{The List} - Technology

[lajzar]

Another science idea regarding happiness.

Certain happiness producing buildings are designated as religious. As long as your science rate is 50% or lower, there is no special effect. As your science rate approaches 100%, teh effectiveness of religious improvemenst deteriorates, becoming 0% when science is at 100%. This reflects the competing demands of religion and science, and is just another tool to prevent the superscience civ.

Religious civs might gain some sort of bonus in this area.

[CiverDan]

Another way to stop the "1 tech a turn" problem is to make tech research subject to the law of diminishing returns. In other words say it takes 500 beakers to research a tech, once I apply more than 125 beakers, it takes 2 beakers to actually get me one beaker closer to researching the tech.

[ardwick]

I've got two things to comment on the tech tree.

1) I'd like to see the game slowed down somewhat in the tech department. I usually end up racing through the techs and never build a large standing army until the modern era. I simply don't make use of many of the units and avoid wars until this time. I concentrate on building city imps and expanding. I keep my cities defended with 3 or 4 of the best infantry I have (spearmen, pikemen, musketmen, etc) and only start building up offensive units when I'm in the modern era.

If the game was slowed down somewhat, perhaps by lessening the yearly jumps in the beginning era (100 years to 10 years) and making the original developments cost more or take longer, than I would need to build units along the way and use them.

2) After you build up your civilization and achieve a certain level, we should be able to work on multiple techs at the same time. Perhaps have a more robust research screen that allows you to allocate your research into different techs. 20% of your research budget goes to Stealth technology, while 25% goes to Satellite research and 65% goes into Fission.

Perhaps the screen can list all available technologies that are in play for you and you can allocate accordingly.

3) City improvements that aid in specific scientific research. In our society, we have great college medical centers that are hotbeds for specialized research. We have government and private agencies and companies that work together to use the latest technology. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and NASA for example. Maybe we can have city improvements such as hospitals, manufacturing plants, Great or small wonders that aid in specific technology research. A hospital can give a small bonus while your Civ researches medical related techs or adds a bonus to building Cure for Cancer or Longevity. Manufacturing plants or such could aid in militaristic techs, etc.

[Plotinus]

I'm not sure I see the benefit of researching several techs at once. Say I've got the clout to research a tech in five turns. I could have tech 1 in five turns and then tech 2 five turns after that. Why would I prefer to get both techs 1 and 2 in ten turns instead?

The only way I can see this being useful is if the technology system were totally changed to something like the Europa Universalis one, where instead of discrete "techs" that you discover one after another you have several categories of research that you allocate resources to, and gradually improve your attacking competence, your naval competence, etc. But I don't think that would work well with Civilization.

[Elias]

I want to see the tech race slowed down a bit too by the time I have enough troops to invade somone there obslete and I also hate the eras either add about nine more of them so its realistic or take them out

How about this since its unrealistic to for somone to really plot research out Hidden techs and radomly generated trees so they could be in diffrent orders.

And you need to research main tech then a sub tech like a unit or building that takes less time. This way you dont have to spend any more time then you want on somthing you dont care about and you can give a specific unit to somone but only slightly reduce the cost of the primary tech you should be able to give some things away with out giving the main tech but other cultural things would need the main tech.

[LDiCesare]

20% of your research budget goes to Stealth technology, while 25% goes to Satellite research and 65% goes into Fission.

Mmmm... 20 + 25 + 65 = ...
Mostly, you seem to be pushing a Master Of Orion (1) - system. You could research techs in parallel, and the tech tree was somewhat randomized (some techs would show up in one game but not in the next one, or would not be possible for your civ to acquire by research in that game).
And I don't see what the problem was with 1 tech/turn. That made OCC possible and fun!

[MJohn99519]

Many Tech Trees

A number of people have suggested that the tech tree be changed. Why not simply have multiple tech trees where the developments from one tree affect the development of the others. You could have the following tech trees for starters:

Cultural

Social Development

Military

Medical

Pure Science

The Cultural tree would include religious items, like temples, churches, momo- and polytheism, theology

The Social Development tree would include conceptual ideas, such as Slavery, Abolitionism, Sufferage, Matriachy vs. Patriarchy, Freedoms of Press and Speech, Governmental theories.

