posted August 24, 1999 15:04                

I have been toying around with this idea for quite some time now (actually since the time that Civ 2 came out) and I would like to see it in Civ 3.
In all the previous civ games, the objective has been to win the game in the modern age (or in the case of CtP in the "Diamond age"). I would like it if in Civ 3, you could define an age where all technological development stops, and then play the game to win in that age.

Think about it. In Civ 2 all units prior to the modern ones are just considered "stepping stones" to something better. Wouldn´t it be a challenge if the best you had were dragoons or cavalry units. The way I think most people are playing the game, they base a lot of their decisions on technology they know they will have, rather than working with what they have got. That is not very historically accurate. I can tell you know, that Eisenhower didn´t consider the possibillity of postponing the assault on Normandy, just because he might gain a technological edge by waiting 2 or 3 years.

It might even help us appreciate the earlier units more, if we had to stick with them, instead of just waiting for something better to come along.

Maybe you could incorporate different conditions for winning the game, based on what age you have defined as the final one. Say you wanted the game to end in the Roman era. That wouldn´t have to mean that you would be playing a short game. Only that after a certain level of technology was reached, no further developement would take place. The game could still go on for thousands of years. A win condition for such a game could be to build a certain wonder, or whatever...I don´t know.

Of course, what ever age you want to be the final one, conquering the world would always count as winning the game.

Anyway, it´s just an idea.

Asmodean

technophile then expanded on this, with a few ideas of his own, that I like, so I will quote them here:

1) All researh after the era you define as the last one should be considered as future tech´s, and as such should add to your overall score.

2) You should be able to research extra benefits for your existing techs, thus making your units grow in strength, as the years progress.

posted August 24, 1999 16:39                

this is where discussion of the stopping idea seems to be a good idea (especially for multiplayer)

maybe a starting time as well? (ready made random multiplayer scenarios!)

if you chose to end at the industrial age the game would end at 1900 ad (if it was not won prior to that) and all techs after industrial age tech would be future tech

future tech (by the way and I will add this to technology) should give you random bonuses in that area (for like 100 future techs) as in academic, military, money, ect that would not be new applications but would provide minor bonuses

using civs ages ancient would end at 1 ad (or 1000 ad?) and renaissance would end at 1650 ad (?)

Jon Miller

posted August 26, 1999 04:55                

I was looking at this facts book today, and on one page it had different styles of buildings, I noticed the British had Moats around their Castles, and the Asians had none. But the Asians could have built a moat if they wanted to right? or thought of the idea? They just never did. Or maybe never needed to? I think we should only discover things if we need them. And also...I found I only used frigates for like 20 turns, then I was using tansports. I would like the times stretched, so that it feels like I am actually in the stone age, and in the bronze age, medivial age, etc.

I don't want to breeeze through everything and not get much feeling of each age. Kind of depressing.

Sorry if these idea's have already been said, but just in case. And if they have been said, GOOD!

posted August 30, 1999 01:10                

Make technology dependant upon trade and infrastructure to a large degree. This makes the explore aspect greatly more important than before, and adds to the builders game. I'm not 100% sure how to work this - perhaps give a sizable tech bonus to economy units earned by trade as opposed to home made economy units.

If possible, eliminate the sliding bar system altogether, replacing it with the social engineering and actual infrastructure. Having to adjust the bar is a pain, but SE changes and building aren't, at least early on.

This would mean that you have two forms of trade, possibly titled trade units and economy units, earning different values for each. For instance, a single trade unit might be worth twice as much as an economy unit, and would thus provide 2 science, 2 cash, and 2 luxuries.

[This will be reposted in the economy thread, but I feel it is important for it to be here as well.]

Tech stealing: This should be difficult, with a good chance of failure, and the tech stolen should ALWAYS be the lowest value (i.e most easily understood) tech available. This automaticially satisfies, and toughens, the prereq requirements.

posted September 05, 1999 20:51                

The overall theme of the book is coincidences, and chaos leading to order. An example: At one battle, Italian citizens would not accept paper money for food. As a result, the soldiers had to forage, and were attacked. When returning to France, an award was offered to come up with a method of preserving foods. One man thought heating and sealing food would stop spoiling, and canned food was invented. Someone else thought that cold air would prevent disease. However, ice was hard to get in the summer time. A method of cooling air was developed (essentially an air conditioner). This led to methods of cooling air far enough to produce liquid air. This lead to a need to store this liquid air, and the vacuum thermos (or Dewar) was invented. This, much later, allowed rocket fuel to be produced and transported, and allowed rockets to become practical.

So, what was this discovery? Was it millitary, because it began with a battle? Was it economic, because the paper money was not accepted? Was it agricultural, because of the method of storing the food? Was it transport related, since it ended with the rocket?

