Diminishing marginal returns to research

[Axe99]

I love the approach to research that it sounds like Stellaris is going to have (I'd be a fan of card-based style research in EU4 as well - sure, we all know what was going to be developed, but people at the time didn't - but that's another part of the forums altogether ), but one thing in the Q&A that got me slightly concerned (only slightly ) was a comment that "three medium-sized empires might research things as fast as one big one".

One of the things that most 4X games do very badly (and I can't comment on Distant Worlds about this, but it's deffo the case for Gal Civ III, Civ (any), Endless Space and many other strategy games) is the scaling of research. Research generally has a large degree of 'diminishing marginal return', such that relatively small countries (take Australia, for example) can be quite competitive in many or even most fields with much larger ones. The big difference tends to be research that takes large capital investments (think, in a historical context, space exploration, or something like the Large Hadron Collider) - but the stuff that doesn't really only needs a relatively small number (rather than proportion) of critical thinking capacity to develop. You can make that critical thinking capacity larger, and it will make things develop faster (and often increase the breadth of development, rather than how far along the tree things can be developed).

This is doubly important from a gameplay perspective, as if larger empires (somewhat unrealistically, unless the empire is made up of hive minds that have synergistic benefits to linking in more population/thinking units ) naturally research substantially faster than smaller empires then it will reinforce the strength of already large empires, making the end game less interesting.

If, instead, things like culture, and government and economic structure (and how much effort can be put in by a player to developing a culture of research and institutional capability in that culture) were a more important element in tech than simply throwing more money/pops at the problem, it would open up the possibility of large late-game empires bumping into small, but technologically powerful, empires, and what-have-you.

It may already be planned like this, or the above may sound silly, in which case please ignore .

 

[RebelScum88]

I am inclined to agree. I think its safe to say that historically, the more open and accepting countries have better scientific establishments, as the free thinking required for innovative research is seen as enriching the state and not as a threat to its power. This should be reflected in game by some sort of boost to research.
I think there is some hope that this will be the case, as Doomdark cited Foundation as one of the inspirations for the game in the recent interview. In that series a small planet of scientists is able to outmaneuver the autocratic but less technologically advanced governments around them(though there are a few reasons for this) I would certainly like to see something similar happen in Stellaris.

 

[FirstCitizen80]

I think this is a good idea, although there should be some benefits to size. I think this should be handled by having scientific research be influence but not determined by the size of the empire. The largest empire might get +7 to research, the next largest +6, the next largest +5, ect....but culture and scientific policies might contribute a total of +21 to an empire if is is geared right.

The numbers could be played with, but basically a having a lot of money or robo-slaves to throw at a problem because your big helps, but only so much.

 

[stilgarpl]

EU3 had scaling too. The more provinces you had, the higher the cost of research. It made sense if you think research as mean technological level of your whole empire. If you have more provinces, you have to develop them more. It slowed down your expansion. If you expanded too fast, you ended up being weak. You have to think whether you wanted to conquer that one province... it either had to be very rich or had very important position.

In EU4 they replaced it with MP, which in my opinion, is a worse system.

Sins of Solar Empire has a nice system - research takes money and time. If you are poor, you can't afford the money and you advance slowly, but even if you are insanely rich, you still have to wait the same.

 

[SIEGE-109]

Australia advances as fast as America because they share research. Research is a worldwide phenomenon. NATO and Warsaw Pact used to "share" research by spying on one another. If the galaxy becomes highly interconnected we should see the same thing, although more scientific civs should be ahead of the curb, and of course aliens will have differing psychology and have trouble interpreting other aliens' research. I think this is what they meant by "three medium-sized empires might research things as fast as one big one".

 

[RebelScum88]

It occurs to me that there might be a degree of randomness in how much research a civ is able to do. At present, it sounds like these science vessel "heroes" are the only way a civ can advance its research. Assuming that an empire can't manually build science vessels (for want of a great scientist capable of manning it) they would be reliant on the scientist characters they are given through random generation. So potentially a large empire's research could grind to a halt because a smaller opponent assassinated most of their scientists, but they maintain their edge by protecting their own.

 

[Axe99]

Australia advances as fast as America because they share research. Research is a worldwide phenomenon. NATO and Warsaw Pact used to "share" research by spying on one another. If the galaxy becomes highly interconnected we should see the same thing, although more scientific civs should be ahead of the curb, and of course aliens will have differing psychology and have trouble interpreting other aliens' research. I think this is what they meant by "three medium-sized empires might research things as fast as one big one".

