Civilization without science

[MyNameWontFi]

Civilization 6 focuses way too much on science. A player ahead in science has an advantage in achieving all victory conditions and is completely invincible from invasions from other players which means that they rarely lose their scientific advantage. This makes scientific progress the number one priority for all civilizations and all other objectives secondary. I play my games with mods that halt players from advancing too far ahead in the tech tree (similar to this mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2904851117). This makes science a lot less important as you can only ever fall behind at most one era and makes other game mechanics more important. It also makes war more fun as it isn't decided by whoever gets the units from the next era first anymore.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this unorthodox way of playing the game.

 

[SaboteurINT]

This was the same in civ I, II, IIi, IV, V. It reflects Real World

 

[MyNameWontFi]

This was the same in civ I, II, IIi, IV, V. It reflects Real World

I'm confused what you mean. What mechanics or lack of mechanics did the previous civ games have?

 

[Gorbles]

There was a thread on this a long time ago by someone who a lot smarter than me r.e. Civ VI, and I believe it boiled down to Science being king in CiV, but hammers reign in VI. Or the other way around, I can't remember.

r.e. District progression, I'd rate hammers more. More hammers more things, more things, more growth, more growth, more worked land and Districts. Slingshotting also doesn't really exist in the way it did in V, if at all (which was a big part of Science being king in V).

 

[InsidiousMage]

There was a thread on this a long time ago by someone who a lot smarter than me r.e. Civ VI, and I believe it boiled down to Science being king in CiV, but hammers reign in VI. Or the other way around, I can't remember.

Back before the AI science bug got fixed, the AI wouldn't be able to maintain an army because it could only build advanced unit but didn't make enough gold to pay the maintenance and would have to disband units. And, since they now only had access to the same advanced units, they didn't have enough production to make them in a reasonable amount of time either. Players will have the same problem too if they only focus on science as well.

Furthermore, having high science doesn't help with unlocking civics, which are key too any victory type. Personally, I actually think its way too easy to generate culture and there should be another couple of sources of science in the game.

Finally, Civ6 is a snowball game, that's how you are supposed to play it. Build up your economy in the early game and then expand rapidly in the late to win what every victory type you settled on. Its just the way the game plays. Maybe it will be different for Civ7, maybe not.

And, as already mentioned, being competitive in technology and having huge advantages for being ahead is entirely historically accurate. Falling behind could be fatal and the Russians actually made some attempts at international disarmament and arms limitations before WW1 because they were falling behind.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

There was mentioned a while ago by someone of the possibility of science and culture/civics being combined into a singular "knowledge" currency. Not sure how it would be implemented, but it's interesting to think about.

 

[cain3456]

^ Sounds like a great leap backward to the way things were before Civ6. I like having separate tech and civics trees.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Finally, Civ6 is a snowball game, that's how you are supposed to play it. Build up your economy in the early game and then expand rapidly in the late to win what every victory type you settled on. Its just the way the game plays. Maybe it will be different for Civ7, maybe not.

It feels to me like I worry about having enough gold a lot for the first part and then once the economy is established I not longer have to worry about it. I think the game would improve by having be concerned about gold the whole game.

OP, having more battles with even tech on both sides does sound like fun. I don't think "civ without science" make the overall game more fun.

 

[canadamufc]

There was mentioned a while ago by someone of the possibility of science and culture/civics being combined into a singular "knowledge" currency. Not sure how it would be implemented, but it's interesting to think about.

Feel like that would dumb down the game, that currency sounds way overpowered. Unless it's implemented very specifically, I can just see every game going into "getting as much of this knowledge currency as possible".
Which, for one thing I give VI credit for, is that not every game is the same. Depending on the victory, it is not essential to be top science, top tourism, top military, top faith, etc. It's possible to win games while lacking in certain areas, which I like and feel increase the dynamics of the game.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

^ Sounds like a great leap backward to the way things were before Civ6. I like having separate tech and civics trees.

I do too which would be its main downside.

Feel like that would dumb down the game, that currency sounds way overpowered. Unless it's implemented very significantly, I can just see every game going into "getting as much of this knowledge currency as possible".
Which, for one thing I give VI credit for, is that not every game is the same. Depending on the victory, it is not essential to be top science, top tourism, top military, top faith, etc. It's possible to win games while lacking in certain areas, which I like and feel increase the dynamics of the game.

