Hurry Up & Wait

[Ruff_Hi]

I would value anyone's comments on this mod idea.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=400752

[Mist]

Hmm, the idea of giving everyone full era of tech once Bottleneck gets researched doesn't work. It actualy encourages you to stop researching althogether because someone will eventualy get the bottleneck and give you all these techs anyhow.

Consider intorducing tech spread concept - once bottleneck is reached techs from the era have a 5% ( and growing by say 2% per turn ) chance to spread to civs without them calculated for each tech separately.

The same should work for Key techs ( which could perhaps grant Great Persons instead of golden ages? more flexibility this way ) and still allow for your main goal - not having people lag hopelesly behind.

Apart from that I like the concept and wouldn't mind trying it out.

[Cyneheard]

The problem is, I think any Bottleneck/Key set-up really destroys any flexibility on the part of the player, particularly in the early game and in lightbulbing effectively (forget lightbulbing anything valuable in this set-up: controlled skipping of techs is critical there). Especially if it's based on an arbitrary "era" setting. Because Civ5 uses arbitrary eras already for its Social Policies, there's some merit to having a set-up like this for there. But not the far more flexible Civ4. This isn't about the bonuses of researching the techs (I think Mist is onto something there), the problem is the "Pre-req of everything".

I'm assuming no Ancient/Classical Bottleneck, because forcing a player to get the entire religious tree before doing anything useful (Monarchy, Alphabet, Iron Working, HBR...) is trouble in a lot of ways. If someone's copper-less (and PB3 had several who had difficulty accessing copper), then they've got no defensive options besides Archers and Chariots for a really long time. How will that hold up against War Chariots, Immortals, or Skirmishers?

But what about Classical/Medieval? Good-bye slingshots or bulbs of Theology or Civil Service in a reasonable length of time. Do we want to force players to always have to get Metal Casting, Compass, and the Aesthetics/Literature/Drama line before getting access to Bureaucracy, Theology, or Feudalism for Longbows? PBEM10 would be utterly broken under this set-up. TT's lack of iron would have given him no hope of getting any decent defensive units besides very-easily-countered HA. Instead, he was able to get Longbows ahead of time.

Now, do we want a way to make sure that civs don't fall so irrevocably behind in GNP that they'll never catch up, a la PB2? I think so. The easy solution, though, already exists:
PBEM2's 100% Known Tech Bonus. I think it's the only way to make Tech Trading work in such a small game. Simple solutions have fewer unintended consequences, and given the centrality of teching to CivIV, radical changes will change the metagame in so many ways that I think it no longer is CivIV. Also, it's not dependent on the RNG, which is IMO preferred for the medium-to-high-level MP games that we get here at RB.

[athlete4life10]

Now, do we want a way to make sure that civs don't fall so irrevocably behind in GNP that they'll never catch up, a la PB2? I think so. The easy solution, though, already exists:
PBEM2's 100% Known Tech Bonus.

What are the exact details of this? I've tried to get through their tech thread to find out what it is but I didn't find anything and don't have time to sort through all the threads...sorry to hijack the thread ruff (neat idea though).

[Sullla]

I don't see why it's a bad thing to have backwards civs fall behind in technology. Why is it desirable to have all players bunched together in the first place? I see no reason to reward poor play. Have some mild tech diffusion rate (techs get 20-30% cheaper if everyone knows them) and then let the strongest survive. After all, we want to see winners and losers in a game, right? We're not writing social welfare legislation here.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah, Mist already touched on this, but it sounds like you'd be reviving the Great Library "sit back and store gold while others tech for you" strategy from Civ III, except there wouldn't even be a wonder that players at least have to gun for.



If you really want to represent backwards nations being able to (sort of) keep up with military tech in the Real World, why not make something like a national wonder (perhaps "the black market") that allows civs to purchase modern units for a premium?

[Tatan]

If you really want to represent backwards nations being able to (sort of) keep up with military tech in the Real World, why not make something like a national wonder (perhaps "the black market") that allows civs to purchase modern units for a premium?

This actually sounds like a cool idea to me; it might be a little tricky to balance, but it would be interesting to weigh using commerce for teching [and more better units later], or for buying a few better units now. It would also be a good way to get around things like resource restrictions [i.e. if you don't have a source of aluminum/coal nearby].

[alexrdavies]

Question: what is your real goal here? Are you trying to stop civs from falling behind in all techs, or just in military techs?

I ask because one way of balancing things would be, rather than gift all techs out at the end of each era (basically your bottleneck plan as I read it), just make it possible to gain military benefits without earning the tech.

Example (and this would need refining):

Say Rifling costs 2400 beakers. Also suppose that R Riflemen have been made so far - by all players in the game put together. Then anyone who doesn't yet own the tech can upgrade to Riflemen as normal, for 2400/n gold + the normal upgrade cost.

