Wonders and Achievements

[roquijad]

LGJ:
Abour ruins, I think we can include both views. First, a few random sites with archelogical items from the nomadic human past. Second, "gameplay-ruins" generated after a city is destroyed by conquest, earthquakes or any other disaster modeled in the disasters model (total destruction is not a must and we only need to check for a "powerful enough" disaster). As you said it, not allowing the player to decide where to dig solves any problem with gamplay knowledge the player has about destroyed cities. Even more, archeological activity should maybe be handled by the economic model if people can get a profit from it through tourism, so the player has nothing to say about digging.

All:
There've been several good comments I'd like to re-comment here. First, I think is true what Kull says about the relation between a person and a wonder. But I don't think this implies a strong link with the Char model. Based on some civ variables like how much freedom people have, we can determine how good environment is for creativity and then compute a chance for an item to appear. This probability represents the probability of a great artist coming up AND the probability of this artist creating a wonder-item.
About structural wonders, for sure we must not make the link with the Char model, otherwise players are obligated to be Nebuchadnezzar in order to build the HG, which I believe is a too restrictive rule. But what I really think is the most important element in Kull's argument is that the relation between persons and wonders shows there's no race at all about wonders. Civs didn't compete for building the pyramyds! Egyptians built them only because it was an expression of their culture and only because there was a "inspired" guy ruling there. I think this is the best argument to support the idea of abstract wonders. A player cannot say "I'm gonna build the pyramids" like in civ2, because it's simply senseless. A player can only say something like "I'm gonna build a great religious building", FE. The "wonders race" still exist, in a way... Civs without wonders won't have the bonuses civs having them, so you want your civ to build wonders, although the race is not now for a specific wonder like pyramids, but for simply having wonders and hopefuly more of them than your enemy.
The problem with abstract wonders is that players won't get that special sensation like in civ2 when they say "I have built the pyramids!". It's a flavor thing, but that makes you feel you're really playing a civilization game. A good solution for having abstract wonders and the flavor element would be a "labeling" procedure. This means we play with abstract wonders, but if the babylonians build a "city beautification wonder", then the player gets the message "you've completed the hanging gardens!" and from that moment and on, that specific wonder is called by every civ, "the HG". The wonder has exactly the same bonuses than any other wonder of that type and calling it HG is just that, a name. Most civs building "city beautification wonders" won't have a special name for their wonders, but some, as the egyptians, will. The french, FE, may label a CBW like "Eiffel tower". What do you think?

I share LOGO's concern about culture and its relation with wonders, but I think it's not too difficult to get things coherent. There are too aspects. First, what kind of structural wonders a civ is willing to build having a specific cultural profile?, and second, what kind of cultural profile people need to have in order to be influenced (affected) by a specific wonder? It's obvious the second point determines the first one. In fact, a civ will only build wonders with bonuses ad hoc with its culture, so a secular US govt will never build a giant temple. What we need is, then, to be a little more specific about a wonder's effects. FE, if you build a religious wonder, we need to specify what religion is affected. Or, if you make a project like the Apollo Program, we specify what kind of cultural attributes are needed for a people to feel proud of it and gain the wonder bonus. This system has two nice consequences:
1) A ruler can see what will be a wonder effect in his particular people's culture, and then decide what sort of wonder to build. In this way romans and modern democracies won't build religious wonders, but probably will prefer things like super bridges or projects. Or, tibetans won't care about the Apollo Program so they will never build it.
2) The wonder's effect duration is now built-in the wonder, instead of given in an ambiguous way. If pyramids only work for the polytheistic ancient egyptian religion, once egyptians adopt Islam the pyramids effect expires, but only because its effect is computed based on people's religion rather than in an absoulte fashion.

To finish, I agree with LOGO and LGJ about going for a new wonder system. We'll see if it's better or not than the civ2 system.

