Research is special because it improve all the other aspect of the strength of an empire. As an example, let's use military strength. Without research scalling, the bigger empire will have (sometimes much) better units. But since its infrastructure would also be bigger (more cities), it will end up with both better units and more of them. So it gets both a quality and a quantity advantage from being bigger. Using research scaling is (in my eyes) the ideal way to prevent the quality bonus, while letting them retain the quantity bonus.

There are other ways to restrict an overeager expansion. For example the essence mechanic in Elemental, or the corruption in Civ1-3. But these are short term solutions, while the long term research advantage remain.

Diminishing returns are not going to change anything. They will affect small specialised researchers as much as big empires. And the main effect will be to smoothen everything toward the middle. But the one with the advantage will remain the same. As for making players pay for the universities, that's no different, as bigger empires have bigger ressources anyway. And GalCivII is an horrible example, research-wise. Do you remember once fighting a small enemy with decent techs? Minor civs were horribly nerfed due to that effect, and it made fast expanders (Torian/Thalan) all the more powerful.

I don't think any of these examples are arguments why bigger empires are costly. First, your armies size are going to grow with the territory you possess, but the borders will only grows as the square root of that territory size. Simply put, the bigger your blob, the more you have inner cities who are very far from your borders and whose troops can be sent to the front. Same for the upkeep, since your income increases with your size. As for mistakes, yes you have more occasions for mistakes, but you are also more in a position to survive them (what's loosing a city to some rebels when you have a hundred of them?).

But that paragraph makes me think of why you dislike my proposal : you think of it as a way to penalize big empires. This isn't the case : it is a way to prevent big empires from being too much advantaged by their size. A properly design scaling system should have both small and big empires research at about the same pace, with differences depending on economical, infrastrural or cultural (faction bonus) reasons.

Why I somewhat dislike its research system, EU3 is a good example of a game with research scaling. The more provinces you have, the more money needs to be invested to get the next technological breakthroughs. As a result, you get 1 or 2 provinces minors (like Switzerland) have about the same tech levels as huge countries (like France).

Well said Ephafn, although I admit being a bit reluctant in your EU III example of tech-taxing for bigger nations, as it often lead to small nations having extremely advanced armies and strongholds while bigger nations are left behind fighting with sticks and stones.

It is a fine balance to be made and Paradox failed at that at first, as usual. With that said, I believe a more refined system can be made for Elemental, using more variables since technological advance isn't directly related with the Nation's size, but rather with the size and quality of its population (compare 1600's Netherlands to Russia) and also with the availability of resources, high quality food and foreign contact through commerce.

The size of a nation only matters when it influences any of those previously stated variables. A large empire with good and large arable lands will surely ensure a high population with high density and that's the substrate for innovation if cultural, administrative and commercial factors are favorable. The curse of larger nations is the increased chance of holding unproductive (bad soil, bad weather) terrain within its borders, diminishing the chances of stable population gain and therefore progress (see Russia). It also adds to administrative costs, but that's an indirect consequence on research. So, one way to control the so-said inevitable tech-gap between big and small is to punish nations that colonize harsh or fragile environments and make sure poorly administrated environmental damage on these terrains haunt those foolish enough to settle there. Make sure the population growth in zones close to, for example, deserts suffers from booms and busts depending on variations in the weather and make sure these regions become marginal in the long run and costly. Also, make sure the world has enough "bad zones" to make the "good zones" valuable and diminish the chances of huge empires being overly productive.

With these indirect checks on population you can control a bit the research done by big empires and at the same time make things fair. If one empire manages to control all the good zones, then well done, because these zones will be fiercely disputed. If it doesn't, the costs of having vast swathes of marginal land will ensure its population will be in check. Small nations will hardly suffer from that, as the probability of having a lot of bad land is smaller with the size of your nation - assuming nations will spring in good lands. Some would ask, what's the advantage of controlling these nearly useless lands? Well, putting it simply, resources, rare or unusual; territory control and dungeon control; and finally, even if marginal, you can always squeeze something out of desert and magical technology will later allow better management and control of these regions.

