Tech through Conquest: Bring it back?

[BigFree]

I've often thought it would add an interesting twist to the game to bring this back in a limited fashion.

Let's say that the further a Civ is behind in tech as opposed to the team they are attacking then the more likely that a technology would be gained by the conquering Civ. While those that are practically equal would have a much smaller chance at gaining another tech.

Just a thought.

[Dauphin]

I'm not a fan of bringing it back, except maybe in the form of a reduced cost to research techs owned by the invaded civs.

[Kuciwalker]

I think you should gain tech as you are invaded, actually.

[BigFree]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I think you should gain tech as you are invaded, actually.

That's an interesting idea as well....

I like things that tend to balance the game a bit.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by BigFree


I like things that tend to balance the game a bit.

But largely exploitable by a human player who is behind in the tech race.

Maybe it would only be used by the people who like to "break" the game. But it would still be there.

[Kuciwalker]

I don't see how it'd be exploitable, really... make the beakers gained depend on the value of the cities taken.

Combine this with making beakers (among other things) decrease your "stability" (and when it gets low enough, your empire splits to pieces) and you have a solution to the Eternal China Syndrome.

[Tian Dan]

I miss this ability but it was to easily exploited. Maybe the percentage scale should kick in, as that seems fair.

Anyone remember the old bug where you would take over a rivals city producing a unit, lets say Armor (which you didn't have the technology for) and left it as the production so you can pump out armor.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I don't see how it'd be exploitable, really... make the beakers gained depend on the value of the cities taken.

Combine this with making beakers (among other things) decrease your "stability" (and when it gets low enough, your empire splits to pieces) and you have a solution to the Eternal China Syndrome.

Well, you didn't say that in your first post.

I don't disagree that it is an idea that is interesting and can be well balanced... just that if holes are left unfilled then players will exploit them. (building undefended crappy cities and then inciting war, for example). But tying city quality and stability to the deal fixes that, so good thinking.

[Ijuin]

I think that you should get a 50% discount on a tech, to represent captured technology that you have to reverse-engineer before you can reproduce it yourself. Furthermore, I think that the tech advance that you get the discount on should be random instead of letting the player choose--that way we won't have invaders immediately grabbing the defender's best weapons tech with the first city that they take.

[Trifna]

Technology transfer is not at all limited to exchange and conquest. In fact, these two ways may hardly be explain more than a minority of history's tech exchanges!

[GePap]

I think certain techs should be open to conquest- not all, but certainly invaders do learn from the people they invaded. Certainly this is true the higher up the tech tree you go. Certainly for example writing or the alphabet, or masonry should be gotten form invasion-scientific theory, atomic theory, theory of gravity, industralization, radio and so forth, no, that should not translate.

Anything in the modern age certainly should not transfer.

[Drachasor]

Well, anything that is open to public knowledge should be attainable by conquest in some form. The latest techs, (especially military) shouldn't be available this way. Though, realistically speaking you should be able to gain a lot of techs fairly quickly from 1 decent city that you've captured. School texts and the like would add you tremendously (such as college texts that go over the theory of gravity). Naturally, if you are far behind it would take quite a while to assimilate it all. Perhaps a reduced research cost as long as you had such a city would be appropriate.

Of course, this is a somewhat complex system (capturing 1 tech is simpler), and I doubt it will be in the game.

-Drachasor

[GePap]

It can be made simple- the game could classify techs as open to conquest and not open to conquest. Certain techs, like government techs could never be captured. As ages advance, less and less techs would be open to capture since they represent more and more complex ideas with huge number of requisite techs behind them. So, things like the alphabet, pottery, masonry, gunpowder can be captured, dmeocracy, monarchy, electricity, industralization would NOT.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by GePap
I think certain techs should be open to conquest- not all, but certainly invaders do learn from the people they invaded. Certainly this is true the higher up the tech tree you go. Certainly for example writing or the alphabet, or masonry should be gotten form invasion-scientific theory, atomic theory, theory of gravity, industralization, radio and so forth, no, that should not translate.

Anything in the modern age certainly should not transfer.

I like the general notion there of certain techs not being learnt through invasion, but I would point out some historical issues with. Namely- the oft quoted rocket weapons technologies stolen from the Germans after WW2, and the capture of scientist put to work on the space programmes, is an example of where you can have a modern age tech quite succesfully integrated into a nations military technology portfolio.

[Drachasor]

It isn't an issue of ancient to modern techs in regards to capturing them or how easy they are to capture.

Hard to capture techs:

Ones that aren't detailed in many places (supercollider, currently used military technology, developing military tech).

Ones the invading culture can't easily understand (ravaging hordes of barbarians with civil war era tech are going to have trouble with microchips).

Easy to Capture Techs:

Ones that are prevasive throughout a culture.

Ones that are out of date and at the library (information on tanks in WWI, for instance, and perhaps even WWII). Black Powder in the modern age.

Things any decent-sized city would have somewhere, and aren't considered "secret"

As you can see, what is easy to capture depends on three basic things:

1. How advanced the invading culture is.

2. How advance the culture being invaded is.

3. How secretive the country being invaded is about standard technology. (e.g. a country capable of fusion technology that doesn't let regular citizens use lightbulbs is going to be hard to capture technology from. Naturally such policies have consquences of their own).

What was highly secret in the year 1800 technology-wise is quaint to the modern era.

-Drachasor