A new (well, not really) way to research

Colonel Rhombus · April 20, 2001, 17:40

Unless speculation on this topic has already been buried by what little we do actually know about Civ3, what do the good people think about a system of research not unlike Masters of Orion 2, where multiple projects are researched simultaneously?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this system, all fields of research are pursued siultaneously, with each different field (propultion, weapons, computers, etc.) allocated a percentage of your overall research tally.

To me it kind of makes more sense than the Civilisation system.

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Regards,
Col. Rhombus

Ilkuul · April 20, 2001, 18:36

I'm not familiar with Masters of Orion 2, so I'm rather in the dark here, but how would this retain the historical progression of the tech tree? If you can research all techs at once, you might as well start with Space Flight, Plastics, Superconductor, etc.! But I presume you mean all 'accessible' techs, i.e. all those for which you have the prerequisites (or which don't require prereq's)...

Hmmm. I'm not sure about this. I just don't know how much it would weaken the gameplay by making it too easy to gain the advances you need. There's something very constrained and 'disciplined' about having to plan your advances carefully one tech at a time - tho' I have to admit that, at least for a large empire with a lot of research going on, it's rather unrealistic!

Maybe the possibility of researching more than one tech simultaneously could be a function of the number of science beakers you are producing? Once you reach a certain 'volume' of scientific research you can do two techs simultaneously, then three, and so on. I think it would be a valuable limitation only to allow a single tech to be researched in the early stages of the game; and in fact IMHO the possibility of doing more than one should only become possible in the latter part of the middle game - certainly only after University has been discovered...

SerapisIV · April 20, 2001, 20:03

Okay, you're idea is similar to the SMAC method of blind research with you being able to focus research on a certain type of tech (applied, social, economic, abstract) The difference being that you'd research all simultaneously with each type getting the percentage labs that you focused on it.

(I never played MOO2, so correct me if I'm wrong)

I kinda like the SMAC system instead because although you could focus on a type of tech, you really didn't know what you were gonna get. THis has some real life parallels as most breakthroughs in science come from the statement "That's funny...." not a fully directed goal, unless its more applied.

jdlessl · April 21, 2001, 00:33

One thing that I've always had a problem with was the way Civ models technological advances for everything but recent history. I also have no idea how to go about fixing it.

As residents of the 21st century, we are very much aware of the importance technology has played in world affairs. When we play a game of Civ, we know that we must research or die. We play accordingly, and thus vast sums are spent paying neolithic engineers to work on Top-Secret "Project Wheel".

Nothing could be further from how it really happened. There are countless examples in history about how a Civ had the opportunity to get marvelously useful advances but for one reason or another thought them unnecessary. "Medicines or new ways of growing crops get dismissed as outlandish nonsense, but come up with a better way of cracking skulls and they'll fall over themselves to get their hands on it". And even that's not entirely true, such as the case of Japan's first experience with gunpowder. In any Civ game, that sort of thing would never happen; we'd take the musketeers over the samurai any day of the week. They didn't.

Furthermore, actual government-sponsored and directed research is a fairly recent thing. Until a 100 or 150 years ago, most advances were kind of a haphazard thing, as Serapis pointed out.

Hence the fundamental problem with representing research in any realistic fashion. How does the game force players, who know full well that they'd better have the latest and greatest, to relax, suspend, or even relinquish research into new technologies due to cultural reasons?

I bring this up because unlike some, I consider turning Civ into SimHistory the pinnacle of success. I think that on any reasonable difficulty level, having your Civ merely survive until modern times should be an amazing acheivement. Historically, refusal to accept new technology has caused many failures in that department.

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Jared Lessl

SerapisIV · April 21, 2001, 09:15

I would love to get a full SimHistory title. Only problem is too many people think the world works in too many different ways for things to get modeled right. That and the difficulty of modeling real-life human gov't with all their prejudices, hates, ideologies, religions, etc. For lack of getting that I like the dumbed down Civ we got.

I totally agree that early science is not handled at all accurately, but I can't think of any other way to model, yet give the player some control, it is a game for the player after all, not a real history simulation.

Ilkuul · April 21, 2001, 15:13

I have to confess my ignorance of both SMAC and MOO2, but looking at the above posts I wonder whether some way could be found to combine some of the ideas discussed here. I appreciate the comments about early research being a lot more haphazard than in Civ2; and also the fact that, for good gameplay, there does need to be some player control. But in Civ2 there's already a small haphazard element in the early game, in the form of the techs you start out with. Could this be extended into the early game in some way, perhaps by having a different research model up to a given point (say, the discovery of University)? Up to that point research would be more along the lines discussed above, with the player able to set the general overall direction of research but not the specific techs; but after University (or whatever the turning-point is) - which of course he could not specifically choose to research! - he would then be able to specify particular techs, either one at a time or several at a time, depending on the size of his empire and amount of research being done.

Just a thought...

dognheat · April 22, 2001, 00:52

About that MOO2 research model, the thing I liked most aobut it was this. You as the player were not able to research every technology (unless your empire charactoristics allowed you to). This ment that you had to make some hard choices as to what your priorities were and then research the appropriate technologies. This ment in order to get all the techs in the game, you had to either steal, conquer, trade to get them. I don't think this would work for civ, since you wont design your own units, there is no need to choose between guns and butter per say.

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*PLOP*