The regular galaxy status updates are great - and a question

Grifman,

I have an impending sense of doom because I don't seem to be able to research techs fast enough. This build is certainly different in this respect than the previous one.

I may have over compensated on the techs.

I like the techs now... before it took me WAY too long to get to the techs I wanted... now if I forcus on a specific point I want to get to I can get there within a reasonable amount of time... I don't know how many people are like me, but I like being able to complete a game in between 2-3 sittings... now I can.

Wyrenn,

That's one thing that is so nice about this game. I like long games, taking a week or more to complete. You and I both get what we want. LOL

I also like the research as it is at the moment. It seems well balanced,

Paul.

I think one tweak we'll add in is that the ORDER in which you research will matter.

Each technology adds a 2% cost to the next tech. A pretty minute difference at first but if you've received 50 techs, that means techs will take twice as long to research at that point.

Our goal is that a mature, reasonably strong civilization should be researching techs between 6 to 10 months apiece.

What we don't want is where every tech takes 30 months to do no matter what (other than the end game techs).

Brad,
towards the end game researching techs becomes too quick. Rather than 2% would it be possible to somehow link it to the total research ability of the galaxy?

Paul.

Hmm. that's a really interesting thought Solitair. But remember these 2%'s are cumulative. So wouldnt that have a similar affect?

I think build times are out of whack compared with research. Seems like I have alot more stuff researched than I can ever build. Seems it should be totally opposite to me - seems like once I research something I ought to be able to build the results of my research much faster.

Grifman

techs come in incredibly fast late to mid game in B3z-1, too fast to even care what they are, I dont read them any more, I have a huge list and planetary build items as a result of them that are stacked to the heavens.. This is partly to do with the cumulative impact of espionage I think, I am stealing a tech every two or three turns (literally) in my game against the Drengin at the moment. By the way they are giving me a hell of a battle

s (:(

oh by the way, I traded some techs with the evil D's for giving them peace but then kept getting messages over several turns that my spys had stolen 'tech X' and 'Tech Y' from them, however some(many) of tehse stolen techs I had already bought/traded earlier.

s

Brad,
last night I got a 3x research event. This quickly finished the game. I was researching techs at 1 a month (with only 5 planets on a medium galaxy!). The 2% per tech would help but would be a static fix.
By varying the increase depending on the total research the game would play differently depending on what all the empires were doing. This would also be a simple balance to the starting conditions. Play a small galaxy with habital planet everywhere or a large galaxy with rare planets, would both authmatically balance.
A variation would be to scale it by the amount of research being done (not capability). This could mean that an empire focussed on research not military or economy could potentially compete with bigger empires who focus less on research.

Paul.