Capture Research

[meece]

bit late but:

It might be better if whenever you kill a new tech unit, capture a city with a new tech building, whatever, you have an option which goes "we can reverse engineer from captured material X science for a certain related tech for Y gold, do you want to?"

probably depending on various factors the gold amount drops, killed units give much less science than buildings etc.

This could even be related to either a new leader ability like "inquisitive: -50% to reverse engineering costs" or it's a world wonder's benefits or something along those lines with the actual amount being tweaked for balancing

 

[Admiral Armada]

I don't like the idea of killed units giving science. It seems to me that this would remove a major advantage to having a tech lead in a war, since the enemy could research those techs even faster.

 

[Scilly_guy]

And something that makes war a harder option is bad why? It just means that you should be more careful with hi tech units (hi tech in the relative sense). And if it was a random event then it is not something that would be happening all of the time.

 

[Admiral Armada]

I had not thought of it as a random event, i was under the impression that it would happen every time said unit was killed. It just seems kinda odd to have your enemy getting free research when fighting you.

 

[buffalo6542]

i dont remember tech being captured via rival unit dieing. The only tech capture i remember is through cities, and that didnt happened often

 

[Scilly_guy]

Its an idea (something that could happen), not something that happens or happened.

 

[rysmiel]

Buffalo6542 that is a lot harder to calculate than you would think. I think it makes alot more sense to provide some knowledge of Drama if the city has a theatre, some knowledge of maths for an Aqueduct, Metal Working if they have a forge, Gun Powder if they have built gunpowder units, or perhaps if gunpowder units are defeated at some point.

i think this is all too complicated; how about if you research one tech at a time, you get an amount of research from capturing a city depending on its size, whether it has a library or university and so on, any science specialists, and proportional to however many techs that civ is ahead of you. It's pointless getting only research towards gunpowder if that's not the research thread you are following at the time.