The Military tree would include the actual units themselves....the application of the other trees for military use.

The Medical tree would have things like Folk-Lore Medicine, Herbs, Blood-Letting, Leeches, Syringes, Hypo-Sprays, etc

The Pure Science tree would have technologies with no immediate physical benifit to the civilization, but are important for speeding other developments on other trees. This would include Philosophy, Literacy, Gravity, Atomic Theory, String Theory, etc.

The development of certain techs in one tree would then lower the cost or unlock the researchability of the more complicated techs in other trees. Some techs, especially in the Cultural and Social Development tree shouldn't be required at all, to allow each civilization to have a unique historical background, and could even be weighted according to civ type.

[snoopy369]

Sounds like, from the last five or so posts, you all want a SMAC style tech system. I'd say there is some advantage to that, but I still would rather research discrete techs. Makes the game more challenging to only research "areas" I suppose, but more strategy is involved in specific techs. I honestly think the style Civ2/3 use for tech is pretty solid -- not too much advantage in terms of gameplay or "fun" to be gained from modifying number of techs researched or discrete vs general. Perhaps the details should be adjusted, one way or the other -- speed of acquisition, max/min, etc. - but I don't think the actual tech model is all that bad.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

The one thing that I did NOT like about the SMAC system was the feeling that I didn't have a great deal of 'fine control' over how fast I researched a specific field. In my model, you can actually allocate a % of your research budget into each broad field, and that this will effect the relative speed at which you proceed down that path!
For instance, if you put 50% of your budget into 'Military Science', then you will discover the techs for this branch at 2x the rate that you discover techs for, say, 'Culture and Religion' at only 25%. Of course, the limitations for Age-related prerequisite techs would still exist so, to use the above example again, say you'd discovered all of the ancient age military techs, you couldn't start getting any middle ages ones until you had picked up all of your other prerequisite techs for the Ancient age!
As for discreet techs, I think it should be possible to research them IF-and only IF-your civ has somehow heard about them. This might be done via an embassy or communications trades or spying on a civ that has the tech, for instance!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[snoopy369]

I would actually argue that your system of researching areas rather than discrete techs is neither realistic nor really good for gameplay (well, the latter depends on what you enjoy about civ, but *i* wouldn't consider it good).

* Realistic: In the modern era certainly, and even in earlier eras, governments certainly back specific projects. For example, my girlfriend is a biologist, and works in a lab that receives grants from several agencies, many of which are funded by the government. These grants are not inspecific "Biology" grants, but rather require the lab to prepare a thorough presentation indicating exactly what they are studying and what they hope to accomplish. This to me is the equivalent of the Civ government researching a specific technology.
Perhaps what would be more interesting is having a lot of techs out there to work with, some of which are failures. Not sure how this would work, since we all know what was successful; it's more possible for a futuristic game (like SMAC for example) where it's all made up anyways. Perhaps you could have a choice of scientists to choose from or something. Or even better, rather than having a discrete tech tree, you can research anything your scientists have 'heard of', but if it's too advanced in a particular area you have a low likelihood of researching it, and/or it takes more beakers to get.

* It's not interesting gameplay: The problem with inspecific research is that you either just have a bunch of mini tech trees with one option at each level, which is really *less* choice than the civ3 model, or you have a bunch of possibilities at each level, and it's semirandom which possibility you get (in Military, whether you get say Military Tradition or Magnetism or Navigation, for example), which is just annoying, when you really want one and don't care about the other two (on a small pangea for example who wants navigation or magnetism, but first person to military tradition has a huge advantage on the attack). That's what frustrated me in SMAC.

