Yeah, even "general category" research could get you easily RNG'd: you and your fiercest rival both research "waether control:rain" spells. He gets "summon Noah's flood". You get "summon light drizzle".

No, that's not right at all. The microwave oven was invented when a Raytheon engineer noticed that his chocolate bar started to melt while servicing a microwave-emitting radar. In other words, the microwave oven was invented as a result of an engineer's observation that his chocolate bar started to melt when exposed to microwaves, even though microwaves themselves had nothing to do with what he was doing or trying to do. He wasn't even remotely trying to figure out what else microwaves do...

Once this guy made his observation he tested it (by exposing popcorn and eggs to microwaves), and then with Raytheon designed the first actual microwave oven.

Alpha Centauri's research was one of the first things I thought of when I saw this thread.

I agree, Alpha Centauri style research would not be useful for spell research.  It would be very good for technology research though.

Some basic areas Elemental could use for focusing:

Warfare: armor and weapons, other military related areas

Industry: machines and tools, better production

Knowledge: makes research easier, unlocks important technology in other areas of focus

Expansion/Growth: improve city growth, better scouting, can use land better(ex better farms)

One of the best things about Alpha Centauri's research was that you could turn blind research off at the start of the game and be able to select what you want like in GCII and other games if you wanted to.

I really want technology with multiple pre-requisites where it makes sense(such as high quality weapons and armor requiring a cetain level of metalworking research in addition to previous weapon/armor research).

GalCiv never had blind research. The tree UI in GC1 was hard to look around in, but you could figure out what was coming even if you had never played the game before.

No, it was a complete accident while screwing around with magnetrons

GalCiv had the worst teching ever. Plowing through phasers I, then II, then III... It became old really, really fast and there were way, WAY too many techs that were clones of the previous ones.

I think games like these have replayability as a major selling point, and keeping things fresh is what the goal should be. Therefore I think the tech tree or skill trees or whatever should offer you different options that are all viable and therefore remail interesting the tenth playthrough.

Ah, so you're right, but you're still wrong where it matters. This Percy Spencer fellow was testing a magnetron developed to be used on radars; testing it to verify that it functioned as expected. He was in no way trying to figure out what other esoteric uses microwaves have - he was building and testing magnetrons for a very specific purpose, and happened to notice that his candy bar melted. So in this case, radar research led to a major technological breakthrough in heating food. The only similarity is that both things involve microwaves (but they involve them in very different ways) - and such fine distinctions do not make it to the surface in games. In a game, that magnetron research Percy Spencer was doing would probably be called something like "Radar +4" - it would seem a little odd to be looking at a research tree, noticing that "Microwave Oven" comes after "Radar +4", right? That's that progression was accidental. And blind or semi-blind research can emulate that to an extent, where it would simply look ridiculous in a fixed tree.

One of the reasons for this is that research in games tends to be result-driven, not method-driven. In a result-driven research model, you research things like "Radar +4," which makes your radar better, or "swords +3" which makes your swords better, or "gunpowder" which gives you the ability to make and use gunpowder. In a method-driven model, you'd research things like "microwave physics", which could then be applied to improve the magnetrons in your radar, or to make a microwave oven, etc. I have never seen a full-blown method-driven model, although some games (Civ IV for example) are a little bit mixed.

Heh? I know this is the internet and people love to argue, but I don't see why this is a case where I could be right or wrong?  I simply indicated that the guy I quoted was misinformed about microwaves.  I hadn't read your response yet, which is a pretty accurate representation of what happened *I skimmed through and saw other responses that had nothing to do with radar/microwaves*

However I agree with having a somewhat blind or random system.  Just like a good game of euchre or poker you can often win when dealt a poor hand if you know how to play it right. So the "Getting RNG screwed" complaints don't bother me, after all any tech advancement is an improvement over what you had before.

However, I think this game will be more about create ways to IMPLEMENT you tech than just researching the best stuff.  The microwave oven's creation would be a good example of this sort of thing... Someone researched and created magnetrons and they were being used for RADAR...  Then some guy is like," HEY this makes things hot!" and uses it to cook food.

It could be that way in Elemental, too.  Through whatever research method the game implements you discover how to imbue things with a fire element..  Do you imbue weapons to cause searing heat to inflict more damage on your enemies as would be the first instinct, or do you find a more creative use, perhaps you can teach your farmers to use it to keep their crops warm year round and produce more food ..

*Ignore the unreadable parts of this post... stream of consciousness posts are hard to edit.

Let me rephrase: Alpha Centauri research is like GCII and other games if you turn off blind research in the game setup options.

This post perfectly explains what I am shooting at. Learning how to implement what at first appears to be a crappy RNG, and discovering a really useful way to use a "crap" spell - that would be awesome

Sorry, I quoted the wrong post. I meant to quote the same person you quoted, but then I must have quoted you and gotten confused about what I was arguing about, and with whom...

