Research: BETA and beyond

well tbh i found research one of the few aspects nearly done

i mean its working good, it does what it should and its nice, the problem maybe is WHAT you are researching not just the systm imo

YES this is an interesting point

right now you just research cities mainly, a bit of adventuring for recruiting a bit of wepaons armors and then complete cities

yeah research right now is very fast , i can complete all tree in few turns but ofc this is a beta, to test research you should get it

the real problem imo is another

are all reasearch possible?

i mean can i play a game where i dont get buildings? can i play a game where i dont get military? can i play ONLY with magic? ONLY with adventure?

right now apparently you cant, you have to be a jack of all trades

lets see how this evolve

I strongly agree with the OP. The whole research system needs a lot of love.

I also have another suggestion. Not sure its a good idea, but I still would like it to be discussed. Make research take longer after each breakthrough, not only in one of the 5 techtrees, but overall.

So, if you get a breakthrough in civilization, and the next tech costs like 50% more researchpoints, then the next tech in the other 4 techtrees cost like 20% more points too.

I dont like the fact, that I can change to another techtree and get the first techs in 1 turn each.

Well we need more varience on doctrinal thought Like warbased mentalities etc.

I suggest two things One we need to have a system basedon the mid and late game where research is not necessary for the beginning but those work hard in the beginning are rewarded as they enter midgame tech or more earlier.

And have crosspath research like if you have some civic and alot of war have some war/civ techs that replace other techs like a war based form of currency minting *a war ministry etc.* as well as other civics and research coming from armorer's forges etc. because they develop new methods of forging and refining as well as military academys etc. but this means they are not as strong in civics and theirsociety is much more expensive to maintain due to large military strain. etc. these are just examples.

Right now that isn't really possible because of the way the system is setup. You need cities with lots of R&D buildings to get R&D done. I think they could add a few things to help decrease the need for the jack of all trades to let you earn R&D from other locations.

For example:

Military

If you are playing the mostly Military route then the typical setup of you have a chance of getting their tech seems quite obvious. This is very common mechanic in 4x games. To make sure it favors the Military player more the percentage chance of taking a tech could be based off of their Military Tech Level. Thus players who focus on the other 4 trees won't have as high of a chance of getting a tech when the seize a city. And of course they already get more cities thus more R&D buildings from being heavily aggressive but this helps their R&D growth.

Magic

There is already a spell that increases your R&D output on the magic line but it seems to be rather low and easy to get. I think some other methods would be a nice addition as well that perhaps tie more into your magic level. I'm not sure if this kind of setup is possible under the current system but a unique building in the magic line that increases your R&D by a percentage based on your Magic Tech level. So if you have Magic level 10 that building would give you a 10% Boost to R&D in any city that it was built in. The exact % bonus and such would be an issue for balance but some mechanic that allows them to gather R&D other then Civics route.

Adventure

Honestly I think the who Adventure route could use a little more work. But as far as someone taking the Adventure route while still having food R&D I think there are some ways this could be achieved. First off I think it would be nice to have tech rewards for goodie huts, ruins, and quest. Now a full tech might be a bit much but finding say a scroll that gives you X amount of R&D in either your current R&D field or one of the others at random could work. It would be nice to see R&D points carry over though as right now it sucks to being like 2 points away and your producing 40+ a turn knowing that 38 go to waste. That would only increase if your finding R&D scrolls that give you say 100 points and your only 2 away from level. Unless they are an item you can use when you want which could work very nicely. 

Also the ability to perhaps recruit scholors which when they join you on a dungeon exploration increase your chance of getting an R&D reward. And perhaps your Adventuring level could increase the chance of getting something. That way pure adventurers are more likely to benefit from this unit's ability.

Diplomacy

This one is kinda the hardest to play up because honestly it feels more like a side play style then a main one. I mean how many 4X games have you played where it's all about Diplomacy? Usually diplomacy is there just to do your relations with the other players while you focus on building your cities, raising armies, and doing research. And once you get the basic Peace and Trade treaties setup there isn't much left to do unless you wanna form an alliance down the road but even then mostly you spend your time minding your business while they mind theirs, unless of course a war breaks out.

