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).

One thing that came up as I was putting together the start of the military model:

There are Engineer units out there among the military, doing Military Engineering kind of stuff. [ ] Now in the real world, a LOT of research discoveries [that we are calling tech advancements] came about because of the Military.

Do you like the idea that the ENG military unit might also be a + to the civ's research capabilities?

Increasing military spending did indeed add quite a large bonus to research, but at the same time increased wastage by a huge amount. Something along those lines shouldn't be too difficult to model.

That game had a massive chart showing all kinds of interlinked dependencies between different types of state funding. If anyone can dig up a manual for that game (I have no idea if I'll be able to find mine) it would be v. helpful IMO.

Jim

Tell me this isn't scary. I just spent 30 minutes rooting around in the garage and actually found that thing! Yep, the whole package, Manual and all. The software is on five 5.25 floppies, LOL

There are 4 charts in the book which seem to be what you have in mind. There is also a reference card which appears to duplicate them (with quite a few changes). I can scan them at work on Tuesday, and mail 'em out that evening.

Extra Scary: I actually have a "functioning" 5.25 floppy in my system, so I was able to review the disks in hopes of finding an electronic manual. No luck. They didn't do that in '92, I guess. The readme did say that the card is more up to date than the charts in the book, though.

Wasnt that game a big flop?

I think Druid2 is talking about military origin of non-Military technology. Computers are a good example. Without defense spending pushing forward IC technology in the early stages it would have taken Much longer IMO to get to the computers we have today. Interchangeable parts were, if I recall correctly, first used to assemble muskets. Interchangable parts' biggest uses were in fostering non-Military factories of all kinds...

Anyway, that's what I think he means

I think this is very overcomplicated. The idea with the tags of a project seems good. - But what sense do you see in splitting up technology topics this way: Crafts, Industry, Hard Science...?

The result will be anyway the same: there will be technologies discovered and lead to various benefits and further new technologies. So why not keep it easy?

The only one thing that is to handle beyond the tech tree is the effect of cultural and economical state.

Of course if your cities have no access to water you can't develop a navy. If your people are very religious you have problems to develop anything.

I suggest the following:
- Keep these tags and assign an amount of 'research points' to every tag.
- The output of research points by the civilization is split up, too, into these tags. But your influence is restricted. You can't assign your population's ideas directly. Depending on culture and economy and government type your research points are calculated.
- To use (discover) a technology the civ has to own its prerequisites and produce the amount of research points for every tag of the technology.
- Of course this will lead often to the situation that a project's research points for some tags are fulfilled and wasted every turn while other tags complete only slowly.
- Therefore I would suggest that your civ is spending surplus research points to resarch other technologies than the main project. - Depending on its culture and preferences.
- If you want to influence these secondary researches directly (and enhance micromanagement, hehe) I suggest a tech queue.
- I suggest the tech queue should be visible anyway and you influence it if you wish and leave it if not.

Peter

The user can reach the same advance in different way. (i.e. You can research the antigrav through science or you can switch to religious government and your priests can levitating if you research levitation.)

Blade Runner

I support the main point that the people mostly research what they will because of social particulars. The government Should be able to add Additional resources to any of the things the society is going after. (This is the way I have it in Clash v0.05)

The major distinction I'd make from Peter's comments is that we shouldn't break down techs into rigid bins of needing this much military tag contributed, and this much hard science to "earn" the tech. If the military wants the tech badly enough, and the prerequisites are there, they should get it if they reach the Total points for the tech. It doesn't matter IMO if the other possible contribution runs dry. Also I think this is much smoother from the player's point of view. Player should understand that tech A isn't being achieved because Nobody in the society is interested in it. IMO the player will find it harder to deal with not getting it only because some little piece of society doesn't support it.

I like the suggestion that the player can either influence the current tech direction or not. In essence if you already have a military-oriented culture and government you will always get the military tech path anyway. Perhaps a middle-road interface would also allow the player to add x% contribution thru money to any new tech with a military tag, but not any other ones. One more alternative would be for the player to designate some key techs for support, and anything that is a prerequisite to those techs would get x% support and everything else some other value, or nothing.

Peter: Not all religious doctrine is antagonistic to tech. I think the Puritans are widely claimed as a positive influence in the industrial revolution in England since they were sources of capital among other things. In essence they couldn't blow their money on anything fun so they invested it instead, sometimes in new technology.

