Yeah, even "general category" research could get you easily RNG'd: you and your fiercest rival both research "waether control:rain" spells. He gets "summon Noah's flood". You get "summon light drizzle".

Alpha Centauri's research was one of the first things I thought of when I saw this thread.

I agree, Alpha Centauri style research would not be useful for spell research.  It would be very good for technology research though.

Some basic areas Elemental could use for focusing:

Warfare: armor and weapons, other military related areas

Industry: machines and tools, better production

Knowledge: makes research easier, unlocks important technology in other areas of focus

Expansion/Growth: improve city growth, better scouting, can use land better(ex better farms)

One of the best things about Alpha Centauri's research was that you could turn blind research off at the start of the game and be able to select what you want like in GCII and other games if you wanted to.

I really want technology with multiple pre-requisites where it makes sense(such as high quality weapons and armor requiring a cetain level of metalworking research in addition to previous weapon/armor research).

No, it was a complete accident while screwing around with magnetrons

Ah, so you're right, but you're still wrong where it matters. This Percy Spencer fellow was testing a magnetron developed to be used on radars; testing it to verify that it functioned as expected. He was in no way trying to figure out what other esoteric uses microwaves have - he was building and testing magnetrons for a very specific purpose, and happened to notice that his candy bar melted. So in this case, radar research led to a major technological breakthrough in heating food. The only similarity is that both things involve microwaves (but they involve them in very different ways) - and such fine distinctions do not make it to the surface in games. In a game, that magnetron research Percy Spencer was doing would probably be called something like "Radar +4" - it would seem a little odd to be looking at a research tree, noticing that "Microwave Oven" comes after "Radar +4", right? That's that progression was accidental. And blind or semi-blind research can emulate that to an extent, where it would simply look ridiculous in a fixed tree.

One of the reasons for this is that research in games tends to be result-driven, not method-driven. In a result-driven research model, you research things like "Radar +4," which makes your radar better, or "swords +3" which makes your swords better, or "gunpowder" which gives you the ability to make and use gunpowder. In a method-driven model, you'd research things like "microwave physics", which could then be applied to improve the magnetrons in your radar, or to make a microwave oven, etc. I have never seen a full-blown method-driven model, although some games (Civ IV for example) are a little bit mixed.

Let me rephrase: Alpha Centauri research is like GCII and other games if you turn off blind research in the game setup options.

Sorry, I quoted the wrong post. I meant to quote the same person you quoted, but then I must have quoted you and gotten confused about what I was arguing about, and with whom...

Yeah that would be ideal. I'm pretty sure we've thrown that idea a few times in these forums already, and every time I like it more and more. I don't know if it's doable (seems hard to give the player that much freedom), but if it is doable then I'd love for Stardock to do it I guess one way of doing it is to have some (or most) spells have general effects that cause different results in different scenarios. Like your example, a spell that raises the temperature of its target. If the target is a farm suffering penalties from particularly cold temperatures (whether permanent or seasonal, if there are seasons), the spell would act as climate control to increase the harvest and lengthen the growing season; if the target is your troops' weapons, their attacks sear their enemies causing more damage; if the target is a group or army of enemies or a map tile, it could cause a heat wave that significantly weakens encompassed units - it could also be used to target enemy farms to raise the temperature too high. So many possibilities! The main problem I can see with this is that it would be difficult to translate "increased temperature" into such a variety of results based on target, and to determine the magnitude of the effects. It certainly would be less straightforward. Another issue is that a few spells could be used for a huge range of actions, thus reducing the variety of spells. The biggest problem, though, is that the effects would almost have to be hard coded (indirectly - in this heat example changing temperature would have hard-coded effects on all potential targets), and thus there would be situations where what the game does and what you might expect (or want) are two very different things...

I was thinking more in the lines of "Neat things, these bows. Keep researching stuff like this."

"Oh great and glorious leader God and Emperor Lord Varenus, we have researched away and developed this awesomesome thingomajig - the Ballistae!"

Obviously, wheels and archery shouldn't be in the same category, even if "accidents" will happen if there are no more techs available without, for example, researching the "Wheel" prereq.

On the microwave digression, one of my uncles spent a large part of his career in whatever federal lab was responsible for testing microwave oven safety back in the days when they were new on the consumer market. Visiting his lab was the first time I was ever in one of those funky, foam-pylon-padded damper rooms and the first time I saw an infrared camera in action (maybe 1974?).

For several years around this time, my uncle made a habit of bringing an example of the latest and greatest microwave oven to our annual family reunions. But he stopped after the year when he went to bed early one night and a bunch of my cousins were old enough to drink with the other uncles, which led to an extended series of experiments on how different things blow up in microwave ovens. Apparently, we got off lucky because several things we'd played with (even though we at least knew to avoid metal) could have caused major damage to at least the oven, if not the entire kitchen. I don't at all remember everything my mad elders tried that night, but I thought the apples looked neatest because they didn't make that much mess but had still obviously exploded.

Not that I am in any actionable way encouraging anyone to do anything that their carefully-written microwave oven instructions forbid. Even if nothing seriously bad happens, the mess takes lots more time to clean up than it does to make...

I assume they tried marshmallow Peeps? The bloating is really quite a spectacle!

peeps in vacuum chambers are really funny.

I have also been attempting to inject excess air into Peeps using old insulin syringes, but they just don't have that much capacity..... it doesn't work all that well.,... although holding one over an open flame is quite a spectacle!

Good tip.   I assume you tried the lightbulb-in-pool-of-water trick? Also, according to the Mythbusters, the best sparks come from two sheets of accordion-folded aluminum foil about 2cm. apart..... or a CD.