Active Research Discussion

[CaiusDrewart]

I don't really care what they do with bonuses, the issue with 5 isn't the way research is conducting (although tying it to population has it's problems. I liked commerce better). The main issue is the tech tree being completely inflexible. In civ4 you could beeline stuff, trade it around, backfill and slingshot. Every strategy had tradeoffs. Civ5 it's like you can't go more than 1 or 2 levels deep without getting everything prior cus everything's a prereq and the tree just isn't that big either.

From the designer comments so far, I really get the sense that they think Civ V was way too strategically inflexible, and that they want to change that. Which is a very promising attitude for Civ VI.

 

[Hail]

The main issue is the tech tree being completely inflexible. In civ4 you could beeline stuff, trade it around, backfill and slingshot. Every strategy had tradeoffs. Civ5 it's like you can't go more than 1 or 2 levels deep without getting everything prior cus everything's a prereq and the tree just isn't that big either.

the civ5's tech tree has only AND prerequisites. adding some ORs will go a long way toward adding flexibility and beelines to the tech tree.

which way civ6's devs went is yet to be seen, but after civ:be I am skeptical.

 

[V. Soma]

I think I remember posting something like this in the suggestions forum before.

a long, long time ago:

Conditioned Technological Development

 

[CivCube]

the civ5's tech tree has only AND prerequisites. adding some ORs will go a long way toward adding flexibility and beelines to the tech tree.

which way civ6's devs went is yet to be seen, but after civ:be I am skeptical.

Soren Johnson was pretty adamant about OR-gates. It was really weird when Civ 5 went backwards.

 

[Hail]

Soren Johnson was pretty adamant about OR-gates. It was really weird when Civ 5 went backwards.

completely agree about OR-gates.
civ5 has alot of gameplay-on-rails (players will get roughtly the same number of social policies per game, etc.) anyway.

 

[MIS]

Active Research: won't this just encourage people to do what they should be anyway; spend the first part of the game Xploring and Xpanding? My first city is inland? I'll research those techs while expanding toward the coast.

I want to see what they do with Tall v Wide. If 7+ cities is optimal (like CivBE), this shouldn't make a difference.

 

[Genesis_26317]

That's the difference between me and you. I prefer the game having strict rules for what you can build and what you can do with what you currently have. Placing such emphasis on resources should be what Civilization is all about. The Egyptians wouldn't be the Egyptians we all know about if they were placed somewhere in the Hindu Kush region. I would have the game setup this way and place rules for the world builder to properly place civilizations like Egypt on rivers. And have an option to turn it off if you want a more random game, where Egypt may be placed somewhere in the tundra...

Oh man those would be some COLD Egyptians is they chose to still dress the same...

 

[CivCube]

I want to see what they do with Tall v Wide. If 7+ cities is optimal (like CivBE), this shouldn't make a difference.

With unstacked cities, Tall is also Wide now. Either way, your buildings and Wonders will start to bump up against other civs. With Active Research compelling people to go for strategic tiles besides resources, it's going to be king of the hill every game.

 

[MIS]

With unstacked cities, Tall is also Wide now. Either way, your buildings and Wonders will start to bump up against other civs. With Active Research compelling people to go for strategic tiles besides resources, it's going to be king of the hill every game.

Don't understand this. You mean unstacked cities will favor less cities (e.g. 4) more cities (e.g. 7), or that it won't make a difference?

 

[CivCube]

Don't understand this. You mean unstacked cities will favor less cities (e.g. 4) more cities (e.g. 7), or that it won't make a difference?

It will add something new to the existing dynamic. I think you'll have the same kind of choices when it comes to Tall vs Wide, but your building choices will be more visible to your opponents. A Tall civ will have more bonuses but also more military targets.

 

[MIS]

I think that will affect MP more than SP. Who know's what the AI will do, but I doubt it would declare war just to bomb a few buildings (rather than take the whole thing). I can see people doing this to each other (especially a run-away) in MP.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Currently my expectation is that Active Research will have no effect, and just be deadweight. It no longer astounds me when mechanics are revealed and within minutes some fan has derived some system off of the name alone that sounds 150% better than the 4, 5, 6 year device brewed up by the dev studio.
Keying research off of your actions? Tubular, man. What we've actually been confirmed: bonuses from securing resources and land and scouting and land and land (and maps and land).

All that's been described is a gimmick, and one which mostly specifies your approach to expanding the way you would anyway. Try to imagine how Active Research would apply to Medeival Era technology, or Atomic Era. I can't do it.