BR: I think we need to keep things in the core system on the real world. When people put out mods they can of course do anything that they want.

One other issue. The interface should show the player generally how much technological creativity the society produces in each area so that they can see the connection between culture/government type and technological advancement. (perhaps even broken down by class, though this may be pushing it) If they can't make the connection as to why their tech is slow or uneven, it'll more likely lead to player frustration than deep strategic thought.

- Each project has tags assigned to it, most will have a single tag, some 2 or even (rarily) 3. As Mark suggested players can view at any time the ‘tech-tree’, which will be divided into a number of segments, roughly corresponding to their tag. This tech-tree structure serves no other porpose than to give the players general idea on what direction they should/could head in.
- There are no Tech levels any longer, but the prereqs will be structured in such a way that no drastic irregularities should occur in research (i.e. players researching something highly advanced while still on a rather primitive stage). This will most likely increase the need for ‘Hard’ prereqs, as the TLs no longer provide certain restraints.
- ‘Soft’ prereqs will still be included. Each project-tag has a number associated with it, if players have discovered less number of projects with the same tag type the cost of the project is increased, maybe by 5% per digit under the tag-number. This of course makes projects with more than one tag more valuable (possible also harder to get), I guess those who´re familiar with the old civ board-game can relate to that (Mysticism, anyone? :-)).
- Possible this same tag-number can be used to determine how/if a project can be forgotten/lost, although I´m unsure on how to compute this excactly.
- As the Fields are out, there are no restrictions on how many/few projects with a given tag are researched at time. The only general restrictions are the prereqs and some social conditions/game status (The Navy/Sea thing again, although, just for the records Peter the Great Did construct a fleet before Russia aquired any coastal territories).
- IMO we must be careful in how we implement the people’s research efforts. Of course I agree that their need/willingness/culture etc. should greatly influence research, I think the general decision on what to research should be left to the player (unless he elects to let the AI run things for him, of course). Speaking for myself I hate games where the system bans you from doing something or which forces you onto a certain path. I maintain that ‘positive restraints’ are more effective and more fun than rules and regulations, it´s easier to pull the donkey than to push him :-). So, IMHO, we should use a combination of more RPs on certain tags and lower cost for certain projects in order to ‘lead’ the players onto the road they should (according to their cultural/governmental/economical etc. settings) take. If a player ruling a Military State Wants to research Civil Rigths project rather than Very-Very-Very Large Gun project, we should allow them that choice, how stupid as it may be.
- There will likely be some changes made (possible major ones) to the way projects are researched and especially how the RPs and Project Cost is calculated, with more empahsize on the tags, I haven´t yet checked this out closely enough to say wheter the system as it is can be used (but I´m crossing my fingers for it to be so). Any comments on this are welcome.

Blade Runner:
I agree it is nice to have more than one path leading to the same technology but we should ask us: are the technologies still the same. In your Example: is technological antigravitation the same as levitation? Can I build levitated tanks and spaceships?

manurein:
This is true, scientists seldom research for military interest only, but the opposite is also true: Many discoveries have a militaristic origin and were used for peaceful purpose only later. The A-Bomb is an excellent example! And the H-Bomb even more: What else use do we have from nuclear fusion yet? We even can't build fusion power plants.
We should not forget: military can have own research facilities but it is no must.

Peter

I like your summary of possible modifications. Just a few comments.

quote:

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- There are no Tech levels any longer, but the prereqs will be structured in such a way that no drastic irregularities should occur in research (i.e. players researching something highly advanced while still on a rather primitive stage). This will most likely increase the need for ‘Hard’ prereqs, as the TLs no longer provide certain restraints.

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I don't think this will be such a problem. For one thing the people will be always working a little on the easy techs. So even if neither the player nor the people have a particular affinity for pottery it will certainly be obtained long before flight. Also the point cost system, which I assume will have roughly exponentially increasing costs will mean that any technology that has Any use will become cost-effective in time.

You are completely right on the issue of always letting the player call the shots. They can invest the state's money in whatever tech schemes they see fit, whether cost-effective or not. Now This has Great historical accuracy .

