Tech through Conquest: Bring it back?

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Drachasor
Naturally, you could probably force many captured scientists to work for you.

A potentially dangerous situation.

[Max Sinister]

Why kidnap? It would be enough if you sent some of your spies who will try to learn the other "tech", and come back to your country with the necessary knowledge. Or you bribe someone from the other country that he will tell you everything. BTW, you can't even speak of stealing, because usually the civ the tech is stolen from still has it. (They lost the secret, of course...)

[Kuciwalker]

That doesn't really work for everything. How do you "steal" feudalism?

[Max Sinister]

You send your scouts into the country, and they'll ask the peasants: "Who is your ruler? How many taxes do you have to pay? Tell me about the laws in your country!" Asking them how the army is organized is a bit more difficult, but if they manage to invite some soldiers in a tavern, they could manage that too...

[Admiral PJ]

How about Losing Techs? Civil Wars or rebbelions could reduce your science by a 1% each city, in total.. or more. Fascist or Dictatorships at least could reduce science knowledge when they're formed. If you lose a city you could lose research points, lose your capital and even if you don't get a civil war you lose at least 2 whole tech advances through social and technical disorganisation.
Maybe RP's(Research points) could be gained if you defeat a hi tech unit.. in military techs, especially if its far more devloped than you own.. tho even similar tech units can show you new design opportunities.

How about Government or Social Engineering rules affect Tech rules too.. Only dictatorships or communists get RP tech from city capture, depending on how big the city was. Democracies could be resistant to RP loss, they're more free and informations exchanged quicker.

I think culture could be stolen with city capture, it can be a bit in Conquests, but it should be a percentage depending on your government.

[patcon]

YES, bring it back, subject to some restricitions.

Here's my distillation of what I really like from this thread.
1. No govt/culture techs gained through warfare.
2. Spread of govt/culture techs by osmosis during peacetime.
3. Only can gain through either method techs you can currently research.
4. Some techs are not subject to either capture or osmosis

My input on these ideas:
1. a. Warfare can only capture techs if you capture a city with its library/university/research lab intact. (If your soldiers loot and destroy the library, the knowledge isn't there for you to steal.) The required improvement would depend on the era of the tech you're capturing. Captured tech is randomly selected. 1. b. If you capture a city with an improvement intact that is based on a tech you are currently studying, you gain research beakers equal to half of what you still need. (You're researching construction and capture a city with an aqueduct, you send scientists there to learn the secrets of construction.)


Of course, knowing that a city was doomed, a civ could destroy improvements to deny you that knowledge.


2. Osmosis only with a civ with whom you share a border, possibly based on how long the border is. Osmosis "researches" for you at a rate proportional to your research rate, but way less (25%?), possibly also tied to relations with the other civ (attitude/trade/rep/etc.). War with a civ wipes out any research gained by osmosis. There's a lot of details to work out here.

[BigFree]

I like the ideas being bantered about so far. Let's hope that some of them may workthemselves into the game or that they are already planned for it.

[Addled Platypus]

Do this by percentages?

capture 1 city pending on size is the perecnt level gained or beaker level gained? size 3 1.5%

capture a second city size 3 1.5% +a bonus for being the second city?


what say thou

[patcon]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex
Do this by percentages?

capture 1 city pending on size is the perecnt level gained or beaker level gained? size 3 1.5%

capture a second city size 3 1.5% +a bonus for being the second city?


what say thou

On gains through warfare what I was really thinking was something like this. (details may be off, because I'm not checking actual costs, etc., but it's the gist)

a) You are currently researching polytheism with 40 beakers remaining before discovery, but are capable of researching construction and mapmaking.

b) You are fighting a civ with knowledge of these three techs and capture a city with its library, aqueduct, and Temple of Artemis intact and 8 population surviving.