That being said I'm not completely void of ideas on this part. First off I haven't really played with this tech tree much since there was no AI really to make treaties with until recently. But I know some games have, and I think I even recall seeing it listed in Elemental, the old Research Treaty. This of course would give you some extra R&D based on the R&D output of your empire and that of the other nation's empire. To really make it fair I think the smaller empire should get a larger bonus out of it because the larger empire already benefits from larger with more income. So if one empire produces 50 R&D and the other produces 100 R&D the larger one would get maybe an extra 5 and the small would get 10 thus their new totals would be 60 and 105.

Along with the treaty itself I think some tie in on the treaty's output for the diplomacy player should be tied to what level your Diplomacy tech is at. That way it again benefits people who specialize more and can't just be grabbed up by jack of all trade players which is how most unlockables in the tech system are setup now.

Also perhaps a unique building which increase your R&D based on the treaties you have setup in that city. So perhaps they generate 10% extra R&D you get from your trade treaties. Thus like in the previous example the small empire that produced 50 but was getting 10 extra from the treaty has maybe 5 cities each with this unique building then they would get an extra 50% from treaty thus bringing their total up from 60 R&D a turn to 65. Again the actually amounts would have to be something to figure out in balancing.

I haven't checked the Diplomacy tree in a while but I think some things that would go great in it would be Espionage type stuff. Perhaps some stealth units unique to the Diplomacy tree that can do all kinds of spy things including stealing tech points or full techs from the enemies would be a great way for the diplomacy tree to run R&D. Also the option to build Espionage type buildings that slowly steal R&D from enemies both that you have treaties with and hostile ones who refuse to engage in treaties.

Conclusion

As you may of noticed a bit of a reaccuring theme with some of the ideas is to tie the payout to the tech level. I think this is a very important setup because right now there does not seem to be much reason to specialize in something. It seems just grab what you need from that tech tree then move on to the others. After you got what you need just work on fluff items like the OP mentioned.

I feel there could be a lot more emphasis on making each of the paths not only feel truly unique but also make them viable options in their own right. Right now it seems like Civics is a must have and the others are just secondary choices, with the except of Diplomacy which feels like a last choice. So options to help with the Neutral factions could help develop it into it's own play style though, but again haven't looked at it lately.

I'd also like to sum up how I view each play style which may or may not fit with what the Devs have in mind but it's to help you know where I'm coming from how how I think they should be more "unique".

Civics (Economic Powerhouse Style): Few large cities, Lots of Production, Great defense, Lots of weak units supported by their massive economy

Military (Over whelming Force Style): Lots of Medium cities, Decent Production, Strong Offense, Medium amounts of fairly strong units, defense a bit lacking but countered by the fact they are usually the ones attacking.

Magic (Versatile specialist Style): This kinda depends on what spells the player researches along the way but because of that they can kinda change their focus quickly in terms of offensive, enhancement, summon, or etc spells. Mostly Medium cities though, Decent Production, Decent Offense/Defense (Depends on summons), can be very powerful with overland abilities.

Adventure (D&D Play Style): Few small cities, low production, few very powerful units, mainly earns money/resources/items from quest and raids, has some unique tricks up their sleeves with unique units. Also fairly heavily in recruiting mercs to fill out the ranks give their low unit amounts.

Diplomacy (Back room dealer Style): Even here on a what I think diplomacy style should be like I have trouble seeing it as a truly separate play style. I think the obvious friendly treaty options are there but also some back room espionage type stuff should be there as well kinda like in SoSE where you can bribe pirates to attack other players. That's because you still need something to build the back bone of your empire on. I mean what do you do for the first 100+ turns of the game if you don't find another player to work your unique abilities off of?

As a big research fan I can't disagree with you. I don't like the direction Research is going right now. I much-much preferred GalCiv2 Research over this, I don't know why they would go in such a diffrent direction (Just improve your old system). Hopefully it's just trial and error, but if you guys could stick to your GalCiv routes on this I would def enjoy being a Super Research Geek more.  

