TECHNOLOGY(v2.1)- hosted by SnowFire

[EnochF]

Barbarians as unintentional agents of the spreading of technology... I like it.

Perhaps capturing a barbarian leader could result in a random result: 60% chance of gold, 20% chance of gaining a military unit independent of city support, 20% chance of discovering any technology known to a neighboring civilization.

This could continue up until Invention, or whatever technology invalidates finding tech advances in "goodie huts," at which point the barbarian leader provides gold 100% of the time.

(Maybe this has already been suggested, though... I haven't looked through the Civilizations thread in a while.)

[KDan]

Science doesn't happen all over the place at the same time. Science takes time to travel.

I think the game would be far more interesting if discoveries were made in the following way:

When a discovery is made, it is randomly assigned an 'originating city' where the discovery was actually made. Of course, cities with bigger science output should have a higher chance of making that discovery.

For the first turn, only that city would be able to take advantage of that discovery and build the appropriate units. Then from the second turn onwards the discovery would spread to the other cities. Every other city would have a chance of receiving that discovery based on the effective distance from any other city that has the discovery, obviously modified by the presence of roads, railroads, etc... Sea should get the road modifier then...
This would put a big emphasis on building a proper road system, which is after all a must for any self-respecting civilization. If you build a very far off city with no roads linking it, then new discoveries, as in real life, will take a long time to get there.
Of course there are some technologies which would travel faster than others. Some technologies could be break-through technologies and have a much higher rate of spreading.

Also, to make it more realistic again, I think that just like in real life, technology should spread to ennemy cities as well. Especially before the modern ages, it is quite hard to keep secret the discovery of domestication! The techs should spread to ennemy cities, albeit at a slower rate than to friendly cities (say 1/10 the rate?). This would help make the game fairer. Then, in the modern age onwards, some city improvements could be built (a secret lab?) to reduce the probability of giving the science to your neighbours. Of course, when you are at war with someone technology spreading will be very very low.
Also, I think road distance should not be the only factor in determining the probability of a technology spreading to a city. The science output of the city from which the science spreads also represents the likelihood of people travelling to that city to learn new things...

Finally, there's one more totally different comment I'd like to make, and which would be a possible solution to the tank vs. phalanx problem, and a serious impetus to upgrading your units whenever you can:
Let's imagine a scenario where a regiment of phalanx meets a battalion of tanks. What happens? The phalanxes, first, not knowing what these things are, try to attack them... and get badly hurt by the cannons of course. Then, normally, I think they would run away screaming that they've seen great metal dragons with a long nose shooting death and thunder at them.
Similarly, say a battalion of tanks was faced with a sea of shell-proof hovertanks shooting laser beams at them. After a first half-hearted attempt, my guess is they would probably run away.
The fact is, if a soldier encounters a force which he can do absolutely nothing about, he will probably run away. Thus, any unit of phalanxes directly meeting a tank should disband immediately. A unit of phalanx meeting a knight, however, would know what to do. It's still human, and you can pierce it with your pike, so that's fine. A musketeer meeting a tank or a machine-gun-man, similarly, although severely under-equipped would have some sort of fighting chance. They could use their powder to stick bombs to the tanks for instance...
This would make it highly unlikely to see phalanxes defending a city in 2000 AD. It would be too likely that a single tank could show up and disband all the phalanxes.

So... units should disband automatically when they see a unit two ages or more ahead. A phalanx would disband at the sight of a tank or a machine-gunner, a musketteer would throw his arms up and surrender if faced by a Walker, and a machine-gunner would run to escape the fire of a spacecraft which appears out of thin air, in front of him.

Hoep this helps!

Daniel

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http://dwdt.xs.mw

[Matlaf]

Hi that manifest is really impressive and i think this Civ could the best ever.

But i have a suggestion:
Does any of you remember Master of Orion 2?
If you didn't play the Psilons you could only get one application out of a new tech. to get the others you had to spy them out or trade them.
This could be a good feature to integrate into the game.
Perhaps with a Wonder of the World which allows you to research 2 applications.
And you would have to set a priority if you want to research economics or military!!

Perhaps combine this blind research and nobody will know what happens next ;-).

Or give the sientist the chance to reresearch a topic for half the costs to get another application from that tech.

What do you think of that idea??

Matlaf

[Maniac]

THE RESEARCH MODEL

1. Introduction

Several people asked themselves if the research system in CivX games was really good. Because it was based on trade and trade is based on population. And it certainly isn’t true that the big populated countries are ahead in technology. Then China would take a lead and eg Israel would walk behind. The opposite is true.

Another point is that, until very recently (now governments do support some research projects.), state had nothing to do with research. It was all done by individual persons and/or universities. So it’s illogical that the player could direct trade besides to Taxes and Luxuries also directly to Science.

Thirth, not all research is done by universities and official organizations. For example, in a Free Market it is more likely that corporations will try themselves to make applications on technologies. However they don’t do more general theoretic research. That is left, as already said, to universities etc. So I think it’s very unfair in CivX that research under Republic/Democracy (Civ2) or Free Market (SMAC) is actually doubled. An eg Communist country must be as capable as any other to do that kind of general research as fast, IF they can find enough money to donate to education and research labs. The only difference should be that under Free Market there is an intrinsic increase of applications. So, again I will try to reduce the importance of trade on research speed.

