Isn't that a bit too Information Age a thing to consider for this game? Even if Elemental's mundane knowledge will include printing presses, it won't have anything like copy machines, much less computer networks. *Maybe* some magical analogs will be possible, but if they are even remotely 'normal,' that will be a big style flaw, IMO.

Also, unless the dev goals have changed, most important research will be magical, not mundane, and there's even less 'precedent' there for your very modern notion of research communities.

Well, I'm not part of that "we" and I haven't gotten a clear impression of the dev take on the discussion either. I would very much like to see champion- or special unit-based research (both mundane and magical) that is connected to the caravan network. I would enjoy, for example, recruiting a truly amazing but delicate research champion who might best be protected by isolation in a distant fortress. Assuming there are no magical communication methods available by default, there will be at least a period where a new spell from said researcher has a 'time-to-market' that includes both research itself and getting the finished scroll to the channeler via caravan (or for the channeler to just come pick it up).

Even then the scientists do not magically forget their work. Scientists not continuing their wok because they are dead is quite natural.

Whatever may be of that, a good player will rarely lose cities, and even the average player will not lose cities that foten. Is there any reason in particular that makes it so interesting to discuss what happens to your research if a city of yours is captured? Why would it mater if the game handles this in a realistic matter or in some arbitrary abstract matter?

As long as the rules are clear and they apply to every one then it is fine to me either way. Saying that research is delayed by two turns or that some portion of the research is lost is just as arbitrary as saying that losing a city has no effect. If you start rationalising why there should be a delay or loss of research I start to wonder why the scientists were not just moved before the city fell.

Also if there would be serious drawbacks to losing science cities you would just place those citie away from the borders, reducing the relevance of this discussion even further.

QFT. You'll also start to see people complaining about how they need a button to move their scientists to another city since they know the city is going to fall 3 turns before it does, but can't get any millitary reinforcements there in time.

Good stuff. I also hope you allow for negative effects for all techs. For example if I get "super lazer 1" I get a negative to say "lazer accuracy". Trade offs are always good for complex tech tree making methinks.

Indeed Spartan, that is a very good idea. This really makes it so that some techs can be good in one game but not in another one. Combine this with random techs appearing in games and I foresee a game that really lets you stop and think about every step that you will take.

Good stuff indeed!

Yep and with a tiered dependancy system attached to boot it should make for some serious tech action and on the mod side the sky would be the limit.

If the loss of some portion of your Research base is considered a reason to "rage quit" then the "Attackable Caravans" implementation should probably keep those types of folks totally away from the game at all.

Imagine your enemy has found your richest caravan route between two manufacturing cities. He waits until it is 3/4 the way there, say 15 turns of traveltime, and then ambushes it, stealing/killing or simply destroying it.

It contained the material requirments to complete your best mounted battalion...

"rage quit"

The difference is that you can perform social and military production in a vast number of cities simultaneously (this becomes a bit harder with the new econ model, but it's still easily doable). These proposals for the tech system, however, involve research CENTERED in one city. If you lose your caravan, you can say "oh well, I can pick up the work again in my third factory city" and do just that. If you lose your tech city, you have no real other option except to use a city that is currently not researching anything, but has a high research output, which I don't think would exist in a close game.

Eh? Do you have some insights into the new economic model that I do not? Did they tell us what thenew model looks like? I thought they were still discussing the model internally and here on these boards.

Well, by "the new economic model" I was referring to the resource system in general:nthe stuff about needing 10 iron to make a knight and all that. It seems like that would make it tougher to dupe units than standard MPs, hence the above comment.

Where the hell am I getting this stuff? Are you retarded? You're reading comprehension is just terrible and I'm not understanding why you feel so threatened by my comments, which weren't even directed at you. This is a theoretical discussion that started from a "what if?"It may surprise you to hear that the game isn't out yet, so us fans are throwing around ideas. An idea was brought up that individual cities research things and a discussion started on what what happen if the researching city was taken over. The devs didn't say this, we did.

