Tech Trade

[Leyrann]

Heck, given an oppressive enough government system, even your own Great People will take off: witness the mass exodus of Great Scientists from Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

And, conversely, a sufficiently tolerant government will draw Great People from surrounding countries. The Netherlands had a lot of great thinkers from all across Europe in the 17th and 18th century because they would be persecuted in their own countries, but not here.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

And, conversely, a sufficiently tolerant government will draw Great People from surrounding countries. The Netherlands had a lot of great thinkers from all across Europe in the 17th and 18th century because they would be persecuted in their own countries, but not here.

Related to Great People and general population exchange, we could make up an entire 'mini-game' based on tolerant versus intolerant (with suitable bonuses and maluses for being either one in different areas) and losing or acquiring Great People and/or population points. Imperial Rome, because of the greater economic benefits from stable economy, attracted waves of immigrants from German and other non-Imperial populations, and the religious ferment in Europe in the 15th - 17th centuries caused massive population and Great People exchange between various states.

The question is, how much, if any, of that could be added to the game without producing enormous opportunities for Gamer Exploitation or Counter-Intuitive Play For Advantage. I can foresee every human gamer rushing to get a particularly 'Tolerant' Belief for his/her religion because it could bring them 'free' Great People, for instance. And balancing or counteracting those Opportunistic tendancies might be more trouble than any benefit from the system is worth.

 

[Leyrann]

You'd have to provide benefits to not being tolerant, but that's almost certainly going to come with people getting mad at Firaxis for "glorifying" intolerant methods.

 

[Glassmage]

Tech trading is terrible. Make it an optional thing for the min-maxers

 

[reddishrecue]

Tech trade should be optional. A tech in exchange for another trade is such a mutual beneficial thing amongst 2 civilizations.

 

[Krajzen]

And, conversely, a sufficiently tolerant government will draw Great People from surrounding countries. The Netherlands had a lot of great thinkers from all across Europe in the 17th and 18th century because they would be persecuted in their own countries, but not here.

It would be incredibly interesting if new civ made great people less "units you generate" but more like indirect phenomena you facilitate; you try to create environment for them appearing and giving benefits to your civ, they can have their preferences and misadventures, leave one civ to join another if they are angry etc.

Similar to someone's idea that religions should be forces not directly under civilizations control and by state design.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

It would be incredibly interesting if new civ made great people less "units you generate" but more like indirect phenomena you facilitate; you try to create environment for them appearing and giving benefits to your civ, they can have their preferences and misadventures, leave one civ to join another if they are angry etc

I think that's what buildings that generate GP points are supposed to represent. The problem is after playing civ for a long time I don't think of a library I think of +1 GS point.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Tech trading, whether optional or not, should not be an immediate transfer from Civ A to Civ B. It should consume some resource, envoy maybe(scientific delegation), for the receiving civ (Civ B) and it should be finished after certain amount of turns. The number of techs being received in parallel should also be restricted ( between 1 - 3 ).

This would be my preference. Allow (optional) tech trading, but make it restricted that catching up this way should still take some time and resources.

 

[TempusFugit]

Tech trading is extremely enjoyable in the older games. I especially love pulling of a series of good deals in Civ 3. With that said, it is probably a good thing that it was removed, because it makes the human player very powerful vice versa the computer player. In the later games you already have a complicated battle system which the computer doesn’t understand at all, and when you combine those two things, then things are even more imbalanced in favor of the player.

Of course the battle between the human and the AI will never be fair or equal, so I’m not 100% against reimplementing it, but I think a better idea would be to see if you could get some of the same advantages by doing something different.

 

[Leyrann]

Tech trading is extremely enjoyable in the older games. I especially love pulling of a series of good deals in Civ 3. With that said, it is probably a good thing that it was removed, because it makes the human player very powerful vice versa the computer player. In the later games you already have a complicated battle system which the computer doesn’t understand at all, and when you combine those two things, then things are even more imbalanced in favor of the player.

Of course the battle between the human and the AI will never be fair or equal, so I’m not 100% against reimplementing it, but I think a better idea would be to see if you could get some of the same advantages by doing something different.

Imo it should be an option (make it disabled by default for all I care) so that people can decide for themselves what they want. If you want to play with it, do so. If you think it's really strong, limit how much you use it. If you don't trust yourself to stick to your house rules, or don't want to make house rules, disable it.

If you make it a game option, everyone gets what they want.

 

[TempusFugit]

I certainly wouldn’t be against having it as an option. The Civ games generally give you a number of options that influences how challenging or not a game is going to be, and you could always increase the difficulty in other ways if you make it too easy by tech-trading.