Hi,



I know perfectly that devs will be occupied in more important things and probably releasing something new after gamescon (new patch promised in mid-august and we're on 17th). But I'll post my suggestion anyway. For people who played SMAC in the 90s and remember like it, one of the things I love was the research mechanics. There was a tech tree but you don't choose a tech to research, instead of it you choose if you want to research military, expansion, industry,.... and the game research a random tech, always in the way you've chosen.



Imo EL is a game in which it could work very well with the actual research system. I would like to see three options in the main menu to choose how you want your research working (may be not now, but in next DLC). They're the following:



Normal:



That's like is working now.



Randomized:



If you choose this option, instead of choosing a tech to research, you'll choose one of the four ministries: Military, Science & Industry, Empire & Expansion and Economy and Population. Then the game will choose a random tech, telling you the remaining turns to the discovery, but not which one was it until it's finished. After this you choose the same or another ministry to start researching.



To avoid computer giving always techs from the last era, I think that from all available techs in the chosen ministry the computer will give a high probability to actual era techs and lower it as far as actual era the techs are. In this way you'll be probability actualized, but having small chances of getting a tech you want from a previous era.

I think that it also discourages the idea of completely leaving a ministry in some eras, and researching it in the next era.



Empire plan linked:



Like the previous one, but you don't choose anything. The computer will assign a probability to each tech, based on the following criteria (in that order):



1. How many points you have in each ministry. More points more probable the tech.

2. How far is from your actual era. Farther has less probability.

3. If you have 0 points in one ministry (most probably in earlier eras) each tech will have a minimum probability to ensure that there's no "abandoned" ministry.

4. Before choosing your empire plan each tech has the same probability.

5. Depending on which faction you're playing ministries in which you have an starting tech or are considered important for this faction will have a little increase to it's chance.



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I found it interesting, because in some way is like investment in basic research, like I'll put my money on researching physics but not chemistry and look what my guys found... And in the other way if you choose the third option it will make more sense to empire plan, at least in the way I see it: is how you're trying to survive the disaster in Auriga, and then conditioning all you're doing and not a mere bones in a arbitrary 20 turns (I said it before here: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-legend/forum/5-general/thread/1289-mixing-ideas-empire-plan-and-winter).

YES! If it can be in the options, that would be awesome. I would like to try the experience of randomization even though I'm not very good at it.

I think it should be in the "Create New Game" area alongside the map options and map size etc... So it can be chosen with each game separately



Thumbs up for your suggestion!



EDIT: I've also played Pandora: First Contact recently and they have a similar concept. Works pretty well and makes the game less predictable and more exciting

Yes, I've played Pandora too. The concepts is a bit different. Fo people who doesn't play it, in Pandora what is randomized is the tech tree paths and requirements, so you choose the research, but in every game the paths are completely different, and you can't have a previous defined path.



In SMAC the tree was fixed, what tou chooose was the genereal ide of what you want to research and then de computer picks randomly in the tree base on your decisión.



I thought the idea was good for ES whith its tech web, choosing what branch you want. The trouble will be the same that in SMAC: you can reasonabily suspect what the computer will research based on the turns left to complete ant the prerequisites/tree paths.



But in EL without requirements in techs a aprt from the era it will be totally mad and unpredictable, except the ministry choosing, due to the lack of prerequisites in techs, a aprt from the era.

And a part from being totally randomly, as the research costs are going now, trying to predict what is going based on turns left, will be almost imposible.

A similar system is used in the 4X boardgame "Eclipse" and it is interesting and makes each play through different.





In Endless Legend's case, I'm not so sure it would work without a lot of work on the trees, balance and system. Why? Getting Economy-related techs early in the game is critical. If player A gets Mill Foundry/Seed Storage/Public Library/Empire Mint early and player B does not get them (or gets them late), Player A has a huge advantage. It's not entirely due to the strength of those techs (they are strong) but the value of them early in the game. Getting Seed Storage on turn 5 is a much bigger deal than getting it on turn 50 as you'd lost hundreds of units of Food output and thousands of units of FIDSI from the workers that Food would have created.



It works in the board game above because resources mainly come from exploring and owning more territory (terrain). Techs can improve output but are not as important to a player's overall economy.

Propbuddha wrote:


In Endless Legend's case, I'm not so sure it would work without a lot of work on the trees, balance and system. Why? Getting Economy-related techs early in the game is critical. If player A gets Mill Foundry/Seed Storage/Public Library/Empire Mint early and player B does not get them (or gets them late), Player A has a huge advantage. It's not entirely due to the strength of those techs (they are strong) but the value of them early in the game. Getting Seed Storage on turn 5 is a much bigger deal than getting it on turn 50 as you'd lost hundreds of units of Food output and thousands of units of FIDSI from the workers that Food would have created.

You bring up an interesting point. Right now in EL, I think all techs are distributed into 4 types (from the top anti-clockwise): Military, Economy and Food, Expansionism, Science and Industry.



The devs could add the option to make the technologies "hidden" at the start in the "New Game" options. In the game, you tell your scientists to invest their research in one of the branches you want. After some turns, your scientists uncover 2 or 3 technologies from the branch you told them to investigate, and you choose one of them to unlock. The process is repeated 3 times for every branch until all techs are unlocked... This system would be super-imposed over the automatic Age Advancement requirement as well (your scientists will uncover techs in the same branch from all the ages you have reached so far)

This way you can still go for the Economy and Food or Science branches first THEN go for the military/expansion as per your priority.



Of course, since the technologies are not connected by webs so they have no prerequisites except for their corresponding age to be unlocked. So, in order for this "hidden techs" idea to work, the developers might need to add MORE technologies, with more buildings/troops/bonuses etc.. to make this more effective. Otherwise, it would be too small-scale and pointless



EDIT: The result of this added feature would be to make Research more exciting. The player will have a sense of "discovery" and "anticipation" with their research...

Some technologies can also be randomized across Ages. For example, the Luxury Resources: The Pixie Blood resource and its associates can be randomly placed in Age 1 instead of Age 3 etc.. They would change places with the Spices and its associates.



However, that means Luxuries should be revealed by the technology itself rather than the Age Advancement (which I honestly prefer myself)

@ Propbuddha: I dind't think about this balancing, just about fun I've got in other 4X. Still I like the idea, but having a balance method that doesn't allows to happen what you're saying about critical techs. May be, if you choose randomizing research in solo it affects also the AI and as the game knows which tech has each player, it may get more probabilities to some techs depending which other players are getting at the early-game, or any other sistem.



@ KrimsonVagus: I like your idea of hidden techs. It's different of my point of view, but I encourage the devs to consider it as a fourth option in game settings. It also will have to be compensated in the way that Propbuddha said, but will be equally fun.

I think the only way to ensure that everybody would get the important economic technologies early would be to simply unlock the four core buildings (Seed Storage, Mill Foundry, Empire Mint, and Public Library) without any prerequisite technologies at the start of the game. Otherwise, players might end up receiving the Dust Dredger while stuck in an area without any water, or be giving Mill Foundry after they've spent 10 turns struggling to finish a single re-search because they started in an area extremely low on science output.



I enjoyed the mystery of only picking a branch to research back in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, but I'm not confident it would work for Endless Legend. Certainly not with the current number and balance of technologies.