Manu:
I agree with your statement. However military "funding" has been a very important stimulus to technology at times. It is certainly not The Only, or even the most important one. I think as Peter said it is important enough that it should Be in the system.

The idea was serious, but the comment was silly. What I meant to produce a complex technology (or advances) tree, where you can follow one or another way to win.
Let say after the A advance there is an advance which called B and an another which called C. If you choice the B advance, you can not research the C and that part of the technology tree, which related with the C advance. We can join this advances let say to different kind of governments. Let say the B advance very useful if you have a democratic government and very bad for your emporium if you have a dictatorship (like the free press advance). In this case the technology tree will be really like a tree. If you start to go one of the branches you can not switch to an another. Maybe this rule is too strong. Maybe we can say: if there is a free press advance and there was a democratic government to switch to a dictatorship and start to research let say ABC weapons cost a lot of money, resources and a long time anarchy before the people accept the new rule.
My problem was with the CIV like game, when I switch to a democratic government take the same time anarchy like to switch to fundamentalism or communism from democracy.

Hrafnkell,

A very nice model, just like all the others I've examined so far. It looks like you've included most of the really important stuff, so I'm left with only a few suggestions and a couple questions:

Influence of Government Type:

Democracy/Republic: While it's clear that having an open democratic society is highly conducive to the rapid development of knowledge, it's also a very porous container. The outright theft of secret information is clearly something which belongs in the diplomacy model, but what about advances like refrigeration or television or the internet? In the real world, when a democracy gains that advance so does EVERYONE else! That's not true of every advance, but it certainly pertains to the commercial ones. Suggestion: To incorporate this in your model, there should be some benefit which flows to the discoverer. How about 1) exclusive use for "X" number of turns (only exception being a civ which steals or discovers it independently during this time period) and 2) Ensuring that economic benefits flow to the discoverer for another "X" number of turns.

Influence of Trade:

Historically, trade routes promoted the spread of ideas (knowledge) as well as goods. Suggestion: The more trade routes between one civ and another, the greater the liklihood that research data will also change hands. This should be factored by government type (an authoritarian one would be more likely to receive than give.)

Bogus Advances:

Throughout the ages people and governments have wasted a lot of time and effort in the pursuit of "Bogus Advances". A good example would be Alchemy, and I know there are many others. Is this a feature which is worth adding to your model? Maybe every era could have at least one, as kind of a wild card. Once the research starts, it can't be totally eliminated until you've moved on to another era. As an example: Your Civ enters the Renaissance and your Natural Science people begin to research "Bodily Humors". It's a dry hole, leading nowhere. The AI knows this, so half the Natural Science budget gets allocated to "Circulatory Systems" which is how the body really works. This keeps you from getting stuck, but serves as a real drag on Natural Science until you've left the Renaissance behind (and with it the discredited "science" of "Bodily Humors".)

Question 1 - Will the model be able to accomodate massive government funded research efforts such as the Manhattan Project (A-Bomb) and the "Space Race"?

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How about 1) exclusive use for "X" number of turns (only exception being a civ which steals or discovers it independently during this time period) and 2) Ensuring that economic benefits flow to the discoverer for another "X" number of turns.
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Both suggestions are good, here´s one more. 3) the original discoverer can only use the project as a prereq for X number of turns (to simulate that only he Really knows what it´s all about).

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Influence of Trade:
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I´m not sure how trade will be handled, if it´s by establishing trade routes then your idea is fine, otherwise we´ll just use the bulk of the trade. I agree that other factors are important, such as the governmental form, cultural likeness and proximity.

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Bogus Advances:
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This is a good idea. But we must be careful not to make this something that the players begin to loath. Maybe we could allow players to 'transfer' all or part of the RPs from the Bogus advance to another once people see it isn´t leading them anywhere?

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Question 1 - Will the model be able to accomodate massive government funded research efforts such as the Manhattan Project (A-Bomb) and the "Space Race"?
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Yes, I didn´t make it clear enough in the draft, but players can buy RPs, at the start of the game when the governmental structure ois weak such buyings are very uncost-efficient, later on they become cheaper.

