Slow down research rate.

[Tripledoc]

This is not a big thing, but nevertheless.

I sometimes find it frustrating that you reach the middleages in 800 bc, and modern age in 1200 AD.

This can happen if you are on Pangea and there is heavy tech trade going on. In other cases the science rate is also, well, ahistorical, while not so fast.

I have the preliminary understanding that now, apart from the basic economy, the science rate is decided by the number of civs, the size of the map, and the number of contacted civs which know the tech you are researching.

There needs to be a fourth inhibitator on science, because naturally science on Pangea will always progress faster than on archipelago.

Thus the map size calculation should be determined by the size of land, excluding sea tiles. So the more land the less science rate is.

Even this might not be enough. So maybe skip the science rate being affected by contacted civs.

The decreased corruption is also a reason for the increased science rate. So maybe one should increase science corruption, while keeping shields the way they were.

Another approach would be to simply raise the cost of researching techs.

[GePap]

The date is meaningless in this game really-it serves a purpose only in telling you how many turns have passed.

[Tripledoc]

That is inherently true in terms of game mechanics.

However, I feel that civilisation is also somehow meant to be inspired by history.

In any case there needs to be a reworking of the years passed.

So then it should be so designed that the years pass at a quicker succesion than they do now.

[ZargonX]

I've always felt that the scientific eras in general should be stretched out a bit, if only so you can appreciate them a little more. In most situations, certain military periods will be completely skipped, for the most part, because technology is blazing right along. Wouldn't it be fun to be able to appreciate each military/scientific period as much as they deserve?

[Sir Og]

There are no IFs in history but if Sumerian knowledge hasn't been lost but instead kept progressing at the same rate then the first man in space would have flown a couple of millennia earlier. There have been a lot of times in real world history when knowledge was lost and had to be reinvented hundreds of years later. The sharing of knowledge in the real world was also never as perfect as it is in civ games.
So it is perfectly normal that technologies in civ games won't be researched around the years that they were researched IRL.
Having said that I think that the civ2 system for technology costs was a lot better and more realistic. The technologies in civ2 required more beakers if you had a lot of technologies and less when you had less advances. This means that if you went straight for republic it would take fewer beakers to research it than if you had invented everything else in the other branches of the tech tree.
Another thing that might help in improving the current research model would be to make it more difficult to trade technologies. Perhaps setting a rule that once you trade techs you can trade techs again only when 'n' turns have passed. Also setting some requirements like civs that don't have writing can’t trade techs that come after writing and civs that don’t have computers can't trade techs that come after computers in the tech tree.

[GePap]

Ways in which to slow the tech climb:

Make tech cost proportional to size-bigger empires have to pay more (ala EU) for the same techs

Make tech trading much harder

Make research blind

Modify the tech tree-add new categories-either research new concepts, or improve on old ones

Allow for backslidding-the ability to lose knowledge due to catastrophic events-not very likely as it would be deemed 'not fun'

[Sir Og]

Blind research is a good idea, but I liked the civ2 style better. It used to give a random number of techs from the tech tree instead of allways giving all possible techs for research.

[Mad Bomber]

Most of this problem is caused by the expansionist civs and luck with goody huts. I would make it a little harder on the expansionist civ's. In this spirit, I'd like to make expansionist units able to get barbs from huts and to give the scout a defense of 1.

Also tech trading should not be allowed before discovering writing.

[Dauphin]

I don't like the Civ2 tech model. Its stupid to think that Pottery costs more than Computers simply because you researched it later.

If you want to have technology development staggered based on historical time why not simply give post ancient era techs increased costs that gradually decrease each turn. They return to 'default' cost once the turn year reaches their expected discovery date.

I don't like the idea, but I prefer it to the Civ2 tech model or the tech research based on Empire size model.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by ZargonX
I've always felt that the scientific eras in general should be stretched out a bit, if only so you can appreciate them a little more. In most situations, certain military periods will be completely skipped, for the most part, because technology is blazing right along. Wouldn't it be fun to be able to appreciate each military/scientific period as much as they deserve?

More techs, with more extraneous avenues, are what I'm after.

I would like to see a tech tree where its difficult if not impossible to research everything, but then is not necesarry to research everything to progress. What you choose to research becomes dependent on what strategy you are using.

[jdd2007]

Perhaps a research-slider before a game begins?

i.e. Short, normal, or long game

[Panag]

Originally posted by jdd2007
Perhaps a research-slider before a game begins?

i.e. Short, normal, or long game

hi ,

great and simple idea

it could have the regular " as it is now " way and a more realistical way , ....


have a nice day

[Tassadar500]

The more choices, the better

[GePap]

My prefered science system would work thus:

you can chose blind research.

Cost of tech depends on trade levels (more trade, techs cost less to simulate cultural diffusion) and empire size (techs cost more for bigger empires) plus social choices (some governments and societies more open to change).

Tech investement comes from two sources-government resources and private innovation. Private innovation is based on your government type and strength of economy.

Techs would be of two types:
Theoretical-concepts like writing, fire, gunpowder, so forth and so on. These techs open up other techs-cost a lot, private innovation is not significant for them but the diffusion factor is significant.

Practical-refining of ideas-better guns for example, or improvements to ships or better agriculture-private innovation is important, much easier to keep these techs underwraps to maintain a technical advantage over neighboring civs.

[TimeTraveler]

I'm not sure why having a large empire should directly cause the research cost of technologies to increase. Hasn't it been that in the real world, as populations increased since 1800, that the technology rate accelerated?