I just got access to the Beta yesterday, and as I was playing around with it, I thought that the tech research system could use some improvement. It isn't that it is a horrible system by any means- it just strikes me as kind of stale. One problem I have with it is that it seems inefficient to me to choose a research path and then select a technology from the list when the timer is up. I could already see what techs I would be allowed to pick from and what they are able to do when I initally selected a research path, so it would have been faster to just allow me to pick which one I wanted to research to begin with and spare me a pop-up later. I also think there needs to be an element of randomness thown into the system. When I play strategy games, I tend to experiment only until I find an order I like to do things in. For research, this means finding what I think to be the most optimal order of trechnology research for my play style. I then use that same order for every game I play. I'm not really forced to change very often, which quickly means that research becomes boring. It also tends to make my thinking stagnate since I'm not really forced to ever consider new strategies. I think the current system needs a greater element of randomness to it. A couple of ideas I had for that:
1) Reorganize the tech into general categories called "Hubs". Each "Hub" would have several specific technologies connected to it as "spokes". You would select a Hub to research and when the requisite number of turns had passed, you would get one of the spoke techs at random. Some of these spokes would then connect to other hubs. For example, there might be a base hub called "Defensive Technologies". This hub might have things like Shields, Armor, City Defenses etc. as spokes. You would select the "Defensive Technologies" hub to research, but you would not know which of the spoke techs you were going to get until the research was complete. Say you earn Shields. Not only would this let your soldiers use shields, it would open up a new hub called "Shield Improvements" that would include things like specific shield designs and shield tactics for research.
2) Have there be a chance every time you gain a new technology that you get an "improved" version of it, or some other passive bonus that would be logically connected to the topic you researched to simulate the fact that scientists persue different avenues during their research and sometimes come on unexpected things. This bonus would change depending on if your civilization was good or evil. For example, say you research a tech called "Medicine", which normally gives a bonus to population growth. There would be a small chance (like 10-15%) that you would gain an additional bonus connected to that research. For good civilizations, this might be something like "Field Hospitals" that would allow troops to slowly heal in the field without using a spell. For evil civilizations, the bonus might be "Effective Interrogations" that would provide a passive bonus to espionage, since they would use their new found knowledge of anatomy to better torture captured spies.
I like your ideas, and I'm really hoping a random element is introduced into the research system. The "cookie cutter spec" problem is a killer in games. When you already know right at the start exactly how your research path is going to go until the end of the game it just takes so much fun out of it.
Of course, random tech creates a balance problem, which is more of a priority now since Elemental is going to feature multiplayer. But the game will already have one major "random" element with the shards and spellbooks - you cannot be sure of what you'll have access to. So maybe just throw in some more random parts and it'll all even itself out?
There is already a random element : the color of techs. Red techs have less chance to appear on breakthrough. Yellow ones, will almost surely appear. Green ones will appear. When you see them in the research screen it just shows what you "might" get when you reach a breakthrough.
The more level on the path, the more chance a tech will become of the better color (red --> yellow --> green)
Ah yes, I see that now. That is definitely a plus. That in addition to something like sabrestrikealpha's second suggestion, where you could also receive an "improved" version of a tech, might be enough randomness to spice things up without creating any major balance problems.
I have to say, I'm not a huge fan of randomness in the research trees, as I don't think it reflects the concept believably. Research is normally a directed, focused and ordered thing, and while occasionally discoveries are made that are not exactly specific to the purpose of a particular research, I'd not go so far as to say that researching for something specific and making a side discovery will always or even mostly result in the abandonment of the initial target.
Also, although your research might fall under a particular category, you cannot research the category, rather you must focus on a particular aspect.
Having said that, the current system seems to place a random variable on the effectiveness of a given line of research, and this I find quite fitting. The reason being that the effectiveness of research often relies on variables such as the diligence, experience and intelligence of the researchers, as well as things like funding and equipment, not to mention the wild card of luck that tends to creep in also. These things tend to vary over time and under different regimes and cultures, and so to some degree it makes good sense.
Although I think that there're still a few tweaks that could be made to the tech tree, fundamentally I think it's a good system.
I respectfully disagree. With a few notable exceptions (mostly military hardware), little to none of mankind's technological breakthroughs took place at the behest of a government. Ultimately, from the perspective of a ruler, you have little to no direct control over most research, as it is mainly taking place amongst the general populace (including corporations here).
One concept that I've been toying with for a while would be a research system that truly embraces the cliche, "necessity is the mother of invention." As situations cropped up, the vast majority of research would be taking place automatically. If, for instance, your nation experiences repeated droughts, you might unlock the "irrigation system" technology...
this needs to get implemented its more realistic too we want weapons we fund warefare we dont know what will get but something will happen
While it may be true that government is or was not responsible for the majority of inventions or technological breakthroughs in reality (TBH, I don't rightly know), the game puts such decisions in the hands of government. Even if this were not so, I don't believe that even independant research would be so haphazard as to constantly make random discoveries that are not necessarily related to the particular technology being researched. I think it would be more along the lines of:
1) Government needs technology for a purpose.2) Research team brainstorms and comes up with one or more possible solutions.3) Government selects and funds a particular solution.4) Research team is either successful or unsuccessful.
Your idea about necessity being the mother of invention is very interesting, and I would love to get an idea of how you would implement that in a game. I think it would make for a very involving game experience. Very original and clever.
In galciv2 we had an event like this, where a galactic plague was spreading throughout the galaxy, and you had to research the cure or suffer a massive population hit. Once esearched, you could trade the tech to others in need. It was pretty cool, and a nice way to tie into the idea you mentoned.
Sword of the Stars had a random tech tree, making each game different from another. I was very entertaining to adapt to a major breakthrough or a block tech path.
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