RA's

[Save_Ferris]

I saw a suggestion on these forums that RAs should provide X amount of beakers towards your research instead of a free (supposedly random) tech. Personally, I think this would be a good idea and could be worked out to be a good and balanced mechanic.

Should the number of beakers scale up by era?

 

[TPQ]

Should the number of beakers scale up by era?

I'd say yes, to keep pace with the cost of techs, but the idea isn't mine, I can't remember who came up with it now.

Still, it would stop people tech-blocking their way to powerful military techs etc as the beakers would just go towards what you are currently researching and any overspill would be deducted from the next tech you choose.

 

[Aristos]

Should the number of beakers scale up by era?

No, they should be a fixed proportion of the other partner's research, in order to encourage some diplomacy. You could go for "many small techers", or for one or two of the "big" techers... same is valid for the AI. For example, you are producing 1000 beakers, and Ghandi is producing 650...if the RA rate is 5%, then a RA between you and Ghandi would give you an extra 32.5 beakers, while Ghandi gets an extra 50... nice way to boost up the smaller guys too, if you want them to be competitive AND your friends...

This is the way it works in Thal's mod, and in GalCiv2 and EWoM. And it works well.

 

[MadDjinn]

No, they should be a fixed proportion of the other partner's research, in order to encourage some diplomacy. You could go for "many small techers", or for one or two of the "big" techers... same is valid for the AI. For example, you are producing 1000 beakers, and Ghandi is producing 650...if the RA rate is 5%, then a RA between you and Ghandi would give you an extra 32.5 beakers, while Ghandi gets an extra 50... nice way to boost up the smaller guys too, if you want them to be competitive AND your friends...

This is the way it works in Thal's mod, and in GalCiv2 and EWoM. And it works well.

amusingly, this is the 'scaling by era' modifier. At least when AIs aren't trimmed down to 1-2 poor cities. As each AI/player increases their base science, over the eras, they'll provide more to the RA than before.

Of course, if they do switch to something like this, they'll have to consider 'fair trading' so that the AI expects, or expects to pay, something towards the RA if the beaker values are not similar. Which is what they do with RAs now if there is an era difference between the RA partners.

Oh, and for someone's prior comment - guarded civs/hostile civs do ask for more when trying an RA. At some point, they ask for a huge amount just to sign one.

 

[Randall Turner]

Oh, and for someone's prior comment - guarded civs/hostile civs do ask for more when trying an RA. At some point, they ask for a huge amount just to sign one.

I haven't encountered that.

 

[MadDjinn]

I haven't encountered that.

It depends on how mad they are at you. At some point, 'guarded' civs can become 'neutral' if you stop annoying them, though they'll still be shown as 'guarded'.

Of course, the opposite is true as well... they'll get shown as 'friendly' but trade like 'guarded'.

 

[Helmling]

First of TMIT, let me agree with almost everything you said, and the sentiment behind it



Just wanted to quickly say that with the right leader and scholasticism, CS's can be almost as good of an investment.

And I dislike the blocking concept even more, that the RAs themselves. The concept that you can "research just enough" of everything else to pop the right tech is absolutely silly in the real world.

Two things I'd like to see changed is reworking of the RA construct so that two civs (or more even) could jointly work on a technology and accelerate it through cooperation and repurpose the AI so it thinks strategically for partners for such agreements. By carefully choosing partners who tech deficiencies are similar and who they don't mind helping accelerate with a given tech I think a lot of this could be solved.

That was, I believe, the original intention. I remember the pre-game press describing RAs that way, but then when the game shipped this "buy a tech on layaway" is what we ended up with.

And you're right, I play as Greece, so with their unique ability, your gold can be better spent (once a few SPs are unlocked) on CSs than on RAs. Obviously, you don't get the same gold-to-science ratio, but for your money you get so many other advantages that it's worth it so long as you have the culture to unlock the first three SPs under Patronage to get the science boost (and the minimum level of 20 influence for good measure,too).