I suppose it would be interesting and realistic to be able to focus on multiple techs at once, and set it up so that you have diminishing returns, or even a min turn cap -- ie to reward people branching out a little, but maybe limits to not branch out too much (or just time would do that?). Say a min turn cap of 6 for any given tech, and a scale such that each additional tech you are researching increases your total beaker output (or essentially does by 'sharing' beakers). Also have 'related' techs, which are techs that share one or more common requirements two levels say back or less and/or share one or more common future advances two or less levels forward; these get a bonus as well (for having more in common):
Related techs:
2 techs: 50% bonus, ie 100 beakers = 75 to each (150)
3 techs: 75% bonus, ie 100 beakers = 58 to each (175)
4 techs: 90% bonus, ie 100 beakers = 47 to each (190)
5 techs: 100% bonus, ie 100 beakers = 40 to each (200)
Nonrelated techs:
2 techs: 25% bonus, ie 100 beakers = 63 to each (125)
3 techs: 40% bonus, ie 100 beakers = 47 to each (140)
4 techs: 50% bonus, ie 100 beakers = 38 to each (150)
and some combination of the two -- perhaps 'related' means a 100% bonus on your bonus for that 'level' (ie level 1 = 25%, 2 is 15%, 3 is 10%, so 2 related techs and 2 unrelated = 25*2% + 15% + 10%, or 2 related and 2 other related = 25*2% + 15% + 10*2%, etc.)
(Otherwise there's no benefit to researching multiple techs, since you'd rather get one tech first and at least have the use of it while you research the second -- just like it's dumb to mine four squares at once with four workers when you can use all 4 to mine first 1 then the second then the third etc.)

[Fosse]

I don't think that researching discreet techs actually brings with it any strategy, or at least not deeper strategy than researching areas.

The reason is that there is almost always a best path, or at the very least a small handful of paths depending on if you are a builder, war monger, or whatever.

I personally enjoyed Blind Research in SMAC, because it felt more realistic and also there was always a chance that the research path I wound up taking would influence my strategy, and not the other way around. So the player has to be more flexible, which is a good thing in my opinion.

[snoopy369]

Not true. Like my example, I think there is quite an element of strategy in choosing a particular set of technologies, and generally ignoring others. Look at my current strategy in one game: I researched iron working - writing - philosophy - pottery - mapmaking, but skipped over literature and warrior code. This was because i was in a human game (and had a good shot at getting philos. first), with islands (thus mapmaking), and no particular interest in getting archers when I had swordsmen already. If I didn't have a chance to pick discrete techs and just picked "military" or "academic", I probably wouldn't have ended up with that set of techs. Admittedly nondiscrete tech selection is strategic as well, but it has fewer options, thus less control, which is not really what I am interested in.

Simply, the greater degree of control I get from discrete techs gives me more strategic options, and I like that.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Actually, there was an excellent idea in civfanatics where, not only did you not research discrete techs, but where there was a sort of 'Osmosis' of certain techs.
For instance, cultural techs could spread via the trade network, wheras pure-science (non-military) technologies could filter between civs that were in an alliance, wheras your military techs could ONLY be traded. Now, this was not guaranteed, so there was still a great benefit in trading even non-military or even cultural techs. Of course, your chance of getting techs by this means would also be dependant on your culture and your civ characteristics-so a scientific civ might have a better chance of picking up pure-science techs from its allies than a religious civ-wheras religious civs would be more likely to pick up cultural techs through the trade network!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[grap1705]

A few preliminary comments:
- what does IMO or IMHO means? I see it often in posts but it remains chineese to me.
- how come I see sometimes comments like "this is not very civ-ish or civ-like"? Sounds like some kind of fundamentalism spreads his shadow over the debate, while I don't really know what it is to be civ-correct. Either it's more realistic and gives better gameplay or it's not. No dogmatism please!