Yeah, I guess by making another overpowered currency, effectively replacing one of the most overpowered currencies, wouldn't be the best solution. The hardest part is to make sure it's not really essential to more than one victory type, with the main one being the tech victory.

 

[ezzlar]

Science is not at all random. Seldom requires practical uses (even if eurekas are a shot at it). Perfectly linear output.

Not so much real life.

 

[UWHabs]

It feels to me like I worry about having enough gold a lot for the first part and then once the economy is established I not longer have to worry about it. I think the game would improve by having be concerned about gold the whole game.

OP, having more battles with even tech on both sides does sound like fun. I don't think "civ without science" make the overall game more fun.

I think the expenses in the game aren't balanced enough. The fact that I only loosely could tell you any maintenance cost in the game, and basically once you have a commerce hub and a few trade routes never worry one bit about crashing your economy I think is a problem. Especially when you get involved in a global war, there really should be a much bigger cost to maintaining troops. Like, if unit maintenance outside of your home territory cost like 10x what it does now, suddenly you might have to pause a war because you can't afford it anymore. It probably should cost more for your troops marching through the wilderness than it costs to keep them fat and happy patrolling your cities at home.

I wouldn't mind seeing science not be the only way to get ahead. But I think the answer to that is probably more about giving you penalties for not developing the rest of your empire, maybe. Like if every point of science you earned per turn more than you earned in culture came with a 50% penalty, or maybe if you effectively got like a 10% penalty to science for each district you were "missing" (or more likely handled on the flipside, where, say, the Gunpowder technology cost 5x what it does now, but you gained 5% bonus to your science while researching it for every encampment building in your empire). Eurekas were a good first step, but I think the game suffers a little bit from being too linear still. Even if we could go back a little to the old days where you had different routes to a technology, if you combine that with a change to how eurekas are handled, that could give you more avenues. Maybe hard science is one way to get ahead, but another civ just starts in the right spot on the map and they have an easier path.

 

[Dragabond]

Having to actually funnel ludicrous amounts of money into scientific research would be more realistic. That just isn't properly represented by the upkeep cost for the district & buildings.

That aside, I've never been a fan of speeding through the tech tree. It makes the game unfun for me. Sending a unit off to war and having them be obsolete even before they reach the front is...insanely silly. I slow things right down with mods and it works out okay, even if it does create brand new issues.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Science is not at all random. Seldom requires practical uses (even if eurekas are a shot at it). Perfectly linear output.

Not so much real life.

Not sure what is your real point here. Are you saying that science in reality is not at all random or just right about the contrary ?

I mean, science is random, technics are more linear. You can't obtain a haut fourneau in the first try, you have to make camp fires first and even "find" fire. The degrees of temperature here are, here, linear. I would say. The principles of the steam machine were invented in Antiquity. But, we didn't have the tools to build it.

And yet, technics, while influenced by pure science, influence science on its turn. We have no clue if the E.T. discovered the same things as us, or in the same order. We discovered the transistor, that revolutionized the society, but if there was something similar, more powerful and more simple at the same time ?

We have known the cold war, and the WWIII is at our door, but was this the case for the E.T. ? Did they get nuclear fission that early ? Didn't we tangle the brushes by highjacking some E.T. (or futuristic) technologies so now we don't even know where to search ? (we are, in spite of our increadible tech, at point 0 as to traveling into other stars reasonably, which is the only, the ONLY thing that gives importance to science : even if we could get all somewhat immortal, there would be no more space for every family, even if we could resurrect people from the past, and the present accidents, there wouldn't be enough space, etc. Not to mention one of the greatest, if not biologically programmed, joy of the life which is to reproduce and multiplicate, so basically one given species is not very good at preserving itself, it mutates and becomes something else or get extincted for other species to grow. We are one "intelligent" species. Or at least we see the void between the moments. That makes each of us go in whatever direction. Will this chaos lead us to a quicker extinction, or will a handful of us save all the other ones ? As to a species ? Physically ? Or is there an ascension of the Soul that a lot of religions try to answer ? See, there are deep connexions at science with religion. The only problem I have with them, is that they need belief, not explanations as I did simply above. If anything, religions have been invented by E.T. that felt so superior that they couldn't believe that simple explanations were understandable by us, at least in Antiquity. Unless we need to ignore this apple in order to do so ? You can't sleep willingly, or at least not with a certain level of it. In a moment of trouble, I've asked God once to give me sleep. It worked. Even earlier, I've asked Satan. It didn't work. Sorry Satan, but we don't have a deal here. Anyway, I had way enough sorcery to deal with.)