The effect? Well, initially - when only one player's researched Rifling, and they've only made one Rifleman - upgrading to a Rifleman will basically cost as much as researching the tech (a premium of 2400/1). That's only fair, really, as no-one has actually used it yet. On the other hand, when most players have researched it and a total of 50 Riflemen have been constructed, you'll only pay a premium of 2400/50=48 gold per Rifleman (on top of the normal upgrade cost) - so you've effectively managed to get Riflemen without having to research the techs, which was your basic aim.

I'd make one more suggestion here. The premiums you pay should count against the eventual cost of the tech. So if you do upgrade a Rifleman for 2400g+normal cost, you get the tech at the same time. If you upgrade 20 Riflemen at 48g a time, you'll only have 3/5 of the tech left to go.

Some consequences:
- if you whip an army of Riflemen and then go off to attack someone with them, they'll have a short window in which upgrading to Riflemen is somewhat cheap, and they can create (just a few) effective defenders.

- on the other hand, if you're backwards in tech then you can't realistically raise the world's largest army of Riflemen yourself, and then go attack a neighbour. They'd be too expensive.

- If you really wanted to, you could shut off your research and piggyback off the work of others by simply making obselete units and upgrading them. However, while you would be militarily competitive, you wouldn't gain other tech benefits like building culture, extra gold from Printing Press etc - so there would still be a strong incentive to actually research. The high cost of upgrades compared to just making the units yourself would be another balancing factor here.

So, what do you think?

[Cyneheard]

I ask because one way of balancing things would be, rather than gift all techs out at the end of each era (basically your bottleneck plan as I read it), just make it possible to gain military benefits without earning the tech.

So, what do you think?

I'm very much of the KISS school of modding. This is a fascinating idea, and I think it's got a lot of merit, although it's definitely rather complicated.

I also wonder about the C&D aspects of it: "Oh, look, my Mace --> Rifle upgrade now cost 205 gold. Therefore, 15 rifles have been built."

A simple method:
5t after Rifling is discovered by someone, there's a notice to all of the players that they can now upgrade to Rifles for a 100g premium if they haven't discovered the tech. (I assume full contact at this point, so the information value of knowing that Rifling was discovered is minimal). You'd have to choose the techs to apply it for (frankly, nothing Ancient/Classical should get this treatment); Rifling, for sure. Probably Infantry as well (it could be conscripting all the draftable units, so Macemen, Muskets, Rifles, Infantry, Mech Infantry, etc. etc. I think letting it apply to everything would be too much trouble, and have an added realism bonus of those are the simpler units to train, so could more easily be purchased/trained up by other players).

And be sure the premium cost still apply to Great Generals, otherwise we could have major problems with balance: An Imp player who's got 5 GG in an AW game shouldn't be guaranteed to have them be top-flight units without having to pay anything.

There's no reason why the costs must only decay once (i.e., 5t or something like 7t/10t/15t depending on game speed later), or have to be 100g. Maybe (Quick speed) 7t later, it's 100g premium, and 14t later, it's 50g, and 21t later, no premium.

I feel sorry for whoever wants to try to code this. It'll be a bear.

[antisocialmunky]

I'm very much of the KISS school of modding. This is a fascinating idea, and I think it's got a lot of merit, although it's definitely rather complicated.

I also wonder about the C&D aspects of it: "Oh, look, my Mace --> Rifle upgrade now cost 205 gold. Therefore, 15 rifles have been built."

A simple method:
5t after Rifling is discovered by someone, there's a notice to all of the players that they can now upgrade to Rifles for a 100g premium if they haven't discovered the tech. (I assume full contact at this point, so the information value of knowing that Rifling was discovered is minimal). You'd have to choose the techs to apply it for (frankly, nothing Ancient/Classical should get this treatment); Rifling, for sure. Probably Infantry as well (it could be conscripting all the draftable units, so Macemen, Muskets, Rifles, Infantry, Mech Infantry, etc. etc. I think letting it apply to everything would be too much trouble, and have an added realism bonus of those are the simpler units to train, so could more easily be purchased/trained up by other players).

And be sure the premium cost still apply to Great Generals, otherwise we could have major problems with balance: An Imp player who's got 5 GG in an AW game shouldn't be guaranteed to have them be top-flight units without having to pay anything.

There's no reason why the costs must only decay once (i.e., 5t or something like 7t/10t/15t depending on game speed later), or have to be 100g. Maybe (Quick speed) 7t later, it's 100g premium, and 14t later, it's 50g, and 21t later, no premium.

I feel sorry for whoever wants to try to code this. It'll be a bear.

If the goal is limited military production of latest tech units so its not a complete face roll, why not do something like making it so military academies and capitols allow for recruitment of the highest tech units anyone has access to?

I suppose mass upgrade is the main problem but the techer should have some advantage. With your suggestions, why not stock pile gold knowing that someone will research rifles and then mass upgrade all your units to rifles and lock other people out of rifle upgrades at the beginning of your turn? I suppose you could fix taht by making a per civ counter for each unit type but I sitll think its not feasible.