Tech Spreading

I've been thinking in a way to Balance Scientific Research in this game,because we all know that big empires have been better in science research than small empires,but in real world,this isn't true(just compare Japan or South Korea to countries like Russia or Brazil). One Solution to this is Problem is called "Tech Spreading". here how it works:


-When you Research a tech,it will demand some time to this tech spreads to all your cities.
-Capital will always receive tech first
-The next city can only receive the technology if this city is connected with capital
-the next city with the highest amount of science output will receive the tech some turns after Capital(this time is determined by the numbers of cities,the distance of capital and even the happiness of your people),then the tech will spread to the second city with the highest science output,until all cities receive the tech.
-Tech will spread slower to puppet cities.
-City can only contribute with science after receive ALL the techs that capital already had.
(edit)-New found cities will get the same tech spreading of the nearest city. For Example: If I found Seattle and the nearest city of Seattle is Los Angeles,then Seattle will have the same techs of Los Angeles. After this,Seattle will have its own tech spreading factors. Seattle doesn't need to be connected to Los angeles after found,but it has to be connected to capital,if wants to receive techs.


the time that a tech needs to spread to all your cities will depend of such factors:
-Distance(cities that are closest to the capital are likely to receive techs faster)
-Population(Tall cities are also likely to receive techs faster than small cities)
-Happiness(Tech Spreading will demand 30% more time if your empire is unhappy,but a very happy empire(with more than +15 happiness) will have a bonus in tech spreading of 25%
-The ways that the city connects with capital(Harbors and Roads have the same bonus and Railroads increase tech spreading by 30% compared to Roads)
(edit) -Science Focus[Cities with Science Buildings(Library,University,NC,...) or with scientist specialist or with a high science output will have a bonus in tech spreading]

(edit) -Techs can spread to coastal cities when you build lighthose at spreader city and harbors have similar effects to roads(after steam power,harbors get similar effects to railroads).
(edit)-Stables,Markets,Seaports,University,Research Lab and Broadcast Tower increase tech spreading if you build them in the cities that receive techs and in the cities that spread techs.




Techs Itself can help to spread tech.Some Ideas of Bonus: (edit) the effect of these techs will be avaliable when they spread to the city.
-Machinery and Combustion Increases Tech Spreading in Roads connections
-Navigation and Steam Power Increases Tech Spreading in Harbors connections
-Telegraph Eliminates the distance factor of tech spreading
-You Share your techs with other civs that are friendly with you and they share their techs,if both has Computer Tech.


What would this concept change the game? for example: when you research steel,you can only build or upgrade your units to longswordman if this city have received the tech. a exception here is if this unit is inside a allied city state border.

Guess Social Policies can speed the tech spreading,but I don't have ideas of which sp might help it

Sounds complicated.....

....but anyway the concept is nice.

It might be good in domination games. It's strange how you conquest lots of enemy cities, and instantly all of them can take advantage of ALL the new techs you discover.
Newly conquered cities (the farther, the worse) should be extremely SLOW to adapt to your empire, so perhaps the new techs could take a while to spread there.

On reading this I initially didn't like the idea. On consideration though, this is brilliant!
I do, however, have some concerns and suggestions. I'll do suggestions first
First, I don't think that techs should always emerge in the capital, instead the city is randomly chosen based on the cities tech level. This does mean there will be a chance of a tech appearing in a terrible city on the edge of the empire; to counter this only cities with certain buildings (university) or wonders (palace, national college, Great Library) should be eligible (possibly add cities working an academy to that list).
Second, telegraph should only negate distance for cities which telegraph has already spread to in the normal way.

Concerns:
How would this work with newly founded cities? Would they have all the techs researched so far, none whatsoever or somewhere in between? The two best choices I see are either all the techs of the city that built the settler (this would be my second choice as it would cause database bloat) or every known tech from earlier eras than the one currently in and current era techs must spread. For example you are in the renaissance and settle a new city. That city starts with every researched tech from medieval and prior eras but renaissance techs must spread from other cities as must any medieval techs subsequently researched.
How would this work with tech bonuses that aren't buildings/units? Embarkation is given when a unit returns to your territory, would this only apply if it is within the territory of a city that has the tech? What if the tile can be worked by a city that has the tech and one that doesn't? Will tile improvements be tied to the city (see previous point) or worker (see point about settlers)? When tech improvements increase tile yields does a tile that is shared between a city that has the tech and one that doesn't increase or not.

I'm sure there are more examples and they can be ironed out, but the core of the idea is very good.

