2 science bars?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Spectator
What I mean is that it would be fun to fight different units all around, to have 4 kinds of tanks on the battlefield. Then you'd never know what to expect. And someone with the medium plane will sell his "flight tech" a lot cheaper than the one with the best plane.

Spec.

Well all you'd need is to have more than one UU for each civ. There's a few people over at Civ Fanatics that have created some new Tank graphics, so all you'd have to do is give each civ it's own version, with slightly different stats from each other. Or you could have several different types become available with different techs, rather than just having the one. For instance, I've added a Horse Archer unit to my game, available with Monarchy, after picking up some good graphics for one. It's faster than a Knight, but doesn't do as much damage. I like having it in the game, it comes in very handy in certain situations, where a Knight might be useless.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I haven't read the "Mystery advances" thread, so if I've repeated what was stated there, then please forgive me!
How about, if you have reduced the amount of time taken to reach an advance, but you continue to put more money into science, then this gives you a % chance of gaining a random advance, each turn you do research. Example: let's say that you have lowered your advance time, through funding, to 10 turns. By putting extra cash into science, you might get a 5% chance of receiving an advance, at random, each of the 10 turns that you are researching your main advance. Of course, this would be an even better idea if the concept of "Minor Techs", which was suggested in the original wish-list, had been adopted!!
So, as was mentioned below. You might get a " minor" tech advance that gives you WWI Bi-planes and tri-planes, or WWI tanks. To get from this minor tech to a major tech would cost much less, 'cause you're already more than 1/2 way there. So, in summary, if all the features were there, this is how I would envisage a science model working:
Excess funding for science grants 5%/x gold/turn to get random "Major" advance, and 10%/x gold/turn to get "minor" advance (minor advances are only achievable at random, or by trading for them). Extra citizens converted to scientists grants 1%/scientist to this chance. "Major techs" are those on the main tech tree. Minor advances can be of 2 types. They are either "1/2 way" points along the main branch of a tech tree, as described above, or they are minor, dead-end, sub-branches. They probably don't grant units or improvements etc. But they might grant bonuses for the civ that gets them-such as bonus trade, reduced corruption, extra gold/turn, extra movement for land units, bonus culture for every city etc.
Within this model, certain minor and major wonders could increase the chance of random techs being granted (for example-Edisons Laboratory!).
Obviously, if this were ever going to be a patch, then the "minor" advances part would almost certainly not be a part of it but, considering that Civ3 introduced the concept of Small Wonders, it wouldn't be suprising if Civ4 introduced the idea of "Small Advances"!!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.