[Lord God Jinnai]

LOGO
LGJ, no wonders in the Americas? Are you speaking of the seven wonders of the world? Isn't that a european idea, therefore be centered in Europe? If your just speaking of wonders in general (as in, "ohhh that temple is wonderous!") what about the Myans, Aztecs, and Incas. Along with large "land mounds" made in north america which could be callled wonders. I think wonders should have a effect on the views by other cultures, for example the french palace of Versais is ment to intimidate other monarchs as much as it is to entertain the king.
-----
I was kinda joking there, but seriously there are places that would be at a distict disadvantage. Most of Africa wouldn't fall into any of the lists of wonders (except wonders for africa) and also Australia, atleast for man-made ones.

roquijad
Abour ruins, I think we can include both views. First, a few random sites with archelogical items from the nomadic human past. Second, "gameplay-ruins" generated after a city is destroyed by conquest, earthquakes or any other disaster modeled in the disasters model (total destruction is not a must and we only need to check for a "powerful enough" disaster). As you said it, not allowing the player to decide where to dig solves any problem with gamplay knowledge the player has about destroyed cities. Even more, archeological activity should maybe be handled by the economic model if people can get a profit from it through tourism, so the player has nothing to say about digging.
-----
There should also be some for cities that might not exist for the game, but were considered legendary (Atlantis FE) Actually the way we have it now I'm not sure how we can model the distruction of some place like atlantis. <> See the Mediteranian wasn't always filled with water. At one point during man's histroy, after cities were developed, the landbridge from present day Spain and Morocco that had acted as a dam was destroyed and flooded the entire mediterainian basin since it was below sea level. We have documents that back this up plus physical evidence that a bridge so to speak existed there until that time based on salt deposits. <> anyway the way the model is the couldn't be a vast flooding of this kind and this we couldn't have someplace like Atlantis.

There've been several good comments I'd like to re-comment here. First, I think is true what Kull says about the relation between a person and a wonder. But I don't think this implies a strong link with the Char model. Based on some civ variables like how much freedom people have, we can determine how good environment is for creativity and then compute a chance for an item to appear. This probability represents the probability of a great artist coming up AND the probability of this artist creating a wonder-item.
-----
Good idea.

About structural wonders, for sure we must not make the link with the Char model, otherwise players are obligated to be Nebuchadnezzar in order to build the HG, which I believe is a too restrictive rule.
-----
Still it should have if nothing else an optional link.

But what I really think is the most important element in Kull's argument is that the relation between persons and wonders shows there's no race at all about wonders. Civs didn't compete for building the pyramyds! Egyptians built them only because it was an expression of their culture and only because there was a "inspired" guy ruling there. I think this is the best argument to support the idea of abstract wonders. A player cannot say "I'm gonna build the pyramids" like in civ2, because it's simply senseless. A player can only say something like "I'm gonna build a great religious building", FE. The "wonders race" still exist, in a way... Civs without wonders won't have the bonuses civs having them, so you want your civ to build wonders, although the race is not now for a specific wonder like pyramids, but for simply having wonders and hopefuly more of them than your enemy.
-----
Almost exactly my point.

The problem with abstract wonders is that players won't get that special sensation like in civ2 when they say "I have built the pyramids!". It's a flavor thing, but that makes you feel you're really playing a civilization game. A good solution for having abstract wonders and the flavor element would be a "labeling" procedure. This means we play with abstract wonders, but if the babylonians build a "city beautification wonder", then the player gets the message "you've completed the hanging gardens!" and from that moment and on, that specific wonder is called by every civ, "the HG". The wonder has exactly the same bonuses than any other wonder of that type and calling it HG is just that, a name. Most civs building "city beautification wonders" won't have a special name for their wonders, but some, as the egyptians, will. The french, FE, may label a CBW like "Eiffel tower". What do you think?
-----
Here's the thing: When its released there will be atleast 2 scipting descirptions of wonders, one based on our world and another based on abstracts. People can then modify these all they want.

