Civilization without science

[reddishrecue]

I remember that civilization 1 had a revolution as soon as you researched monarchy and then when you had an increase of population from this new government, monarchy, or you as the king and no longer despot, you start to grow a lot more population which ultimately led to a demand for luxuries. It was neat having large cities with large populations but no science and then the production would allow a lot of units to be produced depending on the revenues that you have as well since luxuries were needed so badly for a larger population.
This little experiment of mine was entertaining because I always went despot government all the way in civilization 1 and trying different governments were all new to me and waited until railroads for higher populations in most cities.
However, as time passed by, other civilizations outperformed my civilization in science and technology. Better units would appear while I still had the same old primitive units, catapults, knights etc.
I wonder if we were to remove the science part of civilization then there would be a large revenue part for purchasing whatever it is you need and luxuries for making your citizens happy to keep working. No new units would be improved unless purchased. There's still revenues and luxuries which can be a part of the success of the civilization if there wasn't any science. However, other civilizations that have science can ultimately out tech our civilization if we don't use science anymore.

 

[ezzlar]

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 !

I meant that science in Civ is 0% random. You can pick your advances and the rate of output is constant (given science building yields). Which is not so realistic.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I meant that science in Civ is 0% random. You can pick your advances and the rate of output is constant (given science building yields). Which is not so realistic.

Oh I see... so you meant in Civ... that makes sense. However, that would take a good amount of work and fantasy to make it really different from History.

 

[UWHabs]

Oh I see... so you meant in Civ... that makes sense. However, that would take a good amount of work and fantasy to make it really different from History.

You could set it up like the blind research from Alpha Centauri, where you don't know what you're researching - it would pick techs randomly for you (although you could direct if you want to research more towards military or economy or environmentalism or whatnot).
The problem with a random beakers per turn is that you're going to run into a bad string of RNG and have things stall and people won't find that fun. Maybe you could derive a system where like all the beakers per turn go into like a global great scientist pool, and every turn one civ is like randomly selected to get a new technology (within some limits, like maybe you can't "win" the tech race 2 turns in a row, or are guaranteed one every X turns, or something else). Would have to think up how to balance that out if you wanted to go that route. It would be curious if something like that would be too random or not, and how you set it up so that you don't simply end up just wasting all your science while someone else freeloads.

 

[StargazingDog]

I feel that you do need some sort of limit on the science in Civ 6. It is far too easy to get a huge lead. In my last game, I hit industrial era in 900AD. I wasn’t even trying, it just happened naturally. I’ve since played many games of Civ 5, and it doesn’t seem to have the same issue.

I wonder if anyone has made a mod for limited tech discoveries, like Civ 2 handled it. When you selected research, it gave you a list with only a few of the possibilities, and you were limited to those. So, if you wanted something specific, there was a chance it wouldn’t even be on the list yet. Sid Meier mentioned in a GDC talk that he preferred this style. It doesn’t make sense for a civilization to say “I want gunpowder”, and know the precise set of technologies needed to realize it.

 

[Naokaukodem]

You could set it up like the blind research from Alpha Centauri, where you don't know what you're researching - it would pick techs randomly for you (although you could direct if you want to research more towards military or economy or environmentalism or whatnot).

I don't really remember how it worked in AC, although I remember the different domains of tech. It is sure more convenient to do such thing in a fantasy/SF world than historical though.

The problem with a random beakers per turn is that you're going to run into a bad string of RNG and have things stall and people won't find that fun. Maybe you could derive a system where like all the beakers per turn go into like a global great scientist pool, and every turn one civ is like randomly selected to get a new technology (within some limits, like maybe you can't "win" the tech race 2 turns in a row, or are guaranteed one every X turns, or something else). Would have to think up how to balance that out if you wanted to go that route. It would be curious if something like that would be too random or not, and how you set it up so that you don't simply end up just wasting all your science while someone else freeloads.

Random beakers can't exist if you don't adjust the tech cost to the same level. Basically every tech would cost the same, and a number from say 1 to 100 would be generated (for your civ science yields) ? But it would miss out on an important aspect of Civ : improving your science. And if you can still improve your science, then instead of having a number every turn from 1 to 100, you could end up with number like 1 to 10, 1 to 100, 1 to 200, 1 to 500, 1 to 1000 or an adjusted average, like 50 to 200 for example. This way, more advanced techs should still cost more, but at the end the laws of the probabilities would make so that you end up with the same exact effect than the previous Civs.

I feel that you do need some sort of limit on the science in Civ 6. It is far too easy to get a huge lead. In my last game, I hit industrial era in 900AD. I wasn’t even trying, it just happened naturally. I’ve since played many games of Civ 5, and it doesn’t seem to have the same issue.

My reciepe to win a science victory in Deity is choosing a civ with an early and strong UU, conquer one neighbour and develop science, sloting all the science cards (2) and having as many envoys as possible with scientific CS. If Geneva is in, I want to be its master. Other than that, I don't like building theater squares (and btw I don't have the time for them) and religious victory seems impossible with all the religious units AI spam. Rests Diplomacy and Domination, but I'm pretty bad at the first, although I can improve (knowing what the AI will choose as resolutions, and it's too bad there's no other way to gain DV points other ways than just statue of liberty, but I guess it would end up Diplomacy everytime if it were the case), and Domination... let's say that I'm too busy building my campuses and their buildings (universities so costly), industrial zones and their buildings (to build universities and research labs faster, and space rockets too), a couple of commercial hubs not to mention builders, city center buildings, settlers, etc. etc. In the end Deity is a great challenge for me.

I wonder if anyone has made a mod for limited tech discoveries, like Civ 2 handled it. When you selected research, it gave you a list with only a few of the possibilities, and you were limited to those. So, if you wanted something specific, there was a chance it wouldn’t even be on the list yet. Sid Meier mentioned in a GDC talk that he preferred this style. It doesn’t make sense for a civilization to say “I want gunpowder”, and know the precise set of technologies needed to realize it.

Problem with that is you want to remember which tech leads to which. For example, in Deity you want the happiness building ASAP, the one that will allow you to have past 2 pop cities. It's not very far, so you don't have to try too hard. Nothing prevents you to draw the whole tree, but it's boring and, if wwe can have ingame, useless. The only way I can see this working is having random connections like in the Civ6 techs and civics shuffle. The only reason why I don't use it is because I'm not sure if AIs know it by advance, giving them yet another advantage I definitely couldn't compete with. Another thing, in multiplayer, is that players like to make plans in order to win, so that most of them don't like having this shuffle.

 

[Kotofei]

Nyet, science is fine.

The AI doesn't usually run away with science, and when they do, hey, it makes the game challenging for a change. New Kongo sister did it to me a few weeks ago with a T280 science victory. Can't win 'em all...