Researching Techs » Forum Post by Frogboy

I noticed a number of people are basing their assumptions on being able to research three techs simultaneously. It appears that you are not limited to three simultaneous projects. There appear to be scroll buttons above and below the technologies being researched. Additionally, there are “Add” and “Remove” buttons at the bottom of the screen, presumable to add and remove technologies from the active research list.

Brad said that you had the ability to research three things at once. I am assuming that you can latetr expand to more w/ the proper tech, and the buttons are just still there because of incomplete UI.

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Oh, a second thought , sort of related to the last. Every game I've seen has research performed kingdom wide. In reality, research is done at a location. Even in today's world of easy information flow, you don't just have your entire R&D research one thing. Usually it's one thing here, another there, etc.

The multiple paths of research had me thinking that it might be cool if the number of different things you could do depended on the number of separate labs you've got to do that research. And a lab would live at a particular location. If you go and take a town where a lab was researching something, then that research is halted and even if you take it up again, you suffer some amount of set back as only portions of the research escaped the occupation.

And/Or perhaps that's how research is stolen, you capture a lab or infiltrate it. You could have two labs work on the same thing only if they were in the same town. Maybe a technology or spell (like wind-speech) could enable remote labs to work together.

Again, it adds some complication, but it's always bugged me that things are build concretely at one location, but research is this abstract thing that somehow every researcher in your empire can contribute to simultaneously.

+1

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So i guess this means no SMAC research then? I was really hoping to see, since such a drastic change to the economy was being made that we would see something different in research as well, and I sincerely feel that an upgraded SMAC research is the best way to go.

Please, hear me out, research may or may not be done at one location, it could be nationwide. The problem is, is that research, especially considering the era (and the fantasy genre) is made up of accidents or major breakthroughs that no one was really aiming for in the first place. What I truly want to see is a nation that develops its technologies based on its location and its values. Values are taken care of when you pick your faction, those remain with you. But tell me, why would i need to research horseback riding, if my people dont even have horses to ride?

I want to be able to focus my research on domestic, military, magical studies, etc. and have the computer decide what my people research. Ex- within my nations borders there is iron (i dont know that yet as it is hidden bc im in my comfy little fortress) but my people, behind the scenes, have found this ore and are researching and figuring out that, "hey! we can use this stuff" So at first this 'iron mining' technology could be considered domestic or military and if that is my focus it will be researched for me (after which iron will appear on the map). If i switch my focus to purely military i can hope to see 'iron smelting', and other forging technologies to make iron a very powerful part of my nation, even more powerful then it may be to others.

I know i can not change the direction of the devs ideas, i just merely wanted to give my two cents. Thanks for reading

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So...... an RNG? I'm reasonably sure we won't get that, due to the irreconcileable balance issues.

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Quoting ckessel,

reply 2

Oh, a second thought , sort of related to the last. Every game I've seen has research performed kingdom wide. In reality, research is done at a location. Even in today's world of easy information flow, you don't just have your entire R&D research one thing. Usually it's one thing here, another there, etc.

The multiple paths of research had me thinking that it might be cool if the number of different things you could do depended on the number of separate labs you've got to do that research. And a lab would live at a particular location. If you go and take a town where a lab was researching something, then that research is halted and even if you take it up again, you suffer some amount of set back as only portions of the research escaped the occupation.

And/Or perhaps that's how research is stolen, you capture a lab or infiltrate it. You could have two labs work on the same thing only if they were in the same town. Maybe a technology or spell (like wind-speech) could enable remote labs to work together.

Again, it adds some complication, but it's always bugged me that things are build concretely at one location, but research is this abstract thing that somehow every researcher in your empire can contribute to simultaneously.

I like the idea of each site researching it's own thing. It doesn't look like that is the direction they are going, but that is a very cool and fresh idea. I'd love to see it in the game.

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Quoting Denryu,

reply 5

I like the idea of each site researching it's own thing. It doesn't look like that is the direction they are going, but that is a very cool and fresh idea. I'd love to see it in the game.

It's all cool until you lose the site your researching at. In addition to the huge loss of an entire city you'd also lose a research tech that could have taken a very long time. There's no need for further penalties that are just going to make players hit the load button or quit even more.

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Quoting Jonny5446,

reply 3

Quoting Cauldyth, reply 2
In this UI, the player has researched the ability to research 3 things at once (no penalty).
It seems to me like it should be the other way around. There should be penalties for focusing on only one research item. It makes sense from a logical perspective - adding more people to a project has diminishing returns. If a nation put all of its resources into researching a single thing then yes, it would go faster, but there would be a lot of waste.

I also like it from a gameplay perspective, as it penalizes people for going full bore down one tech path at the cost of completely ignoring other aspects of research. It can be done in an emergency to get a critical tech, but the more prudent thing in the long term would be to keep multiple research projects going on at once.

