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This is the first draft for the proposed research system. Feel free to comment on it.
Contents:
I. Overview
II. How the Tech-tree is structured
III. How RPs are calculated
IV. How Project Cost is calculated
V. How Research works
VI. What Research does
I. Overview
I think most who enjoy civ-type games are of the opinion that gaining new technologies through research is one of the key elements in this kind of games. In Clash this should hold true. Although bits and pieces of the research system are taken from various other games of this type there are many innovations to be found here. The two most notable are the decisive affect of economical, governmental and cultural factors on research progress and the ‘free-form’ structure of the tech tree. These two areas also reflect those things we wanted to accomplish in research, that is, making a more detailed and realistic connection between the actual situation in the player´s state and what/how easily he could research something; and secondly give players more options and more freedom in what direction they wanted to take in research. Hopefully this goal has/will be achieved by us.
Now, there is a lot of numbers and calculations found below (and much more to come), so many people may be alarmed that this system will be overly complicated. Just remember that most of the numbers found below will be hidden from the player, or at least something he doesn´t have to worry himself overly much over. But as the system we´re planning is a bit more detailed and ‘in touch’ with the game situation itself, it´s inevetable that the system is somehwhat more complex than found in other games. Using the system shouldn´t, however, pose any problems, as with everything else it´s up to the players how deep they want to go, even those who won´t study the system in detail can still use it, plus that the AI (probably in form of Advisors) should prove helpful in choosing the right course.
Note that in the following text the terms ‘advances’ and ‘projects’ mean the same thing.
II. How the Tech-tree is structured
At the moment the tech-tree is divided into two parts, Technological Advances (TA), which cover all discoveries and inventions that relate to the science world, gadgets, industrial techniques, and so on and Social Advances (SA), which deal with all social and cultural changes as well as ideas concerning economical and military matters. The difference between the two categories should be obvious, and to some extent different rules apply to them, such as how advances from each group is implemented and how projects in each group are affected differently by the situation in the game. However, possibly we´ll get rid of the categories soon, but until/if that happens they´re included here. Each category has a number of fields, the excact number is undecided at the moment and will probably not be decided upon until the work on the advances (projects) themselves starts. As it stands now the TA category has six fields:
1. Crafts, which deals with techniques and instruments used by the populace, such as clocks, compass and lenses, as well as simple production methods such as pottery and weaving.
2. Industry, which deals with all kinds of resource gathering and managing, construction, architecture, irrigation, mining, and the like. Note that the distinction between the Crafts and Industry fields is not clear, this will be worked out as the work on advaces progresses.
3. Communication, this field deals with all kinds of communication methods used by man, both direct (transportation) and indirect (communication). This field will thus include such diverse things as ship building, the combuistion engine, telegraph and the internet.
4. Natural Science, I decided to split science into two parts, although this probably means many things will be in a grey area between them. But I think this should work. This field deals with biology, chemistry and the like as well as all Nature related advances, such as animal husbandry, breeding, medicine, DNA splicing and such.
5. Hard Science, which mainly deals with physics, astronomy, electricity and the like. Note that in order to keep the number of advances in each field approx. the same we´ll probably need to move projects between fields, even if it strictly should belong to another field. This probably will be the case with this field, if we followed the historical rate of progress there would be too few projects at the start and too many at the end.
6. Armaments, which deals with all kinds of methods and techniques used to improve one´s chances in war. Advances include weaponry, armor, fortifications, and other areas such as chemical warfare and electronic devices used in combat.
At the moment only two fields exist in the SA, both of cover pretty broad subjects so possible they´ll be split later on depending on the number of projects in them.
1. Civic, which deals with state-wide matters concerning economics, laws, administration and the like, as well as literacy and other educational things. Also, military thoughts and doctrines are found here.
2. Culture, which deals with religious ideas, philosophy, all kinds of political thought, such as democracy and liberalism, as well as nationalism, environmentalism, humanism, humanitarianism and so on.
The general progression is divided into Tech Levels (TL), which are 12 in total. The first level deals with primitive/antique advances, the last one with modern/near future projects. On each TL and for each field there are between 3 and 5 projects available for research. The number can fluctuate between fields and between TLs. Thus, if we assume 4 projects per field per TL on the avarege we have a total of 384 projects, which is considerable more than found in most games of this type, if I´m not mistaken. But as the progress along the tech tree is more liberal than in other games and that the ‘private’ research efforts of your citizens can count for much, players should never feel bogged down in their researching. That at least is the idea :-).