This shows one of the flaws of the Civ model. Things are not invented in a structured manner. No one set out to build a rocket at the beginning of the chain, but there it was in the end. And, no doubt, the same result could have been obtained in a dozen different ways, maybe earlier, maybe later.

Another problem is that regional and cultural differences have a big impact on research. The arab nations had advanced astronomy techniques. This had to do in large part because Islam requires people to pray towards Mecca. When people spread out, they had to discover ways of pinpointing Mecca. They used the stars. In another example, priests in Europe had to pray at specific times of the day. this was easy in the day time, when the sun was out, but difficult at night. they developed the first alarm clock, powered by water, to ring bells at specific times. This led to many inventions.

The problem is that these led to great advances, and they were culturally specific, but it would be wrong to say that one culture or another deserves a research bonus. They were both important, but essentially flukes that led to important discoveries.

This leads to the third problem. The Arabs had advanced astronomy. The European monks had primitive clockwork. China had gunpowder. No one nation discovered all these things, or could have.. Information was traded all the time. America built the first Atomic Bomb, but never could have if it weren't for centuries of discoveries from around the globe. An isolationist nation could never advance, technologically. However, in Civ, every discovery leads to another. Any civ can discover the whole tech tree on their own.

As I've mentioned, the whole Civ tech method is not just flawed, but wrong. Unfortunately, I also don't have a solution. All I can suggest is that the ideas of randomized tech trees, unknown research times, and more importance placed on tech trading would make the game more realistic, and probably more fun.

posted September 05, 1999 21:51                

But I would like to see a simple semantic change in the way research is handled. When you choose which tech to research next, the computer should display a message more along the lines of "Our scientists have toured the empire and heard tell of the following scientific principles. Which shall we develop further, your highness?" Instead of "What should we research next," which has always bothered me. Later on, you might see "The following technologies are at the cutting edge, Mr. [or Ms.] President. Which shall we encourage our country to pursue?"

posted September 05, 1999 21:51                

I agree that the Civ tech system is inaccurate, and have also come to this conclusion from Burke's Connections (although I watched the 10 part BBC series and didn't read the book). The way that I suggested to solve this problem was to have "tech overlap", which I described in a previous post (although my stated reason for having "tech overlap" was to decrease the present dominance of the Science and Math techs, which seem to almost always lead to a new military advance). This, combined with randomized tech trees, would require that a Civ broaden its research horizons if it wanted to pursue one particular goal, be it military, perfectionist, or what have you.

posted September 19, 1999 01:47                

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

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

posted October 04, 1999 18:47                

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoep this helps!

Daniel

posted October 12, 1999 07:21             

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

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

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

What do you think of that idea??

posted October 22, 1999 19:20                

1. Introduction

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

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

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

2. Fix Research Rate

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

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

3. Key Technologies

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

4. Simultaneous Research

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

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

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

4.1. Military

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

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

4.2. Economy/Applied

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

4.3. Social/Philosophical

Affected by the Happiness SE Factor.

4.4. Academic

Affected by the Research SE Factor.

4.5. Biology/Farming

Affected by the Environmentalism SE Factor.

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

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

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

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

And now it’s finally time to present Education.

6. Education

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

Education should have 3 uses.

6.1. Research buildings

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

6.2. Technology Spread

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

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

6.3. Education points

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

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

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

X * Population

Where:

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

posted October 24, 1999 02:19                

All

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

all the good ideas are not already out there

posted October 24, 1999 10:02                

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

posted October 24, 1999 00:40                

These numbers are of course randomly chosen and unbalanced.

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

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

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

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

Research Rate = 330.

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

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

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

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

Then the total Research Rate would be 371.

posted October 27, 1999 00:21                

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

posted October 29, 1999 21:33                

I've been reading ideas sent here and combinining them with some of my own. What do you think about this kind of system? I think it combines quite well most of the suggestions made here. I'll try to summarize it briefly.

Part One: The Creative Energy

1. Concept of creative energy (CE)
Instead of using old "light bulbs" or "beakers" as units of science, let's use certain abstract amount of creative energy. This simulates the fact that the humans tend to use part of their energy to create new solutions to older problems, to entertain themselves and others, create beatiful things, to search the meaning of life etc.

2. How to use the CE?
The use of CE also solves the problem how to simulate the cultural/religious part of human civilization. Certain part of CE will be used for each of these:

-creation of new information (science)
-entertainment and creation of artworks (culture)
-fulfilling the people's spiritual/philosophical needs (religion)

If the living conditions aren't sufficient and the people aren't guarded well enough, some CE will be used for

-rioting and rebellious actions

Some of it will go to waste, of course. This way, all three can be treated in the same way. This is discussed later in more detail. This also holds the key for simulating the unhappiness of the people, I think. Of course the CE should be only one part of it. The goal should be, that all three, science, religion, and culture, are needed. Player's score should be affected by the level of progress he has made on these fields.