Seconded

Edit: Primarily as it would nudge it slightly closer to the system broadly agreed upon in this thread: https://forums.elementalgame.com/329572/page/4/#replies i.e. the more specific and focused your research (potentially in an effort to min max) the greater cost you pay for that focus.. and as a result you get some really interesting decisions to make

Quoting ckessel,

reply 25

I have a suggestion that I haven't seen implemented in other games, which is prerequisite units or buildings for research. Well, I've seen prereq buildings, but not units.

In a PBM game I used to play your mages could either study a new level or do stuff in the field. The opportunity cost of advancing your magic was not using the magician himself while you were doing that research. I'd love to see a little of that in the Spell research tree (or Tech as well, if it makes sense). You can't research how to enchant weapons, or brew potions without having trained an alchemist or enchanter and stuffed him to work in the building.

I like the idea of tying people to the research rather than having advancements being more abstractly researched. This actually dovetails to some extent with the concept of heroes, but more like key personnel. Does that blacksmith stay at home and churn out stuff, does he team up with the alchemist to help research how to enchant weapons, or does he go off with the army to give an advantage there (maybe better weapons maintenance or some such).

That might create a usability issue though if you've got too many key personnel to handle, but it was quite a bit of fun in the PBM game to agonize over whether I needed that wizard's power now or to let him study to get even more powerful for later.

Seconding both posts!

Infinite Research (IR) & Randomized spells (RS) probably means a different thing for different people. But the following is what I want, or act as material for discussion.

For IR, the number of techs in the tech tree is finite X, but there are many levels of Y for each spells. Higher level of the spells either improves the spell effectiveness, or reduce casting cost. For some spells, there will be a gradual & constant rate of increase in its effectiveness. For other spells, upon reaching say level 10, 20, 30, there will be extra & powerful benefits added to the original spell.
The tech tree is infinite in a sense that it takes forever to be able to research all X * Y level of spells.

Rgds to RS, non-core spells has only a certain % chance of showing up in your tech trees. Modder can decide this percentage. And this % can also be determined by whether you have coastal cities, or have access to iron, Pegasus or some kind of resource. The more available they are to you, the higher % they appears in your personal tech tree.

Fraction spells. Some fraction has its fraction specific spells, AND do not have access to some spells, including Core spells. When designed carefully, this will allow sharp differences btn fractions.

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Quoting Climber,

reply 7

Fraction spells. Some fraction has its fraction specific spells, AND do not have access to some spells, including Core spells. When designed carefully, this will allow sharp differences btn fractions.

Fraction spell example: Destroy 3/16 of enemy troops .

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It's all cool until you lose the site your researching at. In addition to the huge loss of an entire city you'd also lose a research tech that could have taken a very long time. There's no need for further penalties that are just going to make players hit the load button or quit even more.

That's a pretty serious kneejerk reaction.

How is losing the research towards one item any different than losing any other thing produced in a game, like a Wonder or major expensive unit? As for penalties, it's hard to believe a research hit is the straw that breaks the camel's back if you lose a large city.

"Hmm, I've lost a big city, big production center, 2 Wonders, and my most elite units. But damn it, I was fine with that until I lost that 70% completion to Dragon Scale Armor! That tears it, I'm quitting!"

Also, I wasn't thinking that research, once completed, would be lost. Once completed, the team moves on and the knowledge is already in place out in the world (or in the King's library, whatever). Even if the lab is destroyed, it doesn't have to be a binary "lost it all" event. It could be some % of setback as the project has to be reestablished at a new lab.

My main proposal is that research is a produced commodity like anything else. Unlike a physical commodity, once researched it's sort of universally available like any classic tech research, but while in process there's some team/lab/alchemist/wizard physically somewhere actively doing the research.

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I've played enough multiplayer matches to know that half the players tend to quit once they lose their first city. I can't blame them, because in many games, losing even a single city early enough in the game means you've already lost. When you're playing a very long hundred turn + long strategy game your not going to want to keep investing many more hours into a game you've lost hours ago.

I don't see why it is so hard to see that it could be the breaking straw. We don't know how long some of the research could take to complete. Some could be dozens of turns. We don't know. I also expect that my cities will be able to research before they become massive and there could likely be situations where the research they are doing is worth as much as the city itself. Earlier in the game this is probably even more likely and more devastating.

All I'm saying is it better not be a situation where all the research is lost and I would prefer any loss to be minimal. Losing the site itself is enough. This could probably be continued in the steamroller thread.

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All I'm saying is it better not be a situation where all the research is lost and I would prefer any loss to be minimal. Losing the site itself is enough. This could probably be continued in the steamroller thread.

