Current v1.13 Development Discussion

[archcapitalist]

Insane how much I missed here in a few months. I havent had civ on my new computer and have only monitored the forum through participated threads. Never saw the new main threads. Really excited about the new spawn mechanism

 

[Leoreth]

That will take some time still.

 

[archcapitalist]

That will take some time still.

I hope so, actually. I dont have my discs on me here, so wouldn't be able to install anyways.

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I think I will look more into the latter soon.

RFCE has a very good solution implemented even on the level of interface, which shows % discounts and penalties.

 

[Chep]

While I am always in favour of looking towards RFCE for inspiration, I am currently playing Realism Invictus (no RFC mechanics at all though, making its replay-value rather low for me but showing me once again how wonderful DoC and RFCE are), and I have to say, I love the mechanic they have, where open borders give both civs a significant decrease in research costs for all techs the other one has already researched. while that system is supposed to supplant tech trading, I think it might be fun to implement a "light" version in doc.
Yes, I know there is already something similar in place (or at least was at one time) where techs get cheaper the more civs you know who have researched those techs but RIs way of coupling it with open borders makes it more of a conscious thing, you have to decide whether or not those trade routes are worth allowing the other civ to catch up in techs, etc. (but then this has probably already been discussed 5-10 times here^^)

 

[ozqar]

Chep's idea for tech costs and open borders sounds spot on

 

[Leoreth]

RFCE has a very good solution implemented even on the level of interface, which shows % discounts and penalties.

Yeah, I have also thought that all these modifiers definitely need to be displayed in the tech advisor / progress bar tooltip (or where does RFCE do it?).

While I am always in favour of looking towards RFCE for inspiration, I am currently playing Realism Invictus (no RFC mechanics at all though, making its replay-value rather low for me but showing me once again how wonderful DoC and RFCE are), and I have to say, I love the mechanic they have, where open borders give both civs a significant decrease in research costs for all techs the other one has already researched. while that system is supposed to supplant tech trading, I think it might be fun to implement a "light" version in doc.
Yes, I know there is already something similar in place (or at least was at one time) where techs get cheaper the more civs you know who have researched those techs but RIs way of coupling it with open borders makes it more of a conscious thing, you have to decide whether or not those trade routes are worth allowing the other civ to catch up in techs, etc. (but then this has probably already been discussed 5-10 times here^^)

You're right, but I can't really comment at the moment because I'm not really sure how the current tech discount for techs discovered by others works. But I think that is the place to address this.

Tying it to open borders is an interesting idea, maybe it should even be the number of trade connections. Knowledge spread along trade routes after all. But that should probably wait until I can give some attention to trade in general.

In any case I find implementing a catch up mechanic a lot harder than a hold back mechanic, mainly because there are civs that are supposed to be backwards for some time, Congo for instance. I'm not sure if I can help a recently spawned civ like Canada catch up quickly without letting those backwards civs tech too fast at the same time.

 

[Chep]

The first thing I could think of - not sure if actually something civ keeps track of - would be to scale the techcost-decrease with the distance between your capitol and capitol of the civ that has/wants the tech in question.

This means that it will be easy to catch up to the technological level of your neighbours but harder to catch up to civs on the other side of the world.

Fictional Example: Canada spawns and is 3 techs behind compared to America (Agriculture, Mining, The Wheel) and Prussia has Mysticism and the Wheel which Canada doesn't. When it has open borders with those 2 civs, Canada now gets 25% faster research towards Agriculture & Mining and ~28-30% faster towards The Wheel but only something like 5-10% faster research towards Mysticism.

The numbers are just meant to display rough ratios not be the actual final numbers.

Consequences:
- Euro-civs will have an easy time being on the same tech level (might require some work to keep Russia and possibly Vikings a bit more backward, but then their capitols are a bit further from the rest)
- China would be able to keep its tech advantage by keeping its borders closed, research speed-up compared to Euros would be minimal, but other Asian civs could catch up to them (though just changing the likelyhood of them opening borders would change that)
- Congo can easily reach the level of Mali, get some help catching up to Arabia but will have a hard time catchung up to the Euros/Asians
- The US and the first South American civ to declare independence will be somewhat screwed because they dont have any civs capitol close to them, here something else would probably be needed.

Taking something like number of trade routes, number of tiles of cultural borders or just minimal distance between one of your cities and one of theirs all pose more problems than the above-mentioned approach in my opinion.