How about a 'specialist bonus' given to an empire that has the same (large) building in each city? therefore if you have a small empire, 3 cities with lots of buildings they would get an empire wide bonus to a few areas while an empire with 50 small or different cities all with only a farm in common would get empire wide farming bonuses but no empire wide research bonus. If the large empire used farming cities to support the rest, and had the rest with alchemists and libraries then it'd get the research specialist bonus...but this would be harder to do and maintain. (say no bonus for less than half cities with building, max bonus for all cities containing building)

It wouldn't nerf large empires but allow you to more easily play small empires by having alot of extras more easily and large empires would lose those extras during times of rapid expansion.

I'm of the same opinion, but I may say it in a nicer way. But as an direct answer to the OPs suggestion:    

There should be disadvantages to larger empires (or kingdoms) but they should be logical ones, not made-up arbitrary BS so that people running smaller empires have an equal shot. I gave the thumbs down etc emoticons because it pisses me off no end when people just come up with these arbitrary ideas to tweak the game in the direction they want.

A larger empire is going to have more resources, likely more population, hence more people to roduce, research etc. Arbitrary game rules such as has been done in Civilization to try to cap expansion I find really obnoxious.

Some common sense disadvantages of larger empires is larger borders to protect, so make upkeep of units expensive enough that it creates a natural point of either you are going to leave borders undefended (and thus lose resources/caravans/etc) to invaders OR you will be pouring all of your money into military and defense and won't have money to fund research. The argument is going to be to make it simple just make it cost more to have a larger empire, abstract it. Well abstracting it doesn't present the player with a choice of defend or research it just says "Growing too big is BAD and we are going to put all these arbitrary costs on you to keep you in check." I want any disadvantages for growing to big (or advantages to staying small if you prefer) to make sense - it is really bad design when there are mechanics like this thrown in that are basically "becaseu we (the game developer) said so. It's far better if there is actually a good reason other than trying to force the player to play a certain way (or make an unviable playstyle viable just to provide choice).

I Civilization the argument of large empires having inherently more unrest or criminal activity - again no that was just a lame excuse to include a mechanic, there have been plenty of very small countries that have been overwhelmed with corruption, there are plenty of large ones that have existed for long periods of time with relatively little corruption.

Just make defending border important.

Make manning larger borders increasingly more expensive.

Leave the player the choice of leaving himself vulnerable and growing too fast or a slow steady growth that he can defend. You have provided meaningful choices, you have provided different styles of gameplay that have an inherent and natural risk vs reward mechanism that makes sense.

I'm against the idea since I support the steamroller effect. I got this friend I play against in Age of Mythology which have never won a single game against me partly because he focuses on defense too much but also because he lacks routine (doesn't use hotkeys, don't understand the game in detail and is slow as molasses.) He basically allows me to take control of the map and lock him into his little corner of the map. It costs to have that control (Need to be on the offensive most of the time and having units spread out so I can see if he's moving units out) but the rewards are that I can build structures almost wherever I want (and thus train units wherever I want) and also gets to decide where to get resources from (I mine out his closest goldmine just outside his base) and also psychological (He doesn't dare to get out of his base with anything less then his whole army.)

With your suggestion, he would have better or equal technology to me for being PASSIVE!   I think everybody understands how wrong that is....

Eph, you have made a very good point.  This is a problem that occurs in pretty much every strategy game with a research element.  However, Red also makes a good point--- a larger empire should be rewarded for being larger in some kind of research oriented way.  Any advantages, though, create a run-away effect where the bigger empires blast forward in research and the smaller ones stagnate. 

So I have an idea: Have different kinds of research that accelerate or stagnate based on whether you are large or small.  A small collection of city states would excell in one area of research that are creativity based or dialectical and empires would excell in organization and administration.  Empires would have an easy time researching standardized units that lock into an overall "dialogue" with the rest of the armed forces and city states would thrive at researching soldiers that individually excell.  If you are midway between the two with a budding new empire, you instead gain a little bit of both.  I would explain the physics of the system in more depth, but I have to go to work (on New Years  ) so I'll ellaborate afterword.

I'd say tech progress is actaully a multi-step process.

First you need to come up with the initial idea.  This chance of a given idea scale up with population and the resources that population can free up for thinking instead of just survival.  This isn't exactly a linear scale.  After all, there's a good chance multiple thinkers will get the same idea.

Next, the idea has to be tested.  The cost, time, and effort needed for testing will depend on the idea.  If your testing a process a good estimate is probably some multiple of the process' cost.

