Category:Knowledge

Technology comes in the form of "Knowledge" in Ymir. Each knowledge has different requirements that must be fulfilled in order for a civilisation to research that knowledge. Every knowledge will require researchers and may also require resources in order to start research. After implementing certain civics, researching knowledge will also require coins. The first idea most players will encounter is Sedentism. Sedentism is a prerequisite for almost every other idea and is only gained by completing the tutorial at the beginning of each game.

Ideas
In order to even see a certain knowledge, one of your pigs will have to have thought of the idea leading to that knowledge first. There is nothing you can do to directly cause a idea to appear. All you can do is try to create the conditions that may cause your pigs to think of the idea and wait for them to do so. For example, if your civilisation has one water-collector and has no where else to build more, as your population outgrows that one water-collector's capacity to provide water to your people, one of your pigs may come up with the idea to extract water from the ground. Once the idea occurs to one of your pigs, the knowledge Well digging will then become available to research.

Not all civilisations receive the same probability of thinking of an idea. Sometimes, even though all other prerequisites are met, it may take the pigs of any given society longer to think of the idea. For example, the pigs of a certain civilisation may take a long time to come up with the idea of metal working naturally even if all the prerequisites are fulfilled. Such a civilisation will have to either trade for the idea with another civilisation that has the technology researched, or wait for their own pigs to think of the idea, even if it takes a long time.

Note that civilisations can only trade ideas if they have already researched them. Also note that civilisations can only trade ideas. Once an idea is acquired through trade, the idea still needs to be researched before the associated technology can be used.

A previous version of this article erroneously reported that certain civilisations would randomly never be able to think of certain ideas on their own. This has been confirmed by the developer to be untrue.

Cost
All knowledge has a unique, associated cost. Every one will require researchers, some will require additional resources, and after a certain civic is implemented, most will also require coins.

Researchers are porcos who are pulled from a particular profession is order to research a knowledge. For example, in order to research the idea Domestic Dog, you must assign hunters from your hunting camps as researchers. In order to research the idea agriculture, you will have to assign gatherers from your gathering huts as researchers. While you research, the percentage of researchers taken from a particular profession will cause all buildings in the region employing that profession to decrease their output by the same percentage. There is a civic that you can add to your government once you research a certain idea that will allow researchers to both research and produce, thereby negating the productivity malus associated with research.

Some government policies require that you buy resources from your pigs in order to build buildings, recruit units, or conduct research. In that case, you not only have to pay the base research cost, you also have to pay for the resources used in the research process.

Success and Failure
When you begin to research an idea, the probability of success is shown as a percentage at the bottom of the knowledge window. This probability can be increased by adding researchers and increasing the Intelligence of your researchers. Adding researchers not only decreases the time it takes to research, it also increases the probability of success. Each knowledge has a different number of researchers it takes to reach optimal efficiency. Increasing the number of researchers past this optimal number increases the probability of success only very very slightly and is not recommended. When research fails, the resources used in the research attempt will be lost and in order to try again, you will have to pay the cost of the research again. If the research attempt is successful, you will have access to the technology associated with the researched idea.