NOTICE:
By using this system, the older specialist system is not necessarily needed. What do you think?

3. What kinds of things affect the amount and distribution of CE?
-Some base amount of CE created by certain amount of population should be determined. This simulates the fact that the people cannot be stopped from using their creativity. (Well, perhaps except if they are kept in slavery.)
-The size of the city puts certain limits to how the CE can be used: in smaller cities, the religious needs come first, then comes science, then culture.
-Also, some social matters affect the total amount: how hard the people need to work, how controlled the society is, how the people are encouraged to use their creativity, what's the cultural environment the player creates; this could be done with SE. Player could use sliders to control his society. The properties of the society decide the total amount of CE produced.
These should, though, have only relatively minor effect. This simulates the fact that the government can't very efficiently guide the people's minds. It can only create an environment, where the CE is used.

4. How to make the most of the CE?
If the city has an academy/university, the CE is much more efficiently used for science; they are places where educated people gather to learn more and to meet other educated people. Similarly, theatre/concert hall boosts the cultural life, church/cathedral religious life. This should be the principal means of controlling the CE. Another important means should be funding: the player should budget some of his incomes to science, culture, and church. The goal should be, that all three of these need to be funded, and there should be also other expenses: military, infrastructure, governmental, social, etc., so it wouldn't be possible to put 70-80 percent of the money to science, like in former civs.

That was my suggestion for CE system. It still needs more thinking preferably by other people than me; obviously I cannot see all the flaws it may have. Perhaps it could be enhanced with some ideas of other people.

Part Two: The Development

1. The concept of development
When something is done for a long time, it will be done better and better; that's called development. This applies to everything.

The development should be divided to appropriate fields.

2. Cultural development:
Culture includes sculpture, visual arts, drama, music, literature, poetry, cinema etc.; the more CE is used to exercise these arts, the better they will be mastered. I suggest that each one of these fields will be given a "skill". The skills need to be "invented". For example, when writing has been developed, eventually someone starts to write poems; to achieve this, certain amount of cultural CE needs to be used. Skill of poetry is invented; As time passes, and more and more CE is used for poetry, that civilization's skill of poetry increases. There should be some limitations to prevent the skills being increased too high; for example, the amount of libraries you have puts certain limitations to the skills of written arts. Also, when you have reached certain skill level, you need to spend certain amount of CE to preserve that level. If enough CE is not available, the skill will get worse. This way, the cultural development is dependent on your development on other fields. Of course, the cultural information should spread among civilizations in contact with each other quite freely. This simulates, quite realistically, that the civilizations close to each other will be culturally quite similar. I think that like this the cultural life can be modelled pretty well.

3. Religious development:
The religious system is little different from the others; there are no "skill levels" or such; There is only an overall figure of "religious activity", RA; the more the player gives power to the church, and the more he funds it, the more CE is used for religious work. Certain amount of CE would be needed to maintain current level of RA, if more is used, the level will raise.

The RA count will be used to determine the role of church and its effect on people and society; Very religious people is easy to convince to go for "crusades" against the "pagans" of evil civilization x. If certain religion is powerful, it will spread to other civs, making certain influence on their religious life, eventually causing them to believe in the same way as you, giving you possibility to gain certain level of control of their civ without needing to conquer them.

But, the more the church has power, the less you have it; there should be also some disadvantages for being very religious. Quite obvious consequence is the stagnation of science; the concept of "heresy". Also, the church will probably take some authority from you. These are visions; this is what it could be like. Of course certain theological information could be researched, too, as science; monotheism or polytheism, cult seremonies, dogmatic clashes, etc.

4. Scientific development:
Information should be divided to theoretical and applied - science and technology. Technology is knowledge about how certain thing is done; science is knowledge about why that is possible. Deeper understanding leads to better technology, and so on.

Scientific information could include:
-natural sciences like mathematics, physics, biology, medicine
-human sciences like philosophy, psychology
-economics
-geography
-history
-military science (tactics): infantry tactics, cavalry tactics...

Technological information could include:
-military technology like sword making, cannon making, machine guns...
-transport technology like shipbuilding, airplanes...
-agricultural technology like farming, domestication...
-community technology like road building, sewer building...
-etc.

My idea is, that each of those fields would have a certain value: scientific fields would have a certain level of knowledge, technological fields would have a certain level of skill. The higher the value, the better you understand the mathematics or the better swords you can make.

When the skills are used, some CE will be spent to achieve better and better results. Once a certain level of skill is achieved, some CE will be needed to maintain the skill. If you don't build ships for centuries, it will be hard to start over again.

