I'm already feeling like a complete idiot for even suggesting all this stuff, but let's at least get it all straight before I admit how silly it all is.

ICE doesn't "protect your mind." It protects computer systems. It's anti-hacker software that operates via cyberspace. Let's say you don't want anybody hacking into the Library of Congress. Well, you surround the system with a wall of impenetrable ICE that blocks any unauthorized access, and not only that, it tracks down the location of all unauthorized attemtps at access and immediately notifies the police. Think of it as the next step in firewalls. Now, let's say a ruthless corporation... take your pick, PepsiCo, Microsoft, Nike... wants to not only protect its system but actively scare people away. It's not only got an impenetrable wall of ICE, but if you get too close to the company system in cyberspace, it'll start throwing out shards of virus code that will damage your computer. That's what ICE is all about. It's portrayed visually because that's how Gibson describes cyberspace, in purely visual terms - the internet of the future accessible by the ultimate graphical user interface, your eyes and hands.

What else... oh, the hyperatomic motivator. This is another Asimovian idea. It's not a weapon. It's a means of attaining FTL speeds. For Asimov, hyperspace isn't something you can enter through a door or a "jump gate." Instead, in order to enter hyperspace, you have to simultaneously stimulate every molecule in your ship into the "hyperatomic" state, at which point it no longer occupies space in U, but in H. And the hyperatomic state doesn't last very long, so moving FTL is a process of making several small "hyper-jumps." It's still impossible, of course, which is why I feel so bloody embarrassed bothering to correct you...

ZPE, in a purely SF sense, is not "energy from nowhere," but operates on the principle that there's no such thing as nothing because of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Thus, vacuum is never entirely empty.

The term is arcology, which is a word made by combining architecture + ecology. Not "arcologies," as Call to Power called it. The term comes from Paolo Soleri's book Arcology: The City in the Image of Man. You can familiarize yourself with the basic tenets of it at this web site (which I found over at Yahoo): http://www.peagreenboat.com/Arcology /
The term "arcology" is sometimes used as a noun to describe a city designed using arcological principles, and so it can be pluralized to become "arcologies," but the philosophy itself should not be.

And finally, just take the word "twin" away from the "ion engine," so nobody bursts out laughing...

The first application does apply to the "something from nothing" side of ZPE. Since ZPE creates a small force without any energy density, it could be used to hold open an artificial "wormhole", if one did exist. This is relatively certain. How you're going to create your wormhole, of course, is anybody's guess...

Howabout the spreading of new tech. I've seen the bleed effect already and some things on stealing it.
My idea would be to increase the trading of techs (ala SMAC).
Along with the possibility that in a more free society (republican, democratic) the open publication of (non-military) scientific breaktroughs could make it very easy for all other civs to gain it as well. Maybe under the conditon of increased payment for patents or increased tradebenefits to the inventing nation.
I'm in principle for the easy spread of new techs, as long as they're of no direct military value. Noone should have to invent the wheel all over again.
This might especially be accomplished by the Great Library wonder in the ancient times and in the later periods, early renaissance, by the forming of Science Academies. For instance the Royal Academy in London and the counterpart in Paris both had many members from abroad and the current world has a lot of magazines with scientific research areas as topics that can be found around the world in libraries and such.

Just rereading the above part I think this may be something only available after the introduction of something like printed paper and/or something like long distance communications.

Another thought is to learn new ideas by sending out explorers into the world, much like the one Marco Polo went with. Or like the traders that searched for the easy route along the southern cape of Africa to the east.

Or what to think of finding new technology by invading a city, though not the complete tech but the rough outlines of one and maybe only 10% extra effort needed to complete it compard to the 'usual' cost.

Next to that, if the idea of getting important historical figures into the game will be adopted, it might be an idea to get such figures under your employment by bribing them, conquering their 'home'town and have a chance of capturing them. It's all been done before, how do you think both the Soviets and the Americans became involved in the space race? They both managed to get some scientists from Werner von Braun's V2-team to come work for them.

And to get hooked into the idea of corporations doing some work for you, how about some of them luring important researchers to their private labs? Labs they use to invent practical things like the fridge at the moment it becomes real handy or some improvements on the larger techareas like aggriculture or industry or such. Things that are beneficial for those companies. It might even be so that if the idea of patents becomes adopted, those companies can earn money from having some.

UP this goes.

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If the (imho, ludicrous) ZPE were to to be incorporated into Civ3, why would there be an energy economy in SMAC? Wouldn't they just be able to make more energy credits (without such things as "Trainers")? Morgan would have fun with that...but so would everybody else.

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Q Cubed
Renaissance Q • Q-of-all-trades
Thread Discussion Facilitator for Wonders

TECH TREE BRANCH SPECIFIC RESEARCH FACILITIES - The facilities to help research should mostly help one type of research and there should be specialized facilities for the different researh areas. Each facility would increase research in one or more areas only, and should help assimiliting a new acquired tech faster.

