Tech Trading more realistic

I think tech trading should be improved... of course we'll first need a better AI for that, but I'm sure that will be done...

Tech trading goes way too easy, it should be limited a lot more. For example, it should only be possible between CIVs that have a very positive opinion of each other (at least for military techs) or only between allies!!! tech trading between civs that hate each others is just not right.
Also, it should not be possible from the beginning on, that would slow down the tech race (good for me) and make everyone go for it alone at the beginning

I agree that you should not be able to tade techs untill you at least have an embassy with the other guy.

How about having tech take time to transfer? That prevents a bunch of semi-exploits but still allows tech trading/gifting, which does happen even between enemy nations.

e.g. In 1000 BC, I buy Republic from such-and-such a civ. I can't use Republic for 10 turns, but I can dedicate all my science beakers to something else in the meantime.

Something like that. Would seem to make sense to me. It takes time to teach/learn a new technology.

Arathorn

Aeldrik & Sealman, I disagree. Ease of tech trading among the AI civs is one of the things that makes the upper levels more challenging. Besides which, historically, most technologies were not invented independantly a dozen different times by a dozen different countries, they were discovered in one or a few places and spread by trade.

What's unrealistic with selling techs to civs you hate? Happens all the time in the real world: greed is powerful enough to get lots of people to ignore their dislike of others. Nothing in the game forces anyone to sell military tech to their enemies unless its to their overall advantage to do so. Granted, it would be good if the AI was smart enough to not sell somebody Gunpowder three turns before invading them, but how often is that really a problem? I can't say I've seen it happen, but even if it does, the solution is smarter AI, not limitations on tech trading.

I don't care about trading with civs you hate but you should have some sort of diplomatic relations in order to trade.

I like the Idea of Arathron....
judgement, just one "real world" example:
was there any tech trade between the US and the Soviet Union? this is the kind of situation I want to reflect .. and also, as said, I hope the AI will be good enough in CIV 4 they won't have to use such things as having the AIs trade for free with each other to make them faster, when you like to play with 10+ CIVs, the game is just no longer playable, as you go with 8-10 tech in 4 turns, doesn't take long and the AIs have the tech tree ...

Actually Aeldrik while there was no trade of military secret, standard scientifical communication between scientists on the two side didn't stop entirely because of the Cold War.

What I propose is that each tech advance should be Cultural, Scientifical or Technological.

Cultural advances should not only be tradeable regardless of relations, but also they should spread on their own - say a civilization has democracy, well there is a 1 in X chance that a civilization with a trade route to the first will "find out" about democracy from travelers et al (or philosophy, or monotheism, or whatever). X should be based on the distance - the closer the two capitals, the higher the chances of finding out.

Scientifical advances should be fully tradeable between civs regardless of good or bad relations. This represent great scientifical theories on such pure science topics as physics, chemistry, biology et al.

Technological advances should be something the AI is only willing to trade tos omeone it has good relations with. These would represent the advances that help build new stuff - weapons, improvements, etc). IE, State Secret.

Good Idea Oda, but how about splitting Technological up further into, say Military and Economic.