 

[Leoreth]

That's true. And I like if there was actually an incentive to keep borders closed. Especially for the player OB is usually a no brainer but that might reverse if your goal is to maintain a tech lead.

On the other hand, I also intend to make trade routes more distance dependent. So there might be a relation to them, depending on how they are changed.

 

[ezzlar]

Can OB affect cultural levels? It could represent foreign culture and immigration.

 

[Leoreth]

In which way?

 

[ales_]

By the way, where are the future features listed now?

 

[Chep]

while I have no idea how you want to change trade routes, I still feel that those are an inferior choice, since you have more traderoutes the more cities you have and the higher your tech level (having currency or the lighthouse or any of the lategame-effects that give traderoutes earlier than your rival means you profit more than they usually will.

Trade routes will always be something that you want, so having to make this choice between "yeah I want that juicy trade, man" and "dang, I dont want them to research MY techs " is quite fun.
Please try to also implement the feature showing you how much your current OBs reduce the tech cost when hovering over a tech/selecting them
(if that is unclear I can supply a picture of what I mean later)

 

[Leoreth]

By the way, where are the future features listed now?

Uh ... nowhere really.

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I have also thought that all these modifiers definitely need to be displayed in the tech advisor / progress bar tooltip (or where does RFCE do it?).

Tooltip. If you click on my sig and watch any of the videos in my RFCE++ story you will see it immediately . Also, did I mention that one of the RFCE creators, 3Miro, who was absent for 3 years, suddenly replied to me via PM?

 

[ezzlar]

In which way?

Well, I was thinking that you have foreign culture in your city just like when you conquer a city. 89% Romans, 6% Greek, 5% Egyptian. And that would give some penalties? Makes foreign culture a bad thing though.

I dont like the research boost for OB. Since you get trade routes they should represent both flow of goods and ideas since they can be used for both research and gold.

 

[Leoreth]

Tooltip. If you click on my sig and watch any of the videos in my RFCE++ story you will see it immediately . Also, did I mention that one of the RFCE creators, 3Miro, who was absent for 3 years, suddenly replied to me via PM?

Okay. And good to know 3Miro is back.

Well, I was thinking that you have foreign culture in your city just like when you conquer a city. 89% Romans, 6% Greek, 5% Egyptian. And that would give some penalties? Makes foreign culture a bad thing though.

I dont like the research boost for OB. Since you get trade routes they should represent both flow of goods and ideas since they can be used for both research and gold.

Yeah, culture could spread along trade routes, but I fear that the effect is either too strong or inconsequential ...

Your point is another reason why I would like to wait with any intricate stuff until I've had time to think about trade routes. At this point Chep will probably reply that it makes more sense to give tech boosts based on tech differences, while trade routes only give flat commerce no matter who you're trading with (and I'd agree). That's exactly why I want to change trade, though.

 

[ales_]

Uh ... nowhere really.

Will it be listed somewhere?

 

[Leoreth]

Don't know.

 

[Chep]

cool, I dont even have to post anymore

While somewhat realistic, I think spreading culture via trade routes is not a very good thing to add, since realistically the "stronger" culture from the bigger civ will probably hurt the smaller civ more than the other way around (and any mechanic that would counter this seems illogical to me).


So, what I am a lot more interested in is of course your idea for a possible rework of trade routes.

Some thoughts:
- yes trade routes "only" give commerce, but ultimately this gives the player the choice what she wants to do with this trade income: give it to her people to make them happier, get her scientists to study it, use it to plant her spies in the others civ or just sell the wares at a profit.
Changing trade routes to give research, spy points or something like that would remove that (admittedly) tiny choice.
- currently the player has very little control over trade routes, basically she can allow them via open borders or not. But giving her too much freedom could result in tedious micromanagement. Also ideas like establishing trade routes via special units sent to another city would reward civs with high production while civs like Indonesia would lose almost all of their power.
- damn forgot the last point, will probably add it later.


ah yeah, something like this

would be cool if you add any mechanics that change the techcost based on your diplomatic relations.
(in RI you get 50% tech bonus for having OB with 1 civ and additional 25% for each subsequent civ you open borders with if they all have that tech and you dont, but then there is no tech trading, so these values are higher than anything that DoC should get)

edit: seems I missed a letter for the pic