Notice how I didn't emphasize the word "massive' like you did, because that's not the point. I was arguging for minimal/no loss of research on capture and I was arguing against losing a large portion of the research. Besides, one of the options is having a >75% loss of a tech, which would be relatively massive as far as that tech is concerned. We don't know exact timeframes, which is why I tried not to go into that. Either way, it doesn't matter since you're just nitpicking a sentence I was using to illustrate that you can still target people's research without the reserach loss mechanic we're discussing.

"Throw in a gameplay mechanic that says your scientists escape with 75% of the research and it's just a 5 turn loss"

I never argued against something like this. My argument is against losing most or all of the research and I would prefer it to be <= 25% of the research.

Nice job bringing up my karma. I sure feel bad that the 12 small comments I've made haven't garnered the admiration of fellow forum members. Have fun trying to use your karma for something that actually matters. Trying to use pointless status symbols to put down others just makes you look like a dick. It makes just as much sense as me calling you a noob because you have such a high member number.

Since other players wouldn't and shouldn't know how far research is along (considering how random medieval "research" is) if a player lost a city when it was just about to finish a tech, it would just seem like bad luck instead of the other player strategically trying to stop that tech. Players don't like getting hit by seemingly random negative effects, especially with ones that affect something they've specifically chosen and planned. A player will usually be more saddened by losing their favorite unit in a random event, than a random plague event that kills thousands of citizens and may in fact hurt them more overall. Also, take into consideration that psychology dictates that the player will lament in frustration over losing 100 gold more than they would celebrate at gaining 100 gold. Humans don't take losses well. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be significant loses in the game. That would trivialize any victories. Loss aversion just needs to be considered if you are using the "It hurts them just as much" as a reason for having or keeping something.

My line of reasoning and whole argument is this simple- Losing a city has enough negative effects associated with it that it doesn't need to have major research loss penalities on top of it.

I'm not referencing anyone and I'm not putting words into anyone's mouth.

Don't apply your anger towards quitters at me because I mentioned a truth of mutliplayer. People quit regardless of whether it is right or honorable for them to do so. People are going to quit in multiplayer when they lose cities regardless of the game design so you can't stop that, but I'm sure I'll see a lot more the greater the penalties are for losing a city.

The channeler's orders people far and wide as well as recieves information from all across the Kingdom so there's got to be some way this information is getting around. It is a magical and many fantasy backdrops have magical scrying and message sending even in abcense of the classic fireball chucking wizards. Even without magic, you could have carrier pigeon type creatures. There's nothing stopping the old fall back of horseback messengers who would simply relay what the researchers told them. "We tried the following formulas and they didn't work, but our work with X seems to be promising."

I don't know if its been mentioned, but I really enjoyed the random/limited techs I've seen in some game (Sword of the Stars comes to mind).  You got the core tech, but various races had a higher chance of being able to research specialty tech trees (which aren't revealed until you get the prerequisite)  It added a lot to replayability.  Otherwise there tends to be a monotonous pattern that you get into (this game I'm species A and I'll go the merchant route from turn 1   vs  I'm species A and I'd like to go merchant/speed but I find I have the tech tree for merchant/warrior available, I'll have to befriend/steal the tech to go pure merchant or adapt to my new found tech tree).

Ren

I'm not too particular about the details, but I for one would certainly like some consequence to your choice of research paths.  Nothing sucks the fun out of research systems in these games for me more than being able to research every technology option by the end of the game.  At the very least, I'd like to see large increases in costs or development times for trying to expand in every direction.

Indeed. One idea I'm rather fond of is that of mutually exclusive technologies. That is, techs that if you research one, the other becomes unavailable.

That totally furrows my brow, but I'm not sure whether I that's a good thing or a bad thing. Can you give a couple of examples of how that might work in a game or might have described a moment in the real history of technology?

I can easily imagine something like that in a magic system, but for mundane knowledge, I'm stumped.