I share LOGO's concern about culture and its relation with wonders, but I think it's not too difficult to get things coherent. There are too aspects. First, what kind of structural wonders a civ is willing to build having a specific cultural profile?, and second, what kind of cultural profile people need to have in order to be influenced (affected) by a specific wonder? It's obvious the second point determines the first one. In fact, a civ will only build wonders with bonuses ad hoc with its culture, so a secular US govt will never build a giant temple. What we need is, then, to be a little more specific about a wonder's effects. FE, if you build a religious wonder, we need to specify what religion is affected. Or, if you make a project like the Apollo Program, we specify what kind of cultural attributes are needed for a people to feel proud of it and gain the wonder bonus. This system has two nice consequences:
-----
About the secular US gov. Your right there, but also you need to remember that wonders can be built by businesses, guilds, and general populous.

1) A ruler can see what will be a wonder effect in his particular people's culture, and then decide what sort of wonder to build. In this way romans and modern democracies won't build religious wonders, but probably will prefer things like super bridges or projects. Or, tibetans won't care about the Apollo Program so they will never build it.
-----
Well the romans still could build religious wonders. There gov wasn't divorced from religion.

2) The wonder's effect duration is now built-in the wonder, instead of given in an ambiguous way. If pyramids only work for the polytheistic ancient egyptian religion, once egyptians adopt Islam the pyramids effect expires, but only because its effect is computed based on people's religion rather than in an absoulte fashion.
-----
The prob with this is it doesn't allow for the later uses of tourism and other secular uses. It also doesn't allow for a resurgance in dead religions then.

[LOGO]

Here's my opinion of a couple ideas being posted.

Ruins: I like the idea, especially if there is a strong natural disaster model (which I hope there is, although I have my doubts because it is by far not the coolest sounding model to work on) but destruction of cities would be good still.
Another part which would be interesting is having small ruins at certain battle sites. If not actual archeological ruins just as monuments in places where you won the war against the Romans or where Gettysburg took place would be very good for nationalism and would promote tourism. This would also be great to give the player a feeling of realism and acomplishment, I know in Alpha Centauri I used to name hills after "great battles" I fought there, it would be really great if they had days celebrating these and renactments, you could say such things as huge victories are "wonders".

Charactors: I really like the idea of having actual charactors design your wonders. I'm against having an Eiffel Charactor pop up and only he could make the Eiffel Tower, I'm against any charactors with names because it makes it extremely unrealistic and annoying to know Einstein is going to come out with something spectacular before he did it. As alwase Charactors are optional so if it is turned off the social window will take over. Does that solve the problem?

Names of wonders: I'm kind of warming up to the idea of not having real names for wonders. I don't remember ever getting that wonder's feel, I do remember being a little annoyed at how I build things like the pyrimids in Rome and it gives me something that has nothing to do with the pyrimids as a bonus and I hear nothing about it later. I'd like to be able to say "build a large wall" instead of The Great wall, then a kind of screen would apear asking me how I want the wall built, for example I could want a expensive, falling apart, un-maned, huge and uneffective like China's or a small (comparitively speaking), meduim priced, well preserved, military run, and extremely effective wall like Rome's wall across Britain. We could break the wonders into sub groups which could be custimizable to our liking. Things like relgios monuments, temples, goverment monument, capital city, plalace etc. could be in different menus. Any ideas? I really wish you would at least give my idea a chance.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Ruins: I like the idea, especially if there is a strong natural disaster model (which I hope there is, although I have my doubts because it is by far not the coolest sounding model to work on) but destruction of cities would be good still.
Another part which would be interesting is having small ruins at certain battle sites. If not actual archeological ruins just as monuments in places where you won the war against the Romans or where Gettysburg took place would be very good for nationalism and would promote tourism. This would also be great to give the player a feeling of realism and acomplishment, I know in Alpha Centauri I used to name hills after "great battles" I fought there, it would be really great if they had days celebrating these and renactments, you could say such things as huge victories are "wonders".
-----
TK would be more helpful on that part, but he's waiting to do his models once most of the core models are done.