Very interesting idea! I think I quite like it. Regarding new cities and what their tech level should be, perhaps they could just get all the techs that you have in your capital when the settler finished building? That would probably make it easier than if it was dependent on what the city that built the settler had. And I would assume that the tech should always emerge in the capital and spread from there.

I should renamed it to a sketch,because I didn't think in all the problems it may appear(My goal here is to think in some way to balance scientic research in small empires,so you don't need big empires to have science victory). About new cities,I think I can add somethings like this:

-New found cities will get the same tech spreading of the nearest city. For Example: If I found Seattle and the nearest city of Seattle is Los Angeles,then Seattle will have the same techs of Los Angeles. After this,Seattle will have its own tech spreading factors. Seattle doesn't need to be connected to Los angeles after found,but it has to be connected to capital,if wants to receive techs.

filli_noctus said:

On reading this I initially didn't like the idea. On consideration though, this is brilliant!
I do, however, have some concerns and suggestions. I'll do suggestions first
First, I don't think that techs should always emerge in the capital, instead the city is randomly chosen based on the cities tech level. This does mean there will be a chance of a tech appearing in a terrible city on the edge of the empire; to counter this only cities with certain buildings (university) or wonders (palace, national college, Great Library) should be eligible (possibly add cities working an academy to that list).
Second, telegraph should only negate distance for cities which telegraph has already spread to in the normal way.

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I choose Capital because this is the most important city of your empire(if you lose it,you can't win the game). about city with certain buildings,they are usually the cities that produce more science. but there may have exceptions here,that's why I'll edit the post to add this idea. Any Idea to fix or to improve it will be always welcome

There is another problem with this concept that I'd like to share: Do techs spread in pararrel line(techs spreading the same time in many cities) or they spread in sequence line(techs spreading at one time in each city). like I said before,I didn't focus in the problems that this concept may have to big empires,just focused in a concept to balance scientific research.

GenjiKhan said:

I choose Capital because this is the most important city of your empire(if you lose it,you can't win the game). about city with certain buildings,they are usually the cities that produce more science. but there may have exceptions here,that's why I'll edit the post to add this idea. Any Idea to fix or to improve it will be always welcome

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I feel the capital is already more important than it should be which is why I suggested it, but that's just me.

GenjiKhan said:

There is another problem with this concept that I'd like to share: Do techs spread in pararrel line(techs spreading the same time in many cities) or they spread in sequence line(techs spreading at one time in each city). like I said before,I didn't focus in the problems that this concept may have to big empires,just focused in a concept to balance scientific research.

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I don't quite follow you here, do you mean should multiple techs be able to spread to a city in one turn or should one tech be able to spread to multiple cities in one turn. I'm going to assume the former as there's potential for a city to get a tech before the preceding tech in the tree. Although I consider it to be unlikely I would say that if a tech reaches a city before its' prerequisite it will be put 'on hold' until the turn after all prerequisites have spread to the city.

The spreading could get quite complicated, actually. I was thinking that it would spread out two tiles, then four tiles, then six tiles, or something, but then when you add in roads, railroads, harbours and all the other possible modifiers, it starts to be a little confusing. Some good UI would be needed to go with this to make it clear how long a tech would take to reach each city.

I draw a representation in excel to show how it works:




Like I said before,the first city to receive the tech is the capital.City A,City B and City C will only receive techs that Capital already have.

City D will only receive a tech if this tech already spread to City B
City E will only receive a tech if this tech already spread to City C

City F will receive this tech from the first city that already received,that might be city A or city B. Having 2 Connections WILL NOT Increase tech spreading in City F.


Since Distance is one of the modifiers for tech spreading,It would be useless to connect directly a very distance city to the capital.

This is a second scenario with the same cities,but with a different kind of connection:



In this scenario,each city is connected to the other,like a chain sequence. Compared to the other scenario,here the tech spreading would be slower,but cheaper.

That's the problem I've talked before. Which kind of tech spreading would be better? Sequence Line(1 tech spreading to 1 city per time) or Pararrel Line(1 Tech Spreading to many cities at the same time)

OK, I follow you now. It would have to be parallel, as you put it. Sequential spread would just take too long to reach every city.
I'm assuming you diagram is simplified and a city can get a tech directly from the capital even if there is another between them but it has a direct road to the capital but not the other city (for example).

great idea indeed!

massive distance calculations (pathfinding) will slow down the game very significantly though.
i think this should be avoided.