III. How RPs are calculated
We´ve been toying with few formulas in how excactly Research Points (RPs) are calcualted. The RPs are then of course distributed by the player among those projects he most want to discover. At the start of the game players must research one project from each field, thus, as the tech tree structure stands, they´ll always be researching 8 projects at a time. Later on, when they (the government that is) gain more control over what the people is researching they can fiddle around with this, such as research more than one project from a field at the same time and research more/less than the 8 projects required at start.
The number of RPs a player accummulates depends on two things: how populous his state is and what social, cultural, economical and/or educational restraints his subjects are under, which determines how willing the subject is in making changes, how well equipped he is to do so from a financial and knowledge standpoint, and how easily he can get his ideas across and be socially accepted. The latter thing is much more important, so a state of 1 million people where individual freedom is high can easily outpace an autocratic state of 100 million people manyfold.
Here is a list of the things that affect the RPs accumulated. We´ll use it as the basis for the exact formula for calculating this.
- Population (maybe 1 RP per 100.000, this is randomized each turn (multiplied by a random number between 0,8 and 1,2) to give the number a little flux)
- Economic standing of the pop. This is calculated at class basis, probably with the PCI as the basic measurement, but including such things as (un)employment, slavery, taxation, etc. [Multiply by 0,1 to 2,0]
- Education of the pop. This is based on the education status of the state. [This will probably be represented by somekind of an Education Level (a floating point number (1.1, 1.2, etc), in which case we´d multiply the RP pool by the sqrt of the EL]
- Cultural interest in research. This is also calcualted on class basis. Highly traditional societies, with rigid caste system and so on usually frown upon any changes. [Multiply (for each class, then add together) by 0,5 to 1,5]
- Governmental view on research. The government (i.e. those classes which rule) can have very negative effects on research if it´s very centralized and powerful (only modern democratic governments are comfortable about research and the new ideas it generates, in the old days governments always feared (with right) that new ideas could usurp their power). [Multiply (again for each class) by 0,2 to 1,5]
- Turn-based events. These can be of a varied nation and at the moment it´s difficult to say how big an impact they´ll have. These events will normally add (sometimes reduce) a set lump of RPs from the total pool the player has, instead of modifying the RP calculation as the other listings. [The number of RPs added/reduced should at most be ca. the total cost of an avarage advance, in most cases a lot less]
IV. How Project Cost is calculated
Each project has a basic cost, measured in RPs. This cost can be modified for various reasons up or down, making the actual cost in RPs even twice as cheap or expensive. The biggest factors in this are how the state elite looks upon the advance in question and how much the society feels it needs the advance. Thus, in a state run by the Military, all projects relating to military matters become cheaper, while those which the Military has little or no interest in or sees as a potential threat to it´s power become more expensive. But before we look more closely at what affects the cost, lets look a little closer on the projects themselves. Each project has a ‘tag’ which designates what kind of advance it is, some projects can have one or more tags. As of yet the excact types are pretty much undecided, but here is a suggestion list:
- Science (Theory)
- Politics
- Army (Military)
- Navy
- Economics
- Labor
- Production
- Education (Knowledge)
- Spiritual
I´m not sure this covers everything, but we´ll see. These tags serve two purposes. First, a class/culture is more interested in some things than another, the tag list is sorted in priority order depending on the class in power and the culture, those projects with tags from the top become cheaper and vice versa. Secondly, these tags are also used to determine how feasible the project is compared to the game situation, and how likely a project is to be forgotten or lost. For example all projects with the Navy tag become more expensive if the state has no (or limited) access to water. In order to determine this each tag is accociated with a specific game function/circumstances and increases/decreases of the cost based on this. F.e. projects with the Labor tag are influenced by the amount of unemployment, how widespread slavery in the workforce is and so on. Anyway, as you can see this idea isn´t fully developed yet, but you can see what we´re aiming at and the general picture of how we´ll do it.