Charactors: I really like the idea of having actual charactors design your wonders. I'm against having an Eiffel Charactor pop up and only he could make the Eiffel Tower, I'm against any charactors with names because it makes it extremely unrealistic and annoying to know Einstein is going to come out with something spectacular before he did it. As alwase Charactors are optional so if it is turned off the social window will take over. Does that solve the problem?
-----
As far as character names, they wouldn't be anything but that. Eistein wouldn't allow you to discover "Theory of Relativity" he'd just be an important scientist.

Names of wonders: I'm kind of warming up to the idea of not having real names for wonders. I don't remember ever getting that wonder's feel, I do remember being a little annoyed at how I build things like the pyrimids in Rome and it gives me something that has nothing to do with the pyrimids as a bonus and I hear nothing about it later. I'd like to be able to say "build a large wall" instead of The Great wall, then a kind of screen would apear asking me how I want the wall built, for example I could want a expensive, falling apart, un-maned, huge and uneffective like China's or a small (comparitively speaking), meduim priced, well preserved, military run, and extremely effective wall like Rome's wall across Britain. We could break the wonders into sub groups which could be custimizable to our liking. Things like relgios monuments, temples, goverment monument, capital city, plalace etc. could be in different menus. Any ideas? I really wish you would at least give my idea a chance.
-----
That was my idea all along.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Ruins: I like the idea, especially if there is a strong natural disaster model (which I hope there is, although I have my doubts because it is by far not the coolest sounding model to work on) but destruction of cities would be good still.
Another part which would be interesting is having small ruins at certain battle sites. If not actual archeological ruins just as monuments in places where you won the war against the Romans or where Gettysburg took place would be very good for nationalism and would promote tourism. This would also be great to give the player a feeling of realism and acomplishment, I know in Alpha Centauri I used to name hills after "great battles" I fought there, it would be really great if they had days celebrating these and renactments, you could say such things as huge victories are "wonders".
-----
TK would be more helpful on that part, but he's waiting to do his models once most of the core models are done.

Charactors: I really like the idea of having actual charactors design your wonders. I'm against having an Eiffel Charactor pop up and only he could make the Eiffel Tower, I'm against any charactors with names because it makes it extremely unrealistic and annoying to know Einstein is going to come out with something spectacular before he did it. As alwase Charactors are optional so if it is turned off the social window will take over. Does that solve the problem?
-----
As far as character names, they wouldn't be anything but that. Eistein wouldn't allow you to discover "Theory of Relativity" he'd just be an important scientist.

Names of wonders: I'm kind of warming up to the idea of not having real names for wonders. I don't remember ever getting that wonder's feel, I do remember being a little annoyed at how I build things like the pyrimids in Rome and it gives me something that has nothing to do with the pyrimids as a bonus and I hear nothing about it later. I'd like to be able to say "build a large wall" instead of The Great wall, then a kind of screen would apear asking me how I want the wall built, for example I could want a expensive, falling apart, un-maned, huge and uneffective like China's or a small (comparitively speaking), meduim priced, well preserved, military run, and extremely effective wall like Rome's wall across Britain. We could break the wonders into sub groups which could be custimizable to our liking. Things like relgios monuments, temples, goverment monument, capital city, plalace etc. could be in different menus. Any ideas? I really wish you would at least give my idea a chance.
-----
That was my idea all along. However you still cannot determine its effects and the level of the wonder. That's up to the populous.

