Multiple research topics

[denyd]

I'd like to be able to allocate my research beakers among different items.

Example: You've got science at 70% which generates 50 beakers.

I'd like 25 beakers for pottery, 15 beakers to bronze working & 10 beakers to ceremonial burial. With a beakers to go til discovery displayed, so you don't end up wasting research. Also you'd be able to re-prioritize your research as the game changed.

 

[EddyG17]

would that be hard on the AI.

 

[denyd]

Not really.

The AI would first determine how many beakers it had available each turn and then apply them according to the current formula it uses to prioritize research today. In fact the AI would be improved as it would adjust this disbursement each turn to get the most powerful tech according to it's ratings ASAP and it wouldn't be skipping certain techs like it does not (like Printing Press & Polytheism)

 

[EddyG17]

In the Industrial Era all the AI civs priorize in Facisms.

 

[rcoutme]

An even better system might be to make it that research has a chance of getting the desired advance based on how much is done. If, for instance, you have 80% of beakers needed for pottery, why not make it 40% likely to be discovered. Any advance might be discovered, provided any research has been done on it. Make the maximum chance less than 100% as well (no one in the Americas had discovered the wheel).

This way, a civ might gain 3 or 4 advances in one turn yet then go for ages without a discovery. The science advisor could keep track of how much research has been done in a given field and let the player know when he has maxed out and need not allocate more beakers.

Thus, in the above case, the advisor might have a random mention (like in the city screen comments section but instead in research screen) "Great one, our thinkers are still trying to master the finer arts of pottery and expect progress soon! We have been trying to learn the means of using horses (i.e. wheel) and more research needs to be done (i.e. allocating beakers to it will be useful).

 

[MattII]

It was done like this in a game called Space Empires III, by Malfador Machinations, you mignt want to take a look.

 

[pirke]

And what is the advantage? If you spend 50% on pottery and 50% on masonry, you get both at the same time, if you put 100% on pottery, you have and then start on masonry 100%, by the time you get it, you already had a big advantage because half way you already had pottery.

 

[denyd]

But if you get within 1 turn of Pottery and everyone else gets it you can shift your focus to masonry and trade for pottery and get masonry in a shorter period. It's also quite helpful for getting the optional techs. You could run a 75% research on Banking with 25% for Music Theory. You'd get banking a little later, but down the road you'd get Music Theory, a tech you might not want to dedicate full research to.

 

[Arathorn]

pirke is right. Distributing research really doesn't help, because the most efficient mechanism is always full-bore on one topic (unless you can do 50-turn research on all the different topics, but that just screams exploit).

The idea can be incorporated into some of the different tech schemes being proposed around this area (different topics of research), but only if a bit of inertia is inserted. Researchers do well in one area but it takes time to change to full efficiency in another. This is actually realistic as well as improving gameplay.

This can be realized in a number of different ways. One obvious way would be that the slider can only be moved a few percentage points on any given turn, but I don't like that because it removes control from the player. A better harder but more complicated is that researchers (or research dollars or whatever) become more efficient over time spent in a given area. There are a bunch of "devil in the details" in this plan, but it could work.

Arathorn

 

[Volum]

Originally posted by Arathorn
t (unless you can do 50-turn research on all the different topics, but that just screams exploit).
Arathorn

Thats the first i tought when i saw this, that some cheatin human would find a way to research a bunch of different techs using minimal on science and getting a bunch of techs in 50 turns.
Wich would make it easier to stay caught up in techs.

While some of us are really struggeling in our first emperor game

 

[rcoutme]

But the random factor I suggested does help. This makes it far more difficult to determine exactly when you will get advances and which ones you will get. It allows civs that are way behind to catch up without breaking the piggy bank (because if you know civs with the advance then your chances of getting the advance would increase; even if you had done no research on it!)

This should be incorporated into Civ4 for a lot more fun and a lot more random madness.

 

[denyd]

My original suggestion was based on the Master of Orion research logic, which basically had a required beaker count for each tech and you would allocate spending to get the most needed tech to get 70% while spreading the balance of your science among 2-3 other techs. Once the most important one was researched you'd be able shift your priorities to another tech to get that one sooner.

To equate that to Civ terms, suppose you're able to generate 200 beakers per turn and Flight costs 700 beakers and Motorized Transport Costs 900 beakers and Radio costs 1100 beakers. You could research Flight in 4, MT in 5 and Radio in 6 total 15 turns. With my idea you allocate 50 to Radio, 50 to MT and 100 to Flight for the first 7 turns. Now you have flight, with 350 towards MT & Radio. For the next 5 turns it's 100 each, then 50 to MT and 150 to Radio, so now you have Flight & MT in turn 12 and 1000 towards Radio, next turn it's 100 to Radio and 100 to Advanced Flight and in turn 13 you've got all 3 and a little bit of AF. A better example would be Music Theory costing 300 beakers, you could put 10 beakers per turn to MT while reseaching other techs and get MT in 30 turns, while still researching other techs. Under this system there would be no more maximum turns to research a tech, if you wanted to put 10 beakers a turn at a 1100 Radio tech, it would take 110 turns to get it.

Just a little clarification to my original post

 

[Crazy Jerome]

One of the things that made MOO research work well is that you effectively "gained interest" on research that had been done so far. So it was overall much more efficient to spread research over several areas and let the interest compound, but you could dump almost everything into one topic if you really needed that tech in a hurry. It made another interesting strategic choice.

I think this kind of thing worked better in the MOO model than it would on the CIV tech tree, though. MOO had two very different characteristics:

1. You had six categories, and it was essentially the next thing in the category you researched. (IIRC, you could see what you were going to get when you started the research, but not what this would unlock further up the tech group.)