2. Fix Research Rate

Now let’s begin with the most radical. You could have guessed it, I should completely delete the Science component as an ability to allocate trade on as with Tax/Luxuries (would make a new component = Education).
Every civ, and then I mean every, no matter how much territory/cities/population or how much trade it generates, should have a basical fix research speed.
For example, and of course very preliminary cause I have no idea now how to completely balance it, the first technology advance should take ten turns to discover. Again, it wouldn’t matter if you have built your first city on a Swamp-Spice with a river running through it or just on a Hills.
Of course there should be a lot of things that affect that ‘fix’ Research Rate.

But first I want to notice something that wouldn’t affect it. In CivX, for every technology you had discovered, the next one was a bit more expensive. This was to prevent that technology got too cheap too early. But now, since science wouldn’t be related to trade, this should disappear.

3. Key Technologies

Several times there was proposed the idea of ‘Key Technologies’ in the Technology thread. They are certain tech advances that must be discovered before you can enter a new Age. Examples of that are Humanism to enter the Renaissance and Rationalism to enter the Enlightment. Another one could be Philosophy. These are perfectly applicable to my research system. Such key techs would give an increase to the ‘fix’ (I won’t say that word again since I only used it to introduce the Research Rate concept without already talking about everything that affects it) Research Rate. That would make sure that as in CivX, in the beginning research would go slow (eg 20 turns) and in the end fast (eg 2 turns).

4. Simultaneous Research

Another idea in the Technology thread where I agree with is simultaneous research. Then you are simultaneously researching an advance of every category. Categories should be a bit as in Civ2: 1. Military, 2. Economy/Applied, 3. Social/Philosophical, 4. Academic and a new one: 5. Biology/Farming.

Note I am in favor of a super tech tree of around 300 techs. This is BTW necessary when using simultaneous research since in theory there are 5 categories, so 5 times more techs necessary to keep the same research speed as in Civ2.

The Research Rate of each category should be able to differ individually. This is done by SE Factors. For more explanation about the Factors, I refer you to my SE Model v2.3, if I can post it before The List v2.

4.1. Military

This is affected by the SE Factor Military (What else had you expected?). It goes in increments of 10%. That is, +1 Military gives you 10% faster Military discoveries; +2 Mil gives you +20%… The opposite counts for negative Military rates.

In Civ2 it was very regular I was fighting with my Dragoons and Musketeers against the enemy’s Chariots. And they kept rush-attacking me over and over, although they lost every time. In real history, this should be impossible. Unless the difference was too big (eg British against Zulus), the weaker enemy always tried to imitate a new weapon of an enemy or find a defense against it. This was what made Europe supreme in military tech; because all the small nations were continuously fighting each other. On the other side, China achieved military supremacy pretty fast in it’s region and that stopped the development of new weapons. The empire stagnated. So in some way, it should be possible that when you are in a region with many enemies, your military research goes faster. And when you’re leading an isolationist existence, military development would go very slow. But how to do that; I don’t know.

4.2. Economy/Applied

For reasons mentioned in the beginning of this research system explanation, the Economy SE Factor should affect the research speed of this category in the same way as Military.

4.3. Social/Philosophical

Affected by the Happiness SE Factor.

4.4. Academic

Affected by the Research SE Factor.

4.5. Biology/Farming

Affected by the Environmentalism SE Factor.

5. Libraries, Universities, Schools (?), Research Labs.

So what do these buildings do if they don’t affect the science produced in a city?
They should affect the overall Research Rate of all categories.
How much they affect the Research Rate should be determined by how much trade you allocate to Education.

Since you can have only have one type of each building per city, this is the only thing where your number of cities can affect the Research Rate. And together with my SE Military Factor and my City Model [see Radical Ideas 11.3) and 11.4)], this is the thirth solution I give for the ICS problem. No longer large civs will automatically be good in research. Now they must have a good infrastructure plus money available for education. So a few perfectionist cities will beat a many-small-cities empire (until the late game).

Scientist Special citizens should also affect how much the science buildings in that city add to the Research Rate.

And now it’s finally time to present Education.

6. Education

I would delete the Science component and create another one : Education.
However, this component shouldn’t have as much importance in Civ3 as Science had in Civ2.
Because the Science component was very unrealistic in Civ2.
I don’t know a single country in history that would have spent 70% of it’s trade income on science or education (very common in Civ2). My country spends one thirth of it’s total budget on education. And I don’t think there are many countries that can say the same. So allocate 20 or 30% of your trade on Education would have to be common in Civ3. Therefore Education shouldn’t be super important. “But then you have lots of extra taxes! Very unbalancing!”, you could say. Yes, but do remember that players proposed many more uses for your money. To name just a few : people migration (again see Radical Ideas), Religion donations and most important soldier’s pay.

Education should have 3 uses.

6.1. Research buildings

As already said, Education should determine how much the research buildings add to the Research Rate.

