Naughty CTO

[eleaza]

A while back, bycomet asked how to catch up with AI's technology, and I replied some possible ways to do that, but in reality I haven't tried some them yet, so I decided to put those to the test. Especially those using CTO expertises to help boost research time.

I know CTO in Capitalism II are painful to manage, since they like to switch around my research projects on their own volition, instead of keep what I set them up for, and they are generally useless in late game, when I have to manually switch every project back. And embarrassingly I haven't actually use CTO in Capitalism Lab, because I rarely feel the need to catch up for various reasons. And although there is an option to keep current research project in Lab CTO management, but there is no option to ask it to keep training budget. So instead of manually switch projects every now and them, I now need to manually put the training budget back like every month. The early boost of R&D level isn't worth the lost of long term training for late game high level R&D. It's very frustrating to manage the naughty CTO. For "smart people" go, current CTOs are really dumb. At least The constant training level setting needs to be fixed.

And CTO is effectively useless if using subsidiary DLC. It's much easier to setup R&D subsidiary and get the tech with tech trading. R&D sub will keep the right tech researches if set the scope right and maintain the full training budget as I asked it to. And with just a few millions dollar more salary I think it's worth it, instead of the constant battle with my CTO. Maybe we should add more CTO management options, especially when digital age DLC is planning With more technology options to go through, trading all of them through subsidiary R&D might be too much micromanagement and will make company CTO worth hiring again.

[David]

I have forwarded your suggestion about adding the constant training budget option to the dev team for their consideration. But since it will change the save game file format, it is likely to be added to version 4.x than version 3.x.

[eleaza]

I have forwarded your suggestion about adding the constant training budget option to the dev team for their consideration. But since it will change the save game file format, it is likely to be added to version 4.x than version 3.x.

Right now it seems outsourcing R&D to subsidiaries are probably the easiest way to manage them than left with CTO, but the downside is if auto-apply tech option is OFF (for product customization), I have to apply every manufacturing units one by one, unlike the apply all option when it's been researched on my own (but of course I can still use "customize" -> "change all", but it's one factory at a time, although normally I need to manage each factory indepently anyway). And sometimes subsidiary R&D will exchange techs with other AIs, especially when they are not producing them. (and tick Acquire Tech or not, doesn't seems to affect AI selling techs out). Another solution is just to give my own CTO high level R&D center to run, and its expertise boost added in R&D already can reach Level 9 without training, but that defeat the purpose of using CTO in early game where it can boost the R&D level immediately.