[alms66]

[quote]Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai on 03-19-2000 07:21 PM
Ruins: I like the idea, especially if there is a strong natural disaster model (which I hope there is, although I have my doubts because it is by far not the coolest sounding model to work on) but destruction of cities would be good still.
Another part which would be interesting is having small ruins at certain battle sites. If not actual archeological ruins just as monuments in places where you won the war against the Romans or where Gettysburg took place would be very good for nationalism and would promote tourism. This would also be great to give the player a feeling of realism and acomplishment, I know in Alpha Centauri I used to name hills after "great battles" I fought there, it would be really great if they had days celebrating these and renactments, you could say such things as huge victories are "wonders".
-----
TK would be more helpful on that part, but he's waiting to do his models once most of the core models are done.

----Actually, everyone refered to my first post as the "official" Disaster Model, when it was just some ideas to get some feedback on. Since the only feedback I got was either too many or not enough disasters, I left it alone, I'm not waiting for anything. But, since I started working on the Social Model I have written the actual version, which BTW is very different, but just haven't posted it yet. I'll post it soon so you can take a look. It doesn't include the city-destroyers that LOGO speaks of, but will, when I get back to it.

[This message has been edited by Toubabo_Koomi (edited March 19, 2000).]

[roquijad]

LGJ:
[quote]About the secular US gov. Your right there, but also you need to remember that wonders can be built by businesses, guilds, and general populous.
-- We can allow entities other than the govt to build wonders, but I think the model can be simpler if you leave it only in the ruler's hands. Anyway, I can't think of anything considered wonder not created by a govt.

[quote]Well the romans still could build religious wonders. There gov wasn't divorced from religion.
-- You're right, but from the roman cultural profile we at least can say it's less probable for romans to make religious wonders, which is good enough for wonders-culture coherency.

[quote]The prob with this is it doesn't allow for the later uses of tourism and other secular uses. It also doesn't allow for a resurgance in dead religions then.
--Yes it can. I probably didn't state my thoughts correctly. What I meant is you only define the wonder's effects in terms of what kind of people is affected, but you never set a ending point for the wonder. FE, pyramids can have an effect like "increases happiness for every polytheistic person in the civ". You can see that the wonder works all the time, even if the people change religion. Although in this latter case nobody gets happier, but the wonder still has its effect. If, for some weird reason, people turn to their polytheistic beliefs again, then the wonder starts to affect people again, but there's no need to specify when it's working or not. It just works all the time and its real effect depends on the type of population you have.
About tourism, I think all wonders should have a touristic effect by default, so a wonder has a specific effect and a touristic effect.

All:
LOGO says the player should be able to customize his wonders. I think that's already included concerning its size. However, I don't think the ruler can determine its effects. The ruler should only be able to choose what kind of wonder to build (religious, city-beautification, etc), but all wonders in a type should have the same effect, maybe only re-scaled depending on the wonder's size. IMO letting the player to determine how exactly people will be affected by wonders is not realistic.

[Lord God Jinnai]

roquijad
We can allow entities other than the govt to build wonders, but I think the model can be simpler if you leave it only in the ruler's hands. Anyway, I can't think of anything considered wonder not created by a govt.
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Actually there is several. None of the ancient ones fit this, but then again in ancient times there weren't any really powerful businesses/groups outside government. The one exception may be the Oracle of Delphi since it (along with the other orcales) didn't govern. Many of the cathedrals in Europe were FE. Also projects there are plenty. FE Magelians Expedition wasn't, neither Darwin's Voage, Seti Program (to begin with atleast), Phionex Project (SETI 2), etc.

Yes it can. I probably didn't state my thoughts correctly. What I meant is you only define the wonder's effects in terms of what kind of people is affected, but you never set a ending point for the wonder.
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Um this may be a problem. There are some things that should eventually end if they aren't considered that great. That's why I put the levels in. The various lengths can change and may have some work arounds added, but some things will eventually fade with time until they are forgotten.

