Losing Research Progress (not from sabotage)

[Peelster1]

After allocating no research progress on 4 projects in order to have 50% effort on 2 projects, I noticed that the projects that I stopped research on actually were losing progress. I was under the impression that any amount of stolen research would generate a report about it, even if we don't know who stole it. It doesn't really make any logical sense that if I stop researching something I lose progress, it's not like the work wouldn't be there still when I returned to the project unless the work itself was stolen or destroyed. Is it normal for projects to lose progress if you stop researching them or am I being sabotaged so well that I'm not even getting reports that my research is going missing?

[thunderchero]

Yup it will decay here is topic and fix

Research Progress and Decay
viewtopic.php?f=180&t=105#p26158

[slickrcbd]

I always thought it was intentional, in that if you cut off funding to a major research project, they will lay off or at least reassign the personnel involved, and also reassign or re-purpose the equipment.
This makes it harder to later go back and restart things. Also experiments in progress would be halted and have to be restarted from scratch.
Any long-term observation projects might be screwed as well because nobody was collecting data while the project was put on hold.

So it does make some sense that progress would be lost, but it would be more of a big initial hit in the first few months (turns) and then sharply tapering off to almost no loss over time (key researchers might die or otherwise become unavailable). The end result is that when you restart the project you virtually have to start from scratch, with only some of the notes from the previous one on what did not work.

On the other hand, you would not go back to 0 progress in real life unless you cut it off really early.

[Axis]

What about the dark middle ages, many inventions made by romans were lost for a thousand years during that particular time period.
(Then re-invented in the renaissance of course).

[slickrcbd]

That would be regressing a level, rather than just losing research.
In any case, this is why I always thought it was intentional and why I always keep everything at 1%, although I'm unsure if this works if you start at tech level 1 and/or have less than 100 research to allocate.

[Axis]

Regressing a level might be better suited for Civilization games.

[slickrcbd]

I haven't played V, but that doesn't happen in I-IV.

[Axis]

Civilization V is the best I have played, haven´t tried VI though.
Actually, made some maps for V (earth and earth continent maps, large ones).
The idea of regressing a tech is just an idea that could happen when revolution/civilizationwide disorder happens.