I'd like to see a system where we only have one science resource, but still have the three tech fields. The player would then use a weighting system to decide what proportion of their science income is dedicated to each field.
I can see a few of benefits to something like the above.
- It would introduce a nice bit of decision making to the research side of the game. Empires could choose to specialise their tech. It would also make it harder for someone to be preeminent in all tech without having to seriously dedicate their empire to science, as they have be able to out tech even specialised empires.
- It simplifies resources without reducing depth. As people have said there really isn't a reason to have 3 science resources at the moment, they are mostly UI clutter because we have little control of which tech resource we can generate.
- Tech treaties might actually become useful again as specialised empires could make deals with those specialised in other fields to help round out their technologies.
- It is also a reasonable approximation of how actual research works. There is a finite pot of resources and dedicating more to a given field means the others lose out.
This sounds like a good solution.
Other games had an excess money slider where you could put currency into research or "entertainment/culture".
Being as at the moment you can stockpile resources and use edicts every X years I don't see much of a difference between a monthly upkeep and it would reduce having to click on it every so often. The slider could have diminishing returns (and work both ways by increasing or decreasing expenditure on empire research point generation).
Also having a a single pool of research means that you could get rid of the three vague areas and change them to core theoretical sciences. I never understood why society research was both biological and society and "engineering" sounded a bit too vague too!
You could have several theoretical core fields (eg: Social Science, Biology, Physics, Chemistry) which you plow "research points". You can use a slider to determine which emphasis you want (with diminishing returns for excessive specialisation unless you have traits, techs, buildings, ethos, modifiers etc)
The amount you put into each theoretical area gives you the speed of research and the type of research cards you have turn up. Research cards can then be "practical" sciences... things like Architecture, Farming, Genetics, Naval Warfare, Energy Fields, Particles, Statecraft etc etc. These cards will be put into research slots and to be researched will consume one or more of the theoretical core research pools.
I would say each civilisation should have 2-4 research slots, as this allows for a measure of concentration, with the ability to add more with time, but I wouldn't think more than 5.
So all of this gives options to generalise or to really throw everything you have after that one technology you REALLY want, but that is expensive... all the while having random cards determine what you get, but you can still mildly influence that. You could even have benefits like (encourage free thinking) mean that you get some out there technologies that are rare.
This is a pretty fundamental change and would take some UI work, but keeps the randomness that the game seems to want
