Well, it generally applies to ethically-limited techs like necromancy, holiness, and slave labor: for example:

• If you research "Slave Revolution Inspiration" to inspire the enemy's slaves to revolt, you can no longer research "Slave Subjegation" to enslave more people in your own kingdom.
• A tech like "Beast Hunting" would probably preclude "Beast Befriending"
• Anything religiously motivated: I imagine it would be difficult to research both "Unholy Temples" and "Holy Temples"

I realise that some of these could be either magic or normal techs, and that such a thing would likely be used more in the magic tree, but since they will probably use the same underlying system and there ARE some uses in the mundane tree, I'd say it's worth a shot.

I think I get you know. I read "tech" to be about mundane things, not magic, and so far I haven't been expecting any "social tech" like GC2's Xeno Ethics to be in the game at all.

Early on, it sounded like the devs planned to keep mundane knowledge fairly simple in comparison to the magic system. I'm still hoping to see something like that. The game will lose considerable 'epic fantasy' flavor for me if things like upgrading Basic Markets to Fancier Markets are common tasks (I'd rather see any differences like that be a matter of resources, not research). In classical fantasy settings, technological changes are much, much slower than we moderns are used to.

The point being, if a player(s) would quit over the loss of "anything" early game, then no system would suffice to appease them.

I would imagine that any city built early would be rather difficult to attack succsessfully without substanial forces or the "Rush" gameplay fanantics take over and the games goes south quickly as "simply stupid play".

I can't forsee that happening as the other games SD has produced have never done it...

Well, yes, but my point is also that more people would quit if you lost research as opposed to losing military or social activity. With a locus-based tech system (the only one where it actually makes SENSE to lose progress in the first place), you can't just pick up again unless you have empty labs, and keeping those empty in anything approaching a close game would be essentially suicidal.

I also firmly support this notion. To me it adds that extra special "you just know they thought this out" feeling to the game.

I really like this idea, and I think its thinking outside the box, which i think needs to happen in order to make this game unique from game to game. I don't want to feel by the end game that im just going through the motions of research. I felt Civ and Galciv too somewhat, while they were great games for replayability due to random maps, had this fallacy in their design. Ive never really found it in a game (closet was probably MoM but that only had magic research) so maybe its impossible?

i agree, i like scoutdog's idea as well.

Just as long as the buildings were still there. An entirely champion-based system would skew the balance of the game HEAVILY towards going Gandalf.

I think the idea would be that you have certain champions or units that would add research if they were in a town and if that twon had research facilities. I don't like the idea of champions out fighting the world and also mysteriously contributing to research at the same time (unless it were by discovering scrolls, collecting reagents, or finding focus items).

Yes and no. If a particular champion has 'spell scholar' as a trait of some sort, he or she should be able to assume a research production role (be assigned to non-combat duty) regardless of location. If the location is a magical library or whatnot, the champion should get a research bonus. If the location is undefended, then the champion accepts some vulnerability in exchange for being a research producer for that turn.

Goodmorning all

As i see it, The debate of Wether or not to allow loss of tech at loss of town as two differnt Points of view.

Preventing Rage Quit, and Preventing steam rolling.

They are two somewhat different effects, and have different thresholds.

There are the one town loss, one battle loss, Rage Quitters.  nothing can be done to appease them no effort to do so is worth while.

The second is more subtle, If the Research loss is too devistating then surreding becomes almost legitimate, or loss becomes inevitable. A single army punching into enermy land, or being teleported in, should not be a mid game game ender.  If one were to loose 20 turns of research in mid game becasue you lost a town for 2 turns (teleport in strike force, take town, then loose the strike army to retaliation forces soon there after) that game is over, and unfairly so. 

I do not think anybody is seriously proposing that we do anything to appease the rage quitters, but genuin concern over heartripping - game breaking, mechanisms are unsettling and people are concerned that too much data loss would qualify as game breaking.

Does anybody see anything wrong with this summery?
Take care all.

Robbie Price

Quitters aren't a problem if we're getting rewarded for winning like WarCraft 3 on Battle.Net where you unlock avatars the more victories you accumulate. So if that system was in place I would be really happy to face a quitter as my record would get better and better and I would be one victory closer to my new lobby avatar

And I can't seriously believe the people who are debating about scientists keeping notes to save some of the research and stuff like that....I've only played Age of Wonders out of the AoW/MoM/MoO trio but if you lose a city which gave you 20 research then what you are currently researching will take longer unless you devote more magic income to research....

Scoutdog, reply #89

I don't like exclusive techs. I would rather be able to research contradictary techs, but you will have to choose the effects you want for you empire. I prefer that there would be some in game reason why something doesn't work well, such as the effects of 2 or more techs not mixing very well.

Perhaps you might have civics (like in civ 4) where you have to choose how you govern your civilization in multiple categories. For instance, for Elemental we could have a civic category called slavery (or maybe even better name, labour) where you could choose "light slavery", "heavy slavery", "no slaves", or even "free the slaves" policy. You would have to pick one (unless contraditions are allowed, but that would be another topic), and you could always research more later.

That would work, but it takes away the "tough choice" quality of the research that I was attempting to create. I rather like the idea of making an irreversible decision that could impact your empire forever. Sort of like the morality in GC2.

I didn't Galciv 2 ethics very much. It favoured evil too much. I also tolerated by the "tough choice" largely because I didn't feel I was missing out on whole lot near the end of the game. I considered the bonuses to ship defense you got as the "good guys" more valuable than high priced, eventually made obsolete by end game weapons you could get as evil (even if they were very useful until made obsolete).

Clearly, we are trying to push this game in two opposite directions...

I'm also not the biggest fan of strict mutual exclusivity - whether it be in research or some other aspect of the game. I don't hate it, but I think a 'soft' form of exclusiveness works better: it allows people to mold their strategies more to their own personal preferences while still preventing players from getting the best of all words.

To give an example, let's say there are two techs, "laser accuracy" and "laser power." With regular mutual exclusiveness, researching one prevents you from researching the other - you have a binary choice between accuracy and power. With a soft form of mutual exclusiveness, there are several ways of going about it. One method is to make researching the second of the two take significantly longer or cost much more than it would (or a combination of the two). Another method is cause each tech to have reduced effectiveness if you research both (or, when actually using these techs, choose whether to have a very accurate but weak laser, a very strong but wildly inaccurate laser, or an all-around mediocre laser) - how this would be be done depends on the nature of the tech and the game.

In the vast majority of circumstances I think some form of soft mutual exclusivity is more fun than straight up "if you researched this then you can't under any circumstances, no matter how situations have changed, and no matter how much you are willing to put into it, research that." Sometimes that is the way to go, though. In my example of laser research, I'd say no. If there's something that fundamentally changes some part of an aspect of your nation, maybe. Things like "free the slaves" vs. "enslave everyone!" don't seem fundamental to me if they're including as research. If position regarding slavery is determined by faction choice, on the other hand, that's an entirely different matter. But to me, if I can research it, then I can choose whether or not to actually use it, regardless of whatever other technologies or policies I have at my disposal. However, I'm all for not being able to use certain techs/policies in conjunction with others - or getting severe penalties to their effectiveness if you do.