Technology Stealing

[WeaselSlapper]

I think they need to bring back technology stealing from city capturing like they had in Civ 2, but slightly tweaked. In Civ 2 if you captured any enemy city and they had a tech you didn't you would steal a random technology they had that you didn't. I loved this feature and was very disappointed when they removed it in Civ 3. I think they need to bring back a modified version of this in Civ 5. If they tweaked it so that if you capture one of they enemies top X number of cities dependent on the map size (think Representation) you have a chance of stealing a technology. Also if you completely kill a civilization you should get all the technology they have that you don't. These are very realistic parts of war and conquering your enemy and I think they need to be included in Civ 5.

 

[Soundwαvє ▼]

I agree too but then I would also make a chance of get the tech or just add to certain tech that they have it would happen principally if you get a small city.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

I like where you're head's at with with capturing smaller cities. I'm sick of having to ask for technology in exchange for peace when I'm about to kill another Civ to get my hands on their technology.

 

[Camikaze]

This of itself is not a bad idea. BUT. Given that warfare is so overpowered in the game, it is not a good idea. This would only further enhance the ability of warfare to completely dominate the game. You wouldn't really need to focus on technology, just focus on military and get the techs through conquest, keeping you both militarily and technologically at the top of the world.

 

[frizzy]

^That is a problem.

It's what broke the Fundamentalism government type in CivII. Fundamentalism cut research in half, but so what? Spam hordes of fanatics and capture techs faster than you could ever research them.

But, OTOH, technology is often acquired through conquest IRL, and lots of players want some version of that in-game. Isn't there some way of working it in that wouldn't break the game?

It's awesome what they've done with technology through osmosis from other Civs: research of a given tech gets easier as more Civs acquire it, but you still don't get it free or automatically. Wish they could nuance a way of acquiring tech through conquest, but that wouldn't make warmongering too easy.

 

[esemjay]

What if, by capturing a city that has a technology you want, you get a bonus to the technologies that they have that you don't. Like, City Size percent of the remaining amount of research you have to do on that technology. That way, you have "Technology Stealing", but the laws of diminishing returns balance it out. You'd just never outright gain the technology out of warmongering.

For example, say you have 0% progress on Stealth technology. You capture a size 13 city that has Stealth researched, then you gain 13% research towards Stealth. You then move up and grab a size 20 city, and you get 20% of the 87% research you still need (17.4%) netting you a total of 37.4% research thus far.

As another example of diminishing returns:

You have 80% research done on Stealth. You capture the first city (size 13) and gain 2.6% research to Stealth. You now have 82.6% research done, and you invade the size 20 city. You only gain another 3.5% research- ending with you at 86.1% Stealth.

The only feature that would make you gain a FULL technology would be the capture of a size 100 city. If you capture a size 100 city, you DESERVE that technology.

The other balancing factor, could be that you only get this bonus for technologies that your civ can "understand" (I.E. if you invaded that city with a SOD of pikemen, because that's your best unit- you obviously can't "understand" things like the principles of flight, or the principles of RADAR- meaning you DEFINITELY don't understand the principles of Stealth. So, limit the technology bonus to what you COULD get via trading- the technologies available for research or 1 tier up from that (with -50% penalty).

 

[Silurian]

@esemjay I like this idea
Would get no choice in the tech that you got which would give you more in the long run especially if you got different techs from different cities
or the tech you are reserching ( if they have it) or only one tech

 

[ViterboKnight]

Esemjay, it could seem a good idea.
Just a doubt.
From my experience, and from what I read on these forums, war is STILL the easiest way to play a game (Always Peace games are more difficult than standard games). If you give war further advantages, the game balance risks to break.
It could be done, but something else should be also done in order to make war not a THAT better strategy than the other ones (for example, by increasing the costs to maintain and support your armies).

 

[Camikaze]

I assume that idea of city size relating to percentages would mean that you only get the tech that you are currently researching? So, if you are researching Rocketry, and you captured a city, you wouldn't get a certain percentage of Mass Media, you would get a certain percentage of Rocketry. However, this would run into a problem of abuse with quick changes between what you are researching to go in line with cities you are capturing. Because if you only have 20% of whatever tech you are researching left to research, then you would maximise your gains by switching to another tech that you haven't made any progress in researching. This type of metagaming, if you will, is not really a good thing.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

I like the idea of only gaining a percentage of the tech. But I would take it one step further in that if you completely kill a civilization you get all the techs they have.

 

[Camikaze]

But that again is open to massive, massive abuse, and would drastically favour militaristic strategies.

 

[Silurian]

You should not get all the tech by destroying a civilisation.
If you were capturing cities and taking their technology they would put in place measures to reduce or stop you getting the technology (send the scientists to the hills to hide or kill them or blow up the university)

Perhaps the more cities you capture in a war the less you get

 

[awesome]

I assume that idea of city size relating to percentages would mean that you only get the tech that you are currently researching? So, if you are researching Rocketry, and you captured a city, you wouldn't get a certain percentage of Mass Media, you would get a certain percentage of Rocketry. However, this would run into a problem of abuse with quick changes between what you are researching to go in line with cities you are capturing. Because if you only have 20% of whatever tech you are researching left to research, then you would maximise your gains by switching to another tech that you haven't made any progress in researching. This type of metagaming, if you will, is not really a good thing.

i don't know about that, since you get bonuses from great people for techs you're not currently researching.

 

[Big_I]

I'm still not sold that the idea of getting techs from conquest is a good idea in any way to begin with. I don't think that if one nation were to conquer another that they would be able to understand everything that the people they conquered understood. If what you are proposing (and what was in Civ II) were always the case there would have been no Dark Ages.

Maybe, just maybe there should be some sort of tech advantage or gifting through culture flipping, just because that's technically your people who live in the city with that tech.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

During WWII the US learned about Jet engines by capturing German technology and learned a lot more about it after Germany surrendered and were able to successfully build a jet very shortly after the war was over and there have been many examples of this throughout history. It's a lot easier to reverse engineer a technology then it is to design it from scratch. So maybe getting the entire tech isn't the best way to go but gain many research points toward that tech would be a better fit.

 

[Soundwαvє ▼]

I think then you could be able to steal tech by conquer just after you research engineering or something like that.

 

[moscaverde]

Maybe a small bonus to research of the technologies the conquered civ (city) had that the conqueror don't.

 

[Silurian]

WeaselSlapper@
I assume the English would have given the US the tech as well.
I think they had some operational jets at the end of WW2

 

[frizzy]

The English actually had a practical jet engine before the Germans did. They were slower in fielding jet aircraft because they made a very Civ-like decision that lots of Spitfires were better to have than a few -intensive uberplanes, so they didn't immediately build the units associated with the tech.

The English gifted jet technology to the Americans as part of the effort to elevate American attitude from "pleased" to "friendly".

BTW, the tech that the Americans acquired from the Germans was Rocketry.

 

[awesome]

just as a footnote, tech stealing was also in civ1.