Here is a list of those things that can increase or decrease the cost of a project:
A hidden modifying number which determines the exact basic cost at the moment the project is started [ranged between -25% and +25% (maybe more)]
Demographic/cultural modifier (f.e. if the society is very traditionally bound this can severly restrict what advances the culture sees fit to research. [ranged between -50% to +50%]
Threat/Need the government/class/people feel for the project. [Ranged between -50% to +50%, although rarily more/less than 25% unless in dire situations]
Ideas from abroad, received through:
a) spying/military conquests
b) slaves/captives/migrants
c) governmental exchange (players choice)
d) trade (merchants)
Each of this can give a bonus of ca. 25%, maybe more v. occasionally. Note also that migrants, when in the form of conquerers can also affect research/education level adversily if more primitve then the conquered.
'Soft' prereqs, +10% if one TL below prereq TL, +25% if two TL below. If more than two TLs below the project can not be researched.
For unresearced projects in TL below the current project. +5% per project and per TL.
Notes: some of the listings need some explanation. The first listing is a modifier applied to the cost which can be either positive or negative. The idea with this is to keep players in the dark about how many RPs they need excactly to finish a research. They won´t see the modified number, only the cost as it is before this modifier is applied. Players only find out the excact cost when they´ve reached a breakthrough. This is the only hidden modifier.
Most modifiers are only applied at the moment the project is started, but some, such as the ‘Threat/need’ and the ‘Ideas from abroad’ can affect the cost even after the project is started. The new cost is then displayed for the player, with the same hidden modifer being used again to recalculate the excact number needed.
As you can see ‘Ideas from abroad’ can come in many guises. The workings of a) should be covered in the Intelligence section. Note that as it stands now players never steal/exchange advances as a whole, like in most other games, they only receive bonuses to their own research efforts of the projects(s) in question. The effects of b) would be recorded at the moment these elements get in touch/mingle with your society, the effects are based on their tech/education level vs. the player´s and how influential they are in the society (slaves, conquerers, etc.). The use of c) is up to players and works pretty much the same as tech exchanges in other games except that projects as a whole are never exchanged, players only exchange a cost bonus on some project(s). The ideas brought home by merchants from foreign lands are covered in d), what the bonus is is based on how much traffic (connection) is between the states, how advanced the idea is in relation to your own state and how much influence the merchants have in your society.
Pre-requirements are explained in detail below, so the next last listing may seem a bit strange. Basically, a ‘soft’ prereq means it´s not a neccessity to have, but if you ain´t got it the cost is increased. Example: A project in the Craft Field needs a TL 3 from the Natural Science Field, but the player only has TL 1 there, he can still research the Craft project, but at 25% extra cost.
As for the last listing concerning research progression more details can be found later on. Basically, players are not forced to research every project in each TL before advancing to the next, but researching a project from a TL when you still haven´t researched all projects on a lower TL will increase the cost of the project in question. So if you want to research a project on TL 5 while you still got one left from TL 3 and two from TL 4 would be 20% more expensive (5*2 + 5 + 5).
It may not be apparant at what the differnce is between the RP calculations and the project cost calculations, at first sight the same modifiers seem to be used in both cases. The difference is that in the RP calculations the modifiers f.e. for culture and government are based on (applied to/from) each class or even each citizen, while for the project calculations the modifers are all based on the state/culture as a whole.
V. How Research works
The RP pool is distributed by the player among those projects he most wants to discover. At the start of the game players must research one project from each field, thus, as the tech tree structure stands, they´ll always be researching 8 projects at a time. Players are free to choose the amount of RPs in each project above or below the avarage of 12.5% Later on, when they (the government that is) gain more control over what the people is researching they can fiddle around with this, such as research more than one project from a field at the same time (by skipping researching from other field) and later research more/less than the 8 projects required at start (these changes come themselves through research).
All states start at TL0 in all fields. So at the start players can only choose from projects on TL1 in each field. As stated above each TL will have between 3 and 5 projects, but players are not forced to research every one of them to gain access to the projects on the next TL he has other prereqs for. Usually it is enough to research half of the projects in a TL to gain access to the next level, sometimes this can be more (even all the projects), sometimes less (maybe just one). This will depend on how related the projects in the current field are to the projects in the next TL, but the norm is half.
As to be expected most projects need a pre-requirment before it can be researched. There are two basic types of prereqs plus one ‘general’ one. The basic types we´ll call for now simply ‘hard’ and ‘soft’.
Hard prereqs are a specific advance the player must have to be able to research projects with this as a prereq. We´ll try to keep the hard prereqs as few as possible in order to give players more freedom in their research, but some key discoveries still must be aquired by the players, such as literacy, gunpowder and printing.
