Hi everyone,

I know the technology and the research system is something so much discussed, but I think we can discuss a little more.

The "technological tree" system is something so much overexploted, Its confortable, its easy and its practise, but if you are playing all your life this games you know this system is...well, I think it must evolve or be complement.

We all know about the master of the "Technologie tree" system, the Civ saga (except Beyond the Earth), and if you have played Endless games you know that  the Endless system is a fresh breath in the strategy games wich makes lovely and confortable to take a strategy and at the same time gives you flexibility.

We have the Stellaris system too wich your decisions makes you can go deeply in distint researches but its hard making something on that way or like that.

I propose a "natural system", I mean, a system where the condicions where your civilization is placed gives you little boost for some technologies. 

This means if you have placed your city close to a river and the city is EXPLOTING that places, take a little natural amount per turn for a distinct technologies, in this case for Irrigations for example. If you are exploting forests, take a little amount per turn for developing Carpentry. Or if the city is exploting places near the sea, take points for the Fishing or Sail researches.

Im not speaking about to delete the "technology tree" system, what Im telling is more like a complement and giving sense to the "natural" developing of the humanity  in terms of research.

Your people will have their development (I mean farmers, fishers and sailors, merchants , ...) because of how and where you decide to expand and conduce your people and, of course, the events that are happening.

Of course, the way to mesure this is so much questionable, because if the quantity is so low, this has no sense. But if its to high, can be annoying for the game experience. 

The technology system goes increasing the cost of each technology for technologic Eras. So if this quantities stay in a fix quantity can make a feeling where your people are developing in some ways natural and specially and dont let everything in doing clicks for developing technologies. Of course this i propose it for making the earliest technologies more logical and dont let for the industrial revolution what is a sail or a boat or a church or etc. And increasing the cost of each technology makes more relevant investing in science as is logical for superior technologies wich need, naturally, intentional research and the earliest can be researched "naturally" with the time if your people develops naturally this ones.

Thanks for read!

I agree with the idea from Jozul that the technology should be close to the real situation. A civilization in desert may never develop an ocean technology.

And in this way, it means that a civilization should have "contact" to some key factors, and the longer it knows/works with these factors, the civilization will more close to the corresponding technology. In this way, the technology is not "one after another", but can be multiple developed at the same time. Considering a civilization have contact to river, to tree, to ore, so it get points each turn to irrigation, wood struction and mining, at the same time. So this process can make the game much more flexible and diverse.

I would love to see something like what Jozul suggest, but it is also incredibly difficult to balance, especially if we are talking about more competitive multiplayer. Civ 6 eureka system is a nice addition that goes I this direction I think.

Ponally, I find the research system of Endless Space 2 way too confusing and intimidating. There is just too much choice and the information density is too high. It's one of the reasons why I never warmed up to the game...

This is also one of my biggest "concerns" about the game. Not that the game can't be interesting with a basic tech tree, but it would be a downgrade from competing systems (EL type tech tree, eurekas...). I just love the Endless tech tree especially because it forces you to make hard choices and to omit some techs.

I understand given the scope of the game they need a continuous tree (a lot of techs cannot be skipped from a thematic and historic perspective). Maybe a good middle ground would be dead end branches that would be completely optional in the long term but would give room for specialisation? It would also mean it's easier to not focus too much on science for a while if our current culture choice pushes is to do something else. The optional techs could also have conditional triggers/eurekas without breaking the balance.

mobster_san wrote:

I would love to see something like what Jozul suggest, but it is also incredibly difficult to balance, especially if we are talking about more competitive multiplayer. Civ 6 eureka system is a nice addition that goes I this direction I think.

Ponally, I find the research system of Endless Space 2 way too confusing and intimidating. There is just too much choice and the information density is too high. It's one of the reasons why I never warmed up to the game...

Well, I have play so much strategy games (Paradox games, Civs, Total Wars, Endless games, Annos, classics like AoEs, Warcraft, CoH,...) and i have to say that I love the Endless system, both ELegends and ESpace because it makes you to decide everytime and every decision is important, its normal for me study games before or when you are playing (but of course, the best way is playing it). But I understand what you say, are many concepts that you have to study and that can make a wall for the people who want to enjoy at the beggining.

And yes, is what I said, if what I told could be implemmented, it should be very studied because what I propose is more like a give to your civilization an identity because of their enviroment and how interact. On the one hand i think is very original and makes you live how your civilisation is developing, but on the other hand if you have a thought before playing about how do you want your civilisation, well, that could be a bit annoying, but in my opinion I think that would be mor realistic, make your people adapt to their situation (specially at the beggining, in the first Eras where is more like a natural discovering or basic ways that your people search how to live, for example a civilisation who being near the sea searchs food fishing(or not, is your decision) and things like that than study how to profit the gunpowder that needs a focus investigation as I said in the post). 

For more advanced Eras I think this should be a very low quantity (for total points needed for the research if you have some steps) and could be empowered with diplomatic or traits for some civilisation, etc.

In terms of Eurekas/Inspirations from Civ6, I think it changes nothing because it continue to be lineal but just with steps wich gives you a bonus, is something fresh but it doestn make a truly change.

leshyver wrote:

This is also one of my biggest "concerns" about the game. Not that the game can't be interesting with a basic tech tree, but it would be a downgrade from competing systems (EL type tech tree, eurekas...). I just love the Endless tech tree especially because it forces you to make hard choices and to omit some techs.

