generates 1 trade point.

Then each trades that trade point to every other AI, thus obtaining 20 research points, which generate 2 trade points.

The next turn, the AIs have not increased their research capacity, but have 3 trade points each.  Those generate 60 trade points back, etc...

Now, I am not a Stardock programmer, and I have not bothered really experimenting (I have never played with more than 10 AIs, one for each race)  But I really trust my gut feeling when it comes to debugging/expanding other people's code.

In my current ecomental XXL map, stormwind, 12 races, ridiculous - I'm about to get hosed.  My power rating is around 200 and i've got 95 civ research saved up.  Traded 200 a bit earlier.   All the other AIs except 2 are in the 500-800 power range and have literally about 20k  in available research points.  12k civ, 5k war, 3k magic (ish).   Most seem to have 15-20k.    I'm not in front of the game so I may be exagerating a bit, but its not by much.

If my guess is correct, 11 AIs trading amongst themselves will quickly result in exponential research advances.  This matches what you are seeing.  Fortunately, they lack the materials to transform the research into a strong military, and the production to transform it into infrastructure.

This exponential (but unrealized) research would also explain why AIs shoot up in power so quickly, and why they have such an inflated sense of their ability to stomp the player. 

I am REALLY curious to see how close my guess is to the truth.  If it's anywhere accurate, we have found a bug that has far reaching consequences, and fixing it will smooth quite a few bumps.

I think that when trading research the other player should not gain any tradable research. I attribute that they are learning from the other race and can apply it to their current research, but do not develop tradable knowledge unless they do it themselves. I think this would go a long way in fixing this problem. But it's something the devs would have to fix.

There are many ways to fix this situation. Yours works logically, but I think that trade points are only generated when a topic is completed.  For them to use that fix, they'd have to change a lot of the mechanics.

The only person who can find the most effective approach is one who can look at the actual code.  I'm not quite so full of myself as to try to second guess the man on the keyboard.

I just wish I was sure that a developer is aware of this thread, and believe us when we say that this is a serious problem even with less than 10 AIs, let alone when the number of AIs makes it go exponential. 

By the way, anyone testing this would be better off knowing that the exponential effects will not become blindingly obvious until 1. All AIs meet 2. The trade bump is enough to go through single topics in two-three turns. Of course, once it's enough to burn through repeatable topics, the effects are ludicrous - that's when you'll see research in the thousands.

It's possible the calculation is buggy, but here's another idea.  It's possible that it's working as designed.  It's possible that the 10% worth of research points that we get is not the same percentage that the AI gets.  It's possible that Derek and Brad made a decision based on "FUN FACTOR" that the AI needs to have lots of research points so that the player can have fun when trading for those points.  If the AI had the same low number of research points that we have, then it wouldn't be any fun to trade with them.  But this is their secret and they will never tell.

It's the same reason why Brad lets the AI leave goodie huts around--FUN FACTOR.  If the AI gobbled them all up, we wouldn't have any fun cuz we wouldn't find any treasure.  It's not because the AI is stupid, it's because Derek and Brad are smart.  They know how to bring us (rats) back for more.

Is that really true?

Well, the AI tech thing might be working as designed, but IMHO that design is for crap!

This bug really only rears it's ugly head when you have lots of enemies.  On a standard "Large" map with 5 opponents, it's just going to appear as though the AI has an almost reasonable research advantage.  On a modded "Huge" map with a dozen opponents, it becomes clear that something is broken.

Sorry but that is simply not fun.  If they thought it was going to enhance the fun Factor by making Diploymancy they way it is then they were sadly mistaken. Just like they were sadly mistaken when they thought WOM was ready.

I find it unlikely.  Research bonuses are present, and can be set per difficulty setting.  

What we have here is an exponential positive feedback loop.  No one designs such things in, except for nuke manufacturers.

This is just a bug, or at best, unintended consequences.  I can imagine that the designers said, at different points in time.

1. 'Research points can be traded with every partner.'

2. 'Players get too much of an advantage by abusing this, lets allow them only one trade'

3. 'Hey, we optimized our engine, we can have a dozen of AIs and more'

And no one noticed what these three innocent decisions add up to.  In my job, I see similar things all the time.  Once it resulted into a very (un)lucky guy getting scratched on the forehead by a flying 90kg chunk of metal that proceeded to go through a wall.  Another time, in a piece of medical equipment spontaneously generating life-threatening shocks. And a third time, although I did not actually work on this, just read the notes of the guy who dug it out, in another medical device killing dozens of people.

Every time, small, seemingly unrelated decisions which added to positive feedback...

Yea I hope you are right and it was not intended by the DEVs to turn out this way.

Is there any simple modification I can make the prevent research trading entirely?  I play with lots of AIs and having them with 20k+ knowledge is not fun.

In ElementalDefs.xml set <KnowledgeFromResearchPercentage>10</KnowledgeFromResearchPercentage> to 0. This will prevent the accumulation of tradeable research points.

Thank you very much.  That will work for now.  I am hoping they fix the tech trading between AI issue.  I am not sure what causes it because it only happens sometimes, and I think more frequently on large maps.

If letting the AI get 20,000 research points and whatever tech lead goes along with that was a design decision, it is a terrible one.  I hope it is a bug.

I also noticed how the AI does not pickup treasure chests, and if that is supposed to be fun, it is not.  It is dumb.  Especially when my level 1 scouts can kill the enemy AI sovereign without coming even close to dying.  They need to play like a human, or as much as possible, that would be fun.