How the science mechanic needs to be rebalanced

[Lorizael]

My half-baked idea: Make beakers come mainly from specialists. Make specialists cost money. Make money come mainly from trade and resource acquisition. Make bettering your trade and resource acquisition something science is not very good at.

As far as what science would do, it should let you do new things, but not necessarily improve the things you're already doing. For example, pursuing science would open up the orbital layer, which is a new thing you can do. Or science could let you terraform, when normally you couldn't. Obviously, doing new things will improve your performance, but it will only do so through your smart decisions rather than a mostly automatic bonus.

The incremental improvements to your efficiency that you get through science right now could come another way: make successive specialists of the same variety in the same city cost less money. That way, you get better at production or trade or culture by managing your population. This would also help combat ICS. (Is that still a thing?)

Anyway, that's my half-baked idea.

 

[Rebel Fighter]

My half-baked idea: Make beakers come mainly from specialists. Make specialists cost money. Make money come mainly from trade and resource acquisition. Make bettering your trade and resource acquisition something science is not very good at.

As far as what science would do, it should let you do new things, but not necessarily improve the things you're already doing. For example, pursuing science would open up the orbital layer, which is a new thing you can do. Or science could let you terraform, when normally you couldn't. Obviously, doing new things will improve your performance, but it will only do so through your smart decisions rather than a mostly automatic bonus.

The incremental improvements to your efficiency that you get through science right now could come another way: make successive specialists of the same variety in the same city cost less money. That way, you get better at production or trade or culture by managing your population. This would also help combat ICS. (Is that still a thing?)

Anyway, that's my half-baked idea.

I really like where you're going with this, because it makes all the aspects of the game (like science, production, gold, etc) dependent on each other rather than independent. I'm not sure if specialists would be the answer, but making each resource require another resource in order to be improved is a very balanced approach.

For example, you could try and focus heavily on science, but oh no! Your economy is in shambles, your production is so low you couldn't even build a laser rifle, and there are hordes of aliens on your borders. Seems like a good idea to me!

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

The balance just needs to be found where a player will have a tough time deciding whether to take 1 beaker, 1 cash, 1 production, or 1 culture in a general sense (situationally, you might have an easier decision) ... and make the game so that their availability is roughly similar. There's a lot of ways to do this, the important thing is that balance. (Applies to everything. Expand vertically or horizontally. More military now or research to stronger military later.)

Yes, I agree with that summary. Part of the issue with CivV, say, is that the science investments give you so much science, and science itself (and city growth) blows by so fast, that it's just so easy to make that your deliberate concentration. Compare Academy and Manufactory. Compare +33% Science to +10% Production. The food basket is so easy to fill, no matter the pop count, and the hammers sacrificed from food focus are so marginal.

However, no matter what, science is king. Science always involves the enabling of whole new ways to exploit and expand. If those ways were not appealing, the game itself would be boring (and not credible). But there is a difference here, between Science the resource being king, and science the development focus being king. If, as you say, you have a tough time deciding whether 1 cash, 1 production, 1 beaker is right, on this occasion, then you will have good balance. Maybe you need to expand now, maybe you want to build economy, maybe you can put off a war for no longer. It's true that science will be of utmost value to you. But maybe the path to the best science involves a detour through developing something else in your empire, which you slingshot into science later. The question to the player is how.

 

[s0nny80y]

I think OP's grasp on science is limited to amount of observers which a leader can paste a common flag on and call it civilization.

I think the Purity, Supremacy and Harmony victory types show how we humans marry the new planet as one set of observer's/mankind's own and to what end.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Here is quit a few suggestions to make technology far less of an advantage espacially in the military side of things.

Make technology cost production, wealth and tech points:
Modern technology cost alot more then what the tech points seams to reprecent in civ 5, atleast in civ 4 tech do cost money but then the usefullness of money is very limited.

Make Money more usefull
In Galatic civilization 2 atleast money is needed to pay workers to get you both production and tech this system could be implemented in civ, (think civ 4 with a tech slider and a production slider.

Each tech you got makes all techs cost more
This will make it much harder to get a good lead in the tech tree. You really have to think about what to tech it will be much harder to get the rest of them.

Prototypes
In Alpha Centauri each new design needs a prototype built before it can be massproduced. If a prototype cost alot like maybe 5 times as much then you may consider to skip generations because each step may be to expansive, espacially if tech also need alot of production.

Gearing Bonus
Each unit you build of a certin design will make that design cheaper (to a cap), this mean togther with prototypes that building old units may be better then building new ones, espacially if you reached a high gearing that maybe make you pay half the production of this design.

Allow multiple units to be built in one city per turn
Cheap low tech units will be even stronger if this is added and production will be stronger to.

Add proved, unproved design modifier
A design that has never been used much in comebat recives a penalty while a design that have been alot in comebat get a bonus, making it dangerous to uppgrade your whoul army.

Return stacks
This will help both quantity and the ai espacially with:

Allow multiple units to attack at once
1 vs 1 greatly helps the stronger unit, by allowing large amount of units attacking large amout of defenders quntity would make more seans.