2. Not every tech was available to every CIV.

Now, you could put a system like this on top of the CIV tech tree, as long as you had, say, 4-8 tech categories and semi-redundant improvement and units of each type so that some could be skipped. So I might start research in the "education" group and get basic writing. Or I might get a substandard or better writing that gave me, respectively, more expensive or cheaper embassies. Or I might get some alternative form of writing that didn't permit embassies but allowed something else.

Certainly, I think the various knight UUs would better serve gameplay in a system like this, rather than attaching a specific UU to a CIV. But whether this would be too drastic a change from current CIV-think, I'm in doubt.

 

[rcoutme]

Well, you guys may hate this idea, but I think that some of the techs that give new units should have a variable on what kind of unit you get. Why is it useful to research Iron Working? Because we get swordsmen. However, those who researched Iron Working didn't know that!

What if units that came about due to tech advances had random numbers (within a given parameter) and if you didn't like the numbers you got, you could apply more research into that tech hoping for better units.

This would simulate the chance that is involved in actual research. The Germans, in WWII had the worst tanks of any major nation when they started the war. Later, they developed the best tanks of any nation (at least the strongest ones). They tried to develop nuclear weapons, but they didn't make it. The randomness of getting the breakthroughs and the randomness of how good those breakthroughs were is something that I miss in all of the Civ iterations.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I agree with this idea on principle, but feel it should go even further-as I've said in other posts!
Basically, instead of selecting SPECIFIC techs to research, you should instead have to break your science budget into broad tech categories, such as: 'Science', 'Commerce and Economics, 'Culture and Philosophy', 'Military', 'Industry and Infrastructure' and 'Naval and Exploration'.
The amount of your budget that you sink into each category will determine the approx. chance, and relative frequency, of discovering techs which fall into this category. The rub is that, like SMAC, what you actually discover within that category will be fairly random-though it will still be related to the era you are in AND whether you have any prerequisites for that tech! For instance, having a 'prerequisite' should no longer neccessarily prevent you from obtaining a particular tech-but HAVING one or, when appropriate, multiple 'prerequisites' will increase the chance of you getting that tech over another!
Other factors which would increase the chance of getting a tech from a particular category would be your civ characteristics-like militaristic, expansionist and the like. These characteristics would have a positive effect for researching certain tech categories, whilst having a negative effect on others! Cultural 'Flavours' might also have an influence on your chances of getting a particular tech, within a category, over another! For instance, whether you get monotheism or polytheism might depend on your civs 'cultural bent', as it were! Also, having a source of appropriate resource should also help in discovering a certain tech! For example, if you have managed to uncover a source of iron, then this should give you a bonus to your chances of discovering 'Iron Working', with the bonus being related to the size and number of the resource that you possess!
The last point is that, should you become aware of a specific tech, through diplomatic channels, for instance, then it should be possible to select that tech as the next one, in the appropriate category, that you wish to discover.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[sir_schwick]

Instead of the main tech having a % chance of appearing, lets change the idea of what techs produce. The techs in Civ are broad based principle advances. The units and improvements, governments, and special effects you got from them were applications of those principles. When you research the techs, all your civ starts automatically researching applications(if they can). Some applications would require other applications, a combination of principle techs, the prescence of certain resources, and even certain buildings or city/terrain conditions to be discovered. If you capture a civ that has applications you don't that you could research, they will become avaliable much more quickly(within 5 or 10 turns).

How does application research work? Each turn each application that can be researched has a certain base percentage of being researched. This bas percentage is set by the initial conditions of the civ when the application can first be researched. Each turn it does not become known, 1 or 2 percentage points are added. So within 100 turns an application must be done being reserached. Applications cannot be traded, but Principle techs can be.

What are these applications, it sounds kind of abstract?
My first example deals with Iron Working. When you have it researched, you will still not see Iron. Only two applications are avaliable right off the bat here. (1) Basic Iron Mining, (2) Lodestones. 1 will have a greater chance if you have lots of mountains and hills in your territory. 2 will have a greater chance if you have hill, mountains, and water in your territory(especially seawater). Lodestones help out mariners a tiny bit. Basic Iron Mining allows you to see Iron deposits that are very near the surface(there a a lot more out there once the apps are revealed). The presence of Iron in your territory or civ will allow further applications. If you have researched Warrior Code, your people will look into Basic Swordsmithing, thus Swordsmen is an applicaiton. Its chances of appearing are increased by Iron in your posession and each barracks in your civ. Another application is Iron Chains, which increases overall productivity(all that hauling and lifting). If you have the application Horsemen(Warrior Code + Horseback Riding(requires horses in territory)) then you research Armoured Horsemen if you have access to Iron and Horses. Chances increased by iron, horses, and barracks.

Players do not have the option of managing or even seeing what is being researched. They can no longer make down-to-the-turns precise plans and opening moves. Players would have to use what they have, and a civ might get temporary advantage from a certain application popping up, especially in war(Atomic Bomb in WWII). It would also add a flavour to selling Units and capturing enemy cities because they were advanced in the little stuff.

 

[wohmongarinf00l]

these are all good ideas but they require the player to give up a lot of control. just remember how badly people react to the randomness of the combat system.
i think this could be a parallel game to the basic civ4....
it would have cleaner code, more efficient algorithms and data structures and would cost $100...i'd buy it (if it also included my favourite things like better diplomacy and trade).

 

[Camilus]

It would be good you don't have to waste research. Other than that I don't see much use in it.

 

[Nlochman]

My biggest peeve in this game is that reaserching a religious Tech locks me in to discovering a specific religion. If Im Greece I don't want to discover Hinduism. I would like to establish a religion that makes a little more sense. It would be better if after aquiring the tech I could choose to discover Hinduism or establish a religion of my own.

 

[snepp]

Holy thread resurrection Batman!