Scientific knowledge increases in the same way, but much slower; however, scientific information won't disappear as easily, but it is more dependent on written information; if the libraries and universities are destroyed and scientific work is not continued for some decades, the information will start to be forgotten quickly.

The key element of this system is, that there are many smaller fields of information, and they are all developed simultaneously. You don't need to spend centuries to discover "the ultimate sword"; even the most primitive swords and firearms kill people. Instead, you learn quickly, what a sword should be like; then you will slowly learn to make better and better swords. This gives small bonuses to your troops using swords as weapons.

Certain revolutionary ideas make rapid changes in science and technology. Newton's laws caused great progress in physics. Damasc steel gave the sarasenes great advantage during crusades. Let's call those advances "milestones". Most advances used in former civs go under this category. Those ideas cannot be kept secret very well; the news about the breakthrough travel quickly to other civilizations. However, the civilization to reach the milestone first should get some kind of bonus. After some time the others could get a bonus, too, but smaller. Example: civilization x develops damasc steel. This causes dramatic enhancement in sword technology and gives the civ x a 10% additional bonus for their swordsmen. Civs y and z hear quickly about the advancement and learn the secret, too. After some turns they will get a 5% bonus to their swordsmen, but the civ x still has a slight advantage.

5. How this system works?
In order to learn the secrets of certain field of information, some requirements need to be met: for example, to learn how to domesticate horses the civ needs to have some experience on domestication of other animals. Also, supposing that there would be special resource on the map, horses, one prerequisite could be that player has wild horses on his area, or can acquire horses elsewhere. For scientific information there could be some "infrastructural" prerequisites: in order to research philosophy, you need to build at least one academy etc.

When the prerequisites are met, certain amount of CE would be needed in order to find the new field of technology. The amount of CE needed shouldn't be excact, but a value "betweem x and y", and when the total amount of CE is between those values x and y, there would be each turn a certain possibility to make a breakthrough. This would create an element of randomness, which add realism. Especially with the milestone ideas this simulates the fact that often great geniuses make the final effort to combine the information properly.

When the new field of information has been found, certain amount of CE would be needed to advance in level: when certain progress has been made, some CE and perhaps some practical exercise is needed to maintain that level; for instance, if you spend X turns not building any ships, your shipbuilding skill goes down. One prerequisite for progress on certain field could be certain progress on some other field. This is how it has been in our world, too.

The produced CE should be distributed 1) depending on how much the skill is used 2) with some random factors thrown in 3)the player could choose how to emphasize the development; when certain level of excellence is reached, the player would choose to slow down the development on that area and emphasize some other area. On scientific fields, player's funding and emphasizing should be most important factor.

The information "leaks downhill" from civ to others; this means that if civ x is better shipbuilder than the others, the shipbuilding skills of civ y make certain progress because of the "leakage", depending on the connections between those two civs. Usually there is no way to prevent this, and the system should be, that it wouldn't even be wise. They get some of your technology, and you some from them. This also makes the differences between civs smaller. Not fair, perhaps, but realistic. The exchange of scientific information should be much more effective; the scientists from different countries have always cooperated. The progress on scientific fields should be so difficult, that the cooperation would be indispensable. This would add realism.

In the modern world, perhaps after some milestone has been reached, you could build secret labs and make certain information "classified" to make the leakage smaller. By using espionage it shouldn't be possible to steal the whole technology the others have; You should order your spies to "infiltrate" other civilization and use many turns to slowly raise your own level of skill; each turn there would be a possibility that other civ's counter-espionage units notice your actions, depending on their espionage skills.

The good sides of this system are guite good realism and versatility; you don't need to spend centuries to gather a large enough pile of information to be able to build frigates; instead, you can slowly enhance your skill and make your ships better and better. Also, you can research many fields simultaneously.

The bad side is its complexity; but if the system is created skillfully, the hardest part would be to balance the system and synchronize the techs. What do you think? Is it worth the trouble? Think about it and make your own suggestions. Can it be made better? If we can agree on the system, the next job would be to make a list of scientific fields, technological skills and milestones.

I have used ideas from many people for this system. I will not list all of them, partly because I don't remember all and partly because it's impossible to tell who invented which idea first. It's a creation of all who have written to this forum.

posted October 30, 1999 11:56                

There could be some city improvements that would increase the probability of having an idea.

Resource squares could be hidden until you have the idea that relates to that resource (e.g. iron does not appear until you have had the idea of iron working). This would prevent the placement of cities deliberately near to resource squares, and would allow the possibility of advantages of city placement changing through time - a city apparently in a poor place early in the game might turn out later on to be near to good supplies of coal and iron.