Edit: I don't mean to say I dislike the WHOLE system, I like Civ-Warefare-Magic-Quest-Diplomacy catagories.

yes we need something like this

the point is "why research first adventure using 100 turns while i can research first cities, get better buildings, more money more research more mana more everything and then research adventure in 10 turns?

yup agree

This is one of my biggest complaints. The current system has a basic system of research value in the likelihood of rare research being available based on a percentage chance, but when you're burning through a tech every 2 or 4 turns it makes the likelihood of said techs showing up very much increased, and you find you've researched everything within the first few hundred turns. To solve this the logical thing to do would be to sort research into tiers, whereby the first tier research is required basic stuff that doesn't take very long to research, whilst tier 5 (or some other number depending on the quantity of the research) is very rare research that takes a long time to research and gives you the feeling that you have actually researched a breakthrough. 

Also having a few techs that are can only be researched by one or two kingdoms per world, but can be traded, would really increase the dynamic of faction relations - provided the AI is intelligent about it (which you guys could accomplish). But that's just an idea.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I really feel as though this is one of the areas that has always been around, but hasn't been analysed as much as other areas (except by the guys at Stardock, it's undergone a bucketload of changes with each new version).

I know what you mean. Typically by turn 100 I have 6+ cities and about 50+ R&D per turn rolling in. I'm also in the mid 20s of the Civics tech and in some case manage to finish it by about turn 150 or so. Granted each build has had varrying degrees of success as they change things around a bit but the first stats tend to hold pretty true.

I tend to be an economic city builder type player so it's only natural that I go that route. But even when experimenting with some of the other tech trees I often find myself struggling in both money and R&D. The biggest problem is the cost of units in the game. Heroes aren't worth the cost and even decent units aren't worth their price when an army of peasents can easily out do them for much less cash. So you end up not only with R&D at a crawl but your ability to fund anything at a crawl as well. Which is the reason I suggested some of the R&D earning changes and in another thread suggested some money making changes along similar lines, though not just confined to money as metal/crystal/etc are important as well.

These are some screens from some of the eariler builds to show what I mean by how fast I go through the Tech Tree.

In the first 2 you can see by turn 100 I've run through much of the Civics tree already. While those were taking in late Beta 2 it's still fairly representative of what I've been able to build in Beta 3 (haven't had time to try Beta 3A yet). And the last screen is also from Beta 2 as I recall. As you can see I'm racking in 148 R&D per turn at that point and I don't recall what level I was but I was just doing the unlimited techs at that point for more food/housing/etc. It was mostly cause during that beta the last 3 techs were locked.

Both of the screens are fairly representative if a typical game for me. At some point like in the last screen I get so much cash flowing in I just starting hiring every hero I can for the fun of it. When I try to run the other branches though I just can't seem to get the same amount done. I think the 100 turn test is a good one cause it's a lot more time then you think and you can get a lot more done in that time then you might think. Plus I have the problem my game often crashes around turn 120-150 most of the time. Probably thanks to my large build up.

My main fear is they will take the approach a lot of developers do which is to simply increase the cost and nerf the production (aka R&D output). Well the increase cost helps it last longer for slower paced games which is nice. But making Civics have less R&D wouldn't really fix the problem as it still is the main source of R&D. Failure to make the other paths equally viable in games is something it seems a lot of developers fall short on which is something I hope doesn't happen here. After all making the only path less productive doesn't correct the problem it only makes overall pacing slower.

Much of this was discussed in detail back in May at the following:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/383128

and to a lesser extent here:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/382913

Good ideas herein, good ideas above. I'm not sure, however, if there is an "easy fix" for making each of the five research areas equally desirable for those that wish to generalize OR specialize in a certain area.  Bottom line is you NEED Civic Research to effectively move forward as without it you are generally handcuffed in most playing styles.

There's a few things about the technology system that are worth discussing I think.

