Civ 7 research idea: You can research more than one node at a time

[DeckerdJames]

You can choose to divide research potential across any tech nodes, and the research effort will be divided so that the final nodes all unlock on the same turn. In Civ 6 terms, for example, if you wanted cartography, to unlock ocean travel, and skirmishers at the same time to pursue a renaissance-era exploration agenda, you could alt-select both of them and they would finish in the same turn.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Wouldn't it be better to have one sooner and the other one at this very time you otherwise would have both of them ? Like it is now. Just saying.

This is similar to "I want several build queues". But it's always better to have one build faster and the second at the time you would have otherwise get both of them at the same time. Unless the queue is splitted by "force", but it's hard to imagine nobody would complain to have a mean to unite them into one. Unless we have different kind of production yields, like Shields (mostly produced by buildings like Forge and specialists into these buildings, and strategic tiles like Iron, to build military units), Hammers (mostly found in woods for building buildings), and Cogs (mostly produced by Workshops and specialists into it, used for precision buildings, engineering and such) ?

 

[historix69]

From a practical point of view, researching different techs in different cities seems logical.

The problem when researching the same tech in all your cities is that it causes a lot of communication and redundancy ... one research team makes a small progress and then has to inform all the other research teams in other cities about the progress in the shared project. Sending letters costs time, especially in ancient and medieval times. Then they have to check if the progress is actually new or locally known. All this costs (research) resources. It's not like they start in stone age with the Internet and can share all the data instantly and work like one team world wide. My guess is that the effort to keep all cities informed about the project costs more resources than researching the tech in your super-science-city alone. (In Civ 5 there was a research penalty of several % for each city depending on map size. Unfortunately there was no option to exclude such cities from research who increased tech costs more than they contributed to research.)

Similar to heurekas, researching certain techs in specific environments should give a bonus, eg researching a naval tech in a coastal city should give a small bonus each turn.
Trade with nations who know techs should also add a small bonus per turn to each such tech.

Cities should be able to switch projects, eg after finishing a tech the super-science-city should be able to take over a project from another city, check current progress (which may take some time) and then work on the project.
Maybe a small group of neighbouring cities connected with roads and with libraries or universities would be able to efficiently share a project by having annual meetings. (Research cluster)

This would probably lead to a game where maybe only 8 cities or 8 locally connected clusters of cities would research up to 8 techs in parallel, the usual width of the tech tree. No need to come up with penalties like corruption to prevent 100 cities adding research to one tech project.

 

[Chiss5618]

From a practical point of view, researching different techs in different cities seems logical.

The problem when researching the same tech in all your cities is that it causes a lot of communication and redundancy ... one research team makes a small progress and then has to inform all the other research teams in other cities about the progress in the shared project. Sending letters costs time, especially in ancient and medieval times. Then they have to check if the progress is actually new or locally known. All this costs (research) resources. It's not like they start in stone age with the Internet and can share all the data instantly and work like one team world wide. My guess is that the effort to keep all cities informed about the project costs more resources than researching the tech in your super-science-city alone. (In Civ 5 there was a research penalty of several % for each city depending on map size. Unfortunately there was no option to exclude such cities from research who increased tech costs more than they contributed to research.)

Similar to heurekas, researching certain techs in specific environments should give a bonus, eg researching a naval tech in a coastal city should give a small bonus each turn.
Trade with nations who know techs should also add a small bonus per turn to each such tech.

Cities should be able to switch projects, eg after finishing a tech the super-science-city should be able to take over a project from another city, check current progress (which may take some time) and then work on the project.
Maybe a small group of neighbouring cities connected with roads and with libraries or universities would be able to efficiently share a project by having annual meetings. (Research cluster)

This would probably lead to a game where maybe only 8 cities or 8 locally connected clusters of cities would research up to 8 techs in parallel, the usual width of the tech tree. No need to come up with penalties like corruption to prevent 100 cities adding research to one tech project.

That seems to be a very complex system with a lot of micro - I'm not sure it's worth the hassle and learning curve when the current system works. Granted, science snowballing is a problem, but I think that having to set a tech to research in each city would be too annoying. It also takes up production - how will cities in the early game research tech?