I'm less worried about how the mechanic is achieved than it necessarily being modelled based on how things happen realistically, but it's not just about research sharing. There are plenty of examples of small but advanced societies competing (or surpassing) large societies in terms of technology (and there are plenty of large societies that had patches of good tech growth, then patches of stagnation - China is an excellent example here).

 

[SIEGE-109]

Typically in games the player and his real opponents are the more ambitious, dynamic civs. Decadent luddite empires are a type of neutral faction played by weak AI with research debuffed or turned off. Paradox actually said they want to have a game mode like that.

I have no idea how to model the social/psychological forces that determine whether a Civ will have a progressive(EDIT: I don't mean liberal, mean "progress"), driving spirit, or whether it will lose it's edge and slowly decay. I don't think ANYONE understands how it works in real life. Some ignore that inner fire altogether and pin everything on political determinism. Others claim that successful civilizations adopted MY favorite ideology and failed civilizations abandoned it.

The question is whether people want to play as decadent civilizations. Obviously there are people who want to play WH40k mods, but should it be in the main game?

 

[cookiesandmilk3]

I am inclined to agree. I think its safe to say that historically, the more open and accepting countries have better scientific establishments, as the free thinking required for innovative research is seen as enriching the state and not as a threat to its power. This should be reflected in game by some sort of boost to research.
I think there is some hope that this will be the case, as Doomdark cited Foundation as one of the inspirations for the game in the recent interview. In that series a small planet of scientists is able to outmaneuver the autocratic but less technologically advanced governments around them(though there are a few reasons for this) I would certainly like to see something similar happen in Stellaris.

I would say that scientific advancement is more linked to average prosperity and education than being free thinking. I hope that autocratic governments aren't penalised in research, because a society could be embracing of technological change while opposed to social change, and also because this idea that democracies, (or any ideology), are better at research, is a very biased one. It should be linked to cultural values, but prosperity and education should be the determining factors.

 

[Axe99]

I have no idea how to model the social/psychological forces that determine whether a Civ will have a progressive, driving spirit, or whether it will lose it's edge and slowly decay.

I'm just talking technology here, rather than progressive in a liberal/social way. Many countries where the enlightenment took place were anything but progressive in a political or social sense, but there were huge strides forward in technology. Other places that were socially progressive weren't particularly technologically advanced.

As @cookiesandmilk3 says, prosperity and education are important, but it's also possible to make substantial technological progress as a relatively large and poor authoritarian state (the USSR, for example), or to be large and relatively wealthy but stagnant technologically (China for a good many centuries).

One (but far from the only) thing about technology is the 'necessity is the mother of all invention' - the reason there are often huge strides in technology during periods of warfare and struggle is because the struggle is a strong motivating factor for people to push harder to overcome those difficulties. One of the ideas about capitalism (and I'm not saying it's correct, per se - I personally think there's some truth in it, but it's not as simple as the neocons make it out to be) is that a competitive free market creates pressure on people to innovate, which spurs new ideas. Of course, this pressure to innovate need not necessarily come from a free market - there are many ways to motivate people.

From a gameplay perspective, if I was to put something together off the top of my head, I'd model it as a choice about how a player wants to structure their society, but that this choice is only one element of things, with the culture/ethics of the society (and the pops in the society) playing into it as well, as well as how many resources are dedicated to research. So a large empire would be able to put more resources in (with a diminishing marginal return still), but there would still be the 'structure' element and the ethic elements playing into it. Just thoughts though, there are many ways to skin that particular gameplay cat.

 

[SIEGE-109]

Don't be so touchy, when I say "progressive" I AM talking about "progress" technology, general advancement etc, not leftism.

Your second paragraph makes my point. Does anyone really know what makes a society thrive or stagnate? No. So how are we going to model something like that?

 

[Axe99]

Don't be so touchy, when I say "progressive" I AM talking about "progress" technology, general advancement etc, not leftism.

Your second paragraph makes my point. Does anyone really know what makes a society thrive or stagnate? No. So how are we going to model something like that?

Sorry, didn't mean to sound touch, deffo not intended that way . As for societies thriving and stagnating, there has been a fair bit of work done on it. I haven't read up on it in a while, but there's easily enough work to support game mechanics for something like this (as I'm sure it would be relatively broad-brush stuff).

 

[SIEGE-109]

Source?