{Note: possible problem here - IIRC culture improvements (i.e. libraries, temples,etc.) are automatically destroyed upon city capture, but see later comment}

c) Capture of ToA automatically gives you 20 beakers towards discovering polytheism.

d) One of the two techs you aren't already studying is selected for possible capture. This selection could be random, but why not give the conqueror an option - "Sire, our 8 newest captives, I mean newest citizens, have knowledge of construction and mapmaking and have left us an aqueduct to study. What information shall we extract, I mean learn, from them?"

e) RNG determines if you capture this tech something like this:
1) 20% base +
2) 5% bonus for every citizen above 6 (think, more potential "interviewees") +
3) 20% bonus for having an applicable improvement available for study
{These numbers are very open to discussion and would need to be playtested, but could vary based on difficulty level, and certainly editable. You could have a bonus for the nth city captured during the current war, but I don't think it's worth it - too many extra things to have keep track of.}
Therefore the probability of capturing this tech from this city is 20+2*5 +20=50%.

f) On to the next city! What, you think my bloodlust has been slaked by the capture of just one of your pathetic "encampments"?

later comment on the automatic destruction of culture-giving improvements
The entire above discussion is based on allowing cities to be captured with their centers of learning intact, which does NOT happen under current rules as all culture-giving improvements are automatically destroyed. But why does this happen? To prevent the rapid re-expansion of the city radius of a newly-captured city? Does this happen to trade-giving or military-based improvements as well?

I can see the possibility, but not the inevitability, of an invader destroying such improvements, possibly influenced by the civ traits of the invader. Would a "scientific" culture attempt to destroy or preserve libraries in a captured city? Would a "commercial" culture attempt to destroy or preserve markets in a captured city?

Perhaps this could work?
Upon the capture of a city:

1. Culture counter reset to 0.

2. No trade, science, happiness or culture benefits from any improvements until resistance in that city has ended. (It always struck me as odd that I gained culture from a wonder-granted temple in a city where the people were resisting, and presumably NOT going to my temple. Why would resistors put money in my banks to increase my tax revenue?)

3. ALL captured improvements are subject to possible destruction by the invaders.
a. EXCEPTION #1 - wonders (who would desecrate such marvelous things, except maybe Napoleon's soldiers using the Sphinx for target practice)
b. EXCEPTION #2 - improvements for which the invaders receive incentives; such as granaries for agricultural, temples for religious, markets for commercial, etc. (because of your culture's profound respect for these improvements)
c. Yes, I also mean to include aqueducts and hospitals. (These are currently exempt from destruction because of possible population paradoxes - don't you just love alliteration - of cities of 10 without the required aqueduct.) Oh well, if you have a population of 10 and your aqueduct is destroyed, your people start to die of thirst - 1 pop point per period until you drop to a population of 6 or you rebuild the aqueduct. Likewise for pop>12 and hospitals, except there they die off of disease. (This should stir up some conversation from the "agricultural is too powerful" crowd.)

4. RNG determines if a given improvement is destroyed, influenced by the "mood" (as measured by remaining hit points) of the capturing unit. If a unit has taken significant damage in taking the city, they might not be inclined to be "polite". Say 1 hp remaining 75% chance of destroying the improvement, 2 hp = 50%, 3 hp = 25%, 4 hp = 0% (command and control is still strongly intact). Repeat for each vulnerable improvement. So a city with 8 vulnerable improvements, captured by a 3 hp remaining unit would lose on average 2 improvements.

[conmcb25]

yes bring it back

[Addled Platypus]

I like your train of thought patcon

easy to code?


I would say YES

[Max Sinister]

Good work, patcon. Only one question: Why should anyone ever answer the question "Sire, our 8 newest captives, I mean newest citizens, have knowledge of construction and mapmaking and have left us an aqueduct to study. What information shall we extract, I mean learn, from them?" with "No"? There's no drawback, it's always an advantage...

[MrWhereItsAt]

What if tech research was in two parts? Say instead of just beakers (meaning thought and experimentation) you needed 1. infrastructure/materials and 2. experiment and a thorough understanding of those materials etc. This way, if you were at war and captured a city from a rival who had, eg, Steam Engine that you didn't, you would capture the parts of a working Steam Engine as well. Then the cost to research the tech would be reduced, as you would not be starting from scratch, but reverse engineering from the Engine to learn the principles. Some techs would have a greater materials portion than others, eg in the case of the Steam Engine, whereas others would be more thought-intensive, or totally so, as in the case of Philosophy.

