Technologies ex-post not ex-ante

[IsaacCAT]

Preface: reading about how alfalfa was introduced in the Mediterranean possibly by Persian invasions has made me think about technological breakthroughs (Alfalfa improved the nutrition of the livestock, increasing its size)

Observation: the game uses research efficiency to advance technologically, but most of the times the requirements are past inventions and nothing else.

Suggestion: add world requirements to inventions akin to missions to be able to unlock them.

Why:

To make inventions feel they are consequence of the player actions in the World of Imperator and not only a timed mechanism.

How:

There are already inventions that require some World requisites before they are enabled. For example, Request line of succession for Republics to have one party in power or Scientific Patronage and Sponsored Research that require certain country Rank.

Other inventions should be linked to World requisites, too. For example an increase of food production should be tied to having a surplus of grain in your capital province (alfalfa).

Another example, national seal that gives +10% to improve opinion maximum could be linked to previously have established two client states by diplomacy. (In the future that could be improved by having a diplomat closing two client states deals successfully).

This will not stop players to decide how they want to play, on the contrary, it will reinforce their sense of deserving that invention.

 

[finmise]

A brilliant idea

 

[DukeLeto42]

I absolutely adore this. Making inventions feel as much like cool new toys to get as they are responses to the conditions of a society is a great way to make inventions behave more like, well, real-world inventions.

A couple ideas to add:

• Late-game innovations could be gated behind buildings. For instance, low stuff on the religion tree requires you to have a "great temple" building. To keep it interesting, this wouldn't require you to have the innovation to build them, so you could always just conquer someone who has them.
• "Urban planning" could require you to own a metropolis, while "rural planning" would require (as an idea) a province without cities and with all building slots full.
• Developing the siege-focused military tree requires having a legion with engineers, as then you have a professional military force ready to develop and deploy innovations.

 

[Bovrick]

Kinda reminds me of the moves Civ made towards Inspirations/Eureka events; always thought the next move for them would be to remove the generic Science outputs and instead have Science outputs linked to the actions around Eurekas (eg working Fishing tiles Grant's research towards relevant Techs until it no longer makes sense for any new techs to come from Fishing). That way you always have to change up your economy to keep any technological edge, rather than just snowball science into more science.

That tangent aside, it's a practice that I think is the logical next step for any strategy game with progress, so IR is included. This issue, as always, is getting AI to understand - but as long as technological progress is generated from things they should be doing anyway, and you can get them to do those things, then it should be surmountable.

 

[DukeLeto42]

Kinda reminds me of the moves Civ made towards Inspirations/Eureka events; always thought the next move for them would be to remove the generic Science outputs and instead have Science outputs linked to the actions around Eurekas (eg working Fishing tiles Grant's research towards relevant Techs until it no longer makes sense for any new techs to come from Fishing). That way you always have to change up your economy to keep any technological edge, rather than just snowball science into more science.

I think this is a really good point - modelling "science" generation as something done in a dedicated lab ignores how much of our technological development comes from (and especially has come from) use of, and experimentation with, technologies in the field.

That tangent aside, it's a practice that I think is the logical next step for any strategy game with progress, so IR is included. This issue, as always, is getting AI to understand - but as long as technological progress is generated from things they should be doing anyway, and you can get them to do those things, then it should be surmountable.

A major advantage, as you suggest, is that the AI doesn't need to be thinking "ok if I do this and this I can get to this innovation." If done right, unlocks should naturally come from pursuing the thing they benefit (e.g. tribes unlocking innovations that benefit tribesmen). That way, the AI gets unlocks at a suitable pace to give them decent things to do with their innovation points, while the player is free to take a hard left turn and pursue more sophisticated strategies.