How to slow down tech

[Gen. Maximus]

How to slow down tech by about 5x instead adding cost to each individual techs as it will be tedious. Is there like a global multiplier which I can manipulate. I wish to retain the era of my scenario, don't want guns replacing swords too fast.

 

[Gedemon]

look for ResearchPercent values in GameSpeeds table

 

[Gen. Maximus]

thanks, will check that out

 

[Pablod]

trhat will change for the AI as well?
i did it and every civ was in future era when i was in industrial age

 

[Gen. Maximus]

OMG, is that is true, I need to change the tech cost directly! Looks like need some testing. Can anyone else confirm that?

 

[Spatzimaus]

trhat will change for the AI as well?
i did it and every civ was in future era when i was in industrial age

The problem is that whatever difficulty YOU play on, the AI is always playing on Chieftain. Or, in my mod, Prince. (You can change the AI handicap default fairly easily, but if you change it without fixing the imbalances in other areas, the AI will become pathetically easy to beat.) If you only changed ResearchPercent for the difficulty you play on, then you'll see the AI shoot past you. But if you change all of them at once, either through SQL or through a number of Update commands in XML, then it'll apply to the AIs as well.

So no, you do NOT have to change tech costs directly, although if you want a flat multiplier (say, x5) then a one-line SQL mod would do what you want.

In my own experience, the problem wasn't that the tech costs were all too low, it's that as you reached the later eras the cumulative bonuses of having Libraries, Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs just became too much. Likewise, the science boosts of Rationalism policies were just too large. So, in my own mod I lowered the building bonuses by ~33% (Libraries become +1 per 3 population, Universities become +20% increasing to +30% with the Free Thought Policy, Secularism gives +1 science per specialist instead of +2, and so on. The cumulative effect of these changes was to cut research progress in half in the late eras, without much of an impact on the Ancient Era speeds.

 

[Gedemon]

There is ResearchPercent from GameSpeeds and ResearchPercent from HandicapInfos, I was suggesting to change the one from GameSpeeds.

But I can see how raising cost there will make more apparent the advantage of the AI from it's handicap setting.

Solution : follow Spatzimaus example and set AI handicap level to prince, or level ResearchPercent from HandicapInfos.

 

[Gen. Maximus]

Solution : follow Spatzimaus example and set AI handicap level to prince, or level ResearchPercent from HandicapInfos.

I am not clear on this part. Yes, I see <ResearchPercent>100</ResearchPercent> line at both locations.
If one is playing standard speed game, and if I change the number from 100 to 500 for instance in the Gamespeeds file, this effect applies to player only while AI follow the number in the HandicapInfos file at Chieftain level which is at 100? This is what I can understand when I read your response with Spatzimaus's where he is explaining purely base on difference in difficulty levels in HandicapInfos file.

I'm not sure what is meant by setting AI handicap level to prince but I can see that number is 100 anyway, hence the AI research speed still won't slow.

I can deduce from all the responses that I should go into HandicapInfos file and do update changes for <ResearchPercent> to 500 for all difficulty level to ensure both AI and player gets the same effect. Correct?

 

[Spatzimaus]

I'm not sure what is meant by setting AI handicap level to prince but I can see that number is 100 anyway, hence the AI research speed still won't slow.

What he's saying is that if you set the AI's default handicap to Prince, and you always play on Prince for yourself, then you only need to change one entry instead of two. To be complete you should be changing ResearchPercent for every Handicap (or for every game speed, or for every map size, since the effective ResearchPercent is actually the combination of these three), but if you just wanted a quick-and-dirty solution for one particular game, then you don't need to do as much.

And as I said, you really need to decide whether the entire game's tech progress is too fast, or whether it's something that only becomes really out of control in the later eras. Quite a few mods have various graduated systems for slowing down the late game without impacting the early phases; some reduce research buildings (like mine), others increase the cost of each tech by a varying amount depending on its era, and so on. If you cut research by a factor of 5 in the Ancient, then it could be hundreds of turns before you unlock Mining or Calendar to harvest the local luxury resources. A player wouldn't do so badly at this, but it's a crippling drawback for the AI, since AI players don't evaluate the exact effects of each tech when they decide what to research next. An AI player might be stuck with an unconnected luxury for hundreds of turns, which'd have a huge impact on the gap between the player and the AIs, especially since if you're not reducing city growth by a similar amount the AIs will have huge cities with crippling unhappiness, while the player expands as normal.

 

[Gen. Maximus]

THis for a single scenario, since people may play at different difficulty levels I need to ensure all handicaps levels are changed. Thx!