6.2. Technology Spread

Another idea in the Technology thread. Technologies are discovered in a random city in your empire, but big Science/Education city have a greater chance. Then they spread through the empire. If you have a well connected road network, it will go much faster of course.
So in a small perfectionist empire tech will spread very quickly; but in a large undeveloped and unroaded empire backyard regions can be created, where new technology comes very slow. Then you can have situations that the core of your empire can build the most modern units, eg Musketeers, but that at a far border, they are still having Pikemen.

Now to the point. It’s rather logic that, the higher your Education rate, the faster techs will spread.

6.3. Education points

This is a SE idea. Some people said that the player shouldn’t be the one to choose the Value (Knowledge, Power,…), but that your population should do it. You could only affect your population’s Value opinion by Education. I would extent that idea.

All the previous was not with concrete numbers; it was with plus or minus %’s of a Research Rate. For Education points, I would use the classic thing. Simple 20% of trade is allocated to Education = 20% of your trade is Education points.

What’s the use of Education points?
You should have gathered a certain amount of Education points before you can successfully make a SE switch. Changing your SE choice for Government and Economy should require the most Education points. The other some less. If you haven’t gathered a good amount of points and you still change a SE choice, there is a big chance that some cities will revolt and form a new civ.
The number of points necessary for a SE switch should be :

X * Population

Where:

X is a number dependent on 1) which SE category you want to change and 2) which difficulty level you’re playing on.
Population is how many population units your empire has.
So how many cities will revolt is dependent on how many population units you didn’t convine/educate.

M@ni@c

[Maniac]

Comments about these very radical ideas?

[KDan]

Hmm.... couple that with my ideas and I think it would be very good :-)

Daniel

[Jon Miller]

Hi

All

great idea M@ni@c, we need more like these

all the good ideas are not already out there

Jon Miller

[ember]

Nice, I like it.

Maybe there should be a certain education allotment required per citzen to prevent backsliding...
If a modern country stoped spending on tech altogether, in a few years the most advanced tech would be lost, and slowly the general level would regress.

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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[SnowFire]

Aieeeee! Computer crashes one time, my dad turns off the computer w/o saving another... I'll be almost glad to get back to college, where I might actually be able to finish this.

[Maniac]

Let's try to give a more concrete example.

These numbers are of course randomly chosen and unbalanced.

The basic Research Rate of the Academic category is 100. You need 1000 to get a tech.

You have discovered the Key Techs of Humanism and Enlightment, each adding 20.
Research Rate = 140.

Knowledge is your Value, +2 Research.
Research Rate = 160.

You have a perfectionist empire of 8 cities and you allocate 30% of your trade to Education. Each of your cities has a Library, a University and a Research Lab.
So :
Library:
8 (# cities) * 1 (the basic Library's addition to the Research Rate if you have 10% Education) * 3 (30% Education) = 24.
University : 8 * 2 * 3 = 48.
Research Lab : 8 * 4 * 3 = 98.

Research Rate = 330.

"Scientist Special citizens should also affect how much the science buildings in that city add to the Research Rate."

Let's simplify that.
Say, if you have no science building, a Scientist special citizen adds nothing to the Research Rate.
If you have a Library, he adds 1.
University, 2.
Research Lab, 3.
Imagine you have one city that has a Scientist Special Citizen.

Research Rate = 333.
That means you have an Academic discovery every 3 turns (or if you are strict, 4 turns, but of course the remaning 332 Research points go to the next discovery).


I fear that the Research SE Factor could become too weak since now, it only affects 1/5 of your research.
So I propose that the Research SE Factor would also affect the science production of Library, Univ...
Means 170 +20% of the +2 Research SE = 204.

Then the total Research Rate would be 371.

Agreed?

[SnowFire]

The new summary is up. Somewhat surprisingly, there was more material in just 10-15 posts then I expected. They're all now on the list. Please check it out and tell me if it's satisfactory in representing your idea, so I can change it before it needs to be sent in...

[yin26]

Snowfire,

It's looking great! Can I give you just 24 hours on this? I've got most things ready to go and (for my own sanity) really want to give this to Markos by Friday.

By the way, the list is going to be pretty amazing...

[yin26]

Also, important question:

Does this list include all the Firaxis.com stuff as well or will I need to include two versions? Two versions, of course, would make the list MUCH longer, which, at this point, we should try to aviod...

[johnmcd]

SCIENCE AND IDEAS AS WONDERS

This may have been suggested, but I didn't see it.
There seems to be some unhappiness about the 'building' of wonders that are not 'built', an unease I share and probably best represented by women's sufferage. What if there was a class of tech wonders as well as the traditional type of wonder? Whereby a city would remove its beakers from the civ wide science pool and store the beakers in its production window towards a 'great idea', like women's sufferage. When the box was full women's sufferage would be realised. It seems to me to get around the problem of using a coal mine to grant women the vote without unduly undermining the mechanics of the wonder system.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by johnmcd (edited October 27, 1999).]</font>

[SnowFire]

yin: Yes, I was TM over at Firaxis as well, and I used the same summary for both threads. I didn't want it to become an unmanageable two-sets-of-iedas nightmare.

The summary should be off to you by the end of today.