FE, pyramids can have an effect like "increases happiness for every polytheistic person in the civ". You can see that the wonder works all the time, even if the people change religion. Although in this latter case nobody gets happier, but the wonder still has its effect. If, for some weird reason, people turn to their polytheistic beliefs again, then the wonder starts to affect people again, but there's no need to specify when it's working or not. It just works all the time and its real effect depends on the type of population you have.
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But rarely is that the case. Not only that butit also could defeat the reason for building a wonder if it is to enhance the ruler's choice of a religion, if his is polytheistic and so are the rest. I know that other religions use things from other religions and we could incorperate that into it somehow, but your overbroad effect wouldn't work to well unless you were specifically building a universal shrine or something.

About tourism, I think all wonders should have a touristic effect by default, so a wonder has a specific effect and a touristic effect.
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But not to begin with. FE would most people until recently have gone to see the "Great Wall of China" for touristic reasons?

All:
LOGO says the player should be able to customize his wonders. I think that's already included concerning its size. However, I don't think the ruler can determine its effects. The ruler should only be able to choose what kind of wonder to build (religious, city-beautification, etc), but all wonders in a type should have the same effect, maybe only re-scaled depending on the wonder's size. IMO letting the player to determine how exactly people will be affected by wonders is not realistic.
-----
I'm with you with maybe one exception: Religion. The ruler can choose if it promotes certain specific religious types (since there aren't any specific religions) or not. This effect would only be immdediate/short range. The player should have some general ideas though.

[roquijad]

LGJ:
About tourism: Once tourism exist, all structural wonders can be visited (all have a touristic effect).
Also, any wonder should have a patriotic effect, no matter if it doesn't "work" anymore. It's like "yeah, our ancestors built that... isn't great? isn't our nation great?"

About the cultural ingredient in wonders: What I've been trying to say is any building or project can be considered a wonder only if it has something to do with your culture. That's why people in tibet don't care at all about the Apollo Program or the Notre Damme Cathedral! Therefore, you need to specify what kind of culture can be affected by a wonder once it's built. So, if the christian french monarchy builds a great cathedral, then this building can affect only christian people who also care a lot about religion. And this is why you don't need to determine how long the wonder is going to last... if people change their religion or start to care less about religion, then the wonder effects decrease or vanish, but as a consequence of people's cultural profile shift. We don't need to model wonder's duration, only their effects and the type of people who can be affected. The real wonder direct effects are computed checking how many people has the cultural attributes specified in the wonder and giving the bonus according to that number. That will do.

[Lord God Jinnai]

About tourism: Once tourism exist, all structural wonders can be visited (all have a touristic effect).
Also, any wonder should have a patriotic effect, no matter if it doesn't "work" anymore. It's like "yeah, our ancestors built that... isn't great? isn't our nation great?"
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The point is some things are fogotten about over time. Also just because their anscestors built it, created it, etc. Doesn't mean they will feel patriotic about it. Take the Berlin Wall for example. Although not built as a "wonder" it would merit recognition at some lower level. Anyway their aren't many Germans proud of it.

About the cultural ingredient in wonders: What I've been trying to say is any building or project can be considered a wonder only if it has something to do with your culture. That's why people in tibet don't care at all about the Apollo Program or the Notre Damme Cathedral! Therefore, you need to specify what kind of culture can be affected by a wonder once it's built. So, if the christian french monarchy builds a great cathedral, then this building can affect only christian people who also care a lot about religion. And this is why you don't need to determine how long the wonder is going to last... if people change their religion or start to care less about religion, then the wonder effects decrease or vanish, but as a consequence of people's cultural profile shift. We don't need to model wonder's duration, only their effects and the type of people who can be affected. The real wonder direct effects are computed checking how many people has the cultural attributes specified in the wonder and giving the bonus according to that number. That will do.
-----
Some icons can bypass boundries. For example the Apollo program. Although it may not concern some people in tibet won't care about it, they can certainly recognize it as a achievment on the secular level. Also just because you build a Cathedral doesn't meen non-Christians (or whatever religion will be using them in the game), doesn't affect non-believers your wrong. Maybe not quite as much, but people will still go to visit. For example, there was a couple years ago a Hindu Temple that built here (St. Louis) and before it was given the religious rituals, etc. to make it holy ground, it was open to the public to see. And guess what, many non-hindus came to see it, not to become Hindus themselves (atleast most people), but for the art, finding out a piece of the lifestyle, etc.
Now there are some things that don't affect people outside a given area also. FE Mt. Rushmore in the US most non-americans aren't interested in seeing, even if they have the same mentality. Same thing is true with many things, however, some things, like we've been discussing do affect outside. Most of the time it will affect the people within the country/province more positivily than outisde, but not always. FE Great Wall of China wasn't always condiered my most Chinese to be a "wonder" or anything the like, only an attempt at a barrier to its northern flank. However most Europeans when they found this and revised the list of wonders they included the Great Wall.

