Rate of Technology Advance

from Elemental Forums

Hey

Since the Game is so close to release one of the big things that still needs tweaking is the rate of technology advance.Technology is referring to the 5 trees (civilisation, war, magic, adventure, diplomacy)

If I could make a preference to the rate of technology advance I'd like to see something similar to the graph shown below.

 

This model assumes that an empire will continually expand, build more cities, captures territory continually through a normal game.

So at the start of a game your population is small and resources are scarce so technology advance is very low. As your empire begins to expand obviously the rate of tech advance improves a lot. The rate of tech improvement should probably peak somewhere in the early-mid game (I put in 150 turns as an example) and thereafter it should take progressively longer to get new techs (even with an expanding empire).

So all the basic stuff in the tech trees should be relatively easy to get i.e.

- military: getting archers, horses, spears, swords etc should be obtained without too much effort in research (by 150 in the example below). So now you can build a basic army of horsemen, bowmen, spearmen etc. However to improve upon those techs i.e. long bows, plate armor, magically enchanted weapons/armor etc should be more difficult to get (maybe 200-280 from below). By now your technology will allow you to produce a powerful army that can do almost anything.

After that come the exceedingly rarer and more difficult to obtain technologies (maybe you need to do a quest to be able to learn it, or they take a lot of time and or gildar to learn). Anyway these techs should not always be expected to obtained every game due to the cost, time and effort involved. Maybe the game ends before you can learn many of them.

But the idea here is that the tech tree should not end like it does in most strategy games. Things just end up becoming so hard to get that your chance of getting them is very low. This is important for 2 reasons

1. Technology shouldn't end - This is a big failure of most strategy games

2. It keeps interest in the tech tree and makes it worthwhile to continue to invest in it (i.e. you don't abandon technology once everything is learned). These techs should also be interesting - they should do more than give you a simple movement boost or a reduction is spell cost. The possibilities in elemental are enormous. New mineral types for better weapons, new abilities, new enchants, bonuses etc.

How do people feel about this model for tech advance?

 

Also please note that the number I put for turns is arbitrary - take the graph only as a trend or pattern

 

Technology Vs Time



4,318 views 9 replies
Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree, the race to the baddest army or whatever really kills the fun factor in most empire building games, and I for one want to play this game for more than 6 months. not to say the finished product won't hold my interest but a finite amount of stuff to research will make it dull real quick!

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting jeffalford, reply 2
I agree, the race to the baddest army or whatever really kills the fun factor in most empire building games, and I for one want to play this game for more than 6 months. not to say the finished product won't hold my interest but a finite amount of stuff to research will make it dull real quick!
End of jeffalford's quote

As long as it's done correctly the baddest(best) army will have at least two weaknesses thus a more complex paper, rock, scissors design.  So lets say an army of summoned devils would have a weakness to holy type attacks and ice type attacks.  Another example is an army of heavy cavalry mind flayers would have a weakness to missile weapons and sound(air) type attacks.  No single player can actively have all defense counters in sufficient numbers actively waiting for whichever baddest(best) army appears. 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

From my initial impressions, the game as written doesn't seem to have much of a counter sufficient built-in - or at least isn't reporting it properly.

Where are elemental and magical resistances, for example?  Whats the difference between the elementals of various types?

Where can you even see whether a unit's armor is good vs slashing or vs something else?

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Mmm good point OP

On another note: I do wonder though if the technology tree is a little flawed in that if you miss a basic technology, like for instance harvesting, and you try to come back to it later, it will cost and take so much longer to research than it really should.  I like the idea of costing that was seen in Galact Civs, or things like Master of orion or MoM.  Why did we move to this kinda crappy linear progression of technology.... "Lets research and then we might discover something"  rather than lets focus on something to discover more about it"  Seems Back arsewards (arse Backwards).

I agree completely with the OP! 

I guess the way it stands at the moment is based on the chance that you get the option to get the technology (I don't think this is the best way of doing it, but if I had to work with this model then:)... You would probably have times where you were researching technology with no real chance of getting any upgrades at the end of it, but you would hope the next time you upgrade in that area, you would have a better chance to get an upgrade.  Is that the correct thinking?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Thanks for the feedback

One thing that always irked me about the older tbs games was the linear tech research and finite tech trees. But also tech development needs to be paced well so your army isn't rendered obsolete every 10 turns.

And I also agree fully with NTJedi and Scooter. The game will only have a strategic feel if a rock-paper-scissors system is implemented. The implementation of unit abilities should go a long way to help this. Also equipment stats need to be adjusted. Example is plate armour soldiers should have a penalty to move & attack speed, 2 hand weapons can't use shields in combat. And I agree with the resistance stat. Such a stat would be good for determining a units susceptibility to spell based attacks (although the Devs may have a better idea already)

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I believe that there are techs that are rare and you will not see in every game regardles of how much you put into research. As well the chance of some techs appearing each time you research goes down with the higher level techs. So acquiring them isn't so easy and does take a few attempts.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

i agree with you.  i never want to hit the end if at all possible.  i understand that you just cant keep getting improvements to your cities.  but more passive improvements would help.  the main problem i see is in balancing tech for the small maps vs large maps.  on a tiny or small map you should never see the end, on the biggest maps, you should still be getting new stuff 200 to 300 turns in.  this is important.