Civ 5 Information Age is NOTHING like Civ BE Tech Web

And that's a good thing!

s0nny80y said:

And that's a good thing!

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You raise a good point. Civ 5 has everyone start out with Agriculture. Why doesn't Civ BE have everyone start out with "Future Tech?"

Yayy, Now I have a topic to discuss in this thread

That's would be nonsense, shaglio. They should give them "Future Tech No.76" You wouldn't seriously think they would absolutely stop all research after finish the tech tree.

Yet Another Pointless Thread

Most of the research in the early game is how to adapt to planet. Habitation might have been researched while still on the seeder ship by the awake skeleton crew, implementing data from the advance probes sent ahead. It might encompass what type of radiation shielding habitats would have, what ressources explorers could gain from the land, and what they would have to take with them, getting Exosuits prepped for planets atmosphere, calibrate biofilters, all the preparation work you'd make in orbit before actually sending your colonists down to planet.

Keep in mind that most of your early colony's population will have their hands full surviving at first, building additional habitats, explorers, bulldozers and the old earth relic (so the new generation will remember, what their purpose as a civilisation actually is). There might not be many researchers on planets colonist population, nowhere near to what todays earth has access too. So those few Gaius Balthars and Andy Weirs will be doing quite simple stuff, getting old systems to do new things, like process planets plant biomass into biofuel, or establish a supply chain for a LFTR reactor. These tasks are not as trivial as they would be on earth and while the colonists brought all of earths knowledge of chemistry with them, working out all the details to actually put them to use in this new enviroment might take a few years worth of reasearch.

Here is something somewhat related: How come Civ doesn't have mechanics like Rise of Nations or Europa Universalis 4, where if you are too far ahead in tech the game slows you down? Tech rate remains important, but it keeps it from the problem we had in CiV, where the game (and "difficulties") boil down to how quickly you can double your science rate to your competition and pit your tanks against knights. I'm not sure what the original topic was talking about, but my own experiences with CiV's information age was that it didn't exist. Like even if you tried to purposely slow yourself down, you'd get through it in a handful of turns.

Any word of how this will be addressed in BE?

BEFanatic said:

Here is something somewhat related: How come Civ doesn't have mechanics like Rise of Nations or Europa Universalis 4, where if you are too far ahead in tech the game slows you down? Tech rate remains important, but it keeps it from the problem we had in CiV, where the game (and "difficulties") boil down to how quickly you can double your science rate to your competition and pit your tanks against knights. I'm not sure what the original topic was talking about, but my own experiences with CiV's information age was that it didn't exist. Like even if you tried to purposely slow yourself down, you'd get through it in a handful of turns.

Any word of how this will be addressed in BE?

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It kind of has that already. Your research and cultural advancement diminish the more successful and powerful you get. If you're not powerful enough, you risk getting taken over.

Trackmaster said:

It kind of has that already. Your research and cultural advancement diminish the more successful and powerful you get. If you're not powerful enough, you risk getting taken over.

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Don't sure I get where you coming from.

Since currently in CiV, Culture can give you civics (read: buff) which, if not wasted, would give you benefits, and Science is just that. War is pretty much over when you got an army of a tier higher than your enemy and building wonders with no competition.

I don't think it will be changed soon.

poom3619 said:

Don't sure I get where you coming from.

Since currently in CiV, Culture can give you civics (read: buff) which, if not wasted, would give you benefits, and Science is just that. War is pretty much over when you got an army of a tier higher than your enemy and building wonders with no competition.

I don't think it will be changed soon.

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These are all problems to be potentially fixed in Civ6 not BE. CivBE uses the same board game style mechanics. The problems start with 1upt, intensify with global happiness and culminate in missing science/money/culture sliders.

Lancor said:

These are all problems to be potentially fixed in Civ6 not BE. CivBE uses the same board game style mechanics. The problems start with 1upt, intensify with global happiness and culminate in missing science/money/culture sliders.