Oops, I did it again. Sorry for that !

 

[Urlance Woolsbane]

I think the problem lies generally with the tech tree, which projects the relatively recent phenomenon of Research and Development all the way back to 4,000 BC. The eureka mechanic is a step in the right direction, and I think there might be merit in a future Civ game making it the primary means of technological advancement until the the late game; science buildings could serve to lessen the requirements for eurekas (e.g. you only need 2 iron mines instead of 3 for a given eureka, provided you have 2 libraries) or to prevent tech from being lost (another mechanic I think that Civ is in dire need of)

 

[Disgustipated]

Speaking of Eurekas, I think the bonus should be reduced to 25%. Qin's bonus should probably be 50%. I feel like it takes up too much priority as is. It should be a fun little thing to help you out, but not be completely game changing.

I'm okay with the importance of research as is, but I definitely believe in tech diffusion. If you are in contact with other civs, then techs should become cheaper for techs that are discovered by 2 or more civs. This is already in the game to some degree I believe. I might actually bump up the benefit.

By the time you get to modern era, I feel like production should be just as important as research in achieving goals. And I of course would like to see the hammer bonus of chopping eliminated in the modern era and beyond.` More focus should be put on building actual infrastructure to help production.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

By the time you get to modern era, I feel like production should be just as important as research in achieving goals. And I of course would like to see the hammer bonus of chopping eliminated in the modern era and beyond.` More focus should be put on building actual infrastructure to help production.

There could be more "Manhattan Projects" ah, projects which must be completed before some advancement becomes available.

 

[UWHabs]

There could be more "Manhattan Projects" ah, projects which must be completed before some advancement becomes available.

The problem game-wise for that is that you sort of always need *something* to be researching. You could have it take a seriously long time, but you do need something. Although I guess you could always have it set up where like at certain points, the science cost for the next tech is like 10x what it is now, and have the project that speeds up your science by 10x when you finish it. So while you can always still keep researching, you basically end up in like a dark age until you get through the project.

The other thing would be like how you get negative diplo favor penalties for carbon emission or grievances, you could also apply those negatives to your science, for example. So if you are at -500 grievances you get like -50% science. If you don't have a direct economic impact of war, something like that could sort of simulate the dark ages where global fighting and struggle was hampering scientific research for a long time.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

The problem game-wise for that is that you sort of always need *something* to be researching. You could have it take a seriously long time, but you do need something. Although I guess you could always have it set up where like at certain points, the science cost for the next tech is like 10x what it is now, and have the project that speeds up your science by 10x when you finish it. So while you can always still keep researching, you basically end up in like a dark age until you get through the project.

The Manhattan Projects allows you to build atomic bombs but doesn't stop you researching new techs, but I like the approach you suggest.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I'm confused what you mean. What mechanics or lack of mechanics did the previous civ games have?

As @InsidiousMage wrote, all of the Civ games in the franchise have elements of the "snowball rolling downhill", that is, growing larger as it rolls. All of them have a yield, usually "beakers per turn" or some research points per turn, that scales up with population. The early games (1-4) allowed the player to set a slider, to allocate the overall production of the cities/empire to either produce "gold"/currency or research. By making good early decisions, it was possible to secure a solid, growing economy and support a large enough military to achieve the player's goals: either to deter aggression, or be the aggressor. Once the player has a lot of well-built, functioning cities, it's hard to slow them down. The underlying models of yields increasing with population and advanced tech scale up with empire size, in all the games.

A key difference between Civ6 and the earlier games is the AI's ability to use these mechanics to support a large military and invade other players, either other AI or the human player. Civ3 (my favorite) and Civ4 AI players would routinely build large forces and wipe out their neighbors. I've been on the receiving end of sizeable invasions. I've also seen large AI armies in Civ5; in all of these games, the AI includes troops that are advanced... as well as some stragglers that are left over from earlier eras.

Since I like to go for Science victories in all the franchise games, including Civ6, I have seen AI with GDRs walking around. The key difference is that they rarely invade *me*; they have mostly served as stout defenders when I invade them.