Yeah that would be ideal. I'm pretty sure we've thrown that idea a few times in these forums already, and every time I like it more and more. I don't know if it's doable (seems hard to give the player that much freedom), but if it is doable then I'd love for Stardock to do it I guess one way of doing it is to have some (or most) spells have general effects that cause different results in different scenarios. Like your example, a spell that raises the temperature of its target. If the target is a farm suffering penalties from particularly cold temperatures (whether permanent or seasonal, if there are seasons), the spell would act as climate control to increase the harvest and lengthen the growing season; if the target is your troops' weapons, their attacks sear their enemies causing more damage; if the target is a group or army of enemies or a map tile, it could cause a heat wave that significantly weakens encompassed units - it could also be used to target enemy farms to raise the temperature too high. So many possibilities! The main problem I can see with this is that it would be difficult to translate "increased temperature" into such a variety of results based on target, and to determine the magnitude of the effects. It certainly would be less straightforward. Another issue is that a few spells could be used for a huge range of actions, thus reducing the variety of spells. The biggest problem, though, is that the effects would almost have to be hard coded (indirectly - in this heat example changing temperature would have hard-coded effects on all potential targets), and thus there would be situations where what the game does and what you might expect (or want) are two very different things...

Anyone remember or ever played Daggerfall? You could CREATE YOUR OWN SPELLS and the power of those spells in that game. One of the many things I loved about Daggerfall. It is one of the most open ended and largest rpg/fantasy games ever made. I could go for something like that in Elemental instead of canned linear spell lines that are the same every game. I think it had one of the best if not the best spell systems in any game I ever played. You could buy what the game created or you could create spells based on your intelligence and what your mana abilities would allow, plus you had to be able to afford the cost of it.

Now adding onto that and since this game is named Elemental. Anyone remember Ultima I-IV or V series? I think it was Ultima IV that introduced going out and finding herbs and Elements for your spells. Of course all the spells were canned, but, at least some things were determined by how many herbs/elements you had for particular spells. This seemed more realistic than UNLIMTIED SPELL CASTING. So, going out and finding patches of Nightshade for your most dark and deviate spells would be kewl. Having to fight over them and they only spawn at Midnight!! ORRRR like in Oblivion you could be able to find various wild plants in the ummm well WILD and get the seeds from them and have your own farms and gardens and those could be raided by other players?? So instead of just having a clomp clomp stomp stomp the other guy conquest game you could also have resources to destroy or gather and use to increase your powers or decrease your opponents powers by hitting his resources instead of it always having to be a castle/city battle or one big battle of best hero vs best hero?

I was thinking more in the lines of "Neat things, these bows. Keep researching stuff like this."

"Oh great and glorious leader God and Emperor Lord Varenus, we have researched away and developed this awesomesome thingomajig - the Ballistae!"

Obviously, wheels and archery shouldn't be in the same category, even if "accidents" will happen if there are no more techs available without, for example, researching the "Wheel" prereq.

I liked Daggerfall, but in the end it was unplayable, because I liked to jump from rooftop to rooftop, which inevitably led to me falling through geometry and getting stuck.

And I was young, so the spell creation thing confused me...

On the microwave digression, one of my uncles spent a large part of his career in whatever federal lab was responsible for testing microwave oven safety back in the days when they were new on the consumer market. Visiting his lab was the first time I was ever in one of those funky, foam-pylon-padded damper rooms and the first time I saw an infrared camera in action (maybe 1974?).

For several years around this time, my uncle made a habit of bringing an example of the latest and greatest microwave oven to our annual family reunions. But he stopped after the year when he went to bed early one night and a bunch of my cousins were old enough to drink with the other uncles, which led to an extended series of experiments on how different things blow up in microwave ovens. Apparently, we got off lucky because several things we'd played with (even though we at least knew to avoid metal) could have caused major damage to at least the oven, if not the entire kitchen. I don't at all remember everything my mad elders tried that night, but I thought the apples looked neatest because they didn't make that much mess but had still obviously exploded.

Not that I am in any actionable way encouraging anyone to do anything that their carefully-written microwave oven instructions forbid. Even if nothing seriously bad happens, the mess takes lots more time to clean up than it does to make...

They didn't do this did they?

http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/oa_plasmoid.htm

I assume they tried marshmallow Peeps? The bloating is really quite a spectacle!

really?   I never had that problem except in the demo.  I LOVED jumping from rooftop to rooftop.  I find it harder in newer Elder scroll games.  (perhaps its because you can't max climbing and auto-scale walls in the case you missed a roof)

I love bloating peeps.   But then they shrink are are virtually uneditable.  (we played with them under pressure in my high school science class as well.   which was also fun)

peeps in vacuum chambers are really funny.

Peeps are virtually inedible no matter what you do (or don't do) to them...

I have also been attempting to inject excess air into Peeps using old insulin syringes, but they just don't have that much capacity..... it doesn't work all that well.,... although holding one over an open flame is quite a spectacle!

We had marsmallows, but no Peeps (I don't think anyone in any branch of my family would eat one of those things). But the quest was for things with watertight exteriors and a high water content. The egg was a very bad mistake--not in terms of danger, but in terms of unintentionally welding a lot of other messes together.

Good tip.   I assume you tried the lightbulb-in-pool-of-water trick? Also, according to the Mythbusters, the best sparks come from two sheets of accordion-folded aluminum foil about 2cm. apart..... or a CD.

Well, believe it or not, I think that the drunken uncles and elder cousins were trying to play safely--the goal was good food explosions, not sparks. (We usually had fireworks somewhere during a reunion weekend, so we weren't deprived or anything.)