I understand given the scope of the game they need a continuous tree (a lot of techs cannot be skipped from a thematic and historic perspective). Maybe a good middle ground would be dead end branches that would be completely optional in the long term but would give room for specialisation? It would also mean it's easier to not focus too much on science for a while if our current culture choice pushes is to do something else. The optional techs could also have conditional triggers/eurekas without breaking the balance.

I really liked that idea of "dead end branches", but if you only have 1 option to develop at the same time, you have to choose to go deeply in to a thing or advance your civilisation, and thats hard to make it available. I think something like Stellaris with distints types of invstigation could be too, but its so complex for implemment something like that. Or something like Starcraft/ AoE where for special technologies, it must be in special builds and conditions.

I don't think having to choose between dead end branches that can give you either short term strong bonuses or long term bonuses not everyone will get is a problem. In fact the Civics tree of Civ 6 does this, giving you card that are useful for specifically religion or naval warfare. It's harder to balance, but since there is no real science victory it gives more benefit to science cultures: they get extra stuff along the way. It also makes sense thematically, every one eventually gets acces to the core things like irrigation, more science oriented cultures just get more optimal versions.

Regarding Eurekas, I don't think they're good design anymore. They make every game even more repetitive (for instance, you almost always build a slinger early just to get the boost) and they remove decision making from tech choice (I realise I end up choosing whatever tech I have a boost for half the time, even when playing on the highest difficulty where choices matter even more).

OIthers have mentioned the inspirations/eurekas from Civ VI. I think they were a nice idea, but had a fatal flaw: it lead to a lot of micro-ing, at least for anyone wanting to play halfway efficiently. The triggers were very specific tasks and they were always tied to one and only one technology/civic. If you research beyond that threshold, you essentially waste science.

I would instead propose that completing tasks gives you flat research in a given area. Found a city near the sea or extend it to the sea -> +100 science to the next incomplete maritime tech. Kill a unit or conquer a city -> bonus to miliary tech. Build a merchant's quarter/acquire a luxury resource deposit -> bonus to trade type techs.

I'd keep the number of triggers fairly similar, so you don't have to remember tons of mini-tasks to plan towards. Also, you'd need to establish classes of techs and assign them to those classes. But overall, it could be a nice way to let your strategy and environment guide you to the natural discoveries. I'd be complementary to "traditional" 4X research.

A Civ IV mod had tech diffusion, which could be an interesting addition. The more other players already know a tech and the more trade you have with them, the more you get a bonus to a given tech.

Of course, there are some proponents who hold that tech trees should have randomised elements to discourage a one-true-path syndrome. Not sure how that could be implemented in a historic game and at this stage in the process, but maybe?

I'm not usre about Euraks, they are good in theory but in practise you went rtrough techs too quickly, and it was more aobut doing small mission that having research

One thing about tech as well a bit different, too avoid snwoballing in techs there is one thing that might be nice:

Reaserch cost penalty if ahead of time/ nobody knows it.

What i mean by ahead of time is either: 

• calculate a base speed of research about what turn should a take more or less discovered, if you are early on this it costs more, if you are late it cost less
• If you are first to research it, it cost more (could be done trough trade, which have good chance of actually already planned in design, in the way that trade routes with someone having techs you don't know give you science)

We've seen from CIV that it's hard to balance the tech costs since all civs won't be able to get all eurekas, and they very rarely got me to change my playstyle since most of them were very easy to get anyway.

I also think an open-ended tech tree like EL is bad though, since it becomes so hard to balance and overwhelms the player with choices. In order for a tech tree to not reward going as far as possible into one category the techs have to be kinda uninteresting.

I'm a bit biased, since I loved the game, but I really liked the CIV IV tech tree where there were different paths to unlocking techs, but still placing them in a pretty linear tree. There were incentives for going after certain techs meaning that there would be a race for them. In that sense the player had to balance the current needs of researching the base techs for each era (in order to have a competent military for example) and going further into the tech tree to get to important techs such as Code of Laws, Rifling or Liberalism at a higher beaker cost. In later CIVs the bonuses of getting a technology first is rarely relevant. What I also like about the pretty straight-forward tree is that there's also a sense of historical progress being made and a slightly more immersive system than a more free-form one.

I like the ideas here of a slight ahead of time penalty, though, and also getting influence from spreading technology via trade network.

Like most of people on this thread I wish technology could be a bit more "personnal" to your religion. I don't remember if it was on a forum post or on discord but sometime ago I discussed an idea which was to have special tech that once researched would prevent you from researching other tech. For example you could have 3 technology that have the same purpose (or a similar one) but for different environnement. For exemple instead of researching a general boost of agriculture that would boost all form of agriculture you would instead research agriculture in cold or hot weather. Once one of the two is researched you would lose access to the other. For little civilization that just have a handfull of territory it would not be much of a problem, but for a big civlization that span across multiples biomes it would shift how they would play their game.

For example let's imagine you have both Tundras and Hot Desert biomes in your territory, you decide to research the food bonus in the Tundra regions and the production bonus in the Hot Desert regions, therefore you now need to adapte and build your cold regions as a food producers and hot regions as production zones.