 

[historix69]

That seems to be a very complex system with a lot of micro - I'm not sure it's worth the hassle and learning curve when the current system works. Granted, science snowballing is a problem, but I think that having to set a tech to research in each city would be too annoying. It also takes up production - how will cities in the early game research tech?

It is not much more work than the current system. For each researchable tech you set a city ... and in these cities you can focus on science, eg by using specialists. Just 1 action per tech ... you don't assign 100 cities to research ca 8 techs in parallel and then assign 100 cities for the next 8 techs.
In early game it would be mostly the capital with higher population and science improvements to research techs.

The availability of techs would change a bit compared to current gameplay but by adjusting tech costs and research boni I think that overall time to research the tech tree should not change. Adding individual research boni based on terrain, resources, buildings for specific techs (similar to the heurekas) would add some plausability and variety to the tech game.

 

[Chiss5618]

It is not much more work than the current system. For each researchable tech you set a city ... and in these cities you can focus on science, eg by using specialists. Just 1 action per tech ... you don't assign 100 cities to research ca 8 techs in parallel and then assign 100 cities for the next 8 techs.
In early game it would be mostly the capital with higher population and science improvements to research techs.

The availability of techs would change a bit compared to current gameplay but by adjusting tech costs and research boni I think that overall time to research the tech tree should not change. Adding individual research boni based on terrain, resources, buildings for specific techs (similar to the heurekas) would add some plausability and variety to the tech game.

Oh, okay, I think I was misunderstanding you. Do you mean that when choosing a tech to research via the tech tree, you're also prompted to select which city you're researching it in? I thought you meant that you would research tech like a city project. While your idea is good, I'm not sure how tall play would work. Tall play is already pretty bad in VI (except for like 3 civs) and that science change could kill it completely if not compensated for.

 

[historix69]

Oh, okay, I think I was misunderstanding you. Do you mean that when choosing a tech to research via the tech tree, you're also prompted to select which city you're researching it in? I thought you meant that you would research tech like a city project. While your idea is good, I'm not sure how tall play would work. Tall play is already pretty bad in VI (except for like 3 civs) and that science change could kill it completely if not compensated for.

Since you can have many (100+) cities, tech selection like a city project would probably be the better choice. Otherwise you would end selecting a city in an endless city list unless you can sort and filter the list based on science production.

Tall play usually has fewer but bigger cities with more science, so they should be able to research techs per city faster. However if a wide empire also manages to build many tall cities, it may have an advantage, researching more techs in parallel.

 

[BuchiTaton]

A similar idea for a revamp of Science mechanics:

Each player start the game with a slot to assign a Science Project, this first queue is our "National Science Project" line that is always avaible and use the science yield from any avaible unspecialized science yield source. Then later on game each Campus allows additional slots for more Science Projects, each one named after the city the campus is in, each of these additional Science Project queues use only the science yield from his how city.
Now each project have a goal measured in Science, these project are usually (but not only) a new Technology. For example Sailing need to achieve a goal of 50 science units, BUT this science was not stacked and then expended to start the research, the science would start to be accumulated by developing the project. So the global learning is never spent but accumulated to achieve milestones in your empire wide science accumulate that allows to Advance Era.

So Science Projects are like cities production queue when working on City Projects, but this time the Projects can be:
- Research, a Technology from the Technology Tree (close to a net).
- Grant, provide temporal bonus to certain areas like Agronomy to Food, Economy to Wealth, Theology to Religion, etc. Plus attract some kind of Great People like Scientists, Engineers, Philosophers and Artists.
- Breed, improve and/or create copies of crops and livestock resources.
- Prospect, a city area for artifacts/specimens (both cultural and natural) and mining resources (basically replace Archaeologist micro).
- Construct, parts of the Science Victory mechanism.
All of these Science Project options have their own science accumulation goals.

Finally like the production rate of every City come from their different modifiers, each Research Line would have their modifiers that provide them different rates of Learning (for example the improvements of X Campus and terrain features of that city). So we should choose the best ones for the proper project.