Soft prereqs are based on specific Tech-levels, it doesn´t matter which projects the player actually took in the TL, as long as he has gained access to the next level above. Also, even if the player hasn´t reached the TL in question he can still research the project at a slightly increased cost as long as he is only one or two TLs behind.
The ‘general’ prereq is the status of education the player is on, if we use Education Level, that will be the basis of this. At the moment it is undecided how this will affect th research itself, possibly it will increase the cost of researching projects on TLs higher than the EL currently is, but as this will put some restraints on players freedom in his research, we may try to come up with something else. However, the EL can affect the chances of players losing/forgetting advances. How excactly this will be handled is undecided, but the basic idea is that if your state suffers a major catastrophe, such as being overrun by illiterate barbarians, advances which explicitly deal with high-order societies may be lost, such as Aquaducts when you don’t have any large cities. The trick is of course how to implement this, at the moment my idea is to use the ‘tags’ (briefly descriped above) and the Education level, we´ll see how it works out.
VI. What Research does
Now that you know what you can do for research it´s time to ask what research can do for you. The excact effects of each advance is something we can´t do until the game system is more or less intact because most of advances modify the game system. Here is a general list over the areas advances can affect and an estimation of how large each listing should be. Note that many/most advances will have effects from more than one listing, so the percentage does not add up to 100%.
- ‘Hard’ prereqs [10-20%]
- Give bonus to agricultural production (including fisheries) [5%]
- Give bonus to resource gathering (mining and the like) [5%]
- Give bonus to industrial production [10%]
- Give bonus to labor productivity [5-10%]
- Give bonus economical affairs (trade, investments, financial matters) [10%]
- Give bonus to administration/bureaucracy [5-10%]
- More advanced military units [10-15%]
- More advanced transportation methods [5%]
- Faster communications [5%]
- Give bonus to stability / people’s happiness [20-30%]
- Allow new forms of implementing control (pol.power) [5-10%]
- Give bonus to health/sanitation [5%]
- Give bonus to education [5-10%]
- More advanced military theories [5%]
If you feel there is something wanting, or if you want to see some listings given higher/lower percentage, then send us your ideas (Forum or e-mail).
Contents:
I. Overview
II. How the Tech-tree is structured
III. How RPs are calculated
IV. How Project Cost is calculated
V. How Research works
VI. What Research does
I. Overview
I think most who enjoy civ-type games are of the opinion that gaining new technologies through research is one of the key elements in this kind of games. In Clash this should hold true. Although bits and pieces of the research system are taken from various other games of this type there are many innovations to be found here. The two most notable are the decisive affect of economical, governmental and cultural factors on research progress and the ‘free-form’ structure of the tech tree. These two areas also reflect those things we wanted to accomplish in research, that is, making a more detailed and realistic connection between the actual situation in the player´s state and what/how easily he could research something; and secondly give players more options and more freedom in what direction they wanted to take in research. Hopefully this goal has/will be achieved by us.
Now, there is a lot of numbers and calculations found below (and much more to come), so many people may be alarmed that this system will be overly complicated. Just remember that most of the numbers found below will be hidden from the player, or at least something he doesn´t have to worry himself overly much over. But as the system we´re planning is a bit more detailed and ‘in touch’ with the game situation itself, it´s inevetable that the system is somehwhat more complex than found in other games. Using the system shouldn´t, however, pose any problems, as with everything else it´s up to the players how deep they want to go, even those who won´t study the system in detail can still use it, plus that the AI (probably in form of Advisors) should prove helpful in choosing the right course.
Note that in the following text the terms ‘advances’ and ‘projects’ mean the same thing.
II. How the Tech-tree is structured
At the moment the tech-tree is divided into two parts, Technological Advances (TA), which cover all discoveries and inventions that relate to the science world, gadgets, industrial techniques, and so on and Social Advances (SA), which deal with all social and cultural changes as well as ideas concerning economical and military matters. The difference between the two categories should be obvious, and to some extent different rules apply to them, such as how advances from each group is implemented and how projects in each group are affected differently by the situation in the game. However, possibly we´ll get rid of the categories soon, but until/if that happens they´re included here. Each category has a number of fields, the excact number is undecided at the moment and will probably not be decided upon until the work on the advances (projects) themselves starts. As it stands now the TA category has six fields:
1. Crafts, which deals with techniques and instruments used by the populace, such as clocks, compass and lenses, as well as simple production methods such as pottery and weaving.