In this way conquest gives you a help with techs you don't have that is believable and not overwhelmingly advantageous, I shouldn't think. You'd still need to put research effort in to get any tech, and assuming conflict is not extremely easy, that would mean dedicating a non-trivial amount of your potential war resources towards finishing the tech off.

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
What if tech research was in two parts? Say instead of just beakers (meaning thought and experimentation) you needed 1. infrastructure/materials and 2. experiment and a thorough understanding of those materials etc. This way, if you were at war and captured a city from a rival who had, eg, Steam Engine that you didn't, you would capture the parts of a working Steam Engine as well. Then the cost to research the tech would be reduced, as you would not be starting from scratch, but reverse engineering from the Engine to learn the principles. Some techs would have a greater materials portion than others, eg in the case of the Steam Engine, whereas others would be more thought-intensive, or totally so, as in the case of Philosophy.

In this way conquest gives you a help with techs you don't have that is believable and not overwhelmingly advantageous, I shouldn't think. You'd still need to put research effort in to get any tech, and assuming conflict is not extremely easy, that would mean dedicating a non-trivial amount of your potential war resources towards finishing the tech off.

This is an interesting concept and probably more "realistic" than just getting a tech from Conquest.

I like it

[La Diva]

A lot of great ideas here.

Bring back Tech through Conquest with more sophisticated criteria:

1. A civ will be more likely to absorb techs related to its own civ traits. Since it understands that kind of thinking better, it's easier to pick up. Expansionistic can learn Astronomy more quickly than Literature, e.g.

2. Capturing a city will award beakers (RPs, Research Points, as Admiral PJ put it) toward a tech adv (TA), based on AI algorithms from both civs and certain details of the war. A whole TA would be won only if the conquering civ (CC) were close enough to discovering it that the RPs put it over the top. In determining which TA to award RPs for and how many to award, AI would consider statistics like:
... a. both civs' size (number of cities and total land encompassed)
... b. city size
... c. both civs' traits - if they have a trait in common, related TAs would be more likely, e.g.
... d. both civs' % of investment in science before the war
... e. defeated city's pre-war RP production
... f. CC's diplomatic history to that date
... g. how well defended the city was, therefore how hard it was to be captured - depending on item e. above, it would be safe to say that slackers wouldn't be doing much with science, either
... h. how far the city is from its capital - until the age of fast communications, outposts would rarely be in on cutting edge research
... i. how many TA-related City Improvements (CIs) remain standing after capture (see 5. below)
... k. how the CC relates TA-wise to global knowledge - if 2 of 7 civs have the TA, the RPs would be less than if 5 of 7 have it
... l. how long the war has been going on - the more peaceful TAs don't get much attention when Rosie the Riveter is war-weary
... m. global communications advancement - if the CC can pick up missing tidbits on the Internet, it will make the breakthrough more quickly
... n. which civ started the war or entered into it first - I'd rather not see bullies rewarded, but I'm sure many will disagree

2.1. Some scientific "afterglow" could be available depending on how quickly the CC quells resistance, more through Rush-rebuilding of cultural/religious CIs than through military occupation. If you can restore their temple or library in 1/3 of the time it would take without rushing, citizens are more inclined to see you as benevolent and will cooperate more, adding another 20% post-war city RP for the next 10 turns.

3. Depending on how far ahead the civ of the captured city, AI will either award the RPS to a specific tech or give the CC an option of 3 which are within a next-step reach on its tech tree.

3.1. If the CC is close to the discovery immediately prior to the one AI assigns, the RPs would finish the current tech and roll over any remainder award into the target TA which the CC would be obliged to complete before another other TA.

4. Science and/or military RPs would have immediate benefit. Culture/govt/philosophical RPs would be delayed until both war and resistance have ceased, but if your enemy refuses to accept a peace treaty for more than 3 turns, your RPs are awarded anyway. Only 50% of cult/govt/phil RPs would be awarded during a ceasefire (if they bring that option back), only 50% of the remainder during a second ceasefire after additional fighting, and the remainder would have to wait until genuine peace.