this being said:
In real life, research is separated into 2 catagories: fundamental research focussed on general theories and concepts, and applied research focussed on actual usable technologies.
Fundamental research tends to be lead by government funding, while applied research tends to be conducted by private interest. Of course, this is a very manichean presentation of it for reality has it that there are all kind of cooperation between public research and private one. Public research likes being able to use costly equipment that the private sector has, while the private sector likes to have the help of theoreticians from the public in developping tangible applications of abstract theories.
Besides, depending on cultural habits and governments, this mix varies greatly. The US system relies heavily on private research even for military applications, russians tend to have it all driven by the government (but it's changing), while in Europe you do have a rather clear separation of fundamental research for the public sector and applied one in private companies.
That mainly means that we can debate forever on one or several trees, government driven or spontaneous depending on various city factors, etc, it is all true and wrong at the same time.

So mostly, I'd say the present technological tree works about OK but needs some adjustments:

- don't take off "fill in" techs as someone suggested. You need fundamental research to get applied technologies later.

- the clearcut determinism of the actual tree bothers me. When you start searching, you don't know what you'll really find nor when. You search in a given direction. Fundamental theory gives you ideas, but you don't really know in advance. Unless, as somebody else pointed out in a previous post, it's been discovered before by another civ and you know precisely what knowledge you are trying to acquire.
Practically that implies introducing a random factor that makes the research length vary within a given range. And it is that given range the tech tree should show rather than an accurate numbers of beakers.
The first civ to discover it goes for the normal range, the second has its random factor applied to 90% of the normal range if tech was discovered by an ennemy country, 80% if by a non ennemy country. The third to 80 and 70%, the forth to 70 and 60%, etc, down to a minimum of say 30% for instance.
All those percentages are of course open to debate and should obviously also depend on the number of civs in the game at any given moment.
This would prevent small civs from becoming completely outdated ones that you need to protect like endangered species (which could get you diplomatic bonus in UN elections?) if you want to prevent an expanding ennemy from expanding too much. Eventhough we know the real world has developped with such drastic differences in technologies (stealth bomber on one side vs bushmen archers on the other!).

- some advances are not really advances (who calls fascism an "advance"?) but merely caracteristics of times, coming through thinking fashions. Philosophy is one of these, religious trends and political regimes are also part of these. So the idea suggested of having a separate tree for cultural or assimilated advances seems very good to me.
This culture tree could be based on the time schedule so as to help maintain some historical synchronisation in the game play (Democracy appeared around the 16th century with the British parliament and Cromwell, didn't it?)
Some techs would need some cultural advances as prerequesites, but no tech prerequisite for cultural advances.
When a new form of government becomes available, a pop up warns you of this new political fashion. Then either the government (you) decide to organize the switch to another system, either the people overthrow you and call for change, depending on their mood and happiness levels.
Personally, in Civ3, I don't see the interest of going through communism, fascism or fundamentalism (except for building special units to piss off my neighbours) when democracy is available before that and has only advantages compared to those, especially given that unlike in Civ2 you never have any parliament or senate to counter your decisions (which is quite a loss that should be mended).

- I don't like the idea of setting different cities to different research despite the fact that this is what happens in real life, where all over the country and even within the same city different teams search in various directions, some competing with one another for the honours of discovery. So if we want to implement this, we fully randomize research, and take advances when they come, with no control on anything exept that funding more makes them pop up more often. That could be a way of doing it. May be it would be possible to have just an option to launch a game with random research, just like we have the option of not allowing diplmatic or space race victory? That would certainly give a very satisfying flexibility.

- I like the idea of eventually diminishing returns on research. One research team does what it can, 2 don't quite double the output because they partly conduct the same experinces over again, though in a slightly different manner so that there is nonetheless a chance of discovering something faster but not twice as fast.

- the era thing should be managed rather at the cultural tree level, and therefore have effect on the tech tree only through the prerequisite aspect. But that would make it possible ofr anybody to decide to begin the game at a given era and finish at another, may be the same if he wants to enjoy a long stable game at the medieval or antiquity level.

