Guts of research costs

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.

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