Isn't that a bit too Information Age a thing to consider for this game? Even if Elemental's mundane knowledge will include printing presses, it won't have anything like copy machines, much less computer networks. *Maybe* some magical analogs will be possible, but if they are even remotely 'normal,' that will be a big style flaw, IMO.

Also, unless the dev goals have changed, most important research will be magical, not mundane, and there's even less 'precedent' there for your very modern notion of research communities.

Well, I'm not part of that "we" and I haven't gotten a clear impression of the dev take on the discussion either. I would very much like to see champion- or special unit-based research (both mundane and magical) that is connected to the caravan network. I would enjoy, for example, recruiting a truly amazing but delicate research champion who might best be protected by isolation in a distant fortress. Assuming there are no magical communication methods available by default, there will be at least a period where a new spell from said researcher has a 'time-to-market' that includes both research itself and getting the finished scroll to the channeler via caravan (or for the channeler to just come pick it up).

QFT. You'll also start to see people complaining about how they need a button to move their scientists to another city since they know the city is going to fall 3 turns before it does, but can't get any millitary reinforcements there in time.

Indeed Spartan, that is a very good idea. This really makes it so that some techs can be good in one game but not in another one. Combine this with random techs appearing in games and I foresee a game that really lets you stop and think about every step that you will take.

Good stuff indeed!

If the loss of some portion of your Research base is considered a reason to "rage quit" then the "Attackable Caravans" implementation should probably keep those types of folks totally away from the game at all.

Imagine your enemy has found your richest caravan route between two manufacturing cities. He waits until it is 3/4 the way there, say 15 turns of traveltime, and then ambushes it, stealing/killing or simply destroying it.

It contained the material requirments to complete your best mounted battalion...

"rage quit"

Eh? Do you have some insights into the new economic model that I do not? Did they tell us what thenew model looks like? I thought they were still discussing the model internally and here on these boards.

Where the hell am I getting this stuff? Are you retarded? You're reading comprehension is just terrible and I'm not understanding why you feel so threatened by my comments, which weren't even directed at you. This is a theoretical discussion that started from a "what if?"It may surprise you to hear that the game isn't out yet, so us fans are throwing around ideas. An idea was brought up that individual cities research things and a discussion started on what what happen if the researching city was taken over. The devs didn't say this, we did.

Notice how I didn't emphasize the word "massive' like you did, because that's not the point. I was arguging for minimal/no loss of research on capture and I was arguing against losing a large portion of the research. Besides, one of the options is having a >75% loss of a tech, which would be relatively massive as far as that tech is concerned. We don't know exact timeframes, which is why I tried not to go into that. Either way, it doesn't matter since you're just nitpicking a sentence I was using to illustrate that you can still target people's research without the reserach loss mechanic we're discussing.

"Throw in a gameplay mechanic that says your scientists escape with 75% of the research and it's just a 5 turn loss"

I never argued against something like this. My argument is against losing most or all of the research and I would prefer it to be <= 25% of the research.

Nice job bringing up my karma. I sure feel bad that the 12 small comments I've made haven't garnered the admiration of fellow forum members. Have fun trying to use your karma for something that actually matters. Trying to use pointless status symbols to put down others just makes you look like a dick. It makes just as much sense as me calling you a noob because you have such a high member number.

Since other players wouldn't and shouldn't know how far research is along (considering how random medieval "research" is) if a player lost a city when it was just about to finish a tech, it would just seem like bad luck instead of the other player strategically trying to stop that tech. Players don't like getting hit by seemingly random negative effects, especially with ones that affect something they've specifically chosen and planned. A player will usually be more saddened by losing their favorite unit in a random event, than a random plague event that kills thousands of citizens and may in fact hurt them more overall. Also, take into consideration that psychology dictates that the player will lament in frustration over losing 100 gold more than they would celebrate at gaining 100 gold. Humans don't take losses well. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be significant loses in the game. That would trivialize any victories. Loss aversion just needs to be considered if you are using the "It hurts them just as much" as a reason for having or keeping something.