So, the first would be the technology used in the construction of units and purely militaristic improvements Wonders etc. wheras the latter would be for strictly standard improvements, wonders and infrastructure.
So, now you would have Cultural, Scientific, Economic and Militaristic Tech types. With each one being 'harder' to trade than the one below it.
Whilst on these tech groups, I think that these would be good, general categories for tech research more generally. For instance, instead of saying I WANT to study monotheism or I WANT to study republic. Instead you say, I want to invest x% of my science budget into Cultural research, and x+1% into Economic research etc. The more you put in, the more quicker you will get techs of this category. The base rate at which you discover a tech of a given category would also be influenced by your civ characteristics. For instance, militaristic civs are, obviously, best at researching military techs, but worst at cultural techs. Religious Civs would be best at Cultural techs, but worst at Scientific techs. Scientific civs would be best at scientific techs, but worst at military techs. These are obviously just suggestions!
Obviously each civ has TWO (or more) characteristics-so I would suggest that these have an ADDITIVE effect. For instance, a Military/Religious civ would be ordinary at cultural techs, good at militaristic techs, but terrible at scientific techs. Obviously these tendencies can be overcome, to a greater or lesser extent, by how much of your budget you invest into those categories. Also, though, it is clear that if you invest in those tech areas which you are best at, then you will get more 'bang' for your buck-so to speak. Also, the rate at which you recieve a particular advance would be based on cultural 'flavours' as well. For instance lets say you have invested in Cultural techs, and you have a chance of recieving monotheism and Eastern Philosophy. The one you get first will depend on your culture group. For instance, as an 'Asian Tech', you would be more likely to get Eastern Philosophy if you belonged to either the Asian or Oceanic culture group. Whilst you'd be more likely to get Monotheism if you belonged to the European or Middle Eastern culture group. African and American culture groups would, all other things being equal, have a 50/50 chance of getting either one first!
Also, Oda, I think that cultural flavour of a tech should influence both the X you mentioned in your post, but also the value of a tech in trade to a given civ. For instance, lets say that China has an economic tech with an 'asian flavour', he is likely to demand much more for it than a tech with no flavour. By the same token, China will probably pay more, for the 'asian tech' than for a 'non-asian' tech.
Lastly, I was thinking that, for the purposes of science investment. It might be best to put techs into more categories. So, for instance, you would have naval, cultural, scientific, commercial, militaristic, industrial and commercial tech streams.
So, what do you guys think?

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I really like these Ideas, It would make a great and a lot better system of researching techs, especially since the old system (even though it was working fine) of selecting what you research is just not realistic.... a new system should have some kind of random factor in the science research....
I agree to all the propositions of Aussie_Lurker except for one: the cultural flavor of the civ in itself.... My point on this is that this would make the CIVs even more different, which I think they should not be, the difference should come from the leader, not from the CIV itself.... but that 's really just a personal feeling, I would accept it if it was implemented otherwise in the game, as I guess it would be also quite good.... but please then give us the option for a custom civ (missing in the standard CIV3 !!!!!)

After thinking about it a little bit more, here is what I think:

Tech trading goes on too easy, too early, that's not realistic, here are some changes I think would make it better, they off course could be improved with most of the other ideas people have suggested:

-Tech trading should only be allowed with an embassy and good diplomatic relations, not just upon contact
-Tech should swap over (should be a chance of it to happen) from one CIV to another if they have a common border (you get a tech because you neighboor has it, this only for non military techs, the chance should increase with the time the Civ has it....
-Stealing tech should be allowing starting with diplomats and embassies

With these changes, there would no longer be a highly advanced CIV next to another one two ages back (just ridiculous), it would also make it possible to greatly improve the AI not just make it get the techs faster)

My ideas :


I think that the spread of technology should have a different transfer method.
In ancient times and the middle ages you would need to send a special unit, the Envoy or the Ambassador by boat or by land to the nation you want to trade techs with.

With the tech advance of Printing Press, the spread of tech is in proportion to how far away the other civ is from your civ, but it would be quicker than sending an actual unit. It would take several turns however.

There should be a new tech of Telegraph, where transfers of techs happen instantly, if disired(like in civ3)

The spread of anything but scientific and military(economic, arts, etc) techs could be spread(without the need of research) with the advent of Radio, and a new tech, The Internet. You would randomly recieve cultural/economic techs from adjacent civs, and the chance it occurs more goes up significatly with the acheivment of The Internet.