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I would say it is a constant in all civs is that science is king.

1upt makes this harder to deal with (because of the role of quality>quantity)

However, the basic issue is that a focus on science is the best return for your effort.

If they changed it so that
1. focusing on science only gave small amounts of research (eg a university gave 10%+5% with a policy instead of +33%+17% with a policy) for the amounts of production/gold given up
OR
2. Techs themselves had only a very small bonus
OR
3. a Tech lead would rapidly vanish before it can be exploited

Those mostly have to do with numbers.

There is a tech diffusion, if techs were +250% easier to research when someone else had them, then tech leads would be hard to maintain.

Global happiness wasn't as much of a problem as the fact that you had local happiness (ie you could get happiness from buildings/cities, ruining the whole mechanic)

Of course science is king, but the point is other games have mechanics which dampen the effect. Also, CiV doesn't have any mechanics like this. There was the 5% tech cost per city added much later, but even that is mainly to curb runaways from a map control perspective rather than combating heavy science focus. A 4 city Tradition game is hardly affected by it, still rolling out massive science after universities and snowballing into low turn 200 wins.

I also disagree it would need to wait until a Civ 6. When the game is created, the devs obviously expect a player to be at a certain point after x amount of time. All that would need to be done is to add a formula to reduce science gains the further you are ahead of that timeline.

BEFanatic said:

Of course science is king, but the point is other games have mechanics which dampen the effect. Also, CiV doesn't have any mechanics like this. There was the 5% tech cost per city added much later, but even that is mainly to curb runaways from a map control perspective rather than combating heavy science focus. A 4 city Tradition game is hardly affected by it, still rolling out massive science after universities and snowballing into low turn 200 wins.

I also disagree it would need to wait until a Civ 6. When the game is created, the devs obviously expect a player to be at a certain point after x amount of time. All that would need to be done is to add a formula to reduce science gains the further you are ahead of that timeline.

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You Do have a "tech diffusion" if other civs know a tech, it is cheaper for you to research.

That could have been magnified significantly (ie if everyone else on the world knows a tech, it should be ~10% the cost of discovering it new... if 1 other person knows it, you should be able to research it for ~50-65% the cost)

Yeah. The current version is so insignificant I didn't mention it (or rather forgot about it, since it is so minor).

The spy system is kind of supposed to fill that space, with allowing backwards Civs to rack up free techs quickly. But the problem with these type of systems is that they are focused on giving bonuses to low science Civs, but does nothing to keep the tech leader (typically the player, even on Deity) from snowballing science.

This is important, because AI's don't care how much "fun" they are having. A player, however, isn't going to have an enjoyable experience if the game is set up as one large false choice. You can push science or... well, you can push science

BEFanatic said:

Yeah. The current version is so insignificant I didn't mention it (or rather forgot about it, since it is so minor).

The spy system is kind of supposed to fill that space, with allowing backwards Civs to rack up free techs quickly. But the problem with these type of systems is that they are focused on giving bonuses to low science Civs, but does nothing to keep the tech leader (typically the player, even on Deity) from snowballing science.

This is important, because AI's don't care how much "fun" they are having. A player, however, isn't going to have an enjoyable experience if the game is set up as one large false choice. You can push science or... well, you can push science

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I think there is nothing wrong with the leader snowballing science.

However rather than 'holding back the #1' or 'helping the #10' the "rubber band" 1mechanisms should focus on helping #2-5 to keep up with #1 even if they tend to neglect science (ie no one should ever be more than 2-4 techs behind someone they are in contact with.)

Now in BE, it is different because you don't want everyone researching the same techs, so you don't want the tech diffusion.

I agree with the general concept. That is, if one wants to focus on gold or focus on military, then why not allow players to focus on science? But if the implementation of it means impacting choice and overall strategy, then it is a problem. That science has been nerfed in every major patch and expansion since vanilla and it is still king should be telling. The core mechanics of it were flawed.