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Question 2 - In the "How RPs are Calculated" section there are several references to number ranges, such as "between 0,8 and 1,2". Other than for grid coordinates, I'm not familiar with this numbering system (ie. two digits separated by commas). How exactly does it work? Unless, of course, the commas are supposed to be periods? In which case, "never mind"!
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Here in Iceland (and I think in most of Europe) commas are used to seperate digits and fractions, and periods are used to seperate thousands. So, from My POV it´s suppsoed to be a comma, form Your POV it´s supposed to be a period :-).

I'd like to see a wider range for the effects of an advance - more or less EVERY aspect of the game should be a possible subject to it, even if we don't use all variations in the basic game.

Example: I'd like to see an advance that gives the player a free (maybe unique?) improvement to city / province XYZ.

While this maybe isn't necessary for the basic game, it's a fantastic opportunity for all those scenario builders out there.

Btw. I think the same should be true the other way round, so it should be possible to build improvements or "wonders" (or the like) which result in granting a random advance / a special advance / a range of advances.

Could you please give us [Programming Team] some help? We need to know what data you're going to require to be stored for each node in the research tree.

And, if you know, how often do you think you'll need it. E.g.: "only when a research discovery is complete" or "every turn" or "once per game" or whatever.

Specifically:
what item of data [name or number or etc.]
how big each item might be [length of text or maximum value of a number]

if there are some aspects that you have a general idea about but dont know how to do, [for ex.: Node A needs to enable 0 to 5 different nodes]... just say what you've got in mind, and we'll fly from there.

Everyone expects this may change as we go down the path, but it will be a place to start.

Post it in the Programming Thread

Thanks

Technology branches:
Blade Runner, you wrote: "If you start to go one of the branches you can not switch to an another."
How will you justify this restriction? Do you think these problems do exist in reality?
According to the people's preferences as mentioned they will research technologies they like and are interested in with more effort than technologies which are disliked.
I agree totally that unpopular techs will cost more time and resources to research and the unpopularity will vary with religion, government and history. But why would it restrict you from researching tech branch A if you make a discovery in tech branch B?

Government change
Little off topic here. I found no rule for the time of anarchy between two forms of government, except that anarchy is very rare at all. Normally a new government is placed immediatly after the old has gone. It is already there when the old is still ruling.

A new suggestion (don't know it is already said or not):
What about researching techs already discovered?
No, I am not crazy! But I think if you discover a new tech of irrigation or a fire weapon you can research improvements after you have the basic technology. The things you build from this tech get better the more over-researched it is.
F.e. if you discover gun powder you can build musketeers and research explosives - but these musketeers are less effective than a knight or swordsman in the beginning. But researching on the gun-powder-topic improves them until they are much better in battle than the ancient units.
Of course you can implement this idea as technological advance in the tech tree, f.e. "advanced fireweapons, requires gunpowder, effect: doubles the strength of musketeers". But with my suggestion you would implement something like "gunpowder 1, enhancing musketeers by 10%", "gunpowder 2, enhancing musketeers by 20%", "gunpowder x" without any limit. Of course I suggest the formula: 2 times better technology level requires 4 times more time and research cost.

Peter

I'm wondering how your going to handle geographic advancement of technologies. For example the americas discovered the wheel, but never implimented in anything more than childrens toys because they didn't have anything like horses till the Euopeains came. Also in Japan they skipped the bronze age and went from the stone age to iron age (although the gap was still around the same size of other countries for those two periods) because copper was extremely rare in Japan.

On the geographic distribution of technological enablers...
I had planned to use the easy geographic ones. FE if you don't have access to both copper and tin you can't develop bronze working. Horses/wheel are a special case, and I'm just not sure supporting that particular big difference (horses) between old and new worlds is worth all the game complexity that would need to be included to handle it. If we do handle horse availablility then it would be similar to the other materials-enabled techs.

I'm with you on loss of techs being a Big factor I would like to include. I've got two ideas for handling it, there are certainly others.
1) Require a certain education level to use certain techs. When ed level dips below you can't use them. If it stays too low too long then those techs are Gone from your civ and you need to re-learn.
2) After lack of use tech knowledge goes away. This is harder to implement generally since not all techs have an obvious means of use. Perhaps the education and use effects could be merged into a single system.

BTW, If you're interested in helping out in detail on the tech system let me know and we can take it from there. Keli said he will soon have more free time to pursue this, but that he'd welcome some help/new ideas.

