Population Based Science

[RebelSchutze]

A suggestion I wanted to pose to see what the general consensus might be.

In a personal scenario pack that I may release soon if anyone is interested, I have added 1 science to every citizen regardless of job. This is designed to influence research rate by the number of citizens. Ofc, this goes with some tweaks; base time to research is doubled and I also made each pop require 3 food to curve growth and offset the major advantage that agricultural civs would already have with this system.

The justification for this system is to try to emulate real life; I think most people here could agree that historically isolationist or low population nations tended to lag behind such as Japan, subsaharan African or the Meso-American civilizations. The more people there are living, warring, or trading together, the greater exchange of ideas, the faster the technological advancement.

Ofc the results of this system is that high population nations can tech up much faster than low population nations. There is now a serious incentive to expand and compete with the AI for good city build spots. Nations that are locked on an island and limited in size early game may have difficulty being competitive. I also found that on fairly low difficulties it can be much harder to compete with AI in the tech race. I remember in vanilla civ3 I used to build a supercity on an island and could still outcompete AI by wonder rushing, however now this strategy is now no longer possible.

Although I haven't tested it yet I am interested to try this on a large world map such as Teturkhan's, it would be interesting to see how the American civilizations develop prior to magnetism and in isolation by themselves relative to their tightly packed European and Asian counterparts.

 

[need my speed]

low population nations tended to lag behind such as Japan, subsaharan African or the Meso-American civilizations

At the time of the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, Tenochtitlan was (one of; we don't know the exact numbers) the world's most populated city.

In general, I disagree with this premise; commerce, moreso than food, drives scientific advancement (look e.g. at the Netherlands, England, Scotland, the Italian states, et cetera).

 

[RebelSchutze]

At the time of the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, Tenochtitlan was (one of; we don't know the exact numbers) the world's most populated city.

In general, I disagree with this premise; commerce, moreso than food, drives scientific advancement (look e.g. at the Netherlands, England, Scotland, the Italian states, et cetera).

Ofc it was, but the Aztec empire wasn't say, like Rome or it imitators in that was a collaboration of many developed/populated nations and had trade spanning multiple continents. The Aztec empire at its breadth had about 5-6 million, Roman encompassed somewhere between 50-70 million at least, and that is not counting their interactions with the populations of Parthia, China or India. Commerce is certainly a factor but you could again you can attribute commerce to population, population size both creates demand for tradeable goods and product to fulfill it.

 

[timerover51]

It is an interesting concept, but I wonder how it would work with the AI tech trading like mad. i would be quite interested in seeing a release of your scenario.

 

[RebelSchutze]

It is an interesting concept, but I wonder how it would work with the AI tech trading like mad. i would be quite interested in seeing a release of your scenario.

I appreciate it, I will probably have a "beta" version up in a week or so, I would like to add around a hundred new units to fill the roster out and do one more test playthrough to check the last economy tweaks, then release it with a huge world map and a random map file. It's something I have toyed around with for the past 5 years or so intermittently, I just now got around to hopping on the forums and adding units.

Playing regent on archipelago all the way to modern era (which would have the most extreme tech disparity between AI) I found that at least several AI powers will keep up with me or exceed me in tech, and that I always had a strong competitor if I wasn't an underdog. Overall I have found that the difficulty curve is much higher. Weak AI benefit from the tech exchange but eventually they get left behind in the dust with nothing marketable left to trade for tech. Fortunately for them the big powers were usually more interested in picking on each other (or me).

 

[need my speed]

Playing regent on archipelago all the way to modern era (which would have the most extreme tech disparity between AI) I found that at least several AI powers will keep up with me or exceed me in tech, and that I always had a strong competitor if I wasn't an underdog. Overall I have found that the difficulty curve is much higher. Weak AI benefit from the tech exchange but eventually they get left behind in the dust with nothing marketable left to trade for tech. Fortunately for them the big powers were usually more interested in picking on each other (or me).

This does sound interesting though. Would you say this is a similar increase in difficulty than if you prevent yourself (but not AIs) from trading technologies? Basically, it is hard to have a fun early game yet also have a challenging late game - my 'no human tech trading' solution slightly delays this problem from appearing, but your idea sounds intriguing. I wonder, though; usually the human has more cities (and thus probably also population) than the AI, so it might also in effect make the human even more powerful.

 

[RebelSchutze]

Well I've been running a few other changes to my scenario so I don't know what the pop/science alteration would do exclusively for an otherwise vanilla game. These alterations include:

- Different gov stats, despotism is actually useful for very early start players with 3 free units but rest are expensive
- 100 shield settlers
- pop consumes 3 food each
- military units use up 1 pop (like workers)
- C3X minimum 3 tile distance for cities (I think it may force AI and players alike to build better cites rather than just ICS)
- only one content pop per city by default

Comprehensively, although I wouldn't call myself a civ3 master, its a much more difficult game. Early game gold is scarce and military units have to be used efficiently. Wars are fought often at a deficit. The low income really forces the player to have to prioritize strategies, you can't say max boost science and have happy cities, you can't zerg goody huts and also have enough workers for effective early infrastructure. A small 10-20% AI income bonus is enough to make them exponentially more competitive because they can juggle more of these tasks than you can. Ofc, that results in the AI being able to keep up with you or surpass you in expansion, which also keeps them technologically advantaged.

I found myself regularly getting trashed on just regent difficulty, often due to being 4th or 5th place on tech, so I reduced AI-to-AI trade rate across the board to make things a little bit more fair for the human player.

 

[Spoonwood]

A small 10-20% AI income bonus is enough to make them exponentially more competitive because they can juggle more of these tasks than you can.

All of the AIs gold can get acquired from an AI with a surplus resource or luxury via deals like "16 gpt for spices + 30 gold" followed by trade route pillaging. Their gpt can get acquired by doing deals like "540 gold for 30 gpt" and then buying back the gold AND a luxury or resource from the AI with gpt, and then pillaging out the trade out.

Also, gpt can get injected into the economy.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Conversely this is a good trick to use to slow down tech advancements. Useful for scenarios where each turn represents weeks rather than years. By eliminating libraries, universities, etc. and relying on population to generate science I can see great uses for slowing down tech.

 

[Fergei]

If science is based on population then the only scientific trait benefit would be the free tech at the end of each era.

 

[justanick]

The idea seems to be that additional research is based on popuulation. The regular research from commerce would still benefit from libraries. But each citizen would generate 1 point of research like the expert type scientist does create 3 points of science. Those donnot beneft from buildings.