So, you'd be just as adamant that any progress towards a Wonder shouldn't be affected if that city is lost either? It takes turns and turns to complete a wonder, maybe dozens, we don't know.

You'd want that Wonder progress loss to be minimal if the city was lost and you'd prefer no loss at all.

Same if you're building a deathstar space station.

Right?

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I agree: total research loss upon losing a city would be..... bad. Some techs in GC2 took hundreds of turns to research. A slight dip wouldn't be too bad, though: maybe a standard two-turn "reintigration" hold on that ctiy's research.

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Quoting ckessel,

reply 11

*Terrible straw man argument trying to equate technologies to a wonder*

By the same logic I also hate losing units and buildings I'm producing. When I lose a city it should simply be duplicated and moved to some other location in my empire.

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By the same logic I also hate losing units and buildings I'm producing. When I lose a city it should simply be duplicated and moved to some other location in my empire.

Yes, that's exactly the point. You're arbitrary separating the effort of tech from the effort of everything else. Why call it out as a special exception to the rule? Most techs took less time to research than the effort to build most wonders and even some units in both GalCiv and Civ. If you're argument is that tech loss is back breaking, then the effort lost in those other things that take even MORE time would also be back breaking.

It takes effort to produce something, be it physical or mental. It's an arbitrary distinction to say that this effort deserves special protection while all the other things that take effort don't. In wars, sabotaging an opponents capability to produce is a very valid tactic, be it bombing a factory or destroying research facilities. That's not a strawman.

You seem to have attached this hyper sensitive protected status to the act of research without giving any reasons why you think it should be special beyond "people might quit", which is a complaint that can be levied to any significant loss.

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If techs and wonders were the same they'd probably not have different names.

Techs are vital to success in just about every game, while wonders are usually optional. Wonders are more likely to be unique to the first faction that builds it as well as being more visible while building. Maybe it wouldn't be a straw man if I was talking about buildings, since you know, wonders are usually buildings, but I didn't. I'm talking about researching.

If your looking for "realism" justification it's reasonable to assume that any plans, ideas, basic prototypes, etc. would be shared to the empire prior to a major attack. As someone said before, medieval research was usually just finding tons of ways to fail and is more knowledge based than prototype based. It's not like they are trying to move big mechanical prototypes from place to place.

More imporantly, gameplay wise there is really no reason for this. You talk about ruining an opponents ability to do research and it being a valid tactic. It still is regardless of whether the player loses massive amounts of research when you take over his city. By taking over the city you just put a halt to any further researching on that tech for what is likely going to be a long time. It doesn't even stop you from targetting cities known to be research centers.

Since most games do little to stop steamrolling by a dominant player, if I'm going to err, I'm going to do it on the side of preventing steamrolling, rather than making it easier. Since people tend to quit with "significant loses" there's no need to make loses that are already very significant even more so (and certainly not by arbitrarily pretending that no one in my empire learned anything from the 75 years of research I was doing before that city was captured). I don't need every game I play to be decided by one pivotal city take over.

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It still is regardless of whether the player loses massive amounts of research when you take over his city. By taking over the city you just put a halt to any further researching on that tech for what is likely going to be a long time.

Where the f**k are you getting this stuff? I said nothing of the sort. And where do you get MASSIVE amounts of research? Look at any GalCiv or Civ tech before the uber end game stuff and you're talking 5-10 turns typically to research something. Sometimes just a turn or two. How is that massive? Maybe 20-30 turns for a bigger tech.

You lose one lab, so what. You lose, say, 20 turns towards one project. Throw in a gameplay mechanic that says your scientists escape with 75% of the research and it's just a 5 turn loss (yes, I did alude to something like this mechanic in my first post). You build a new lab and start that project again or have a different lab take up the task.

Where the hell is this HUGE, MASSIVE loss you're complaining about? You're just making crap up at this point with waving hands in the air. I can see why you have zero karma. Your posts make little sense at all and invent things never said.

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Quoting Scoutdog,

reply 12

I agree: total research loss upon losing a city would be..... bad. Some techs in GC2 took hundreds of turns to research. A slight dip wouldn't be too bad, though: maybe a standard two-turn "reintigration" hold on that ctiy's research.

Why look at the glass half empty? If it is bad for YOU to lose research when you lose a city it would be EQUALLY bad for your opponent. Really, it adds a whole new dynamic to the game, because as you got near completion of a major research project, you might want to call in a few of your roaming armies to protect your research investment (if it was in any danger in the first place.

I really don't follow Touresh's line of reasoning and agree with CK - with everything you lose with a city, losing the research on the currently researched item would make you hit the reset button??? Seriously?

And I just got to reiterate - no matter how bad it is, you have an equal or better chance (assuming you are a better player) of inflicting the same damage on your opponents (AI or human).