1. The current general system is there to stay. we're obviously not going to change it in Elemental 1.x.

2. The general balance of the tech system has NOT been implemented.

3. There are only two tech trees in the beta (as opposed to the 3 for v1.0 and 10 for v1.01).

4. Beta 3B will have a significantly different tech tree.

5. The GENERAL view of city building is moving towards greater specialization of settlements. Right now, everything flies out the window because you can get crazy amounts of resources because you can build crazy stuff in every city.  This is moving towards Royal and Imperial achievements where you have to choose a settlement that will have such and such building in it.

6. We are migrating towards a system where control of resources is more and more important rather than cranking out powerful cities. The cities will magnify what you gain from controlling resources but we're trying to generally move away from the cities themselves conjuring resources out of thin air.

I think #6 is the key issue from a design point of view.  Right now, the cities simply still let you conjure too much stuff.  In galactic Civilizations, we could obviously limit things by planets.  But in Elemental, there really isn't anything stopping you from just popping down bunches of cities and producing crazy amounts of gold, materials, spell research, tech research, etc.

Worse, the current system flies in the face of the game's setting.  But I'll talk more about that soon.

The pieces are coming together, it's just a matter of balancing it out in a fun way.

One other thing about the tech tree:

Because everyone is playing either the Kingdom: Amarian (Pariden) tech tree or the Empire: Trog tech tree it's easy to forget that the Empire: Kraxis tech tree and the Kingdom: Mancer (Altar) tech trees can favor other areas significantly.

I had no idea that was the plan!

*Drools*      Now I'm all giddy like a school girl.

Edit: you beat me Cauldyth!

Thanks for the feedback Frogboy, it's good to know you guys are still working it out and most of the issues that have been raised largely come down to the fact that despite the stage we're at regarding the game, it's still a beta we're seeing. I think one of the big things that the success of the research system overall is going to come down to is the city building, which is still changing even to this point (thankfully away from the dreaded snake system currently in use), and of course this all comes down to balance and once again to the fact that this is a beta. 

The major thing with regards to the fun of whole system is balanced variability, and I know by vanilla, and definitely by v1.01, this will be exactly what we get.

Thanks again Frogboy and everyone else who has posted so far, 

Paradoxical

I like Pyromancers Idea of buildings in the Diplomacytree, which efficiency depends on your treaties.

Like +1 to research for each trade treaty and each research treaty.

Also, there should be passive effects (like in GalCiv) to strenghten your treaties. Im missing stuff like "Bonus to trade treaties".

And last but not least to make diplomacytree more interesting: Espionage, maybe even stealing of ressources.

yeah ofc, like i said the problem is not in the system, system is good, its what you research (at this point) the problem

what you mean by 10?

its not clear

sounds nice, it has been discussed already and most ppl loved this idea

The technology tree you play with is determined by your race and your faction.

This is why we moved the faction customization out of the game setup and into the modding tools because we were trivializing the differences between races.

In beta 3A, we only have 2 of the 10 technology trees implemented: The Amarian (Men) and the Trog (Fallen).

By release, the goal is to have each race to have its own technology tree.

Beyond release, the goal is for each race to have its own technology tree that is different based on its allegiance (Kingdom/Empire).

So the Trog tech tree would be different if they play as a Kingdom with different buildings.

..

Now, all this gets to the second issue brought up in this thread and others and that is that right now, you build everything in every town. There's no real sense of specialization and every game feels the same.

In Galactic Civilizations, we solved this issue by having planets be the place you started "cities" (colonies) and those colonies would have uique resources that lent themselves to specialization.

In Elemental Beta 3-B, the resources, not the cities, will provide the resources (gold, research, arcane knowledge, materials). The cities will instead act as multipliers to those resources that are nearby.

You'll still be able to build a few basic things (merchants and workshops) that produce a trivial amount of a resource.  But libraries, universities, marketplaces will act as multipliers of what you are already producing in a city due to the resources you control.

A resource only has to be in your zone of control to acquire (which you acquire by clicking on it and choosing to build the appropriate improvement on it and it then gets magnified by the nearest city).

Thus, while you CAN build a university in every city, it would be pretty silly and expensive if that city has no research going on in the first place.

As a result, the objective of the game becomes clearer -- conquering the resources you need from others because YOU need them.