TECH ASSIMILATION - When you acquire a tech without researching it, you should have a limited amount of research to be able to use the technology. Special facilities should reduce this significantly.

PHASED TECHNOLOGIES - Each current technology that produces units should be broken into at least three phases, Rudamental (costs more and not as effective), Standard (no adjustments), Advanced (costs a bit less and more effective). Note that each phase could have additional techology pre-requisites.

TECHNOLOGIES RESTRICTED TO ONE RACE/FACTION - This can be used to give the races slightly different abilities, particularly in conjungation with Phased Technologies, allowing each race to have certain levels/varieties of the technology which the other races cannot obtain. In this example, Each of these technologies should have the option to be marked as non-tradable/acquirable, so they only way the other races can get the technologies is to buy whole units from the race with the technology.

NOTE: If these are set up to handle this, faction/countries can also have a % +/- to an area as part of their definition, and technologies themself can add and subtract from this as well.

TECH TREE BRANCH SPECIFIC RESEARCH FACILITIES: Yeah, this is in the summary somewhere. Nuclear plants only help you if you dedicate a librar/university to math/physics, etc.

Tech Assmiliation & Phased Technologies: The Tech Assimilation one is basically "Spies don't steal all the technology, they just steal 65% of it" idea. However, the "Phased Technologies" is a great expansion on the "Re-researching a tech" idea. This goes with the previous one in that you might steal Rudimentary technology with a spy, but it won't be enough to compete with the enemy's Advanced technology troops.

TECHNOLOGIES RESTRICTED TO ONE RACE/FACTION & Tech Headstarts: I'm hesitant about this myself, but this is in the summary already. Your idea about making certain techs easier to research, and restricting how far you can in an area, certainly have merit though. Also, with the "Research slider bars with inertia" idea, this could be handled for you, so that the Cretans would have already devoted more scientsits to "maritime tech" (if there was such a tech) and wouldn't suffer efficiency penalties for moving there.

The basic intent is to divide the technology tree into categories, not based on application, but rather on type of discovery. These categories would be: quantitative science, technology and social trends.

Each of these would be independant trees of discoveries, although each tree has slightly different characteristics.

Science is entirely undirected by the player. Research simply happens at a relatively set rate. Research is not cumulative towards a goal. Ie, you do not gain points each turn until you reach a certain number. Instead, your research gives you a base (very small) chance of making a discovery on a given turn. Some discoveries cannot be made without appropriate technologies. Once discovered, scientific discoveries are difficult to control; any civilization has a chance of acquiring science discoveries every turn from nearby civilizations and this chance increases as time goes on. It is hard to keep a good idea secret. Sciences do nothing in and of themselves, they merely trigger events or unlock technologies.

The second track is technology, which is more specifically the applied result of progress in science. There should be a very large number of technologies available in the game, many more than any single culture would research. A player may focus research on technologies which will be beneficial. A player can also spend money to increase progress on creating these technologies. The progress toward new technologies is most efficient if each city is pursuing a seperate goal. Efforts can be combined at an efficiency cost. The disadvantage to pursuing the direct technologies is the reduced chance that your scientists will be the one to make the next science breakthrough. Technologies are or allow all of the facilities, wonders and units in the game.

Social trends are totally out of control of the player and are influenced by all the civilizations in the game. As various sciences, technologies and other triggers are discovered it will immediately trigger the existance of appropriate social trends. All of the choices as to how you structure your society are made after the trend becomes available. Once a social trend is actually used in one civilization it will begin to make its way around the world to other civilizations, even if they do not have the trigger themselves. The time before the other civilization gets the trend is based on distance, and the combined current social and trade attitudes they both have (if they are both xenophobic it will take a long time, both agressively mercantile and it will happen quite quickly).

All research in an empire is divided between science and technology proportionally.

Heres is an example of how this all plays out:
Your civilization has had the science of philosophy for some time. Your research is set to 30% science 70% technology. Say you have 3 cities of size 5, each producing 10 research. This is a total of 3 for science and 7 in each of 3 areas for technology. At each city there is a 3% chance per turn (for example) that you make a scientific breakthrough, thus these breakthroughs will come, on average, every 11 turns or so, or maybe 3 in one turn, who knows?! On the other hand, perhaps the technologies require 60 points to be gained, so they will be after about 9 turns.
After a turn you get lucky and make another science breakthrough, geometry! You already knew astronomy so this allows you to pursue two important technologies. Mapmaking and Land Plots so that your farmers will be able to work more efficiently on their own land every year after the river floods. Because Land Plots is important to you you have two cities working on it, one gives 7 points and the other at a 20% penalty ends up giving 5 points. A total of 12, you will get this technology in five turns.
After you get Land Plots, your cities begin to grow again. When the reach size six, and you have a wealthy citizen you create the idea for Local Democracy (a social trend). This is because you now have the luxury of a wealthy class in large cities sitting around discussing philosophy. If you do nothing then no one else will discover your idea.. yet. But if you implement the democracy, then the idea will spread quite quickly, although its greatest benefit will still likely be to your condition.