Automatic Tech Benefit During War

This popped in my head just now after watching the History Channel’s “Inventions of War.” Basically, wars (big wars) boost the speed at which we research things. For example, if WWII had not occurred, some of today’s things we take for granted may be very, very different (the jet engine and plastics and many, many other things come to mind).

Civ IV should also reflect this. Whenever there’s a big war, your technological research should be faster based on how many civilizations you are at war with. To keep it more realistic, I think the power of your civilization and the civs you are fighting should also contribute to how fast you research things, because odds are the more powerful, the more advanced that civ already is. You cannot have three third-world countries fighting, but still having the benefit of increased tech research.

This would be different than the current Mobilization (which even now does not give you any tech benefits when you mobilize during war), because it should occur automatically as large wars drag on.


So, a quick summary:

• Intense wars determined by number of Civs fighting & their rank/power in the world
• The more civs one nation is fighting and the more advanced the nations at war are (hence, and intense war), they would get faster tech research
• The longer a war lasts, speed of tech research should be increased (you shouldn’t get this tech bonus right away after a war starts!)
• If a world power is fighting a smaller country which is not dominant, tech research speed bonus is given to neither

I think it is a simple idea, but all comments are welcome.

My worry about this idea is that war is already powerful enough as is. Imagine you received all kinds of bonuses to research simply for being at war. Then you'd never want to be at peace.

Although it's interesting that you only give the bonus to smaller nations fighting larger superpowers, not the other way around. Maybe this could be more balancing than initially thought.

dh_epic said:

My worry about this idea is that war is already powerful enough as is. Imagine you received all kinds of bonuses to research simply for being at war. Then you'd never want to be at peace.

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True.
But taking into account that it has some limitations like, you have to be at war for a long time for this to kick in, and being at war for a long time may lead to other negative things. And also that smaller civs are not affected by this and that one has to be at war with a few other higher ranking civs.

I mean, this would be harder to exploit.
You wouldn't want to go to war with the most powerful civilizations. Most likely you would like to bully smaller civs, therefore, no benefits.

I have the same concern as dh_epic. The warmongers have enough power as it is. I am also afraid this could be exploited by making 'phony wars' with more advanced civs that are more powerful but on another continent far away, which would make a too lucrative risk/reward ratio.

Theoden said:

I have the same concern as dh_epic. The warmongers have enough power as it is. I am also afraid this could be exploited by making 'phony wars' with more advanced civs that are more powerful but on another continent far away, which would make a too lucrative risk/reward ratio.

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We posted at the same time.
A good point you make with attacking high-ranking civs on a different continent to exploit this. This used to be the case with Civ III, as civs wouldn't be able to do anything because they were BAD at using ships. But hopefully one would not be able to exploit this if the AI is smarter when fighting from different continents.

hey i was just watching a bit of that myself. my concern is this would remove the question of "do i want a powerful army or a booming economy?" any way to fix that?

I agree with theoden and dh_epic, it seems like it would greatly benefit warmongers.

I might be okay with an increase in military related scientific research IF the civ mobilized. But then that would then lead to what techs are militaristic in nature and which are not.

IMHO your idea could be implemented with a lot of heavy 'ifs'. The AI needs to be made much smarter as you propose, so it cannot be exploited. Also there needs to be an alternative to war-research. This means there has to be a way to speed up research which would require peace. Else, the choice to go to war will be as much a question with a single answer, as in civ3.

Sealman has a good alternative. Tie it into mobilization and speeding up the research of militaristic techs (perhaps with the tradeoff of slightly slower non-militaristic research).

I'm not even sure how realistic this idea is. The only historical evidence we have for this comes from ww1 and ww2. Both of these occurred after over a century of continuous rapid invention. I don't think the wars accelerated the research so much as redirected the existing high level of innovation. In civ terms, the leading civs started researching military techs instead of social ones.

Or did that show also highlight ancient inventions which were spawned in war as a direct consequence of a specific war?

dh_epic said:

(perhaps with the tradeoff of slightly slower non-militaristic research).

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but greater military leadership leads to greater civilian gains (look at the Jet engine, computers, metal working, explosives, etc.)

You are breaking the balance of CIV being a both warmonger and builder's game.

Yeah, this one is seriously imbalancing. And whether you add checks and balances -- to prevent warmongers from getting even more advantages -- or you don't add checks and balances... the "realism" value is nebulous, for what little value realism offers.

War doesn't increase the rate of basic research. The big tech booms of war are almost always engineering advances; newer, better ways of using existing theory. The research system of CIV seems to be more based on the theory and less on the engineering. Maybe new units made possible by a previous tech are only made available after or during declared conflicts?

maybe a new "upgrade" tree. Basic tech speed is not increased, but existing units could be upgraded by "discovered" improvments. After all the 1st tanks were not very good until they were tried and tested in war, and suggestions of improvments came in from officers. This could lead to different upgrades for different civs or culture groups, after all russian units in the world war, though basically the same as US and Allied units, had different advantages/disadvantages when compared.
This could be balanced by reducing the economy of nations at war (i.e make war much more costly), and allowing nations at peace to make loads of cash. Then the nations at peace could buy the 'upgrades' off the economically damaged nations. This would allow the damaged nations to recover quicker after war, while allowing the peaceful nations to improve on their army.....

an example of this would be the jet engine. The jet was a british invention, but the Brits gave the US the patent so the US gave the British lots of cash to help rebuild after the war.

If there are a whole bunch of smaller peripheral techs that can be found in the
various post-medieval ages, then accelerated tech races may be fun. But in the
ancient world and the medieval world, very little progress was made in inventions.

.......

I like the Idea of having to test out a unit and the more you use it the more "skilled" they become. From anywhere between tank tech to chariots. After all, you're not going to have the world's best military tech if you don't fight in any wars.

And for something completely different, I think that you should "aquire" someone else's military tech as you fight them. Unless it is a closely gaurded secret (byzanitines firethingy majig) you can usually figure it out once you've seen it used agaisnt you.