[LOGO]

About customation of wonders, I think the ability to customize wonders would really be a rather enjoyable process giving the player a feeling of control, or it could end up being an annoying feeling of micromanagment, I havn't decided. Anyway, I think we should seperate wonders into two groups, pupose built wonders and artistic built wonders. Artistic of course being the Pyrimids or Notre Dame and pupose being roman aquaducts or the great wall of China. For purpose built wonders it would be incredibly helpful to be able to custimize the wonder, especially ones designed for military action.
I'm sorry but is there a factor for failure in the model? Many wonders have failed in the past like the original pyrimids that were built before the stunning ones in giza. And how do we factor in projects like GPS or Internet?

[Lord God Jinnai]

[b]LOGO[/b}
Actually not really, but it might not get as high a value as you were hoping for the money you put in. Say you put in 150% of the min. cost and only got the lowest wonder level. That would be the "failure" for this. This makes it so people don't get annoyed at spending tons of money and getting absolutely nothing. This is where we should depart from reality in favor of fun, but not too much like I said before about not getting as great a wonder as u want.

Also on 2 types of structural wonders, what about those that fall inbetween? FE most tombs/temples would be both purpose and artistic.

[LOGO]

Tombs and temples serve a function? I don't mean soley artistic, but anything that doesn't really play an actual function. I've already given a couple examples of those. I agree that relism will have to be overlooked in favor of gameplay, and I don't think a player should ever have more then one catastrophic mess up, unless he's making stupid choices, in one game.

[LOGO]

A word on Projects, unlike wonders we should really encourage competion between nations in completing a project. The idea of a project being discovered by one civ and that civ being the only one that has it doesn't work. For example, stealth is ours now but other countries will eventualy have it, already our NATO allies have semi-stealth aircraft like the Euro-fighter and the Tiger helicopter. So what I propose is a two part system, first you will have dramatic boosts so long as the project is your only, and you'll have a slowly deteriating boost from being the first one to discover it. Projects could be spied on and stolen, therefore you'd have to build up military installations to safeguard it, you'd also have a big short term and small (depleting) long term research plus in whatever area science that it is in. Any thoughts?

[Lord God Jinnai]

On projects your also overlooking the fact that contries and companies can join forces in your bonus standpoint. Also although what you say is also a good idea, you haveto remember that not everything is a project. Stealth really wouldn't be (and the US isn't the only country in the world with stealth tech, though it is the best). Also some projects that would be redone via other countries later wouldn't be as great in importance and wouldn't take away the spotlight from the first country/countries and/or company/companies to finish that project (From historical standpoint as well as outiside the contries that achieved the project). FE both the US and USSR were the first in space, however USSR was first. Historically the USSR will get the credit for achieving this goal because it did so first its been recorded. Only in circumstances where things aren't recorded is there a conflict. FE the first person/people to cross the Atlantic ocean has long been debated and new evidence keep showing up that the Romans were the first, however very little concrete evidence. So the credit is currently given to Leaf Erikson. Before this because Leaf was unkown Christopher Columbus was given credit.