"One could say more micromanagement though I would disagree there. and as for the K.I.S.S. aurgument, dammit this is a PC title and a TBS Wargame. We want some more complicated mechanics to gives us a deeper experience."

That surely sums up my feelings.

Agreed with john_hughes. It'd be a nightmare of building and rebuilding to get optimal researching done.

All I really want is a more interactive tech tree. Right now it seems like were just given a list and we pick one every once in a while. After the initial research into a category, it seems like endless opportunities open up and there's no real flow to the whole thing.

@John-Hughes

Perhaps you could make it so that new research buildings won't count towards research until after the breakthrough your currently working towards? Regardless, the point is to avoid a situation where any one strategy becomes the be all end all, and although the strategy you pointed out is possible you'd be making some significant resource and research sacrifices trying to be jack of all trades rather then focusing on a specific path. In any case in the later stages the strategy wouldn't even be possible economically... If someone wants to attempt this in the early game, its their resources and time they'd be wasting... Not mine.

Lets say an early research building takes 5 turns to build... To research something in that field as you are now takes 15 turns. When you demolish your current buildings to build buildings for that specific research branch you lose the half-input they were generating, meaning now it would take you 25 turns to research... 5 turns pass you build your first specialized building. 20 turns was reduced to 12 turns. You still have to wait 5 more turns for the next building, once its built 7 turns will be reduced to 2 turns... It still would take you 12 turns working in the same city as opposed to 15. This doesn't include gold costs or materials spent.

If you have several towns the time to build would be alleviated... Possibly turning 15 turns into 6 or so... Personally If I wanted to be a jack of all trades I'd probably just build several different buildings since most will have natural factors in addition to their RP output. A Barracks may produce Military RP but it also strengthens your troops, or lets you make squads etc. A wizard tower may give Magic RP, but it also grants spell research. An Inn may give Adventuring RP but it also grants prestige to the city its in and could have an effect in drawing adventurers. Its not like they are buildings dedicated strictly to research, they just grant research in their field in addition to whatever use they may have. You'd actually be better off building balanced cities if you want to be a Jack of all, rather then attempting your method.

However, if you don't want to be a jack of all, which is the point to begin with. Then you can just focus on military buildings and it wont hamper your research output for warfare... Or you can be a civilization dedicated to magic and you wouldn't have to worry about civics based research upgrades because your wizard towers and arcane labs are what do the Magic research.

Hell you could still have civics based research buildings like Schools... I'd just make it so that they grant a smaller amount of RP to each field rather then trump a specialized building in its field.

What should produce more magic RP? A school or a wizards tower? I don't think that's too hard to figure out.

Also another drawback to the constant rebuilding is that in my example the building themselves do more than just produce RP's, they also provide a basic function.  So if you were to decide you wanted to research magic and focus on that. You rip out all but farms, houses, and magic producing buildings. This would also mean you have no Material Production, Gold Production, Prestige, Army Production, yadda yadda. It might be a viable specilization, I think in practice though as pigeon said the opportunity cost would become to high for that kind of behavior. Not saying if you took one city and defined it as tha it might not be possible. Hell it even becomes a viable strategy. But I think it would be far from overpowering. If you tried that with all your cities I think you would find yourself running out of resources so fast it would become a losing strategy.

That being said obviously each tech tree would also have an associated building that was pure RP's without another function. and that bonus would have to be bigger than the basic bonuses from building that come with other functions. You could possible use those to min/max and rebuild. But I see that as less of an issue because you would still want your basic infrastructure there. So the number of tiles you had available for that kind of stuff would remain relatively low.

But yeah it might be possible lol. Your last post slipped in while typing this one. And you are right it would have to be balanced.

Wow Sareln, Nice thought into that. Great expansion on the original idea. My only disagreement would be the base research points. The system I proposed tends to mean that all RP's need to be specialized. But beyond that that is definitely a logiccal step in the right direction.

I respectfully disagree but can offer an alternative to satisfy both arguments.

To avoid over complication, why not give a basic research bonus for specific tech categories instead?  This way you retain all the benefits of the original system and avoid any research railroading plus retraining the average tbs player.

For example if I am researching the espionage tech then I can receive x points from research buildings but get an additional point for each tavern built.  The bonus would only apply to that technology, so the player must decide if building the infrastructure is worth it.

Edit: I'd like to add the devs have stated that the GalCiv research path is preferably avoided.

I really like your suggestion, and I think I do agree with this concern. I think that they should either go with something like your suggestion, or retain the general research structures like schools, but also make specialized structures provide research for the relevant research line.

