[SUGGESTION] Research Agreement redesign

Motivation:

When playing on the higher difficulties it's obvious that tech progression is very fast, maybe as much as half of the turns available to turn limit can take place in Modern/Future era. When the game was new arguments were made that production was too slow, consider instead that it is research pacing that is out of sync. Opinions on this are however, of course, subjective.

The more Civs on a map, the more Research Agreements you can sign. Say you have 8 other Civs on your map, that is potentially 8 techs every 30 turns. Insane. My suggestion is that to revert to the design that was promised before the game was released, agreements give a flat bonus to Research. But with a twist.
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Suggestion:

(Actual numbers are open for discussion, the design is what's important.)

The first signed Research Agreement gives you a global +10% beaker production.
The second signed RA nets slightly lower bonus, say +6%, third +4%.
Signing more than one RA will not give as much benefit, but if you really want to push science you can do that but at greater cost.

Problems:

Compared to current design, there is no downside since you do not lose anything if it is cancelled. Adressing this should of course be possible with some creative thinking. Maybe make RAs unavailable between Civs with poor relations.




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In another thread which spawned the idea for this one, when discussing RAs and things like "No tech brokering" option in IV, Sonereal made a good suggestion:

Sonereal said:

Or maybe make a NO TECH BROKERING option for RAs? That way you can't give another civilization a tech through an RA that you got through an RA. This would do a lot to cut down on tech proliferation.

Click to expand...

Maybe include as an alternative option, I'm just juggling ideas to deal with what I consider an imbalance in the game.
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3 RAs would equal only a 20% boost but hey, that's a 20% boost. It also means that less scientific-inclined civilizations wouldn't even bother since 20% of 20 would be 4. So, the RAs actually start favoring civilizations with a powerful science background in the first place but can help smaller civilizations get off their feet.

In this scenario though, its never in the technological-advanced civilization to sign an RA with another.

Though, I don't see why not give each RA a flat 5% bonus AND include No Tech Brokering. It'll help smaller civilizations get on their feet, give larger ones a nice tech boost, and still reduce the speed techs are researched.

Although, I think tech costs need to cost a little more in the first place.

Yeah I think costs in general should be raised and ofc adapted to how a new design would play out in reality.

I think a flat bonus would could make the RAs more powerful the more Civs are on a map but of course you could also adjust beaker prices accordingly instead.

The "no tech brokering" would have to work differently if you won't net actual techs I guess.

Another thing that came to mind is we could have scientifically backwards civs reap more benefit from RAs or something along those lines, having medieval civs in modern times make little sense.

What if it gave a boost AND a tech? That way, the backwards civilization can get a new tech at the end of it and the more mature civilization gets a tech boost.

Just have the costs of the RA based on the technological achievements of the more backwards of the two. That way, it's more beneficial to sign them with a lesser civilization than one on your level.

skallben said:

Compared to current design, there is no downside since you do not lose anything if it is cancelled. Adressing this should of course be possible with some creative thinking.

Click to expand...

Hmm... Maybe if your RA got cancelled, all the extra beakers you got from the RA are subtracted from your current research.

Babri said:

Hmm... Maybe if your RA got cancelled, all the extra beakers you got from the RA are subtracted from your current research.

Click to expand...

This.

The lesser civilization will want to stay with it to get the tech. The older one wants the tech boost.

The downside is that you lose the money for the rest of the turns, which isn't so harsh as the current system but harsh enough imo. Research agreements in the current system are no-brainers, too. Always sign as many as you can get unless you plan to attack a civ. The AI rarely attacks you anymore if you have a RA it seems.

I have absolutely no love for the current RA system, but I'm not sure if they can be changed to provide no tech at this point in time. You can create the research boost, though.

It would make more sense to me to have the current fixed-length, reward-on-completion style, but make it a number of beakers (possibly related to your current output) that's awarded at that point.

SamBC said:

It would make more sense to me to have the current fixed-length, reward-on-completion style, but make it a number of beakers (possibly related to your current output) that's awarded at that point.

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Why would it make more sense? It's closer to the vanilla system but honestly I never liked the all-or-nothing style the RA had. I view them as a science boost that rewards you for peaceful play, but does cost you some money.

alpaca said:

I view them as a science boost that rewards you for peaceful play, but does cost you some money.

Click to expand...

Exactly my thoughts, RAs are diplomatic actions and should be integrated into that system further IMO. RAs should require trust IMO, currently you can just add some extra gold to the deal if the AIs seem reluctant.

But anyways, is any of this possible to mod currently?
I have absolute zero knowledge on modding, hence posting this instead of making it.

Sonereal said:

What if it gave a boost AND a tech? That way, the backwards civilization can get a new tech at the end of it and the more mature civilization gets a tech boost.

Just have the costs of the RA based on the technological achievements of the more backwards of the two. That way, it's more beneficial to sign them with a lesser civilization than one on your level.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I like that. Gonna take some balancing to get it right but it's good for the game I think, having too weak civs in game just makes them free land for warmongerers.

skallben said:

Exactly my thoughts, RAs are diplomatic actions and should be integrated into that system further IMO. RAs should require trust IMO, currently you can just add some extra gold to the deal if the AIs seem reluctant.

But anyways, is any of this possible to mod currently?
I have absolute zero knowledge on modding, hence posting this instead of making it.

Click to expand...

More or less, but as I said I don't think you can use the research agreement trade logic for it because you can't remove the free tech from that if I'm not mistaken. I'm not even sure if you can modify it's length.

An idea I saw and liked was:

Add X% of generated each turn to a bucket. At the end of the agreement, s in the bucket are split among the leaders who made the agreement.

This has the advantage of helping less-advanced civs catch up. Any sort of fundamental modification to RAs will require the full sdk though.

Thalassicus said:

An idea I saw and liked was:

Add X% of generated each turn to a bucket. At the end of the agreement, s in the bucket are split among the leaders who made the agreement.

This has the advantage of helping less-advanced civs catch up. Any sort of fundamental modification to RAs will require the full sdk though.

Click to expand...

Definitely sounds interesting, although I'd still rather add the tech points every turn.

Thalassicus said:

An idea I saw and liked was:

Add X% of generated each turn to a bucket. At the end of the agreement, s in the bucket are split among the leaders who made the agreement.

This has the advantage of helping less-advanced civs catch up. Any sort of fundamental modification to RAs will require the full sdk though.

Click to expand...

I like this. (Like your mods too btw)
As you say, good thing is this would benefit small/******** civs.
An immediate downside IMO would be that big cutting edge civs would potentially yield alot from this.
How about applying literacy % from Demographics screen to that?
Is that possible?
That would make empires with lacking infrastructure benefit a bit less, favouring builders instead.
I honestly still think puppets needs a research penalty but that is another story.

So, you'd need the SDK but would it require alot of work to pull something like this off?