I'd like to redo the tech model with your permission. I'd be using the non-TL and isntead use basically the "Hard" and "Soft" RQs. Also I'd like to add some more futuristic ones, nothing too far out there like Interdimential travel, but stuff that is currently being researched and has shown some possibility of success down the road. I do keep up with this so it shouldn't be to hard to figure out what can and can't be done.

I'll do one anywayz even if you don't want to, i just won't post it. I won't be putting in any "bogus" techs since its still hard enough to come up with enough other techs. I will prob also add a tag "geographical" which basically means you need to be geographically located near a source of relavent material.

Also I'd like to add a new tech group called "Basic Technology Advances" This would incorperate the idea brougght up by Peter. Basically this section doesn't have any new techs, but only adds effecincy to existing ones. It will work (can't remember that name of the curve but i want to say bell curve). Anywayz the level starts out incresing quickly the eff., the slowly tapers off and cost much more to make even a minor improvement. I know there's a point that no improvements can be made, but for right now i'm trying to keep it somewhat simpler. This will of course be modified via new technologies. For example:

Someone learns the tech "Crop Rotation" and dicides to go to there basic technolgies and research "Agriculture" in general some more based on what they know already. They do so and come up with better crop rotations and any other agicultural techniques prev learned. Then at the same time some reasech is put into the development of say "Pesticides" (getting a little out of sinc tech wise, but its only an example hehe). Anyway once that is discovered it resets the curve.

Effiecency in "Basic Technologies" is represented by simply percentages. This is the percentage of effeciency beyond the 100% that would normally be so if no research was spent in that basic technology. Also once a new tech is discovered, i'll use the above example, then the perecentage would be lowered. Agriculutre was originally at 0% then with the investments got up to 20% when the new tech was discovered. The new percentage for Agriculuture would be something like 8%. They still know more about crop rotation, but only the inital about pesticides.

Whew! I never thought I could type so much on one item!

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Now for something totally differnt tech wise.

I think in the begginning technology reaserch should be blind. I don't have an exact date when this should be taken off, but many times techbology came about (and still does often) by accident.

FE: the telescope was inveneted when someone "forgot who" had two pieces of glass set up in such a way that it magnified the object he was looking at.

Some thoughts until Keli shows up... I'll be brief since I don't feel like typing

Future techs:
IMO the basic game should stick to actual history. However, potential near-future techs could easily go in a mod.

Refinements of techs already had:
I think it'd be much better to just allow each tech to be 'over-researched'. So you would have the tech for 2-field rotation that could be over-researched at any level, but with diminishing returns above 100%. At 200% you might get a 20% bonus. I do like the suggestion in general, but why make it complicated by adding a whole other category? The over-researching also helps a little IMO in modeling a traditional society where they may not culturally want any More tech, but the ones they have are Very refined due to Lots of local trial-and-error.

Also the future techs will as I stated be things currently being researched that have show some hard or semi-hard evidence of success beyond being simply theory in a written form. This means time travel will be out, atleast backwords (i may leave it out all together for simplicity), however, transporter tech of non-living matter is a possibility since last year the first particle was transported across a room. This isn't much, but its more than many considered possible with out tech level. I'm adding these because I always hated ending up with 70 or 80 years of developing "Future Techs" at 1 per turn.

Finnaly to the basic technologies. True it will add more techs, but it will also eliminate many others...you'll see what I mean when its done.

Also there is one section I'd like some help on. The tech levels of art. I am very good at art and also very knowledgable about what is art and its history. I'm just wondering why its listed the way it is since the art styles (with a few exceptions) could have happened in any order. FE a Picaso style painting could've come in the greek era. Also the level of art is also a misleading idea since there is no such thing as "bad" art, just what each person consideres. For these reasons and many others I'm leaving this out unless someone can convince me otherwise.

Here's the basic way in which the curve would work. This is still considering above 100% norm. 1-20% cost in ponits could be 10x the percentage trying to reach...21-35 15x perecentage trying to reach...36-40 20x the percentage trying to reach and 41%+ double the cost of the previous percentage. This is only an idea and the numbers may be completly off. You can put a cap on if you want, but i think with the setup i have it'd soon get too expensive to continue research anywayz and easier to develope new techs.

I've done about 100 techs and am prob 1/3-1/2 done with the main techs...no basic ones put in...