 

[Axe99]

Source?

No idea, it's been years since I read that kind of stuff, but it's out there. It's linked in a bit with work on political economy and the like, although it's not quite the same.

 

[Cyridius]

I am inclined to agree. I think its safe to say that historically, the more open and accepting countries have better scientific establishments

Not necessarily. The very closed Stalinist states in the USSR/Warsaw Pact had very advanced levels of research. For example, in space, where the old Soviet satellites and probes are still some of the best developed to date and have a huge number of records which remain unbroken.

Technologically speaking, the Soviet Union was rarely behind the rest of the world, and more often ahead. It was just, relative to the US, dirt poor. Similarly with Cuba, it's one of the most advanced countries for medicine and medical research. Iran is constantly developing new technologies and produces huge amounts of scientific materials, journals, theories etc to the point where it's the most rapidly developing on the planet.

So I don't think there's a correlation between the "openness" of society, which isn't really quantifiable in the first instance, and its scientific capacity. Indeed one could argue that the level of state intervention into the economy would be the measure to look at given state intervention has historically been the locomotive for scientific research.

 

[Axe99]

Not necessarily. The very closed Stalinist states in the USSR/Warsaw Pact had very advanced levels of research. For example, in space, where the old Soviet satellites and probes are still some of the best developed to date and have a huge number of records which remain unbroken.

Technologically speaking, the Soviet Union was rarely behind the rest of the world, and more often ahead. It was just, relative to the US, dirt poor. Similarly with Cuba, it's one of the most advanced countries for medicine and medical research. Iran is constantly developing new technologies and produces huge amounts of scientific materials, journals, theories etc to the point where it's the most rapidly developing on the planet.

So I don't think there's a correlation between the "openness" of society, which isn't really quantifiable in the first instance, and its scientific capacity. Indeed one could argue that the level of state intervention into the economy would be the measure to look at given state intervention has historically been the locomotive for scientific research.

This isn't quite the case. The USSR was very good in some areas (primarily military and space-related - which itself had a military slant) and behind in others (have you ever been in a Soviet car? I was over there in 92/93 at the end of it all, and they weren't much chop!). The USSR is a great case of a state focussing very hard on one area, but the broader society, by not being as open or innovative, not picking up the slack on the rest.

As for the state being the driver of scientific progress, this may be the case during armed conflict, but things like the Renaissance and the Enlightenment weren't driven by the state to any significant degree.

 

[SIEGE-109]

A major factor is simply the willingness to invest in research. The USSR may not have been an open society, but they had a lot of PhD's with state research grants.

 

[Titanius Puffin]

No idea, it's been years since I read that kind of stuff, but it's out there. It's linked in a bit with work on political economy and the like, although it's not quite the same.

Try Jared Diamond's 'Collapse' or maybe his 'Gun's Germ's and Steel' (though the latter might be a little off topic) .

I'm somewhat fond of Niall Ferguson's 'The Ascent of Money' as a history of finance, which had an important role in discovery, industry, and invention.

 

[Axe99]

Try Jared Diamond's 'Collapse' or maybe his 'Gun's Germ's and Steel' (though the latter might be a little off topic) .

I'm somewhat fond of Niall Ferguson's 'The Ascent of Money' as a history of finance, which had an important role in discovery, industry, and invention.

Collapse is good - I've read half of it, and I was thinking about mentioning it as a source, but I'm crook and can't read as much as I'd like these days (hence only reading half of Collapse, which is a great read). I've read more academic/focussed takes on it as well, and something scratching at the back of my head suggests reading some of Eric Hobsbawm's books may be a good idea, but the memory is so sketchy I'd take it with a huge grain of salt.

The more academic stuff comes from articles in academic journals on political science and economics and the like, and is from years (decades!) ago, so I can't recall anything. If people want me to, I can have a google and see if I can find anything interesting (and likely more recent).

A major factor is simply the willingness to invest in research. The USSR may not have been an open society, but they had a lot of PhD's with state research grants.

Absolutely - they also had a good, broad-based education system (something China also had, which has helped its technological development no end) - a good, broad-based education system is a key factor regardless of the size of the society.

One of the differences between a 'free market' and a 'state-driven' society (noting that it's not a dichotomy, both systems have elements of both in them, it's more a matter of degree) is that free market technological development tends to be a bit broader-based, while state-driven markets tend to be more focussed - so they'll get good at a few key things, but lag behind in others.