- obviously I want lots of future techs since I voted for the game to go to year 3000. BUt in fact 2500 would satisfy me enough. That was a good aspect of CTP2 and a lack of scope of CTP3. Those who don't like future techs can then just parameter to stop in the modern era without moving on to the future ages.

- at the diplomatic level, there would be need to feature research pacts, enabling to put in common research means on common goals and for instance add may be 75% of each countries research output to compute the speed with which the progress will be discovered. CTP2 had such research pacts though I never noticed they boosted my research in any way. Probably because I was always very much ahead in science...


As an ending comment on the medicine versus sanitation debate:
- medicine has existed forever through sorcerers using the natural medicine technique of plants, or chamans using spiritual methods of healing (which are more and more being rediscovered). The chineese where healing with acupuncture for thousand of years before Pasteur even took his first breath... But fo course, this medicine often appears as ridiculous for the "scientific" doctors that use chemcial products and nuclear rays to cancel one symptom without healing the cause and causing a side effect that'll have to be treated as well after... Natural medicine is redevelopping because so many people are unsatisfied with the illness businessmen of allopathy.
- sanitation has existed in the western world with the romans, but was forgotten all through the middle age. It therefore came far after medicine, but long before medicine. But not the same medicine...

[snoopy369]

- IMHO/IMO: In My (Humble) Opinion
- Civ-like: I'm one of the people 'guilty' of using this phrase, and I will continue using it. Whether you like it or not, Civ is a particular style of game. I use the phrase generally to suggest that a particular trait is more appropriate to another style of game- say starcraft, or simcity, etc. I don't mean it to be 'dogmatic' per se, as you're right, if something makes civ a better game we should do it. BUT, a lot of people have wildly different opinions on what "better" means, and I feel that it's better to stay within a certain bounds when discussing improvements to Civ -- hence civ-like.

Only thing about your comment about governments versus private industry is that the government does both 'fundamental' and 'practical' research, while private industry does *less* but not no theoretical research. Most of the governmentally sponsored scientific research is indeed practical, not theoretical; the highly competitive grant process strongly rewards practical applications for the majority of grants (although there are certainly some theoretical grants). Most theoretical work in fact is done at universities by professors, some of which may be funded by government grants but often is funded by alumni donations.

I agree that determinism is annoying, but like I said earlier i don't see any good way around it. The random factor might be interesting, and I could see it being implemented as an option, but *not* as a mandatory thing, i wouldn't want to play most of my games with it.
I definitely would not support having a second tech tree with 'cultural' advances, or a time-based tree. Some civ games progress fast, others slower, but it should not be year-linked, as that would limit the game too much imho. Definitely make the governments more useful all around, make communism and yes, even fascism more useful, and differentiated (give bigger bonuses to fascism in war for example). And democracy originated, at least in concept, in Athens 500 or 600 bc, certainly in greater form than it was ever practised in England pre-1900. (Perhaps not "perfect" democracy, since slaves and women couldn't vote, but the concept was there, just not other cultural details)

Research pacts sound intriguing. Not sure how easy they'd be to implement, and it wouldn't add a whole lot to gameplay since we have essentially the same thing in that we can agree to research different things and trade, but it would be interesting.

Medicine vs Sanitation: I'd have to somewhat disagree with your characterization of modern medicine, but i think your argument brings up an interesting point: what we call medicine today is rather different from medicine centuries ago. I'd say the difference is twofold: ancient medicine was primarily "trial and error" rather than understanding the physical effects of the medicine, and it was primarily symptomatic (sort of a corrolary to the first really). Modern medicine attempts to cure *both* symptoms and root causes, in most cases, and attempts to understand the scientific reasons as to why and how illnesses work.
Thus, I'd recommend two seperate advances. "Ancient Medicine" or some such perhaps reduces overpop unhappiness by one, and reduces plague by 25% or something, and perhaps has a wonder that does something or another ("Hippocratic Oath" or some such, although that's not really ancient medicine). This would come very early, possibly after Ceremonial Burial; then sanitation, late middle ages to early industrial age. Then Medicine late industrial ages.