What it comes down to is pacing. Good strategy games have competitive pacing. Chess has competitive pacing by default, symmetrical gameplay by turns (although "pacing" is still a term in chess for how quickly you develop pieces). Take a game like Starcraft 1 or 2. Terms like APM (actions-per-minute) exist, because pacing. No one wants to watch a game between a 200 APM player and a 50 APM player. APM is not the sole factor, but it often is a sign that the match will be very one-sided, because the pacing will likely be off.

Going back to my first post in this thread. Other strategy games had the foresight to realize pacing is important, so included mechanics to equalize it. I just hope the people working on BE place just as much attention on pacing, to get proper systems in place at launch, so they don't need to go several patches and expansions attempting to fix it.

BEFanatic said:

I agree with the general concept. That is, if one wants to focus on gold or focus on military, then why not allow players to focus on science? But if the implementation of it means impacting choice and overall strategy, then it is a problem. That science has been nerfed in every major patch and expansion since vanilla and it is still king should be telling. The core mechanics of it were flawed.

What it comes down to is pacing. Good strategy games have competitive pacing. Chess has competitive pacing by default, symmetrical gameplay by turns (although "pacing" is still a term in chess for how quickly you develop pieces). Take a game like Starcraft 1 or 2. Terms like APM (actions-per-minute) exist, because pacing. No one wants to watch a game between a 200 APM player and a 50 APM player. APM is not the sole factor, but it often is a sign that the match will be very one-sided, because the pacing will likely be off.

Going back to my first post in this thread. Other strategy games had the foresight to realize pacing is important, so included mechanics to equalize it. I just hope the people working on BE place just as much attention on pacing, to get proper systems in place at launch, so they don't need to go several patches and expansions attempting to fix it.

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Definitely agree there... part of the problem is that science is Usually the bottleneck for development.

Core cities build almost all the buildings if you are a builder... and so science limits you rather than production (especially when it comes to wonders)
Quality>Quantity for military units and so science limits your military capability more than gold/production

What is needed is the Inability to 'fully experience' a tech level... ie it can be worthwhile to slowdown your tech to focus on production/gold to actually build all the stuff in that tech.

With BE they do have a lot of flexibility in doing that, there are many fewer expectations (no need for a big production boost tech just past the middle of the tree)

3of5 said:

implementing data from the advance probes sent ahead.

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sorry, sir. we didn't pack any probes. we thought it more important to bring money. and since the spaceship has no windows we have no data whatsoever about the new planet.

Fabio1701 said:

sorry, sir. we didn't pack any probes. we thought it more important to bring money. and since the spaceship has no windows we have no data whatsoever about the new planet.

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Actually it does seem that you will almost certainly get info about the new planet, the "spaceship" options are mostly what kind of info you get

-Continental Surveyor*
-Retrograde Thruster
-Tectonic Scanner*
-Fusion Reactor
-Lifeform Scanner*

*Giving you some type of map info

The technology web in civilization beyond earth actually is better and more advanced than the information era in civilization 5. The only obvious thing that arrives here is the 200 year time skip between 2050 and ~2300. What remains unknown at this point, is what type of technologies got to stay in earth. Post information era in civilization 5 bnw is the future technology that has stayed but the future in earth is still unknown as well as the technologies. What is already known at this point is that someone took a victory in civilization 5 bnw in the post information era.

KrikkitTwo said:

Actually it does seem that you will almost certainly get info about the new planet, the "spaceship" options are mostly what kind of info you get

-Continental Surveyor*
-Retrograde Thruster
-Tectonic Scanner*
-Fusion Reactor
-Lifeform Scanner*

*Giving you some type of map info

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Really? That's pretty cool I missed that bit of news, I knew that there were some starting options that you could choose to load your ship with extra guns, food, money etc and one option was the outline of the continents. Nice to see there are 3 types of map info...

BUT STILL!!! One satellite, ONE, in the proper orbit with enough time can map the entire surface in detail and multiple spectrum. I mean, google maps is a 21st century technology.