Technology Test Scenario: Development & Discussion Thread

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by alms66

If tech order values means setting the % spent on tech research in the econ interface, then yes. In the scenario, currently, I have several fields preset to 5 (or 8 maybe). I want to do this for the tech fields (Military Tech, Food Tech, etc.) I thought those production order tags could only go in the civilization tags (i.e. were a subtag of civilization)?

Hey Alms, a side topic while I'm thinking about it. . . When you put in 5% orders for like Build Farm you should generally use the ROI field to restrict the builds to only those that really benefit the economy. It is possible to overspend on building up farm capital. Generally for a category like that you should use an ROI of 10 (10%) or maybe 5. The ROI constraint prevents investment being wasted.

Sector infrastructure like Build Farm, and military units are the only place that ROI has meaning for now. For military units it is keyed off % of revenue that goes to Army Supplies. When that is high, mil units are less attractive and don't pass a 10% ROI test.

[alms66]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I'd say population on a given terrain can yield some activities. It would have to depend on population in order to avoid settling lots of squares with 10 people to get some RPs.
About negative, I'd rather have conditional (forest + coast = increased shipbuilding) but that looks feasible. I'd rather use it ony to cancel some RPs generated by the same square.

Population should definitely be a factor, though the number of tiles should also be a factor. This is just an example:
If you have 10 tiles with 1000 people (10*.1) would yield 1 RP, while 100 tiles with 100 people (100*.01) would yield 1 RP, and 1000 tiles with 10 people (1000*.001) would yield 1 RP. But the bonus for the number of tiles would add (tiles/1000) to this total, for:
10@1000=1.01
100@100=1.1
1000@10=2.0
This way, if you do settle lots of tiles of the same type, it still has an effect (which it should, your empire is made up of mostly one tile type!). Even if the exact numbers from this example were used, I don't think the bonus is too large for occupying such monotonous terrain.
And conditional would be better than negative, definitely.

Originally posted by Mark_Everson That's a good idea Alms. It could possibly be refined to people pursuing X actions in Y terrain give RPs in Z activity. The actions would be like building particular infrastructure, or working in particular sectors of the economy. We wouldn't have to do the specific parts immediately, but could work up to it.

That would be great. It would really help solve that "If I'm an Island civ, I should get bonuses to shipbuilding" situation.

Originally posted by Mark_Everson Hey Alms, a side topic while I'm thinking about it. . . When you put in 5% orders for like Build Farm you should generally use the ROI field to restrict the builds to only those that really benefit the economy. It is possible to overspend on building up farm capital. Generally for a category like that you should use an ROI of 10 (10%) or maybe 5. The ROI constraint prevents investment being wasted.

Sector infrastructure like Build Farm, and military units are the only place that ROI has meaning for now. For military units it is keyed off % of revenue that goes to Army Supplies. When that is high, mil units are less attractive and don't pass a 10% ROI test.

Is there a way to preset the ROI field?
I've never used this before, and frankly don't know whether it's explained in Dawn or not, but we should add that to the list of things to do, if it's not.
So you're basically saying, use the ROI field on everything but tech spending and unit building, right? If I were to use ROI for tech spending and unit building, what would happen? If it's nothing bad, why even have the second field?

*Edit*
Corrected Example

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by alms66
Is there a way to preset the ROI field?
I've never used this before, and frankly don't know whether it's explained in Dawn or not, but we should add that to the list of things to do, if it's not.

I'd thought it was in the xml stuff, but it looks like I was wrong. I'll put it in the xml handling code sometime soon. It's not in Dawn, and as a matter of fact the interface excludes it to reduce confusion. I think it is more a topic for the econ tutorial whenever that happens.

So you're basically saying, use the ROI field on everything but tech spending and unit building, right?

Sector infrastructure "Build X" and military units are the only things that use it now.

If I were to use ROI for tech spending and unit building, what would happen? If it's nothing bad, why even have the second field?

For tech spending it doesn't do anything. For unit builds it makes units less (more) likely to be built for high (low) levels of Army Supplies spending.

[alms66]

Another activity...
Contact Activity
Mere contact with other cultures is enough to spark new ideas and spur on technological and social advancement. That is what the “Contact” activity represents. This is not the same as technological or social diffusion that comes from contact. The difference being that diffusion is the spread of existing ideas/inventions from one culture to another via contact, while the contact activity is the formation of new ideas/inventions by one culture due to contact with another culture. An example of diffusion would be a traveler from CivA traveling to CivB, seeing the wheel, and bringing the knowledge of it back to CivA with him. An example of contact activity would be a man from CivA seeing that in CivB citizens are able to freely move about, have lower taxes and have more civil liberties than in CivA, from which he conceptualizes the ideology of Democracy.

One possible way of generating the RPs is to base it on the level of contact (War, Peace, Alliance – or – -1, 0, 1). War could generate 1/3 as many as Alliance and Peace could generate 2/3 as many, for example.

It may seem a bit premature to include this activity (assuming everyone agrees to include it in the first place), but I don’t think it is. Since war should generate a few RPs (even if not as many as stated above), this activity will still be useful now, though it will be much more useful once the ability to change diplomatic states is in (this statement based on the last sentence of the previous paragraph).

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Alms:

A Contact Activity really doesn't seem needed to me. If the contact is so tenuous that there is no diffusion through trade, etc. then it probably doesn't do much good in stimulating invention beyond rumored other civs IMO. Lets see what others think. . .

[alms66]

It's not meant to replace diffusion, but to work along with diffusion. I was merely pointing out that it was not the same thing as diffusion. One could argue that there would not be any Contact Activity between two very ancient civs, but that arguement doesn't hold up for very long through the course of history, due to cross-border intermingling, etc., so I feel that including it throughout the entire game (unless we want to throw technology requirements on activities, which may be a good idea anyhow) is justified.

[Max Sinister]

Please don't let the tech spread as fast as in Civ3. It's completely unrealistic.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
Please don't let the tech spread as fast as in Civ3. It's completely unrealistic.

We'll do our best to have some level of historical accuracy, Max!

[Max Sinister]

Thanks!