Scientific Civs' Free Techs?

[Dominae]

Thanks Catt for bringing game info from far and wide to the humble halls of 'Poly (I just stick here for the most part, too much volume to read otherwise).

It's nice to see the explanation, but I still have no idea how this slipped through their initial version of the game. If the tech-selection is coded to pick among the first four availalbe techs in an era based upon their appearance in the tech list, why does one tech have 91% chance to be selected in the first place? This must mean there is some priority to their placement in the tech list, making it more than a mere list.

Personally I look forward to the new Scientific trait, if they do make this change. It would make everything a lot more interesting, not to mention making Scientific more powerful (think: tech-trading).


Dominae

[theNiceOne]

It's good to have it revealed. But I don't really see why it has to be random at all. Why couldn't it simply give the tech you choose to research, as ToE now does?

This would make scientific a bit better though, but I don't think it would unbalance anything.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by theNiceOne
It's good to have it revealed. But I don't really see why it has to be random at all. Why couldn't it simply give the tech you choose to research, as ToE now does?

This would make scientific a bit better though, but I don't think it would unbalance anything.

Not until three scientific civs in a PBEM game make a deal, "I'll get Monotheism, you get Feudalism, and you get Engineering, and then we'll share," anyhow. Actually, the fact that scientific civs don't get different things for free and trade them more often (and never before the Modern era) is a key limiting factor on the power of the trait.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Actually, the fact that scientific civs don't get different things for free and trade them more often (and never before the Modern era) is a key limiting factor on the power of the trait.

IMO, Scientific could do without this limiting factor and still be a balanced trait. I'm not proposing you should be able to pick which free tech you want, just to make the possibilities equally likely.


Dominae

[Stuie]

I don't mind the tech being random, but I'm not sure I like the idea of different Scientific Civs getting different techs; seems unbalancing as they could then trade amongst themselves and leave everyone else way in the dust.

Perhaps they should all get the same tech, but the tech would be random in each game. So it might be Rocketry, Fission, Computers or Ecology in any given game, but all the Scientific Civs would end up with the same one in the same game.

[Nor Me]

I read this some time ago in A study of Hut Outcomes on the Civ2-Strategy forum:

Originally posted by samson
Scrolls

The result of a scroll outcome can be any unacquired Civilization Advance for which the Civ has all prerequisites.

The chance of obtaining a specific Advance can be calculated by listing the position numbers of possible advances in an alphabetically-ordered list of all advances (as under @Civilize in Rules.txt). An advance's chance of selection is statistically equal to the distance between its position and the position of the advance above it (wrapping the list from bottom to top).

For example, with no starting techs the list of possible advances and position numbers out of the total of 93 advances would be:

Alphabet 2
Bronze Working 9
Ceremonial Burial 10
Horseback Riding 37
Masonry 48
Pottery 66
Warrior Code 88

And the chances for each advance are:

Alphabet 7/93
Bronze Working 7/93
Ceremonial Burial 1/93
Horseback Riding 27/93
Masonry 11/93
Pottery 18/93
Warrior Code 22/93

Note that Ceremonial Burial, appearing immediately after Bronze Working, has only 1 chance in 93 while Horseback Riding benefits from the long gap between itself and CB.

It looks like it's a hangover from Civ2 when the advances were alphabetically ordered.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Stuie
I don't mind the tech being random, but I'm not sure I like the idea of different Scientific Civs getting different techs; seems unbalancing as they could then trade amongst themselves and leave everyone else way in the dust.

Like I said above, I'm not sure this imbalancing. The rules for trading free techs are the same as trading normal techs, so that keeps the trading in check. Also, tier 1 techs are known to Scientific civs, when non-Scientific civs enter the new Age, they will all be easier to research, empowering them to choose as fits their strategy (I would love to research Steam Power at reduced cost).

But even so, I really do think this is the way the Scientific trait should work. Scientific civs should be tech leaders almost by defintion. As is, getting Nationlism for free seriously undermines the potency of the Scientific trait.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Catt,

Good job posting this here. I saw it at CFC, but forgot all about this thread here at 'poly.

Fixing this will boost my desire to kill off Scientific civs for sure.

Allow a scientific civ to choose its advance would be interesting... it would strengthen the trait significantly, IMO. Since I consider Sci to be second tier trait, I guess that would be good. Potentially VERY powerful in MP games, like Nathan pointed out. A lot of people would want to be Persia.

-Arrian

[planetfall]

Catt,

Yndy beat me to the punch. Came online later today.

It should make the game more interesting to have the free tech change more. It will interesting to see if tech is assigned randomly equally distributed which was implied by Mike B. or will be user selected as Arrian suggests.

== PF

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Arrian

Allow a scientific civ to choose its advance would be interesting... it would strengthen the trait significantly, IMO. Since I consider Sci to be second tier trait, I guess that would be good. Potentially VERY powerful in MP games, like Nathan pointed out. A lot of people would want to be Persia.

Unless one engages in styles of warfare that require changing governments, I already regard Scientific as on par with Religious. Getting three free techs (even if not always my first choice) provides a bigger research bonus than the gold lost to longer periods of anarchy costs, although it doesn't make up for the loss of shields. And while a scientific civ's cheap buildings come later than a religious one's, they're more expensive and there are three of them instead of two.

And if, as I've heard alleged, there is no war weariness in purely human MP games, there is nothing to force a scientific civ out of Republic when it fights in such games. In which case, even a rabid warmonger has no compelling reason to choose Religious over Scientific in such a setting.

Nathan

[metalhead]

Aha! So one of my random ramblings about the free techs was actually correct! Well, most were wrong, and it appears that this was unintentional, but still!