Nopt to worry though, it really doesn't look like SD is going this direction anyway. I wish they would as it would be innovative and I think it would add to the game.

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I like the idea of each site researching it's own thin.g It doesn't look like that is the direction they are going, but that is a very cool and fresh idea. I'd love to see it in the game.

I think this is a good idea and it has absolutely nothing to do with losing buildigns or losing research.

Here's an example implementation:

You have research sites 1, 2 and 3 with an output of 10 research each.

You could have 30 rp focused on a single tech (single tech research model).

You could divide these points however you like, but that would always be less effective than putting all in one place in sequence.

Or you could assign each site to one research, and each tech would only get benefits from the best research site. This means to double your tech output you must research two techs.

Now the downside is you can't concentrate on a single tech and get benefits. That can be circumvented by using randomness or diminishing returns:

Jsut change the output so it's random: Sites give 5-15 output.

If you put all sites on researching the same thing, instead of researching one tech with an average of 10 points per turn, you receive that tech with an average of 12* points per turn (* ok it's not 12, it depends on the random number distribution and I'm not going to do the math, as results would be very different if the randomness is a bell curve or linear...).

There are other ways of increasing the average without using randomness, but I think random is cool as it illustrates the serendipity of technological advancement. For instance, the second best site only provides 1/2 its output, the third 1/3rd, etc.

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This whole discussion is just another example of lack of imagination I think. Why on earth is research localised? Why on earth should we lose portions of the research once the research site is captured? Maybe a slight setback can be ok sometimes, but it is not required imo.

Why do you guys think the benefits of a tech are available empire wide once a tech is completed? I always kinda assumed that researching a tech is not just finding out how stuff works. For example, finding out how to make iron from raw ore is not just a process of figuring out how to do it, but also of making the idea widespread, making facilities empire wide to be able to make iron, getting naysayers convinced that making iron is a good idea, etc. Therefore this 'research' as it is called is in fact not just the research side of the story. It is also the experimenting, the process of spreading the knowledge, some techs may require making legislation, etc.

When looking at research this way then the 'research' part only makes up a small portion of the process and you can explain just fine why losing cities does not hurt your overall research process. This way losing cities will just hurt because you lost a good site, not because your research is hit as well.

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Why look at the glass half empty? If it is bad for YOU to lose research when you lose a city it would be EQUALLY bad for your opponent. Really, it adds a whole new dynamic to the game, because as you got near completion of a major research project, you might want to call in a few of your roaming armies to protect your research investment (if it was in any danger in the first place.

That may be, but losing your research on a big tech every time the bad guys come knocking would IMHO make the game rather.... tedious. People probably wouldn't quit the first few times, but that sort of prolonged status quo would get boring very rpidly.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

... Why do you guys think the benefits of a tech are available empire wide once a tech is completed? ...

Because social scientists are a terribly small part of the audience for Civ-form games? And maybe even more because the weakest part of modeling in these games is how time works?

Faux-snarky talk aside, I generally agree with you about much of the balking about losing a research site seems a bit narrow-minded. In particular, I have almost zero sympathy for a "that would be no fun" argument about an *idea* for a game. I'll reserve judgement for a build running on my PC.

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Goodmorning alll,

One thing to take into account is that some of the economic discusion focuses around the existance of specilized cities. It is not a huge strech to imagin that Elemental will have some bonuses for creating a city specially fucused on producing research. (buildings that provide a blanket +% to all research production in this city is the normal way to do this).

Therefore having labs spread out over multiple cities will carry a non trivial disadvantage.

On a sperate note, CIV 4 Has a dotting of pivital high cost research techs (Civil Service, Monotheism, the techs that unlock religions) amougnst a slew of lower cost fast finishing techs. Loosing half of one of the long haul research techs would truely be crippling.

That being said. Having a mechanism where research buildings have to be properly populated, and some build up RP can be lost due to forced relocation would make the game more limited.

Lastly the people who would leave due to loosing a city will leave tech loss or no tech loss. The solution is to reward players for staying in the game longer, and lable them as game abandoners so that people can choose to not join games with them if abbandonment is truely frustrating for them. Trying to make the game forgiving enough that abandoners won't abandon is the wrong way to go.

Take care Robbie Price

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I think that a more snesible soution would be to have a DELAY in research as your people re-integrate to new labs: for two turns or whatever, you simply don't research on that tech. It's realistic, but it also doesn't unfairly nerf people. In fact, I'd say it's even MORE realistic: if you destroy a lab, scientists don't just magically forget all of their work.

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if you destroy a lab, scientists don't just magically forget all of their work.

unless they die...

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unless they die...

Even then, I would assume that they would send regualr backups of their notes to other scientists and the channeler himself. We've pretty much agreed that a commodity of information system would be more trouble than it's worth for the vast majority of players.

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