What is the condition for accelerating Mathematics research? "Build 1 Catapult, 2 Archer, 3 Footmen AH AH AH" ?

It's sugar water. Gives you a buzz, but not mental activity.

edit: At least raw science output was the right call, as opposed to a multiplier. This kind of math was necessary to make the bonuses felt in comparison to tech-output as an alternative

 

[Louis XXIV]

Soren Johnson was pretty adamant about OR-gates. It was really weird when Civ 5 went backwards.

I understand the design philosophy, which was clarity of strategy. It's not a bad idea, but, to me, it led to beelining in a way that felt unbalanced. To me, it was a fundamental mistake to have a "military tech path." I understand the importance of reducing the learning curve. That's been a problem with Civilization for a long time (and I hope the mentioned tutorials help), but I would spread units, buildings, etc. all across the tree for balance reasons alone.

Anyway, on this topic, I'll repost my thoughts from the Polygon thread:

The tech tree stuff could work although I'll say I'm cautiously optimistic. I don't want to force people into a path where they have no other choices (and, thus, limiting strategy that way). I also don't want someone with a bad map draw to be hopeless, although the map should obviously matter.

 

[civvver]

You don't really even need OR gates, you need divergent paths that don't have to come back together for a long time, or only have to come together for a couple techs. They might be key techs, but they aren't required for a looong time. Like civ4 eventually you need everything to really get out of industrial into modern era, like you need the bottom half with economics and steel to get to the top half with assembly lines and so on. But you don't need any of that to get say communism and beeline that civic. I guess OR gates help a lot with that though in some cases. Civ4 certainly had more.


Let's make an example, pick a tech to beeline like gunpowder. Civ4 go click on it, it's 11 techs but you skip like everything in the tree in the middle ages period. You just need theology into education into gunpowder. In civ5 you tech the entire bottom half of the tree and it's 13 techs. Civ4 has more techs I think 92 to like 80 in bnw so percentage wise it's like 11% vs 16% as well.

 

[MIS]

CivBE had a "tree", but I think it made it too easy to get to the end techs (especially with sources of free techs). Civ III had optional techs by era.

I think they should do whatever is more realistic. I'm not sure what that is.

 

[kingchris20]

I wonder how the tech tree will look, it would be nice to see the possibilities.

It better be a tree, and not that silly web thing from CIVBE

 

[DefiantMars]

It better be a tree, and not that silly web thing from CIVBE

Bite your tongue! Yes the tech web did have problems, but it was a novel idea. That said, I don't think it really have a place in historical civ anyway as the BE system deals with an open ended result where with the main series we have historical technology to deal with.

I do really like the idea that technology will be more active affair. If I'm on an island or coast, I would think that my civ would be a bit better at figuring out how to deal with all that water compared to a landlocked civ in most scenarios.

 

[gunnergoz]

Should timber resource help speed the ship building process, and speed up your technological research for ship building techs, instead of just being right next to the coast with a possible fish resource? How can you go on with the immersion if you are on a coast but not surrounded by trees? Like a desert terrain.

There were early reed boats for local transport in some cultures with limited access to lumber, so it is not necessary to have trees to have maritime trade unless you want larger (oceanic seagoing) trade vessels.

 

[kirbdog]

The addition of "or" gates, especially if implemented as a counting function (minimum X out of Y), could do a lot. Even if the stock game made little use of it, I'm sure the mod community wouldn't mind.

For example, you could need to do 2-3 out of the 4-5 foundational techs for Medieval (chosen from Philosophy, Currency, Engineering, and Optics, say) to move on to the techs in the next era. This would allow you to create more opportunities for beelines within each era (with less interdependence between branches within an era), while also providing checkpoints to make sure that the pacing of technology overall is appropriate (especially useful if this reduces the need to organize your tech order entirely around technology-boosters, because you can't move on to researching "the University" until you've done some "GE requirements" [other techs] in the ancient era).

The developers would still need to work on balancing things to reduce the effect of utterly dominant strategies, but that's always the case.

 

[dexters]

I like it. Tired of the 'best start' 'best research gambit'

They've already started that somewhat in Civ5 as the early game between the same Civs can vary greatly depending on geography and proximity to other AI and city states. But really good players tend to overpower those variables with their exploits and set strats.

So it's good that they're continuing down that path. But I feel like they've shortchanged Civ5 a bit as I've always felt Civ5 starts, unlike say Civ4 or 3, are some of the most varied in Civilization games.

You can play the same civ on the same map settings and get wildly different trajectories in the early gamw