2. Industry, which deals with all kinds of resource gathering and managing, construction, architecture, irrigation, mining, and the like. Note that the distinction between the Crafts and Industry fields is not clear, this will be worked out as the work on advaces progresses.
3. Communication, this field deals with all kinds of communication methods used by man, both direct (transportation) and indirect (communication). This field will thus include such diverse things as ship building, the combuistion engine, telegraph and the internet.
4. Natural Science, I decided to split science into two parts, although this probably means many things will be in a grey area between them. But I think this should work. This field deals with biology, chemistry and the like as well as all Nature related advances, such as animal husbandry, breeding, medicine, DNA splicing and such.
5. Hard Science, which mainly deals with physics, astronomy, electricity and the like. Note that in order to keep the number of advances in each field approx. the same we´ll probably need to move projects between fields, even if it strictly should belong to another field. This probably will be the case with this field, if we followed the historical rate of progress there would be too few projects at the start and too many at the end.
6. Armaments, which deals with all kinds of methods and techniques used to improve one´s chances in war. Advances include weaponry, armor, fortifications, and other areas such as chemical warfare and electronic devices used in combat.
At the moment only two fields exist in the SA, both of cover pretty broad subjects so possible they´ll be split later on depending on the number of projects in them.
1. Civic, which deals with state-wide matters concerning economics, laws, administration and the like, as well as literacy and other educational things. Also, military thoughts and doctrines are found here.
2. Culture, which deals with religious ideas, philosophy, all kinds of political thought, such as democracy and liberalism, as well as nationalism, environmentalism, humanism, humanitarianism and so on.
The general progression is divided into Tech Levels (TL), which are 12 in total. The first level deals with primitive/antique advances, the last one with modern/near future projects. On each TL and for each field there are between 3 and 5 projects available for research. The number can fluctuate between fields and between TLs. Thus, if we assume 4 projects per field per TL on the avarege we have a total of 384 projects, which is considerable more than found in most games of this type, if I´m not mistaken. But as the progress along the tech tree is more liberal than in other games and that the ‘private’ research efforts of your citizens can count for much, players should never feel bogged down in their researching. That at least is the idea :-).
III. How RPs are calculated
We´ve been toying with few formulas in how excactly Research Points (RPs) are calcualted. The RPs are then of course distributed by the player among those projects he most want to discover. At the start of the game players must research one project from each field, thus, as the tech tree structure stands, they´ll always be researching 8 projects at a time. Later on, when they (the government that is) gain more control over what the people is researching they can fiddle around with this, such as research more than one project from a field at the same time and research more/less than the 8 projects required at start.
The number of RPs a player accummulates depends on two things: how populous his state is and what social, cultural, economical and/or educational restraints his subjects are under, which determines how willing the subject is in making changes, how well equipped he is to do so from a financial and knowledge standpoint, and how easily he can get his ideas across and be socially accepted. The latter thing is much more important, so a state of 1 million people where individual freedom is high can easily outpace an autocratic state of 100 million people manyfold.
Here is a list of the things that affect the RPs accumulated. We´ll use it as the basis for the exact formula for calculating this.
