Best method for getting to the next age?

By not having ages.

Really, I'm behind on my tech chart...

First of all: in that game i was rather lucky, i found 3 excellent planets and the Drengin were not really nearby. With excellent i mean not just large, but that the tiles are clustered - which gives nice adjacency bonuses. In my current game - in which i have acquired only 1 excellent planet and the Drengin are near - i go a lot slower. Because the Drengin are nearby i have to build anti-invasion vessels (think scout without life support) to protect my planets. They do not cost much to build, but they do cost turns (production). As a result i am currently in turn 203 and it will take about 6-8 more turns before i am at the same level as the screenshot in the other game.

But concerning your question:

Every tech has a ResearchCost and a TechPoints (see TechDefs.xml). The further you go down any tree the worse the ratio is. For example "Xeno Industrialization" has a ResearchCost of 29 while it gives a TechPoints of 142, while "Advanced Construction" has a ResearchCost of 60 but also gives a TechPoints of 142.

The Ages are purely based on the collected TechPoints (see TechAgeDefs.xml: AgeOfExpansion: 0, AgeOfWar: 3000, AgeOfAscension: 6000, AgeOfVictory: 9000). This means researching easy techs are the fastest way to move through the Ages.

My research strategy:

First the "Entertainment center". Next prioritize the various farms, "Hospital" and "Food Distribution". Also research the various manufacturing plants especially fusion and it successors, techs that increase raw research and raw production. Cost and maintenance reducers can come later. Of course balance the expected benefit against the number of turns it takes to research and what you actually need.

Upon hitting an age barrier: research cheap techs!

With "Hospital" and "Food Distribution" i am not primary interested in the direct benefit, but in the adjacency bonuses that they give. So i try to pair them up and surround them with farms. I also try to pair an energy plant with the manufacturing capital and possible the "Singularity Power Plant" and surround them with factories. So terraforming is very important to create tile clusters. Adjacency bonuses are king.

Rarely build any research buildings on any of my planets. I get my research from balancing between research and production in the production distribution wheel on my production planets. The main production wheel stays most of the time in the middle and is used to keep my financials in the black.

The boosts research, production, finance and happiness get from star bases is massive, so build them.

Briefly: try breadth-first (and see how it goes).

We know that GC3 implements tech cost creep, which increases tech costs in rp per level as you gain techs.  We don't know the equation for the cost creep function.  But I think it's pretty intense, in the ballpark of 4x or 5x rp cost per tech by the time you reach Age of War.

• I have an annotated screenshot posted on my Steam wall that shows a 25% tech level award from surveying an Artifact decaying to about 7% (by counting pixels in PSP) over many dozens of turns, while I ignored it and researched other stuff.  Assuming that the awarded rps stayed constant while the cost for that tech level stretched out, creep for that one level must have increased its cost by 390%(!!).

[TechAgeDefs.xml] shows that each Age is defined by a threshold of <RequiredTechPoints>.

• <RequiredTechPoints>    0 = AgeOfExpansion
• <RequiredTechPoints>3000 = AgeOfWar
• <RequiredTechPoints>6000 = AgeOfAscension
• <RequiredTechPoints>9000 = AgeOfVictory (but its <DisplayName> is still AGE_OF_ASCENSION)

[TechDefs.xml] shows that tech level has two attributes.

• <ResearchCost>: This must be the base rps you need, before tech cost creep is added in.  At start of game, there's obviously no cost creep yet, so all tier 2 techs cost their base amounts.
• <TechPoints>: This must be your progress toward each Age.  I note a curious correlation:
• 142 for every tech with <Option>AgeOfExpansion
• 095 for every tech with <Option>AgeOfWar, except ... (these are probably *gasp* XML bugs)
• [_] 176: GenericResearchCoordination
• [_] 176: GenericFortification
• 176 for every tech with <Option>AgeOfAscension, except ...
• [_] 095: GenericNeroLinking (while his ROMs burned?)
•    0 for every tech with <Option>AgeOfVictory (c.f. GenericBeyondMortality)
• 142 for every tech that omit any <Prerequ><TechAge><Option>AgeOf__ entry.  These techs are all in Age of Expansion (but don't explicitly state that).
• [_] GenericDiplomaticRelations
• [_] GenericDiplomaticOptimization{1,2,3}
• [_] GenericCulturalInfluence
• [_] GenericCulturalOptimization{1,2,3}
• [_] GenericXenoCommerce
• [_] GenericCommerceSpecialization{1,2,3}
• [_] GenericXenoEconomics
• [_] GenericInterstellarBanking
• [_] GenericInterstellarTrade
• [_] GenericTradeOptimization{1,2,3}

Some conjectures based on this:

