Research Agreements

[Dawnpromise]

Intellectuals from two great civilizations meet, funds are committed to the sharing of knowledge, and the result is that sometime in the next century the civs will compare research notes...

I can't be the only one who finds research agreements to be lackluster? The duration is far too long to feel relevant given how fast diplomatic states can shift.

I have two ideas/suggestions to address this:

Lazy fix: Reduce research agreement duration and investment cost. This would make agreements more dynamic at the cost of being less powerful (as agreements reward are based off science gained during the agreement).

Complex fix: Research Agreements grant a % of the partners science to each side. This would make agreements function similar to vassal agreements (only for science however). It would also turn the agreement into a per turn gain instead of a lump sum at the end.

I'm curious what anyone else thinks about the state of research agreements. Are they fine as they are? Do they need a different change?

 

[Moi Magnus]

I like the current version. Research agreement are here to reward very long friendships. And they succeed to it. I usually don't have a lot of problems to preserve them.
I've never made the calculation, so I don't know if they are worthy (from an optimisation point of view) waiting that long, but they seems good to me.
If we were to implement a change, I would be in favour of a adding a turn lag to your system : n-th turn of your agreement, you have n% science of your partner, maximum 20%. End of the agreement make it decreases 5 by 5 each turn. However, 20% of the science of your partner seems a lot, probably too much. It works for vassal because the vassal is supposed to be weak.

 

[Dawnpromise]

I like the current version. Research agreement are here to reward very long friendships. And they succeed to it. I usually don't have a lot of problems to preserve them.

The issue for me is that while they're nice they take so long and become available so late they feel meaningless to me. They're supposed to be the reward for playing friendly but I always feel like I'd get a bigger bonus by forcing the to be vassals...but of course then my vassals wind up crippled and weak due to the one way nature of vassalage.

Also the formula for Research Agreements (RA's for short as that'll get tedious to type out if this thread goes on) I believe is the combined science gained by both sides divided by 2 rewarded at the end of the agreement. So yeah the % per turn deal may need a number adjustment. (Edited in original post).

I just find it odd that a peaceful agreement for mutal benefit only pays out at the very end, even if it is basically a G.Scientist bulbing. One would think that manner of arrangement would be providing a constant benefit instead a lump sum after a century of not talking to each other.

 

[Owlbebach]

One thing i sure of is that RA are very strong. In one of my previuos games there was a very friendly world, something like 10 out of 15 players were constant friends and as result there were lots of RA. As result i started Rationalism when i had 3 policies in Piety and then i started ideology when i had 3 policies in Rationalism.

 

[De_Genius]

I never get RAs and therefore I have often disabled them completely.
I find that often even friends through most of the game will eventually declare war with me, and with the RAs taking 100 turns (or something) on Marathon they are very vulnerable.
I also see a lot of the AIs being bros for life boosting them through the RAs all while I am all alone in the world.
I understand that they hate me when I am warmongering, but even in my peaceful games my neighbours will eventually declare war due to me being close to winning the game.

 

[Dawnpromise]

I never get RAs and therefore I have often disabled them completely.
I find that often even friends through most of the game will eventually declare war with me, and with the RAs taking 100 turns (or something) on Marathon they are very vulnerable.
I also see a lot of the AIs being bros for life boosting them through the RAs all while I am all alone in the world.
I understand that they hate me when I am warmongering, but even in my peaceful games my neighbours will eventually declare war due to me being close to winning the game.

That's part of why my 'lazy fix' idea was to shorten the RA duration. Bringing it down to Peace Treaty times would make then less vulnerable to sudden diplomacy shifts while retaining the current reward effect although reduced by the smaller duration.

Basically I'd rather RA's gave me 375 thousand science after 15 turns instead of 1250 thousand science after 50.

 

[Funak]

I really like the current RA system actually, promotes friendship.

 

[De_Genius]

That's part of why my 'lazy fix' idea was to shorten the RA duration. Bringing it down to Peace Treaty times would make then less vulnerable to sudden diplomacy shifts while retaining the current reward effect although reduced by the smaller duration.