- Population (maybe 1 RP per 100.000, this is randomized each turn (multiplied by a random number between 0,8 and 1,2) to give the number a little flux)
- Economic standing of the pop. This is calculated at class basis, probably with the PCI as the basic measurement, but including such things as (un)employment, slavery, taxation, etc. [Multiply by 0,1 to 2,0]
- Education of the pop. This is based on the education status of the state. [This will probably be represented by somekind of an Education Level (a floating point number (1.1, 1.2, etc), in which case we´d multiply the RP pool by the sqrt of the EL]
- Cultural interest in research. This is also calcualted on class basis. Highly traditional societies, with rigid caste system and so on usually frown upon any changes. [Multiply (for each class, then add together) by 0,5 to 1,5]
- Governmental view on research. The government (i.e. those classes which rule) can have very negative effects on research if it´s very centralized and powerful (only modern democratic governments are comfortable about research and the new ideas it generates, in the old days governments always feared (with right) that new ideas could usurp their power). [Multiply (again for each class) by 0,2 to 1,5]
- Turn-based events. These can be of a varied nation and at the moment it´s difficult to say how big an impact they´ll have. These events will normally add (sometimes reduce) a set lump of RPs from the total pool the player has, instead of modifying the RP calculation as the other listings. [The number of RPs added/reduced should at most be ca. the total cost of an avarage advance, in most cases a lot less]
IV. How Project Cost is calculated
Each project has a basic cost, measured in RPs. This cost can be modified for various reasons up or down, making the actual cost in RPs even twice as cheap or expensive. The biggest factors in this are how the state elite looks upon the advance in question and how much the society feels it needs the advance. Thus, in a state run by the Military, all projects relating to military matters become cheaper, while those which the Military has little or no interest in or sees as a potential threat to it´s power become more expensive. But before we look more closely at what affects the cost, lets look a little closer on the projects themselves. Each project has a ‘tag’ which designates what kind of advance it is, some projects can have one or more tags. As of yet the excact types are pretty much undecided, but here is a suggestion list:
- Science (Theory)
- Politics
- Army (Military)
- Navy
- Economics
- Labor
- Production
- Education (Knowledge)
- Spiritual
I´m not sure this covers everything, but we´ll see. These tags serve two purposes. First, a class/culture is more interested in some things than another, the tag list is sorted in priority order depending on the class in power and the culture, those projects with tags from the top become cheaper and vice versa. Secondly, these tags are also used to determine how feasible the project is compared to the game situation, and how likely a project is to be forgotten or lost. For example all projects with the Navy tag become more expensive if the state has no (or limited) access to water. In order to determine this each tag is accociated with a specific game function/circumstances and increases/decreases of the cost based on this. F.e. projects with the Labor tag are influenced by the amount of unemployment, how widespread slavery in the workforce is and so on. Anyway, as you can see this idea isn´t fully developed yet, but you can see what we´re aiming at and the general picture of how we´ll do it.
Here is a list of those things that can increase or decrease the cost of a project:
A hidden modifying number which determines the exact basic cost at the moment the project is started [ranged between -25% and +25% (maybe more)]
Demographic/cultural modifier (f.e. if the society is very traditionally bound this can severly restrict what advances the culture sees fit to research. [ranged between -50% to +50%]
Threat/Need the government/class/people feel for the project. [Ranged between -50% to +50%, although rarily more/less than 25% unless in dire situations]
Ideas from abroad, received through:
a) spying/military conquests
b) slaves/captives/migrants
c) governmental exchange (players choice)
d) trade (merchants)
Each of this can give a bonus of ca. 25%, maybe more v. occasionally. Note also that migrants, when in the form of conquerers can also affect research/education level adversily if more primitve then the conquered.
'Soft' prereqs, +10% if one TL below prereq TL, +25% if two TL below. If more than two TLs below the project can not be researched.
For unresearced projects in TL below the current project. +5% per project and per TL.
Notes: some of the listings need some explanation. The first listing is a modifier applied to the cost which can be either positive or negative. The idea with this is to keep players in the dark about how many RPs they need excactly to finish a research. They won´t see the modified number, only the cost as it is before this modifier is applied. Players only find out the excact cost when they´ve reached a breakthrough. This is the only hidden modifier.
Most modifiers are only applied at the moment the project is started, but some, such as the ‘Threat/need’ and the ‘Ideas from abroad’ can affect the cost even after the project is started. The new cost is then displayed for the player, with the same hidden modifer being used again to recalculate the excact number needed.
As you can see ‘Ideas from abroad’ can come in many guises. The workings of a) should be covered in the Intelligence section. Note that as it stands now players never steal/exchange advances as a whole, like in most other games, they only receive bonuses to their own research efforts of the projects(s) in question. The effects of b) would be recorded at the moment these elements get in touch/mingle with your society, the effects are based on their tech/education level vs. the player´s and how influential they are in the society (slaves, conquerers, etc.). The use of c) is up to players and works pretty much the same as tech exchanges in other games except that projects as a whole are never exchanged, players only exchange a cost bonus on some project(s). The ideas brought home by merchants from foreign lands are covered in d), what the bonus is is based on how much traffic (connection) is between the states, how advanced the idea is in relation to your own state and how much influence the merchants have in your society.
Pre-requirements are explained in detail below, so the next last listing may seem a bit strange. Basically, a ‘soft’ prereq means it´s not a neccessity to have, but if you ain´t got it the cost is increased. Example: A project in the Craft Field needs a TL 3 from the Natural Science Field, but the player only has TL 1 there, he can still research the Craft project, but at 25% extra cost.