• There seems to be no TechPoints creep.  They don't reward you more as you amass more of them.  Dang! killjoys
• In Age of Expansion, you're limited to taking 142 TechPoints per tech.  Then 3000 / 142 = 21.127, i.e. your 22nd tech level advances you to Age of War, and you'll overshoot by several pixels.
• Your 21st tech gives you 2,982 / 3,000 TechPoints = 99.40% of the AoE pixel bar.
• Your 22nd tech gives you 3,124 / 6,000 TechPoints = 4.13% of the AoW pixel bar.
• From my tedious notes, this is consistent with every Beta 1 game I've played.  I always hit AoW at exactly 22 techs, and leak into the Age of War bar by several pixels.
• In Age of War, you can take 95, 142, or 176 TechPoints per tech.  Let's ignore the 176s (which I think are just XML bugs).
• If you take only 95-TP AoW techs, then +2,876 more / 95 = 30.274, so your 31st AoW tech level puts you into Age of Ascension.  (I think there aren't even 31 techs total.)
• If you take only 142-TP AoE techs, then +2,876 / 142 = 20.254, so you must go back for 21 more AoE tech levels.
• If you take half of each, so that your average TechPoints is 118.5 TP, then you need 25 more tech levels (and the 25th can be from either Age).
• In Age of Ascension, you can fill in the tech tree and quietly reach Age of Victory after another 20-30 techs.

Note that TechPoints per age is linear and flat, but ResearchCost in rps has that creep -- which could be linear, supra-linear, polynomial, or exponential.  I further infer the following:

• As you take tech levels in a branch, the downstream techs in that branch all creep upward.  Completely separate branches may also increase mildly.
• Wild guess: Every tech level adds:
• a flat inflation penalty(?) to all other techs (similar to the Ideology trees, so there is precedent for this)
• a large creep penalty to all downstream techs in that branch (as noted, this can reach +390%!)
• Paul has mentioned in a few streams that tech specializations (rounded-rectangle option choices) are handled specially.
• Each specialization costs as much as its most expensive downstream tech -- to penalize you for coming back to it later?
• Taking 2 or 3 specializations adds the "large creep penalty" 2x or 3x over -- to penalize you for choosing "all of the above"?  The entire subtree after that gets that much more costly.
• Ugh ... this really, really hurts the small ship stack idea of taking all 3 Interstellar Specializations (+1 move, +1 sensor, +2 range).  The entire non-weapon ship components tree will see all 3 of those creep kicks.  Gahh ... maybe I'm playing it wrong, and a beeliner will kill me.

I conjecture that we maximize Age advancement for minimal rps spent by going breadth-first, to minimize cost creep penalties that drain away total rps spent.  (When you're in the 75% "tech creep tax bracket", 75% of your rps essentially go to cost creep, and only 25% to the base <ResearchCost>.)

• Take only 1 of each specialization.  Mnemonic: Each specialization adds a luxury tax.
• Take low-tier techs first.

Now, such a timeline is probably not competitive due to other in-game considerations, e.g. you just won't grow pop and build stuff as fast as an empire that is willing to drill to tier 3-4 in some critical techs.  And obviously, a pure breadth-first style is nonsensical, because you'll reach Age of War while having zero Age of War techs eligible to be researched immediately.  (I have done that, and it is ... somewhat embarrassing )

But the converse might also be true: beelining might actually be slower, because you're paying compounding creep costs to stay in one branch to tier 5, and maybe adding inflation costs to all other branches' low tiers.  When we take creep and inflation into account, it means that all total orderings are not equal (for a given set of partially-ordered tech sub-trees).  Put another way, let breadth-first be your default choice (even if you know it's stupid), and ask yourself: Is the benefit I gain for re-ordering it in this other way worth the inflation and creep cost of drilling depth-first?  So it adds a bit of bean-counting pressure to our tech paths.

Come to think of it, it might actually be less efficient to beeline for a tier-4 research tech that gives only "+10% to research", if you later have to go back and finish a small ship stack of 6-9 techs in completely different branches.  "+10%" is only 1 Research Laboratory-on-an-island per planet, and only for those planets actually doing research, and when added into your other research bonuses, it might actually be only a +1.5% gain in your total rps per turn.  If the tech inflation for having taken a tier-4 makes your sideline techs more expensive by +2% each, you actually lose, in "total rps before inflation" spent.  You'd have been better off doing the entire small ship stack first.

Here's something I'll try in Beta 2:

• Plan ahead for the subset (sub-forest?) of 22 AoE techs you want to end up with.  Choose them to give you coverage where you want it, for the type of game you want to play.  They should probably include some food, manuf/research, ship, and wealth/approval techs, and then your choice of weapons, diplomacy, trade, or influence.
• Make sure that your sub-forest of techs reaches the AoE/AoW boundary in 1+ tech branch, so that you're ready to research into AoW as soon as you get there.
• Within your sub-forest of techs, take them breadth-first as much as possible.
• Adjust dynamically, depending on the "hotness" of your game.  If you think you have time and opportunity to get a production boost, maybe you can afford a slightly sub-optimal drilling, and just pay the creep tax.  If you sense you're in a race, then lean toward ruthless streamlining.  And so on.

I admit that, up to now, I've ignored all of the above, and researched techs based purely on their benefits.  Whatever the cost later, I just pay it without noticing.  That approach works against the Beta 1 null AIs, but surely we'll eventually encounter smarter opponents (new AI or multi-player), and then many of our pet strategies will get sintered in open competition.

