The Key to Tech Gifting

[Xin Yu]

Another possible formula is 10+length/10+width/10:
small map: 10+4+5=19
medium map: 10+5+8=23
large map: 10+7.5+12=29.5

Quite close.

[Xin Yu]

quote: Originally posted by samson on 04-24-2001 11:35 AM Yes, 24 is the Bonus Multiplier for a medium map, 19 for the small.

If we fit the numbers to an equation:
Bonus Multiplier=a+b*(map size), then from the above numbers (mdium map size 50x80=4000, small map size 40x50=2000) we get a=14, b=1/400.

Now 14= 10x1.4 = tech paradigm x deity modifier. Coincidence?

[solo]

My 1056 game, where I was purple and supreme confirms what you say, samson.
It was not a handicap at all, being in that position, as the AI were very cooperative and docile all game, and I was never hit with a penalty.

[Scouse Gits]

Now in GL - thanks samson
___________
The SGs in Jacob's Creek (Good on yer finbar)

[VetLegion]

Amazing!

Congratulations on insight!

[catullus]

A wild guess:

Sid and Brian want to make a science progression cost ladder. Already, the leader needs more beakers to next advance, simply because he has more techs, the tech*(tech+1) cost. But they also want to implement a way to make it even easier for a weak civ to catch up, for a strong civ to halt its growth. Sid proposes to link a science penalty to size of the tech gap between player and the player above (or below) him.
Brian sets to work. Adds a line in code, late in development, late at night.

tech_cost += tech_dynamic_constant * (player_tech_size - tech_size(player_power_position - 1));

Or something like that.
Meaning add a modifier based on difference between number of discovered techs for you and the player one step worse than you in power. A civ with a huge lead to #2 will have a huge modifier added. Pathetic civ will be compared with barbarians.

Mistake.

tech_size table is organized, not after power graph position, but after turn number (color). A player in power position 1 (pathetic) gets compared with the tech level of player 0 (white). Nobody gets compared to player 7, barbarians.
A subtle bug.

Brian should have made a simple power table for each round, fixing barbarians as position 0, and sorted in rank up to 7.

A likely explanation?

C.

[VetLegion]

excellent link by chrispie (thanks): http://www.gamespy.com/devcorner/april01/reynolds/

some quotes, but the whole article is excellent read:

The general idea:

quote: Getting ahead in the game should (properly) give the player a greater chance to win, but it should not make it easier for him to further increase his chance to win. Rather, just as the further we stretch a rubber band the more it resists, the farther ahead a player gets the harder it should be for him to increase his lead. Likewise, the more a player has fallen behind the easier it should be for him to begin catching up-again, our game system's "rubber band" pulls the player back toward the competition

what, according to Brian R., went wrong in civ1:

quote: Players ahead in the technology race had the first crack at building "wonders" and "improvements" which had the effect of further increasing their lead in the technology race-many wonders directly or indirectly increased research speed. Then, as the time scale proceeded from "B.C." to "A.D." the technology cost for all players suddenly doubled-again working to the advantage of players who had been able to research more technologies at the "cheap rate" and effectively locking out those players who were already behind by imposing a further penalty on top of their already bad situation. A winning player rapidly eclipsed the opposition and the rest of the game (often a considerable period of time) consisted simply of mopping up.

Actually, in civ1, game ended when human player got chariots
The fixed that in civ2 a bit, no more superchariot 4/1/2

Finally, the rationale behind tech design in civ2, abstract:

quote: With some care and tuning, a technology race can be changed from the "Rich get Richer" to a "Poor get Richer" situation. Moreover, this can even be done in a way which also pays homage to our common sense historical intuitions. We know from history that nuclear weapons were extremely difficult to develop and required a massive and unprecedented investment by the Americans who first developed them. But nuclear weapons having once been developed, a far lesser investment was required for their duplication and imitation by other powers.

In game terms:

quote: Translated into game terms, this means that technologies should be much more expensive for the first power to develop them, and then increasingly easy for other powers to copy. That way, players who are ahead in technology have to expend increasingly large efforts to maintain and increase their lead-they are paying the expensive first-research cost while the trailing players are paying the cheaper "catch up" prices. And the further behind a player falls, the longer a time period passes between the initial discovery of a technology and the player's attempt to research it-cumulatively reducing the cost to "catch up."

I wonder why is formula so mystified?

quote: When these sorts of changes were applied to Civ2, the result was a game which was much more likely to remain competitive into modern times. Now even experienced players were often challenged to deal with nuclear-armed opponents and participate in hotly contested space races.

yes, with size one cities on polar caps

quote: The rules of the game should work to keep the game competitive for as long as possible.

Acceptable. Tech thing is part of the rules to help the weak. If it has been more random it would work bettern then this though. Now that samson discovered The Key, it feels a bit unfair, at least to me.

edit: fixed quoting
[This message has been edited by VetLegion (edited April 30, 2001).]

[Laertes]

Could the explanation for this seemingly strange rule be built on the basis of the work that the Scouse Gits did on starting techs? The purple civ usually get the most starting techs. If you are Supreme, and the gane designers wanted to slow you down, their best guess at "who will have the most sciences" might be the civ who started with the most.

Clearly, this logic does not give as good a result as counting all the techs that everyone has, and then comparing, but maybe it was simpler to code (I'm no programmer)

??

[Adam Smith]

Just tried this in two game situations this evening. These situations certainly confirm the theory.

Game 1 (current game):
Deity, seven civs
Playing as Romans, 1250 bc (just built Marco Polo), power supreme
Gave six techs to Sioux
Beaker requirement for current tech declined from 128 to 120, even after gaining one tech through exchange of knowledge.
Beaker requirement for next tech declined from 153 to 135
This makes my favorite wonder, Marco Polo, even more valuable.

Game 2 (old game):
Deity, seven civs
Played as Romans, 1834 AD, power moderate
Gave 21 techs to Spanish
Beaker requirement for current tech declined from 860 to 640, a reduction of 25 percent!
This game had a SSC and several repeated commodity trade routes, making two discoveries per turn ridiculously easy, even with moderate power.

Nice work samson et al.

[Bird]

Hehe, AS. I bet the Spanish were awfully nice to you after getting 21 techs.

[SlowThinker]

In my "Campo" game I payed 10, 18, 27, 36, 45... beakers,
i.e. very low beakers cost

And I am supreme and the purple civ doesn't exist! Probably it get drowned at the game start, since there is "restart" option - is this the reason why the techs are cheap?

[debeest]

There's no purple civ because it's a small world so there are only six civs to start with.

I've been supreme all game, and out in front in science, and I'm certainly not getting a bonus; I think I'm probably paying maximum. I figured that with no purple civ there was no way for me to reduce my cost by tech gifting. Then I thought, wait, with only six civs in the game, maybe "supreme" should match up with the sixth one (orange); but that's me, and I'm not paying base rate either. Then just to explore, I gifted a bunch of techs to the Americans (last in turn order), and it had no effect on my cost.

[atawa]

Has anyone playtested this in MP?

[War4ever]

Originally posted by atawa
Has anyone playtested this in MP?

well trading is generally frowned upon in our games....so our group, no, too much advantage with trading , much less applying all of these algorythms to it....

but i agree with your question? is any other group using it...i am sure the aussies are too stupid to use it so who else is left

j/k guys...

[samson]

If the Key-Civ algorithm does apply to MP, then some colors will necessarily be paying lower costs for techs than others... even if tech-gifting and tech-trading are not allowed. MP games would be inherently unfair. So this seems to be an important question for MP players to find the answer to.