Maleficial techs

[couerdelion]

Some consequences of tech discoveries have adverse consequences for a civilisation which I believe are counter-intuitive. In a current game, my discover of Corporation lost me money because the Great Lighthouse became obsolete. Later my science rate dropped by around 10% when I discovered Scientific Reason!!!

I’m sure others have experienced these problems and will have consciously avoided the dangerous tech in order to keep long-standing wonder bonuses. However, I would prefer to see at least some compensating factor in the technology to more than compensate for the losses suffered. In the case of Scientific Reason, something that should fuel the drive for all techs, my homeless monks and Great Librarians only benefit is that they recognise the large oil slicks that appear near my cities.

[Blake]

Sci.Method is balanced that way. It's a very important keystone tech which signigifies the end of one era and the start of the next.
It opens up extremely powerful techs like Biology, Communism and Physics.
Want compensation for the Great Library? Either state property or biology can give you food in spades to create specialists. In the science department you can be first to the Great Scientist on physics.

It's one of the best strategic-decision points in the game - do you blow straight through Sci.Method to pick up the sweet techs and get first dibs on Kremlin and the free GS? Or do you delay it for as long as possible to keep your legacy infrastructure in operation? Also worth considering that it's a military dead-zone, at some point the investment pays off in the form of artillery and oil-fired war by machine, but the riflemen and calvary are on seperate tech branches, along with the more hammer-centric stuff like Lumbermills and Railroad. It's things like sci.method that help make Civ4 a great strategy game.

I personally tend to research sci.method ASAP and really start stacking up the food and health for explosive growth. So for me the Great Library and mass monastaries are not a priority.

On corporation it's definitely worth delaying for as long as possible if you have GL and mostly coastal cities. Then again it does come with compensation such as the extra trade route in landlocked cities, wall street, and opening up powerful techs.

[Mr Justice]

excellant point blake.

i tend to weigh that decision up.

in my last game i had altogether 5 monstries in 2 science cities (200/300 total reaserch each), and i did delay sci method cause of it, lost out on GS. but no matter.

worst i heard was somone not reaching calander to keep their oblisks .

[monkspider]

A situation where advanced technology actually harms you that I've noticed is industrialism if you're playing the English or Horseback Riding as the Persians. There are other examples I'm sure, but the basic idea is that this tech obsoletes a UU that, hammer for hammer, is far superior to the unit that replaces it.

[Thrar]

Horseback riding doesn't obsolete chariots, you're still able to build them afterwards. I didn't play Persia, but I suppose it'll be the same with immortals.

[Urban Ranger]

I like Scientific Method. The one I have problems with is Calendar as I usually (90%+ chance) end up with the Stonehenge in my games.

[couerdelion]

Calendar for me is one of those techs that I find you either really want or can do without for a little time because it doesn’t seem to do a great deal unless you have stacks of calendar resources. But by the time you get up to Calendar, Stonehenge is not really doing a great deal so the loss of that wonder ought to be minimal. I have never found any huge value in having my map centred.

Scientific Reason is an “unlocking� tech in a similar way to Writing and Mathematics, Wheel, Philosophy, Printing Press and Education. But those all come with some tangible benefits. If you research Scientific Reason before Industrialism or Combustion then it will take longer that if you did it the other way round. And this relation will hold for all techs until you are only left with ScR. However, the name for me implies that there ought to be a benefit to replace what I lose. Calendar might lose you a little culture while Corporation at least enables Wall Street and gives extra trade routes. But Scientific Reason gives no immediate compensatory benefits and so reduces scientific research when it is discovered.

For me it is counter intuitive. If my tech specialists tell me that they have made great strides in discovering technology and they are then slower than they were before, even the most trusting of rulers would start to think that he had the wrong scientists. While Free Religion gives you +10% science, Scientific Reason could at least mimic this.

[Aeson]

"Realism" is nice to shoot for, but far too subjective to ever get right for everyone. It's also generally not fun or balanced (in a game sense) anyways. If you need some sort of explaination that makes sense, imagination helps... (History can too, if you look at it right.)

Scientific Method obsoletes Monasteries. What does this abstract represent? How about something like:

The church had been a haven for learning away from the drudgeries of trying not to starve, die of some disease or another, get killed/kill someone, or various other favorite pasttimes of the middle ages. Suddenly there is a new burst of scientific discovery based on new methods/principles of research. But there is backlash from the church targetting this new science, because it's (undermining it's power, questioning it's ideals, blasphemy... your choice). The monasteries are no longer places of tolerance for learning, and the influence of the church on the population retards the acceptance of the new scientific research, perhaps even directly influencing the researchers themselves.

I know it's a stretch... I mean... nothing like this ever happened... right? I'm not saying this is a perfect analogy, or that it had any implication on the design. But you can almost always find a "reasonable" explaination for things that are so abstracted... whatever your "reasonable" may be. Just so long as you're reasonable.

[Blake]

A more likely explaination is that the previous research techniques become invalidated as being unscientific.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Blake
A more likely explaination is that the previous research techniques become invalidated as being unscientific.

Both if I do not research Scientific Reason then I do not invalidate them and therefore research more rapidly without this knowledge that I would with the knowledge.

[Blake]

"invalidated in the eyes of the scienitific community". It might not be invalid, but thanks to that new-fangled Scientific method no-one will take it seriously anymore.

[uberfish]

I think Scientific Method is historically realistic. Obsoleting monasteries reflects the shift from religious to secular methods of teaching. For heretical ideas such as the heliocentric solar system and theory of evolution to be commonly accepted, the old system had to go.

Obviously it didn't happen in one instant historically as it does in civ4, but it does reflect how monasteries did gradually become irrelevant as centres of learning.

[Badtz Maru]

Scientific Method opens up a lot of techs that historically have been challenged by the religious establishment - biology has of course been challenged by those who find the idea of natural selection heresy, physics led to the heliocentric theory which was opposed by the Catholic Church, and communism, of course, has always opposed religion.

[Ijuin]

I think that what should happen when you get Scientific Method is that Monasteries lose their science bonus, but you should still be able to build them for the purpose of creating Missionaries. It is highly annoying when you acquire a foreign religion that you would like to spread yet you are unable to build Missionaries for it due to having already learned Scientific Method.