5. Destruction of beneficial CIs would depend on:
... a. whether the CC or the Defending Civ started the war;
... b. the govt and civ traits of both civs - militaristic would be more inclined to plunder culture CIs when capturing a city or to destroy barracks and science CIs when being captured
... c. how swift the assault and capture of the city - caught unawares would mean less chance that everything valuable was destroyed or smuggled out
... d. how advanced tech is - catapults did some damage, but not compared to WWII bombing raids, which lacked the precision targeting of smart bombs

6. Espionage could have more options, to do more subtle work to help set up capture
... a. planting unrest
... b. learning identity of key TA people and location of secret labs and military facilities
... c. stealing documents, photos, etc. - pieces of research, which is more logical than nabbing a whole TA
... d. bribing key officials, military personnel or key TA people

The culture / government TA osmosis factor for a neighboring civ is good. The culture part already works for city defections, but that would seem to make the losing civ madder and resist the indoctrination even more. It makes sense that this osmosis could be welcomed or rejected through options during Diplomacy encounters. I agree with Kuciwalker that it should be possible only during peacetime. The happier the "oozing" civ is, the higher the two-way osmosis rate for positive influences.

As for stealing a cultural TA, the fact that it was taken by force or during war reduces its effectiveness and lowers the RP award.

Originally posted by Drachasor
Naturally, you could probably force many captured scientists to work for you.

At least in movies, scientists resist helping a conqueror when forced. At best, you could hope for a reduced research rate, perhaps 25% of each scientists' normal benefit. And some would rather commit suicide than give away any secrets.

Originally posted by patcon
...Culture counter reset to 0.

This should depend on how high it was and how high the conqueror's total culture count in relation to other civs. The more the conqueror values culture, the less likely that those CIs would be destroyed, so accumulated culture would be cut by half at most. The more militaristic or barbarous the conqueror, absorbable culture would be 0-10%.

RNG determines if a given improvement is destroyed, influenced by the "mood" (as measured by remaining hit points) of the capturing unit. If a unit has taken significant damage in taking the city, they might not be inclined to be "polite". Say 1 hp remaining 75% chance of destroying the improvement, 2 hp = 50%, 3 hp = 25%, 4 hp = 0% (command and control is still strongly intact).

While this has some merit, I think the determination should include total seige time, number of units lost, and remaining hp on the units that retreated rather than being killed. Frequently, I've worn down the defenders to where my last unit can enter the city relatively unscathed. But that doesn't mean his battle buddies don't want revenge.

That said, I can't imagine wanting to destroy any CIs and having to build them again from scratch, unless Firaxis adds the ethnic cleansing / religious persecution angle that some have proposed. Then you might want to raze every cultural vestige in order to start fresh indoctrination.

Again, this destruction factor should be contingent on the total demeanor of the conquering civ, not just some ticked off troops in the occupation army. If you're normally peace loving but need to teach someone a lesson, you (like President Bush vs. Saddam Hussein) will do everything to preserve the innocent citizenry and infrastructure while tarring the pants off the scoundrels.

While we're off thread-subject, as long as there are resistors in the city, it makes sense that CIs in production can be sabotaged (a la subversive bombings in Iraq), slowing down efforts to bring real peace.

(What is RNG, btw?)

Originally posted by Admiral PJ
If you lose a city you could lose research points, lose your capital and even if you don't get a civil war you lose at least 2 whole tech advances through social and technical disorganisation.
Maybe RP's(Research points) could be gained if you defeat a hi tech unit.. in military techs, especially if its far more devloped than you own.. tho even similar tech units can show you new design opportunities.

I don't see how a civ could lose knowledge it already has once you've reached the latter Middle Ages, where information is more readily available and communicable.


I do like the idea of the freak high-tech RP award, but it should happen gradually. There might be a 10% "thinking outside the box" kind of incentive for all TAs that lead directly to being able to produce the unit that was defeated. Then when the CC begins to research the TA that produces the unit, the "aha" factor kicks in, and you get an immediate RP bump of 25% of the total needed to finish that TA.

Originally posted by Max Sinister
Why should anyone ever answer the question "... What information shall we ... learn from them?" with "No"?

It intrigues me to think that a "which" question can be answered with "no."