But then, would specialized RPs build up even if you aren't researching that line? If I have 10 General RPs, 3 warefare RPs, 4 Magic RPs, and 1 Adventuring RP, what happens if I'm researching warfare? Do I produce 13 RPs in warfare, 4 in magic, and 1 in adventuring? Or do I just produce 13 in warfare? Both would allow specialization, but I'm not sure which I prefer. The second scenario is a little cleaner, but it'd also be kinda cool to be able to produce , say, 10 general RPs and 10 warfare RPs. That way, you'd be chugging along at a good pace in your chosen specialization (warfare in this example), with 10 general RPs to direct at the other lines, or even doubling up on warfare.

My intent, at the time of writing, was to have points accumulate regardless of what you were researching.  In this case, the first scenario you describe best captures the idea I was trying to communicate.

That might actually be something to re-examine.  What does it really mean when we say: "Starting from scratch?".  Does it mean that everything about civilized life needs to be rediscovered? Or have the people retained some form of knowledge over the cataclysm - like, say, farming.

You say we're coming back to the discussion, so in summary what ground has already been covered?

I think we can skip much of that realism and still have a small something to build an intuitive sense that you just can't rip out the old specialization buildings every time you switch tech paths:  building pre-reqs.

Example:

Put the War Academy at the end of a building line: Training Yard, Arena, Barracks, Military Academy.  Each building replaces the one in series with it.  Eg. you can build a training yard in any slot, you can only build arenas on top of training yards, barracks on arenas, and the academy only on top of barracks.

There is an issue with War Academies only giving a research modifier - and that's what we do with multiple buildings.  Will their research mod only apply to RPs coming out of that city? Are they empire-wide? If they're empire wide, how do we balance large and small empires?  I guess the big thing, is that if I'm putting the text: "Increases Civilization Research by 30% Empire Wide" on a building, I want it to have close to that effect as possible. eg. if a person is generating 100 RPs/Turn, and they build a Civil Service Academy somewhere, they should see 130 RPs/Turn when researching civilization.

You seem to be rather stuck on Civ IV ... speaking of cottage economies and specialist economies. Don't get me wrong, Civ IV is great ... but we are talking about Elemental here. There will be building based economies (kingdom) and unit based economies (empire) ... and also their will be, at a more micro level, a build first and recruit first dichotomy ... or more accurately, to stay and improve your city or to wander and recruit NPCs. Nevertheless, this second dichotomy seems rather luck based, and I don't see how you could make it properly balanced (giving just the right number of advantages to a "stay at home" sov.

One interesting advantage to staying at home could be in the realm of "random" events. I say it with quotes because it is mostly affected by your terrain environment and player actions rather than complete RNG. In any event, if your Sov isn't in a city, the AI or RNG is going to randomly pick one of your available options ... while if your there you get to pick the choice and get experience (for good choices only?)

*finishes a game of CIV IV*

*plays his turn for a FfH PBEM - damn Stasis*

Nothing wrong with being stuck on CIV IV from this one, that's good stuff there .

There are always opportunities for abuse in systems, that's why designing successful and interesting strategy games is both difficult and rewarding.  Abusing systems is something that players/humans, especially those that play strategy games, try to do.  Abuse is a tricky word - take the CIV IV system, is it abuse to commerce-specialize your capital, run bureaucracy, and build as many science multipliers in your cap as possible? Or is that just good play?  I'm not saying this to go: "oh, all systems have holes, so the holes in this one don't matter".  I'm saying this because I think that we can fill most of the holes in this system, and be rewarded with a game that plays differently from the "standard" that CIV has set.

This vision I have for this system does not have every building generate RPs, but rather, only specific research buildings which do the "big" thing for that tech category - eg. War trains troops, Civics improves cities.  So the idea is, some inventions in this category are important to keep your kingdom developing forward (those which give buildings which generate RPs of some kind), but there are other inventions worth grabbing in the category, so you're balancing further development of your research capacity against practical applications now.

I have mostly been thinking in the kingdom mode, since the empires look to be geared in a rather dramatically different manner (the unit economy).  However, I do think some of the ideas we're tossing around are portable to both systems.  Eg. a war academy becomes a "Warrior Mystic" who's awesome at combat, can recruit followers to himself when in a city, and generates RPs which can be directed anywhere, but generates more RPs when the focus is War (to copy the last War Academy example I used).

This is kinda the best of such decisions I have seen thus far. Of course, you should also include a Magical Academy and an Adventurers Guild. Maybe even the (worthless) Guild of Diplomats. That way, you can only have a max of 2 ACADEMIES in any city, they all add research, but also add to their own specific field.

Either way ... I think its best if buildings that give specialized RPs don't do so in a potentially overblown manner, yet at the same time contribute significantly when you are researching X technology ... and not contributing when you are not. Or rather ... the War Academy might give a constant +5 research and +1 war research. When researching a War technology however, you get a total of +5 research and +10 war research.