Tigz

Join Date 02/2006

Tech Tree Penalties

Is anyone else finding the tech tree penalties a little annoying? The penalty I'm talking about is the one that if you keep researching down one tree all the way to the right it increases the research cost of even basic techs from the beginning age in all the other tech trees. For example I've got 1878 per turn of research coming in and it takes me two turns to research Missile Augmentation. Where as if I go back to a previous save where I haven't researched nearly as much to the right in the tech tree it only take four turns to research Missile Augmentation at 383 research points per turn.

So ~1532 Total Points to research Missile Augmentation earlier compared to 2 turns of 1878 research per turn later in the game. I don't think there is a way to show the actual cost of the tech unless someone has figured out how to show that?

My concern is that this penalty system, severely hampers anyone who doesn't research every tech from that age before moving on to the next. Sure it prevents people from shooting down the research tree (as mentioned in a dev stream) but it prevents players from customization their advances to suit the current needs of their empire. Say you were going for a non conquest victory and then you get halfway through the game and are finding that you can't win in that direction. So you start researching war related techs only to find there is almost no way to catch up in that tech tree when compared to other empires because of the penalties you are receiving for lower end techs. Even if you have already maxed out all research related techs.

Just seems a bit ridiculous to me that the penalties are this strong. Anyone have similar thoughts or is everyone liking the current system? I'm curious to hear your pros and cons.

Locked Post +1 Karma

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

DARCA1213

Join Date 01/2014

+106

I didn't know till you told me and now I hate it. I also want to see the tech prices.

Thanks for pointing this out, this is total stupidly and pointless all of it. If the ages were gone, players could play the game they want and not have to limp though the tech tree or as you said become penalized for taking a different strategy which was the whole convoluted point of the ages to start with.

DARCA.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Honestly, I don't mind the ages too much, as it's just a construct that I can get around, but I can understand how it can hamper some players play style. (I guess I think of ages as a no Zerg rush rule built into the game.) I haven't actually tried to just research straight on one tech tree (colonization, warfare etc.) and see if it prevents me from moving up to the next age without researching any other tech tree though. I've found you have to branch in the initially stages, otherwise wealth or production becomes an issue so it doesn't matter if you have lots of warfare tech since you can't build anything.

I just don't understand the retroactive penalty for researching to far right and not keeping up (researching right) in a completely unrelated tech tree. As in the game I'm playing right now. I'm researched all research bonuses in the colonization tech tree I could possible have, but now all my research costs actually more in the warfare tech tree? Shouldn't my penalty be that if I spend all my research in one area (colonization) but neglect the warfare tech tree, I'm weak military and easy to conquer if my diplomacy/initial forces are overcome from an aggressive empire? Lore wise the penalty makes even less sense. As what are the scientists doing in their fancy research spheres, "Hey we have all this fancy stuff, but it actually makes it harder to invent this weird thing called "missiles"."

Successfully updated karma reason!

androshalforc

Join Date 03/2007

+62

I agree I don't like the idea of a penalty to research based on ignoring a tech branch

I like the idea of a soft cap of making techs from a next age cost more if you haven't truly reached That age however the inverse should be true that techs from a previous age actually cost less to research

the only reason I could think of for the current system is that your scientists have become so focused on learning to learn or make money or terraform that switching to a different field is difficult

" we've spent the last ten years learning to make the environment better and now you want us to come up with a way to destroy it?"

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting androshalforc,

reply 3

" we've spent the last ten years learning to make the environment better and now you want us to come up with a way to destroy it?"

Which should be easy considering that you have to know what destroys to make the environment better. AND you know what works for plants/etc and what doesn't thus you can make a unstoppable biological weapon tailored to destroy what you wish.

Successfully updated karma reason!