here is a simplified view of tech spreading system i want to suggest:

imho the factors that should be considered are:
* connection to the trade network
* index of city's progressiveness (see below)
* communication technologies

say we have 3 cities involved in development of tech X.
science rates are 10 for city1, 25 for city2, and 15 for city3.
when a tech got researched, we determine a discoverer city (DC).
how we do it?
1. get total tech rate 10+25+15=50
2. get random number N from 1 to 50. let it be 14
3. loop through cities, adding their outputs until the sum is less than N: we have 10 on iteration 1 (< 14), 35 on iteration 2 (and 35 is greater than 14) so the DC is the city2.
when DC is determined, add the new tech to all other cities' undeveloped techs lists UTLs.
on each turn a city checks its UTL and tests if it has managed to acquire each of those techs or not.
1. calculate city's progressiveness index PI. that is a summ of all its outputs + + + + divided by number of s.
2. divide by 2 if a city is not connected to the trade network
3. add communication technology bonuces (+10% for wheel, +20% for writing, +20% for sailing, +30% for printing press, +40% for telegraph etc)
4. so we got tech spreading index TSI.
5. divide TSI by TSI+c5science: tech_cost / some_constant). This will be a probability of acquiring a tech on a current turn.

ps we can use simple plot distance in calculations, although
it will not affect performance

Excellent Job . It looks like you've been thinking in this idea a long time ago,and if i didn't post something about it,you would post it. This idea looks great,but can you post a didatic example? My Imagination isn't so great to imagine a scenario like this. You can use excel to make a diagram,like me or a screenshot from the game,to show how would it works(if you use the second option,consider marathon games,because the result would be easier to understand). About that some_constant you posted,it could be some kind of balance of the time.

GenjiKhan said:

Excellent Job . It looks like you've been thinking in this idea a long time ago,and if i didn't post something about it,you would post it. This idea looks great,but can you post a didatic example? My Imagination isn't so great to imagine a scenario like this. You can use excel to make a diagram,like me or a screenshot from the game,to show how would it works(if you use the second option,consider marathon games,because the result would be easier to understand). About that some_constant you posted,it could be some kind of balance of the time.

Click to expand...

This is an interesting idea for sure. I think avoiding any sort of complex algorithm would work best for a mechanic like this to avoid confusion. A simple way for it to work would be through cultural borders - whatever borders are connected to the Capital's borders get the tech. This would also make a city's distance from the capital something to keep in mind again when expanding.

I really like this idea so I started working on making an algorithym to calcule this,
There needs to be add alot more variables and balancing of values, and even more important starting at constructing the formula but I uploaded a concept at:

http://www.4shared.com/file/AfL7f77N/TechSpreading.html

First time doing something like this, so dont be to harsh on me

and my version

http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.php?id=2871090&da=y

First I want to thank everyone that help to improve this idea. I liked both algorithym and these ideas can be together. about the kilmeplease algorithym ,it can be added a time modifier(0,67 for quick; 1 for standard ;1,5 for epic and 3 for marathon) and a type of connection modifier(1 for roads and harbors and 1,3 for railroads and harbors(after steam power spreads to this city)) and I'll edit the post to add some buildings modifier:

-Techs can spread to coastal cities when you build lighthose at spreader city and harbors have similar effects to roads(after steam power,harbors get similar effects to railroads).

-Stables,Markets,Seaports,University,Research Lab and Broadcast Tower increase tech spreading if you build them in the cities that receive techs and in the cities that spread techs.


I guess we can think in some national wonder or in a world wonder that can increase tech spreading. Any suggestions?

Very interesting idea. Would love to see it implemented to the game in some way. If they will ever add Religions to the game, they could spread in a similar way. All in all would make nicely complete concept

GenjiKhan said:

I guess we can think in some national wonder or in a world wonder that can increase tech spreading. Any suggestions?

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Well, The Great Library comes first in mind, why not The Great Lighthouse also. The Oracle and The Porcelain Tower definitely. Some new ones could be Petra, The Internet and The Parthenon. The National Broadcaster as a National Wonder.

GenjiKhan said:

and I'll edit the post to add some buildings modifier:

Click to expand...

building modifiers are already considered by PI index

GenjiKhan said:

I guess we can think in some national wonder or in a world wonder that can increase tech spreading. Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

Angariae - ancient persian postal service.
the great lighthouse also is a good candidate. moreover its current bonuces are quite pathetic.

I think that a 2-10% (depending on total number of civs) decrease in the amount of s after each civ discovers a tech would be sufficient. Civ4 does this, although to a lesser extent.

It wouldn't enable small empires to get techs first, but it would make-up (some of) the gap between large and small empires. It's also much simpler. And although it's a game and it doesn't really matter, it is realistic.