Making research cost more for bigger empires

Ephafn

Join Date 03/2006

Making research cost more for bigger empires

AKA research scaling

In most TBS strategy games I have played, the amount of research points created by an empire increases with its size, while the points cost of the technologies remains constant (at least with respect to the size of the empire). This gives empires who grow quickly in size early in the game, either by building or by conquering a lot of cities, a non-negligible technological advantage compared to smaller nations.

To counter this, I am proposing to make research costs increase with the size of an empire, thus making larger empires get new breakthroughs at the same speed as smaller ones (or even slower if their infrastructure is not as well developed). Note that I explicitly don't propose any particular way to do the scaling, or to define what "bigger" means in term of empires. I think that any such suggestion would only muddle the whole discussion about whether the game would be more enjoyable with some sort of scaling or not.

Advantages to scaling :

Staying small and focusing on research become a viable long term strategy.
Reduces the steam rolling aspect of large empires without having to cripple their economies.
Closer to what actually happened in the Antiquity and the Middle-Ages, where cities-states (like in Greece or Italy) where a lot more creative than large empires (Roman Empire, Egypt).
Alliances of smaller states get an easier time defending from the huge bully.
Gives reasons to simply pillage instead of always occupy conquered cities. Also gives reasons to give away less useful cities to some vassal.

Disadvantages to scaling :

Less intuitive to players, as less (territory) is sometimes more (research).
Can be less fun to players who like to steam roll their opponent with advanced weaponry.
Can badly interact with technological trading. (Note : depend strongly on how the trading is implemented, so it can go from being completely broken to working perfectly fine.)

And of course I missed some important arguments on both side of the fence, but this is only what I could though of.

So, what are your opinions about this question? Should large empires research be penalized to make it more in line with the smaller empire research? Or is it fine like in most TBS, where research costs do not depend on the empire size?

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Demiansky

Quoting Ephafn,

reply 25

Well from what you wrote, I think it all boil down to a matter of preference : should expansion (military or otherwise) be rewarded with faster research? My answer is no and I would guess that yours is yes. I find that the additional resources, military production and economical base are enough rewards for expansion, and adding faster research just overly favour expansionists nations. It is a game mechanism which actively help winners and obstruct losers (as defined by their size). A bad analogy would be that it's like playing soccer where you would get an extra player for every goal your team score.

Nah you don't understand my point at all. Also, apparently you're not familiar with a concept of conquest in strategy games.

1) In any strategy game i played, conquest was expensive. Depending on specific game mechanics, you lose production so you have less infrastructure, you pay significant unit upkeep so your research suffers, you need to research military techs instead of economy techs and/or you use some other significant resources.

2) If you're on conquest, your army is elsewhere. Like, not in your own cities. Hint: you're vulnerable at that moment.

So, if you commit to a conquest, (1) tells us that your economy suffers as it is, without any additional game mechanics. And (2) tells us that if you attack someone your defense becomes weaker even if you didn't lose any units yet (and you will). In other words, both your economy and military becomes weaker, but you hope to compensate your losses in the future with your newly conquered territory. If you don't get any significant extra research from new territories then your economic research may actually be worse than if you didn't conquer anything at all.

Non-military expansion is very cheap in many games, but military expansion isn't cheap at all. Maybe an extra-early rush is efficient vs AI players (but that's only because of the inferior scouting in TBS genre compared to RTS genre, and overall inferiority of the AI in combat), and even then other neighbours of the victim gain the opportunity to expand cheaply to the victim's land with a non-military expansion and gain free spoils from your costly military expansion (a rush).

So, i agree with you that non-military expansion shouldn't be rewarded too much (like, with extra research). After all, your expansion is limited by a randomly generated map. And if i want randomness to be rewarded, i'll rather play a lottery instead of a strategy game. However, military expansion is costly, risky and isn't that random-dependant so i think it should be rewaded significantly more than a non-military expansion.

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You are right when you say that military conquest is expansive. But any military expanses or economic penalties are short or medium terms problems. The research bonus however, is extremely powerful in the long term, long after your armies and economy have recovered. Furthermore, these penalties do not depend much on wheter your military conquest was successful or not, so it reinforce further the "winner advantage".

1) Military conquest already give you increased production base (for more troops), wealth and ressources. Don't you think that this is an already fitting reward for it?

2) Unscaled research tends to favor the uninteresting version of the steamroller effect : the victor is decided in the early game, but the actual victory will have to wait a while. Why is it so? Simply because early successes tend to increase the research speed, thus making further conquests easier, which lead to even more successes, and you see the pattern. This make it very hard for the underdog to get back in the game, no matter how good a player he is, simply because his research will never catch up to the leaders.

3) I many games, expansion (military or otherwise) is a matter of : If you can do it, do it. If you are strong enough to conquer your neighbor, it is almost never a bad idea to do so (diplomacy may be an exception). Scaling research cost is not going to change that completly, but at least it will make other playstyles worthwhile instead of pure expansion.

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Quoting Ephafn,

reply 27

You trade short-term/medium-term price for a long-term advantage. That's how it should be. Also, you also risk that your conquest will be unsuccessful, it will take too much time and so on, so you may lose more than you gain, even long-term.

Quoting Ephafn,

reply 27

1) Military conquest already give you increased production base (for more troops), wealth and ressources. Don't you think that this is an already fitting reward for it?

Well, if you don't get research for a military conquest and you're already lagging in research compared to others (they researched economy techs instead of military ones and built infrastructure instead of troops) then you have no other choice but to continue conquest, after all you will have no chances in the tech race. I think it isn't fun.

Quoting Ephafn,

reply 27

If conquest is inefficient, early land advantage will decide the game. The only valid strategy will be to either settle as much as possible or settle the best spots as fast as possible. After that, the game is decided as that early economic success leads you to a better economic success later and you finally win. It's even less interesting that way.

Quoting Ephafn,

reply 27

3) I many games, expansion (military or otherwise) is a matter of : If you can do it, do it. If you are strong enough to conquer your neighbor, it is almost never a bad idea to do so (diplomacy may be an exception). Scaling research cost is not going to change that completly, but at least it will make other playstyles worthwhile instead of pure expansion.

If there is a conquest in the game, then it MUST be efficient at least sometimes. If it's never efficient then there is no point to add it to strategic game at all. If you choose not to conquer when it's more efficient to conquer someone (and it happens at least sometmes, as i said) then you're playing a strategic game in a suboptimal way. I think you can just reduce the game difficulty a little and then you'll be able to win without conquest, lower difficulty will compensate for suboptimal play.

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