Guts of research costs

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The cost of a tech level depends on four things:

  1. Your research setting for that field (cheap, normal, or expensive)
  2. The level you are researching (higher level, higher cost)
  3. The total number of tech levels you have already have in all fields (you can add it up yourself, or look at 'tech levels' on the 'score' screen).
  4. whether 'slow tech advance' was selected as a game parameter.

in general,

totalCost=(baseCost + (totalLevels * 10)) * costFactor

where

  totalLevels=the sum of your current levels in all fields
  costFactor =.5 if your setting for the field is '50% less'
                     =1 if your setting for the field is 'normal'
                     =1.75 if your setting for the field is '75% more expensive'

If 'slow tech advance' is a game parameter, totalCost should be doubled.

Below is a table showing the base cost of each level.

Level Normal Cost
1 50 + 10/level
2 80 + 10/level
3 130 + 10/level T1 + T2
4 210 + 10/level T2 + T3
5 340 + 10/level T3 + T4
6 550 + 10/level T4 + T5
7 890 + 10/level T5 + T6
8 1440 + 10/level T6 + T7
9 2330 + 10/level T7 + T8
10 3770 + 10/level T8 + T9
11 6100 + 10/level T9 + T10
12 9870 + 10/level T10 + T11
13 13850 + 10/level T12 + 3980 (T10 + 210)
14 18040 + 10/level T13 + 4190 (T10 + 210*2)
15 22440 + 10/level T14 + 4400 (T10 + 210*3)
16 27050 + 10/level T15 + 4610 (T10 + 210*4)
17 31870 + 10/level T16 + 4820 (T10 + 210*5)
18 36900 + 10/level T17 + 5030 (T10 + 210*6)
19 42140 + 10/level T18 + 5240 (T10 + 210*7)
20 47590 + 10/level T19 + 5450 (T10 + 210*8)
21 53250 + 10/level T20 + 5660 (T10 + 210*9)
22 59120 + 10/level T21 + 5870 (T10 + 210*10)
23 65200 + 10/level T22 + 6080 (T10 + 210*11)
24 71490 + 10/level T23 + 6290 (T10 + 210*12)
25 77990 + 10/level T24 + 6500 (T10 + 210*13)
26 84700 + 10/level T25 + 6710 (T10 + 210*14)

It's a Fibonacci series up to level 12, then it levels out quite a bit. To get all 6 categories to TL26: (at all normal cost): 4,185,240

This includes the 10/level additional cost, and assumes all tech areas start at TL0.

(Courtesy Bob Martin, with some editing/formatting/additions by other editors)

  • S.B.Posey's Spreadsheet has a sheet to quickly calculate the resource cost of tech level gains over multiple tech ares and levels for a given set of starting tech levels.

This is a Frequently Asked Question