As for the last listing concerning research progression more details can be found later on. Basically, players are not forced to research every project in each TL before advancing to the next, but researching a project from a TL when you still haven´t researched all projects on a lower TL will increase the cost of the project in question. So if you want to research a project on TL 5 while you still got one left from TL 3 and two from TL 4 would be 20% more expensive (5*2 + 5 + 5).
It may not be apparant at what the differnce is between the RP calculations and the project cost calculations, at first sight the same modifiers seem to be used in both cases. The difference is that in the RP calculations the modifiers f.e. for culture and government are based on (applied to/from) each class or even each citizen, while for the project calculations the modifers are all based on the state/culture as a whole.
V. How Research works
The RP pool is distributed by the player among those projects he most wants to discover. At the start of the game players must research one project from each field, thus, as the tech tree structure stands, they´ll always be researching 8 projects at a time. Players are free to choose the amount of RPs in each project above or below the avarage of 12.5% Later on, when they (the government that is) gain more control over what the people is researching they can fiddle around with this, such as research more than one project from a field at the same time (by skipping researching from other field) and later research more/less than the 8 projects required at start (these changes come themselves through research).
All states start at TL0 in all fields. So at the start players can only choose from projects on TL1 in each field. As stated above each TL will have between 3 and 5 projects, but players are not forced to research every one of them to gain access to the projects on the next TL he has other prereqs for. Usually it is enough to research half of the projects in a TL to gain access to the next level, sometimes this can be more (even all the projects), sometimes less (maybe just one). This will depend on how related the projects in the current field are to the projects in the next TL, but the norm is half.
As to be expected most projects need a pre-requirment before it can be researched. There are two basic types of prereqs plus one ‘general’ one. The basic types we´ll call for now simply ‘hard’ and ‘soft’.
Hard prereqs are a specific advance the player must have to be able to research projects with this as a prereq. We´ll try to keep the hard prereqs as few as possible in order to give players more freedom in their research, but some key discoveries still must be aquired by the players, such as literacy, gunpowder and printing.
Soft prereqs are based on specific Tech-levels, it doesn´t matter which projects the player actually took in the TL, as long as he has gained access to the next level above. Also, even if the player hasn´t reached the TL in question he can still research the project at a slightly increased cost as long as he is only one or two TLs behind.
The ‘general’ prereq is the status of education the player is on, if we use Education Level, that will be the basis of this. At the moment it is undecided how this will affect th research itself, possibly it will increase the cost of researching projects on TLs higher than the EL currently is, but as this will put some restraints on players freedom in his research, we may try to come up with something else. However, the EL can affect the chances of players losing/forgetting advances. How excactly this will be handled is undecided, but the basic idea is that if your state suffers a major catastrophe, such as being overrun by illiterate barbarians, advances which explicitly deal with high-order societies may be lost, such as Aquaducts when you don’t have any large cities. The trick is of course how to implement this, at the moment my idea is to use the ‘tags’ (briefly descriped above) and the Education level, we´ll see how it works out.
VI. What Research does
Now that you know what you can do for research it´s time to ask what research can do for you. The excact effects of each advance is something we can´t do until the game system is more or less intact because most of advances modify the game system. Here is a general list over the areas advances can affect and an estimation of how large each listing should be. Note that many/most advances will have effects from more than one listing, so the percentage does not add up to 100%.
- ‘Hard’ prereqs [10-20%]
- Give bonus to agricultural production (including fisheries) [5%]
- Give bonus to resource gathering (mining and the like) [5%]
- Give bonus to industrial production [10%]
- Give bonus to labor productivity [5-10%]
- Give bonus economical affairs (trade, investments, financial matters) [10%]
- Give bonus to administration/bureaucracy [5-10%]
- More advanced military units [10-15%]
- More advanced transportation methods [5%]
- Faster communications [5%]
- Give bonus to stability / people’s happiness [20-30%]
- Allow new forms of implementing control (pol.power) [5-10%]
- Give bonus to health/sanitation [5%]
- Give bonus to education [5-10%]
- More advanced military theories [5%]
If you feel there is something wanting, or if you want to see some listings given higher/lower percentage, then send us your ideas (Forum or e-mail).
] Now in the real world, a LOT of research discoveries [that we are calling tech advancements] came about because of the Military.
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