www.glodas.net

Hmmm, I don't like the idea of having yet 'another unit' to do something which could be simulated abstractly!! If anything, I'd like to see LESS units in the game and, hence, less MM! Thats why I thought the diplomacy and trade elements of Civ3 were so much improved over Civ2-simply by removing diplomats, spies and caravans!
Anyway, I do like much of Aeldricks idea. I especially think that direct tech trades should be much, MUCH harder. Whether an AI chooses to trade techs with you should depend on shared culture, shared government and religion and, at the very least, some kind of trade treaty. In the case of non-cultural techs, though, a MPP should be the very minimum required before an AI civ will consider giving you, or anyone else, a tech (though he/she will happily accept one given to them )!
To help balance out the greater difficulty in directly trading techs, I still feel that the idea of cultural techs moving by 'Osmosis' via trade networks is the best solution. Of course, cultural, religious and governmental factors should have a hand on how easily this osmosis occurs. For instance, if you have got a very xenophobic government, then it should be very difficult for you to get techs via this osmosis-and equally hard for other civs to get yours-even if, by some miracle, you have trade networks with these civs!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I agree with aeldrik. It should definately be improved.

I think tech can be traded if not advanced through the use of it's prerequisites. For example: If nation "A" and nation "B" trade alot and nation "A" has 'currency' then nation "B" should be able to research this much quicker. Paying for a tech is pretty unrealistic, especially in the ancient ages.

Flash back:
"Hey, look, Dad! I just got the aztecs to trade me 74 gold for monotheism."
"They paid to learn it?"
"Uh... yeah."
"Well that's redundant."

I think teach could be familiarized to another nation, improving relations maybe, but not traded for a cost, for most techs aren't even technology. they're just concepts.

Whether you have good relations with another nation or not could certainly affect how much they'd want in return for exchanging knowledge with you, but if it's not feasable to exchange knowledge with those you don't have very good relations with, everyone will have to go for researching everything oneself all the time, which would be sad..

However, it's not natural that you get everything without cost. I'm a computer programmer, I can't just show up at a car mechanic and exchange knowledge with a mechanic, such that within 5 secs I know everything there is about mechanics and he knows computers.

One would still need some time to get that knowledge around to all the scientists within your nation, and to make sure they understand it so they can reproduce its effect and learn it to new generations.
What if one had to use a certain amount of money per turn after one had traded a tech before your scientists understood it enough to put it in practise?..

Example: You are researching something that costs 2000 bulbs to research. After researching 200 of them yourself, you find this is going to slow and decides to trade civilization B for it. The deal includes B having to pay X gold per turn for Y turns, representing the cost of having scientists in our civilization teaching our scientists. We have to pay 5*X for Y turns having all our scientists occupied by learning the new technology. After Y turns we know enough to start using the tech. While our scientists are learning the given tech, they can't learn other techs, so we can't
trade other techs before we've completly understood this one.

X and Y would of course depend on how much we had researched ourselves before trading, how complex the tech is etc.

This way, one can't just trade all knowledge instantanious.. One still has to spend some time and money.

I just read this post again and my writing bores the hell out of me but that's because I am in a bad mood having to grind the last few years out in a no-lose game.



The tech tree is a binary affair at the moment.

You either know mathematics or you don't.

There are many techs that can/should have grades.

Maths and philosophy are too obvious. Everyone knows some but no one knows all.

How about having the choice to either continue researching a tech further down the tree or the next grade of an early tech?

The advantages of greater advance in early techs are:

That more of the population are able to get involved in the progress of tech and/or those that know it know it well - simply speeds the research of related future techs

That the unit/building etc associated with the tech can be constructed cheaper and/or is used more effectively. eg better horsemen.

This may include wonders; if there is a wonder that you really want and believe you can get you may want to max it by maxing the tech that enabled it.


The disadvantages are that:

You must choose very wisely, guessing which future resources you will have access to.

The race for many important techs will be harder to win.

The tech tree is already far better than Civ 3 and it is extremely well thought out philosophically and the biggest gameplay problems involve the millitary strategy, which is pretty dismal, but this idea might suit some people. Coupled with the other levers you control your civ with it might offer more strategic depth.


Good luck everyone.