Should Future Tech Have Actual Benefits?

Basically each time you research Future Tech, you get one additional Delegate, Spy, and Trade Route, alongside a 20% increase in total Culture, Faith, and Tourism, +1 Movement and +20% attack power for all units, and maybe +1 of every main yield on a tile improvement. ...

I agree with others that most games won't see future tech. Adding concrete benefits is good idea, but perhaps the game can give you more control by making you choose the type of future tech when you start researching one:

- military future tech
- economic future tech
- diplomatic future tech
- medical future tech
- information future tech

etc...

with each one having concrete benefits, for instance +5% in strength for all units in the first, +5% increase in gold yields all economic buildings for the second, etc. (+20% strength sounds too big to me!)

This way you can continue the game and continue to optimize in a way you want.
 
Future techs provide more score for the victory screen. The other information era techs are already making it easy for victory and conquest. The stealth bomber has been there since the longest (civ 2) and the UN is now the world Congress. The new XCOM squad and the giant death robot are also useful. Those all seem like game ending techniques along with the 2050 time victory. Having benefits from future technology would spoil the techer even more.
 
If you've gotten to the point where you're researching Future Tech and no one's won yet, points are probably the first thing on your mind.
This. You can immagine world divided in 4 parts, each owned by one civ. They are more or less equal. Then points are important.
 
all units and cities gain +10% combat str permanently for each future tech :lol: (due to advance in weaponry and the like)
 
Why not just add an extra era? Preferably, one with terraforming. :king:
 
Have you ever played Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri? A bit dated, perhaps, but I believe it is exactly the experience that you are looking for.
I've long advocated for a combined Civ/SMAC experience, whereby after achieving a Science Victory the player transitions seamlessly into SMAC. This makes less sense now than it did back when SMAC and Civ were on comparable gameplay (and graphics) levels, but it's still something I'd love to see.

Obviously this can be easily simulated by the player, by booting up SMAC upon finishing Civ, but there are some interesting integration/re-coding ideas that could be implemented by a combined experience. For instance, instead of having one colonization ship consisting of fragmented ideological factions, the game could use the top X empires from the Civ portion, each with its own colony ship, with the empire actually achieving the Science Victory being the first to land and granted some sort of bonus. (Which could be as simple as having X number of turns to explore and develop before the other players "arrive".)

...Don't want to go totally off-topic by getting more into this. Just wanted to agree that SMAC would be a great follow-up to Civ, for those players looking to continue playing in a futuristic vein.
 
Lochlann, I agree entirely. A very simple tie-together would be really nice and add a lot to both games.

Fotonut, your solution sounds like it would make a lot of sense without being too complicated. I think I remember seeing a similar future tech system in Masters of Orion 2, and it was both simple and effective.
 
Here's my idea. Each time future tech is researched by any civ, there is an increasing chance (based on the total number of future techs researched by every civ in the game) of making contact with an alien race.

Once the alien race is contacted, they will proceed to destroy all cities and cause the game to end in a draw, because everyone hung about wasting time.
 
I think it would be nice to make future tech have actual benefits, not for the purpose of any victory condition, but for the benefit of players who continue playing on after they have won (or lost).

Sometimes, even though you have won, there are still some personal goals that you wanted to accomplish, such as wiping out a particular civilization. That's why there is the "Just one more turn..." option. Making future tech give something useful would extend the playability of the game past the victory screen for players who are into that, and it certainly won't wreck the balance of the game for players who are not into that (after all, as everyone has pointed out, the game is usually decided long before then).
 
I think it would be nice to make future tech have actual benefits, not for the purpose of any victory condition, but for the benefit of players who continue playing on after they have won (or lost).

Sometimes, even though you have won, there are still some personal goals that you wanted to accomplish, such as wiping out a particular civilization. That's why there is the "Just one more turn..." option. Making future tech give something useful would extend the playability of the game past the victory screen for players who are into that, and it certainly won't wreck the balance of the game for players who are not into that (after all, as everyone has pointed out, the game is usually decided long before then).
Yeah, that's the angle I'm coming from as well. When playing Marathon games, as I typically do, I find myself embarking on grand "beatification projects" across the globe, shifting into sandbox/terraforming mode after it's clear that the game has been won. In such a mode of playing, it would be nice for Future Techs to correspond to some sort of tangible benefit, in order to extend that Future Tech "illusion" (as described in a reply above). Nothing important, just as a token.
 
How about "Future tech" gives you a "Future tech" resource. +4 Happiness, tradeable to less advanced civs like any other luxury. I always thought there should be a way to trade the fruits of technology (computers, phones, consumer electronics) to civs not as far down the tech tree, like how a country like japan can take advantage of their technological edge by selling high-tech products to those without the capability to produce them.

Maybe you get a different one everytime you research the tech, not just more of the same one.
 
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