The map generation, that got handed over to my AI in beta 3, has gotten updated dramatically to help seed the world with lots of interesting resources of various kinds of various rarirites with some certainty that there will be a few near you.

Now, in some games, you will be better off going down the diplomacy route because there are resources that give you influence points that you can then build improvements that magnify that influence which you can use to get good trades.

In other games, you may want to go all magic because you got a few ancient temples in your empire that let you get spells a lot quicker than others.

In the CURRENT build, everyone just goes of the Civilization path because the ONLY resource that acts the way it will in beta 3B is food and the civilization techs benefit the most from food and the Civ techs allow you to produce your own resources making the other categories a lot less important.

yeah its very clear now

all sounds interesting and well thought, it should give the game a good boost in strategy and fun (building 55 libraries and temples and markets isnt fun but tedious sometimes, even civ and mom suffered that problem sometimes)

looking forward to next beta (even if im still testing few things in this)

The core issue that I think all these games have in common to various degrees is giving players the ability to conjure up their own resources from thin air.

As soon as you do that, you are basically making the game about cranking out the most cities/colonies/outposts/whatever.

And ultimately, this is the problem Elemental has been suffering.

Real wars are often fought over resources, so it's good to hear wars in Elemental will also be resource-driven.

Nice.  This was one of the complaints about Civ4 - if you couldn't get your hands on a resource, you were completely screwed.  A civ/kingdom/empire should always be able to produce at least tiny amounts of something.  It will never replace having a proper source, but it at least gives them a fighting chance of trying to secure such a source.

This is a very good direction to head in; however, a couple of observations:

• My starting point will potentially force me to play the game a certain way, such as if I spawn near the "ancient temples" you allude to.  I would rather not be forced to play a game a certain way-- I'd rather have some flexibility.  This can be addressed in two fashions: 
• ONE:  A pop-up screen during game creation whereby it is asked, "Do you wish to primarily spawn near: 1) food, 2) magic, 3) etc. 4) RANDOM.
• TWO: A potentially good use of ESSENCE would be to spawn some of these resource areas to which you refer at a cost of ESSENCE.  And I'm not supporting "conjuring things out of thin air" but am supporting the use of POWERFUL MAGIC to "mold the land" to your needs.

Implementation of ONE and/or TWO should address the issue of being "forced" into a game strategy.

yeah civ ai also suffered from that, they were all espansionistic in the end, even if traits were different, and player was forced to build and build to produce a comparable amount of culture/research/gold

civ online was slightly better for the reason you pointed, there resources were far more important than base stats

the strategic value of an horse or iron or oil was far superior the the raw amount of production/food etc

elementals is going to offer more gameplay and solutions through champions and exploration though, thats a good point as soon as you can compete for the victory not just outproducing more paesants than your enemies but also conquering some important artifact/book in a dungeon and stuff like that

I can't believe that I didn't know we only had 2 of the tech trees out of the 10 we'll have at launch.  

I read practically every post, but I obviously miss some.  

We really need a way to find all of Frogboy's posts/replies easily.   

well first of all i find good if the game in some way make the players think what is best for the given condition/territory

ofc it shouldnt be totally limiting and forcing the player to a single solution, i agree on that

between one and two i prefer two but its a long shot from the point we see now in beta, its really important to understand how is going to work magic and its job in tactical combats and stuff like that

Yeah Brad, I can say in my recent playtests (with videos available).

I kept coming to the conclusion that what's currently in the form of building, just doesn't seem all that interesting past the first standard group of things. After that there almost doesn't feel like there is much of a point really. But then again I know that and temper my expectation based upon factors that these are just placeholder values and presented systems.

I'm looking forward to the new changes. Though now with what your talking about, with resources being the key to game play in the upcoming versions. I still think that even now the idea of setting limited satellite communities, may help reflect those aspects better. But instead of having them be something we physically control or "Build" stuff in. They should just almost be natural extenders of the town in support.

But that's just an idea that keeps popping it's head up in my mind. And look forward to the significant changes coming up in 3B. That sounds quite interesting now. (Not just the Tac Battles. But because you're streamlining the process of the cities.)