Thanks, Thecw, for the info about TechPoints. Being the nerd I am I wrote a script to determine the best cost to tech point ratios to figure out which techs to pursue for age advancement. Frankly it was overkill...researching the cheap techs is the answer. I had already been doing the other things you mentioned.

With the TechPoints knowledge I knocked it down to turn 275. By turn 205 I had all the research I needed, I was essentially just waiting for all my improvements on Earth to upgrade (70 upgrades, 1 per turn). This with 8 planets, none above class 12 (to start), and no particularly good event, planet, or tile bonuses. With some micromanagement of research and smarter initial placement of some of my starting improvement I bet I could knock off another 40 turns.

I'll wait to read Gilmoy's post tomorrow, when I'm not so tired.

This describes roughly my order of research:

Except that i prioritize the areas of techs a little bit different.

For the ship techs your observation is correct. I counter this with the following strategy:

Pick a weapon tech (Beam, Missile or Kinetic) and research a different specialization. With this i mean: lets say you want to have beam weapons, so research either Missile or Kinetic specialization. This to keep the following beam techs cheap and therefor fast researchable.

Choose a defense tech - preferably one to counter a weapon tech from an enemy, and - like the weapon tech - research one and only one different specialization.

Tech advancement beats specialization anytime. Especially when you factor research time into the equation.

eviator,

My pleasure.

You can shave of quite some turns by researching "useless" (cheap AKA 1 turn researchable) techs just to advance to the last age. The massive gain is that once you have reached the third age, the "Ultra Terraformer" becomes available, and with that you can create tile clusters. And with tile cluster comes the mighty adjacency bonuses into play. For an example see the screenshot in reply #9 in the other thread: A level 11 "Singularity Plant" which give 6 level 3 adjacency levels on its neighbours.

Avoid unnecessary tech specializations, they will only drive the cost of other techs up. 

Mmm.  My notes span many pages now.  Handwritten hardcopy actually persists into the Age of Tablets ...

I have entered the Age of War on:

• turn 101 in my Technological Capital game (Terran)
• turn 087 in my 1st Benevolent game (Terran)
• turn 108* in my 1st Influence Gambit game (Altarian)
• I actually entered it during turn 108, because I colonized a planet manually, unlocked Benevolent tier-3 Breakthrough (+300 rp, which is also a bug), and it granted the 22nd tech instantly (Ww3 Kinetic Specialization) + part of the 23rd.
• D'ohh -- I completely overlooked that I could test that!!  After unlocking and exiting Ideology, I went directly to the Technology newsbot (as expected), and then chose my 23rd tech (Wk4 Kinetic Weapons).  Bleh.
• I should have taken an Age of War tech, e.g. Ik6 Economic Focus/Tourism Board, just to prove that it was selectable if you cross an Age boundary during a turn (from an Ideology or other grant).

Anyways, these are sub-optimal, because I was learning the game as I went, I never understood this thread, and research wasn't even my focus.  It's just a byproduct of micro-managing.

Beta 1 v0.42 caveats:

• [+] Benevolent is overpowered because of the Mindfulness bug.  Fixing that will dull-thud it back to reality.
• [-] Altarian is hampered because Enjoyment doesn't give Recreation Center starbase module.

Here's a fun little challenge in Lower Bound racing.  I do this for all genres of games when I'm in loophole-hunting or engine-stressing gedanken-mode.

• What is the lower bound on the turn number of your 1st successful planetary invasion?  A submission consists of two screenshots, showing the turn number, the planet while enemy-held (with your transport within 1 turns' range), and the planet after capture, in the same turn (which means you move your transport manually).  The turn number automatically includes your transport's transit time, so ship speed and proximity to enemy helps.
  

Offhand, I'm guessing turn 100 is achievable in Beta 1, and maybe turn 120 after Beta 2(?) fixes all extant tree bugs.

Corollary: Fear us micromanagers in PBEM multiplayer, you must outrace that or we publish first (on billboards formerly yours)

@Gilmoy:

If you can reach tier 3 of the benevolence tree i found it a better choice to take "Empathy" and build the "Missionary Center", this will help you to acquire the rest of the benevolence traits (including "Breakthrough": 300 rp and "Quantum Leap": 1000 rp) without further colonization events.

With hindsight it became clear to me that one of the factors in my fastest game was the fact that i colonized sufficient planets to reach "Empathy". The extra planets didn't hurt the game speed either .

Benevolence is definitely the most powerful of the ideology trees at the moment.

If my memory serves me well, i don't think you are wrong here. I tend to hit the "Age of war" before (or near) turn 100, a transporter is easily build, so the only (time consuming) factor will be the travel distance to the enemy planet.

I already took Empathy!  I took Breakthrough because I had to  can't exit the Ideology tar pit without unlocking something

Quoting Gilmoy, reply 9

I already took Empathy!  I took Breakthrough because I had to  can't exit the Ideology tar pit without unlocking something

I absolutely hate this feature. I hate it. Any time you have a feature that forces a player to take an action and cannot be bypassed that is a bad feature. 

Somebody call Marvin to mod this so we can sandbag our points. Still force us to purchase in linear fashion but let me decide when I want to unlock them. 

He's becoming a moding hero of legend. Lol