At that point, the refined idea could be called a full fledged technology.  If the community is interested in using that tech, they have to expend some resources integrating it.  This cost can range from new buildings and equipment through training costs if the required equipment is already available.

New communities adopt the tech in a similar way.  They can either import the product of that tech or put in the time and resources needed to integrate that technology.

One potential problem you may actually run into in any of these stages is redudancy.  It's entirely possible for two people to get a similar idea or for something to think up something that's been thought of before.

Certain techs can help alleviate these issues.  For example, a strong education system increase the chance new ideas will actually be new to the society rather than just new to that individual thinker.  Likewise, a strong communication system can help those who do come up with the same idea refine it faster.  It also lets them spread the idea to new communities rapidly so those communities can capitalize on it.

Mechanically, I can think of two ways off the top of my head you could integrate this into the game.

Tech Spread - Technology is not instantaneous adopted everywhere in on sudden surge.  Instead it's perfected on a small and slowly spreads through the society.  In game terms, you could model this much like how religions are handled in Civ 4.  The ideas will spread naturally over time to neighboring cities or those connected by trade routes.  You can also speed the process by explicately spending resources to spread the idea.

Academic Upkeep - Large populations do have greater potential to develop new technologies rapidly.  However, the ability for researchers to work together is limited by your communications network.  These limitations can get more pronounced the larger the nation becomes.  After all, the bigger the nation the longer it takes a researcher on one end to hear about what some one on the other end is doing.  In game terms, you might have each research center provide diminishing returns as it's likely they're working on redudant ideas.  You can increase the effect of these secondary research centers but the cost for doing so is also subject to diminishing returns.

There's nothing I've found that takes the fun out of a game more than arbitrary restrictions of the type being discussed.  The earlier example of the Civ 3 concept of corruption is a stellar example.  That single "feature" was the reason why I stopped playing Civ 3.

I've nothing against reasoned and logical, in terms of the game world, limits but a larger empire will be able to out research a smaller empire.  It's that simple.

The trick to good game design is to make smaller empires playable and to offer win conditions other than "conquer everyone else" as options.

Well, personally I think that the research mechanism and the idea of technologies themselves should be under review...but I think something like this doesn't necessarily make that much sense.

After-all, most technological innovations tend to come from the wealthiest and most industrially proficient nations, or nations where trade and education are heavy. Is this the definition of 'large'? How do you define 'large'...is it powerful? Ancient Rome, the United States of yesteryear, and the British Empire were all large, and they all manage to be pretty technically proficient and turn out hundreds of new innovations and refined technologies.

Of course I also have to say that the Civilization concept of technology is silly: since the goods you make and sell and the ideas you have tend to filter outwards anyways, even if you are the first innovator people will copy your inventions eventually, and you might sell your inventions yourself. So just because you were the one who invented, say, Coal Power, doesn't mean that other people won't soon pick it up to follow your example...but that's the problem with the Civ tech system.

If anything, I'd like to see an overhaul about what technology means...but either way I don't see how it is that richer, more developed nations should have /less/ research.

Ok, so let's say that new cities without a research infrastructure generate a very small amount of research. Isn't it the same in most other games? Also, that makes it almost mandatory to build that research infrastructure in all your developed cities. That's a lot of micromanagement and it isn't that fun.

Another solution: research points are accumulated slower from a far-away cities. That's logical in a feudal times because inventions from a far-away provinces are much less known in the capital and so they will not be introduced that fast all over the land by a central government.

Third solution is that invention should not only be invented, but introduced as well. Introduction cost scales with population (so double population in the empire means that introduction cost will be doubled for that empire). That way, a small empire pays almost only invention cost, and a huge empire will pay an introduction cost that may be several times bigger than invention cost for that research topic. If that's not enough, then introduction cost should be bigger if some of the population is too far away from capital, is not connected by roard, has no libraries etc. But i think some simple rule should be enough to make it relatively balanced.

It isn't any different but that's not a good reason to add extra micromanagement either.

Let's see. A had same resources as B. B used these resources so to conquer C. However, A didn't use their resources so to invade either B or C when the time was right. In that case A is just stupid and B deserves it's hard-earned bonus research, no? So, your experiment tells us that it's how it should be as it is, there should be no research penalty for a bigger empire.