Reparation should be costly
Free reparation is one reason why strong units are so strong in civ 5 also it is important to survive in earlier civs because its like getting free units.

 

[Lheim]

Here is quit a few suggestions to make technology far less of an advantage espacially in the military side of things.

Make technology cost production, wealth and tech points:
Modern technology cost alot more then what the tech points seams to reprecent in civ 5, atleast in civ 4 tech do cost money but then the usefullness of money is very limited.

Having a tradeoff between how much science and how much production and money you can produce is good; good game design is all about choices. I don't see how this is different functionally from the old sliders, though - and the sliders might well be more intuitive.

Make Money more usefull
In Galatic civilization 2 atleast money is needed to pay workers to get you both production and tech this system could be implemented in civ, (think civ 4 with a tech slider and a production slider.

Money is always super useful. But having each unit of production cost money like they did in Gal Civ 2 (or was it Endless Space?) - that was a weird choice. It could lead to you becoming bankrupt if you tried to take advantage of a good production bonus in early game.

Each tech you got makes all techs cost more
This will make it much harder to get a good lead in the tech tree. You really have to think about what to tech it will be much harder to get the rest of them.

Punishing a player for getting ahead - not good, in my opinion. I prefer the alternate idea of making 'obsolete' techs rather cheap for other civs.

Prototypes
In Alpha Centauri each new design needs a prototype built before it can be massproduced. If a prototype cost alot like maybe 5 times as much then you may consider to skip generations because each step may be to expansive, espacially if tech also need alot of production.

Prototyping was a good mechanic, as was significantly increased costs if you wanted to give a unit all the bonuses it could have - it retained a use for more primitive or more 'specialized' units that weren't simply the best of everything the unit design workshop could put together.

Again, though, I feels this 'five times cost' thing veers into punishing a player for good play!

Gearing Bonus
Each unit you build of a certin design will make that design cheaper (to a cap), this mean togther with prototypes that building old units may be better then building new ones, espacially if you reached a high gearing that maybe make you pay half the production of this design.

Allow multiple units to be built in one city per turn
Cheap low tech units will be even stronger if this is added and production will be stronger to.

Don't see the point, with one upt and the abstraction of 'units' to whole armies. However, a galciv style system to allocate production between military units and civil structures simultaneously would be a welcome relief from micromanagement.

Add proved, unproved design modifier
A design that has never been used much in comebat recives a penalty while a design that have been alot in comebat get a bonus, making it dangerous to uppgrade your whoul army.

SMAC's 'very green -> veteran' morale system. It was nice for immersion but I'm not sure how much strategy it actually added.

Return stacks
This will help both quantity and the ai espacially with:

Allow multiple units to attack at once
1 vs 1 greatly helps the stronger unit, by allowing large amount of units attacking large amout of defenders quntity would make more seans.

I'm kinda ambivalent about 1UPT, but even I understand that SODs weren't awesome. I guess I like the Civ 3 'armies' solution best. Single units are fodder, but group them together in single controlable super units called armies - that have a maximum size, gets the benefits of 1UPT without the drawbacks.

Reparation should be costly
Free reparation is one reason why strong units are so strong in civ 5 also it is important to survive in earlier civs because its like getting free units.

I agree. The free-heal promotion is rediculous. It has the same gameplay effect as the whole 'free parking' cash custom rule that people sometimes use in monopoly - to cushion the effects of bad choices and prolong the game for the lucky.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I agree. The free-heal promotion is rediculous. It has the same gameplay effect as the whole 'free parking' cash custom rule that people sometimes use in monopoly - to cushion the effects of bad choices and prolong the game for the lucky.

Actually the whole fact that you only have to pay Time to heal a unit is the bigger problem. The promotion is bad, but the fact that a unit heals without costing gold or production overvalues the tactical side of the game, where the human has a massive advantage over the AI.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

That sort of sounds like weapon experience. It's true that in any discipline, there is a measure of skill lost when "upgrading" to new tools or new processes. An old pro will always want to do things the old way.
An experience penalty when outfitting a unit is something I was working on as a CivV mod, but the rewrites to the code are very daunting. If starting fresh, though, I wonder if that could be implemented - losing some experience when upgrading an existing unit to different weapons. As with my mod, certain investments could be made to disable this experience loss, further differentiating warlike playstyles from other ones.

I dislike sliders, but I also dislike the generation of beakers in CivV. I think part of the balance is playing on the slower settings (which buffs units, and thereby hammers and rushbuying). But since this is Civ in space, we can just do something totally new, and design it to balance. We know the tech web is in the game, but will it really be better to make the technologies completely disconnected in different areas?

 

[Lheim]

Actually the whole fact that you only have to pay Time to heal a unit is the bigger problem. The promotion is bad, but the fact that a unit heals without costing gold or production overvalues the tactical side of the game, where the human has a massive advantage over the AI.

I always thought that having units heal much faster in friendly territory - or perhaps only in cities, represented enough of an opportunity cost.

It certainly brings a certain rhythm to warfare - where you have to conquer and either recuperate or keep a constant supply of troops moving forward.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I always thought that having units heal much faster in friendly territory - or perhaps only in cities, represented enough of an opportunity cost.