I hope they return this to the intended way, as it opens up more advantages to Scientific civs. If you enter the next age among the tech leaders, the Scientific civs will have an even bigger advantage, since it will be much more likely that they can trade the techs they receive initially, and both jump 2 or 3 techs ahead instead of the usual 1.

This does raise an interesting question - in the 4 Civ III and 2 PtW patches, how the hell was this ignored? The designers had to notice it - did it just slip through the cracks? Kind of makes you wonder about the playtesting that goes on over there at Firaxis.

[Mazarin]

just a thought..but wouldn't another tech than Nationalism make scientific weaker? As Nationalism is overvalued by the AI it is often extremely helpful as a turning point to gain the tech lead. I'm just wondering if scientific civs would be as powerfull with steam power.

[Dominae]

Here's a new idea (I hope): the chances of getting a particular tier 1 tech are inversely proportional to that tech's relative, devaluated cost. An example is in order. The numbers below are arbitrary.

Monotheism: 40 beakers
Feudalism: 40 ...
Engineering: 20

One way of doing it would be to let say Monotheism have a 40% chance of being selected. But this will not do because non-devaluated techs are more likely to be discovered (which unbalances things with respect to tech trades).

Here's another way. Let's say the Babs are the first civ to reach the Medieval age. So their chances of getting each tech for free are:

Monotheism: (100 - 40) / 200 = 30%
Feudalism: 30%
Engineering: (100 - 20) / 200 = 40%

The '200' figure is a normalization factor: (100 - 40) + (100-40) + (100 -20) = 2*60 + 80 = 200.

So the Babs have higher chances of getting the tech with the lesser value (which I think makes sense). The Babs do in fact get the tech with highest probability. But now that the Babs know Engineering, the tech is devaluated for, say, the Persians (who have contacted the Babs). Assume the tech devaluates to 1/2 its original value (silly, but bear with me). Then the new tech costs are:

M: 40
F: 40
E: 10

Now the probabilities of each free tech for the Persians are:

M: (90 - 40) / 180 = 28%
F: 28%
E: 44%

That's not a big difference. But let's say the Persians get Monotheism, which devaluates by 1/2 as well. Now these are the chances for the Russians:

M: (70 - 20) / 140 = 36%
F: (70 - 40) / 140 = 21%
E: (70 - 10) / 140 = 43%


So the net effect is that the more expensive techs have lower probability of getting selected. This balances out the tech devaluation with respect to trading free techs. If everything were at 25%, a couple of civs could get very rich very quickly. The solution presented above makes this much more unlikely.

Another important point is that this solution lets the non-Scientific civs get a shot at obtaining the expensive tier 1 techs first, since the Scientific civs are less likely to get them for free.

Edit: My calculations were off in the first version.


Dominae

[metalhead]

Yes, but why skew the results against the Scientific Civs? The big benefit of the Scientific Civs should be the possibility of getting a tech that nobody has. As it is now, this almost never happens (with the notable exception of me getting Computers for free in a OCC, which was responsible for me winning the game), although the current system can still be manipulated.

In an abstract way, a Scientific civ can be viewed as a civ that often makes new breakthroughs due to its own inherent excellence with scientific methods. For these civs to get a free tech that other civs have already researched kind of goes against what it means for a civ to be Scientific, unless of course these civs are well behind the rest of the world in research.

A better system would be to skew down the probability of a Scientific civ receiving a tech that other civs have discovered. But, to keep it fair, the probability should only skew down for the civ if there are still 1st tier techs that no civ owns. Once the first tier techs are all discovered, then all scientific civs entering the age automatically receive the tech with the lowest base cost. This makes sense because a player would have to play to his or her civ's strength, research, in order to get max benefit from their trait, and will be penalized (though not drastically) for failing their scientifically minded populace and falling behind in research.

This way, just as a militaristic civ gains more benefit from maximizing war with more leaders and better troops, a scientific civ will gain more benefit from maximizing research. In fact, it would make sense to have all the traits be a little more dynamic and provide a little extra benefit to the player who really plays to his or her civ's strengths

[Dominae]

metalhead, the point of my suggestion of skewing the probabilities away from the expensive and undiscovered tier 1 techs is that Scientific would be too powerful if this were not the case. It is difficult to assess how unbalancing getting different techs really is because thus far Scientific civs almost always get the same tech. I'm guessing it would be. Even at a flat 25% chance of each tech, two or three Scientific civs could get together and seriously slingshot themselves up the tech tree. I doubt such a cooperative effect was intended for the Scientific trait (if nothing else, none of the other traits are directly improved with collaboration).


Dominae

[stonewall]

Originally posted by Mike B. of Firaxis at CFC


Basically, it's a result of the algorithm used to randomly select an available tech. It's unintentionally heavily weighted towards the available tech that appears first in the list of techs (in the editor). It is supposed to select, at random, one tech from the new era that is available to the player (i.e., it has no prerequisites).

As an example, with unmodded rules you have the following available techs in the modern era with these approximate chances of being received:
91% Rocketry
1% Fission
1% Computers
7% Ecology

As you can see, Rocketry is heavily favored (simply because of it's placement within the list). This is unintentional and all 4 techs should have an equal chance of being selected. I will look into improving this for the next PTW patch.

__________________
Mike Breitkreutz
Lead Programmer, PTW
FIRAXIS Games

Does anybody know if this has been addressed in a patch? I don't have PTW yet, so I have not noticed any differences yet.

[Konquest02]

It has been, in patch 1.21f, now available worldwide...