Free option: Parallell tech-tree advancements?

[Ralf]

Originally posted by TechWins
I don't see why you would want to research multiple things at a time.

Read my second reply - I made the exact same objection, but in other words. Anyway; if they nevertheless add this feature, they can limited tech-allocation to max three slots - more isnt needed.

No percentage-bars - just three empty tech-slots. Filling one slot means 100%. Adding a second one means 50% each. All slots filled means 33% each. You can then take away two half-finished ones, and by that concentrate on the remaining tech 100% - then take back the half-finished ones in order to finish the adrupted research. It must be visible which tech is half-finished of course. I guess it give you some added flexibility - or, so they tell me. Anyway, its a harmless feature that one can bypass. Why not add it?

[Grumbold]

For it to make sense, you have to start with the fundamental idea that 20% research in five fields is more efficient than 100% in one. Get three to five brilliant scientists working on a project and they can share ideas and make good progress. Add another fifty and they will simply be wasting most of their time keeping each other informed and the progress will not be much faster. Scientists that are experts in their own field could be worse than useless in another. Unless you build in a weighting system you are absolutely right that it will be foolish and wasteful to do anything except 100% research in a single field.

[Geoff the Medio]

I don't see why you would want to research multiple things at a time.

You could research multiple things to 'cover all your bases' in a way. If you focus totally on a non-military tech at the start of the game, then get attacked early, you have no way of efficiently using the accumulated research towards learning a military tech. If however, from the start, you speread your research between the 2 techs, it wouldn't take so long to learn the military tech if the need arose. As well, instaed of switching from the build tech to the military tech and losing 50% of accumulated research, you could have had them both being researched the whole time, and thus still only have 50% of the research accomplished on the military tech at teh time you'd do the switch, BUT you'd get to keep the other 50% on the build tech (or at least most of it... see below) for after you've researched the military tech (as opposed to the current system, whereby you'd lose that 50%).

You can then take away two half-finished ones, and by that concentrate on the remaining tech 100% - then take back the half-finished ones in order to finish the adrupted research.

Perhaps there should still be some penalty for changing research: either immediate lost research on techs you're switching off, or in slow relapse/loss of accumulated points on techs you leave off for too long (but not all the way?). Otherwise, you could (awkwardly) achieve the same effect as in the quote by just letting accumulated research on a tech stay accumulated, and allowing people to "store" that research indefinately... you could research one tech for a few turns, then switch to the other (and so on, back and forth)

start with the fundamental idea that 20% research in five fields is more efficient than 100% in one.

Or that (I like that better actually... though 5 simultaneous techs is too many... 3 is a better max)

Unless you build in a weighting system you are absolutely right that it will be foolish and wasteful to do anything except 100% research in a single field.

However this isn't necessarily true (see above)

Lastly, something which doesn't seem to have been considered yet is the way tech costs increase in civ. Techs don't haev a specific set cost... it changes depending on how many previous techs you've researched... so if you have a half finished tech, then finish a different one, what would happen to the half finished one? It shouldn't remain half finished, since that would be effectively giving you free research points. I only bring this up because it might be confusing... obviously (to me) the fair thing to do would be to increase the total reasearch points needed and keep the accumulated constant for the partially researched tech, despite confusion from someone who thought they'd get the tech almost immediately (not realising it would increase in cost/turns if they got another tech 1st)

On second thought, maybe that would be a good insentive to simultaneously research... if it was limitied to only 2 or 3 simultaneous techs. This would effectively incorporate the effeciency thing without an additional penalty being added... though if some of your techs got out of sync so that one had like.. 10 more points out of 300, that could be very annoying ... since split 3 ways, your points might have the slightly more researched tech get finished a turn early, thus costing you many more turns to finish the other 2...

I'm going to stop now.. this is way too long.