My line of reasoning and whole argument is this simple- Losing a city has enough negative effects associated with it that it doesn't need to have major research loss penalities on top of it.

I'm not referencing anyone and I'm not putting words into anyone's mouth.

Don't apply your anger towards quitters at me because I mentioned a truth of mutliplayer. People quit regardless of whether it is right or honorable for them to do so. People are going to quit in multiplayer when they lose cities regardless of the game design so you can't stop that, but I'm sure I'll see a lot more the greater the penalties are for losing a city.

The channeler's orders people far and wide as well as recieves information from all across the Kingdom so there's got to be some way this information is getting around. It is a magical and many fantasy backdrops have magical scrying and message sending even in abcense of the classic fireball chucking wizards. Even without magic, you could have carrier pigeon type creatures. There's nothing stopping the old fall back of horseback messengers who would simply relay what the researchers told them. "We tried the following formulas and they didn't work, but our work with X seems to be promising."

I'm not too particular about the details, but I for one would certainly like some consequence to your choice of research paths.  Nothing sucks the fun out of research systems in these games for me more than being able to research every technology option by the end of the game.  At the very least, I'd like to see large increases in costs or development times for trying to expand in every direction.

That totally furrows my brow, but I'm not sure whether I that's a good thing or a bad thing. Can you give a couple of examples of how that might work in a game or might have described a moment in the real history of technology?

I can easily imagine something like that in a magic system, but for mundane knowledge, I'm stumped.

I think I get you know. I read "tech" to be about mundane things, not magic, and so far I haven't been expecting any "social tech" like GC2's Xeno Ethics to be in the game at all.

Early on, it sounded like the devs planned to keep mundane knowledge fairly simple in comparison to the magic system. I'm still hoping to see something like that. The game will lose considerable 'epic fantasy' flavor for me if things like upgrading Basic Markets to Fancier Markets are common tasks (I'd rather see any differences like that be a matter of resources, not research). In classical fantasy settings, technological changes are much, much slower than we moderns are used to.

Well, yes, but my point is also that more people would quit if you lost research as opposed to losing military or social activity. With a locus-based tech system (the only one where it actually makes SENSE to lose progress in the first place), you can't just pick up again unless you have empty labs, and keeping those empty in anything approaching a close game would be essentially suicidal.

I really like this idea, and I think its thinking outside the box, which i think needs to happen in order to make this game unique from game to game. I don't want to feel by the end game that im just going through the motions of research. I felt Civ and Galciv too somewhat, while they were great games for replayability due to random maps, had this fallacy in their design. Ive never really found it in a game (closet was probably MoM but that only had magic research) so maybe its impossible?

i agree, i like scoutdog's idea as well.

I think the idea would be that you have certain champions or units that would add research if they were in a town and if that twon had research facilities. I don't like the idea of champions out fighting the world and also mysteriously contributing to research at the same time (unless it were by discovering scrolls, collecting reagents, or finding focus items).

Goodmorning all

As i see it, The debate of Wether or not to allow loss of tech at loss of town as two differnt Points of view.

Preventing Rage Quit, and Preventing steam rolling.

They are two somewhat different effects, and have different thresholds.

There are the one town loss, one battle loss, Rage Quitters.  nothing can be done to appease them no effort to do so is worth while.

The second is more subtle, If the Research loss is too devistating then surreding becomes almost legitimate, or loss becomes inevitable. A single army punching into enermy land, or being teleported in, should not be a mid game game ender.  If one were to loose 20 turns of research in mid game becasue you lost a town for 2 turns (teleport in strike force, take town, then loose the strike army to retaliation forces soon there after) that game is over, and unfairly so. 

I do not think anybody is seriously proposing that we do anything to appease the rage quitters, but genuin concern over heartripping - game breaking, mechanisms are unsettling and people are concerned that too much data loss would qualify as game breaking.

Does anybody see anything wrong with this summery?
Take care all.

Robbie Price