Blind research - thoughts

[Mart]

Blind research option (cannot set precise research goals).
This is standard game rule, and maybe even most of us had our first SMAC games with this rule, however, somehow for years, for over a decade actually, I was playing with directed research. Probably as majority of players on our civ sites, like Apolyton, WPC, CFC and here AC2.
We like to have better control over the factions, but playing recently more games with this "blind research" rule, I have to admit, I find it very interesting, if not more interesting.
So some thoughts on it:

1) It is not like we have no control over direction of the research. We can still set these general rules, 4 directions. As I read somewhere, they are supposed to influence the chance of specific area techs.
2) The "abused" Industrial Automation B-line lost its very important meaning. It is much more difficult to get to this tech very fast in blind research. Sometimes I find other early techs more important in some circumstances. Excluding Centauri Ecology here, which just comes first.
3) Centauri ecology is very often the tech selected when you set EXPLORE aim as the only one in research direction (SHIFT+R). Did they tweak it in the game engine? The other option is Mobility, in theory should be as often selected.
4) Uncertainty of getting Industrial Automation makes other strategies very important, overall makes the early game more interesting.

[Dio]

Blind research option (cannot set precise research goals).
This is standard game rule, and maybe even most of us had our first SMAC games with this rule, however, somehow for years, for over a decade actually, I was playing with directed research. Probably as majority of players on our civ sites, like Apolyton, WPC, CFC and here AC2.
We like to have better control over the factions, but playing recently more games with this "blind research" rule, I have to admit, I find it very interesting, if not more interesting.
So some thoughts on it:

1) It is not like we have no control over direction of the research. We can still set these general rules, 4 directions. As I read somewhere, they are supposed to influence the chance of specific area techs.
2) The "abused" Industrial Automation B-line lost its very important meaning. It is much more difficult to get to this tech very fast in blind research. Sometimes I find other early techs more important in some circumstances. Excluding Centauri Ecology here, which just comes first.
3) Centauri ecology is very often the tech selected when you set EXPLORE aim as the only one in research direction (SHIFT+R). Did they tweak it in the game engine? The other option is Mobility, in theory should be as often selected.
4) Uncertainty of getting Industrial Automation makes other strategies very important, overall makes the early game more interesting.

The only anomaly in the procedure that relates to blind research appears to involve the setting of the flag to control the explore option. The other AI controls all check to see the faction has an interest in that area (0 or 1). The explore option appears directly before the technology check and sets the flag if it is not equal to zero and jumps using the same conditional jump as the Discover setting. In other words, I think the fact that Centauri Ecology has a Discover value over zero while Doctrine: Mobility does not may have some relation to this observation.

[Mart]

Ah, ok. I see it now. All these first level techs of Explore have the highest explore (AI-coloni) parameter, but the whole set of four is different. And most likely this whole set for Centauri Ecology makes it the most selected one.

[vonbach]

I cant play with directed research it feels like cheating to me.