It certainly brings a certain rhythm to warfare - where you have to conquer and either recuperate or keep a constant supply of troops moving forward.

It doesn't, the ability to have a defensive line+range take almost no damage is significant

(Bigger part of that is the Range, but another is the Defensive line that takes almost no work to maintain)

 

[Browd]

Arguably there is a gold cost to healing units. Every unit costs maintenance every turn, whether you are using the unit productively or not. Healing (unless you have March or its equivalent) requires that you idle the unit until it heals, so you are spending gold on those turns for no tangible benefit other than healing. On other turns, you are spending the same amount of gold to move the unit into a desired position or to support combat operations on that turn (or just keeping the unit in existence as a deterrent to AI aggression).

It's fair to ask whether that the gold cost should be a different amount based on how the unit is used on a particular turn (higher when healing or when attacking, and lower when just patrolling or indulging in some R&R), but (IMO) that would just inject more micromanagement complexity without great gameplay benefit.

 

[sendos]

My half-baked idea: Make beakers come mainly from specialists. Make specialists cost money. Make money come mainly from trade and resource acquisition. Make bettering your trade and resource acquisition something science is not very good at.

As far as what science would do, it should let you do new things, but not necessarily improve the things you're already doing. For example, pursuing science would open up the orbital layer, which is a new thing you can do. Or science could let you terraform, when normally you couldn't. Obviously, doing new things will improve your performance, but it will only do so through your smart decisions rather than a mostly automatic bonus.

The incremental improvements to your efficiency that you get through science right now could come another way: make successive specialists of the same variety in the same city cost less money. That way, you get better at production or trade or culture by managing your population. This would also help combat ICS. (Is that still a thing?)

Anyway, that's my half-baked idea.

This isn't a half-baked idea. This is a complete idea and it is a great one. It does place emphasis on tall empires but if there's a way to make wide empires benefit from this without the game ending up like G&K, that would be great.

As for unit maintenance, I like the idea of increased maintenance for healing but not for attacking. That would just nerf warmongering.

As for the instant heal promotions, I support either of these proposals:
- Remove insta-heal +50HP or 100HP promotions, but each promotion grants +15-20HP instantly.
- Keep insta-heal promotions, but add a cost (something like 100 gold/credits and it could increase over time).
- Keep insta-heal promotions, but they don't come into effect until start of next turn. Prevents the annoyance of instant healed units to an extent, I guess.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Healing should be very expansive like healing from 1 hp to 100 should cost like 95% of the cost of producing/purchasing the unit and it should take its time to.
Uppgrading units should also be much more costlier then in civ 5 promotions and experience should be lost to.
Make promotions matter more 15% in specific terrain is not much, it should be more like 33% anti units, promotions maybe 75-100%.
Tech should not depend as much on buildings like in civ 5 and which basicly make tech give more tech which make it impossible to catch up and techrushing for these buildings very strong.

 

[Storminator]

I'd like to see fewer things unlocked by the tech tree.

Similar to the world wonders unlocked by social policies, you could have other units/buildings/wonders unlocked by other mechanics. For Civ5 examples, move Barracks off the tech tree. Any city that builds 5 units can build a Barracks. Move the Colossus off the tech tree. Once you explore 100 sea tiles you can build the Colossus.

I'm certain that once you start looking at other ways to unlock things you can move a good chunk out of the tech tree. Figure out a good way to balance that and make the other parts of the game a serious trade off and you drastically reduce the dependency on science.

PS

 

[Jman5]

I think one of the most important things is to spread science choices around so there is no "science" or teching path.

For example, you get rid of Rationalism, but take the individual polices and spread them among the rest. (or whatever the equivalent is in BE)

I also have a love-hate relationship with Space-Race Science victory. I love it because it's so easy to aim for. I hate it because it lets me get away with a completely passive play style. All you have to do is keep your head down, and just coast. You don't have to spend any production or gold on a large standing army, and you can tech efficiently through the ages.

This isn't a half-baked idea. This is a complete idea and it is a great one. It does place emphasis on tall empires but if there's a way to make wide empires benefit from this without the game ending up like G&K, that would be great.

As for unit maintenance, I like the idea of increased maintenance for healing but not for attacking. That would just nerf warmongering.

As for the instant heal promotions, I support either of these proposals:
- Remove insta-heal +50HP or 100HP promotions, but each promotion grants +15-20HP instantly.
- Keep insta-heal promotions, but add a cost (something like 100 gold/credits and it could increase over time).
- Keep insta-heal promotions, but they don't come into effect until start of next turn. Prevents the annoyance of instant healed units to an extent, I guess.

I really hope the unit healing mechanic changes in BE. Along with what you mentioned, there needs to be changes with how defending units heal every turn. Instead of just having a passive heal if you leave it be, it should only heal if nothing attacks it. As it is right now you basically have to 1-shot units. Otherwise they either heal up a fair bit, or hit an upgrade and do a 50 hp boost. It's part of the reason why players like myself could fend off massive assaults from the AI. We position a couple of units in key locations by our cities and just sit them there while the AI wears it's army down against them.

A city or other type of fortification should be the only sure-place to heal a unit during an assault.