Basically I'd rather RA's gave me 375 thousand science after 15 turns instead of 1250 thousand science after 50.

Then perhaps just making the deal add a small amount of science when going on would be easier ? Just give 25 science per turn when the deal is active makes it worthwhile even for a short while, and you could still renew it when done. It would also still promote friendships.
Even with this I would probably still disable it in my games, since I am not able to be friends enough to get a DoF. For some reasons they just don't like when I am ahead of them in tech and tourism.

 

[Enginseer]

Basically I'd rather RA's gave me 375 thousand science after 15 turns instead of 1250 thousand science after 50.

And this lazy fix has problems. Definite balance problems.

 

[Dawnpromise]

And this lazy fix has problems. Definite balance problems.

Hence why I called it the 'lazy fix'. It's just an idea I tossed out without thinking too hard on it. Basically a quick fix that won't hold, it's how I handle a surprising number of problems in my life.

Personally I'm more in favor of my 'complex fix' as the current state of things RAs just feel underwhelming and would prefer a more interesting solution.

 

[DarkZero]

There is a reason why research agreements are disabled by default, RA are the single most snowball mechanic in civ and only makes those who a winning win much faster, wen you play on lower difficulty and the one winning is you they sure look tasty, but wen you play deity is often the last in score for a good part of the game, you will find that no ai wants to do them whit you, they would rather do whit that guy whit +2000 score than you, and as a result you will find these impossible to win games no mater how hard you try whit a couple of budy budy ais on another compitent in endless friendship and RAs that build spaceships before you research planes.

 

[Funak]

There is a reason why research agreements are disabled by default, RA are the single most snowball mechanic in civ and only makes those who a winning win much faster, wen you play on lower difficulty and the one winning is you they sure look tasty, but wen you play deity is often the last in score for a good part of the game, you will find that no ai wants to do them whit you, they would rather do whit that guy whit +2000 score than you, and as a result you will find these impossible to win games no mater how hard you try whit a couple of budy budy ais on another compitent in endless friendship and RAs that build spaceships before you research planes.

There's a reason why RA are disabled by default, that's because the guy who made Civ4-diplomacy (a mod that adds tech-trading) decided that he wanted it like that, and Gazebo didn't want to step on his toes.

In reality most people play with RAs because they are far less exploitable than techtrading.

 

[DarkZero]

There's a reason why RA are disabled by default, that's because the guy who made Civ4-diplomacy (a mod that adds tech-trading) decided that he wanted it like that, and Gazebo didn't want to step on his toes.

In reality most people play with RAs because they are far less exploitable than techtrading.

Nice!
You sure know reality man, its not like on most games 90% of people download and mod and them play whit the default settings, I am sure the thousands of people who play this mod and never posted hero sure go to the advanced setting re-enagle RA and disable tech trading just like you said.

 

[Funak]

Nice!
You sure know reality man, its not like on most games 90% of people download and mod and them play whit the default settings, I am sure the thousands of people who play this mod and never posted hero sure go to the advanced setting re-enagle RA and disable tech trading just like you said.

The first part is a fact, I'd post you a direct quote from Gazebo, but to be honest I don't really care if you believe me or not.

The second part was based on people who actually makes a conscious choice. But yeah you're right, there are probably a bunch of people who just goes with defaults, and who would still go with defaults if the default had RAs enabled instead.

Either way, your statement was clearly wrong.

 

[tu_79]

Count myself among those who enable RA. Research agreements basically punish warmongers, they have harder times to find friends.
Maybe at the hardest levels it's a drag, I can't say. If I'm losing, I usually die long before research agreements date.

 

[Gazebo]

Nice!
You sure know reality man, its not like on most games 90% of people download and mod and them play whit the default settings, I am sure the thousands of people who play this mod and never posted hero sure go to the advanced setting re-enagle RA and disable tech trading just like you said.

Funak is correct - out of respect to Putmalk's wishes, I kept RA disabled and tech trading enabled by default for C4DF.

G