Something Isn't Satisfying Regarding Research Robustness

You can just turn up the research speed when you create the new game. That way it won't take as long to get as advanced and you can diversify with less cost.

They seem to take too long, and require too much to have gone on before things start to get interesting.

As SargentPeter has said, you can crank up the research speed when you create a new game. Imho it's quite some fun fighting and playing with lower tech lvls, as there you don't have the "who attacks wins" situations you get in the later stage.

Simultaneously, I don't like that its a finite choice between investing in progress in one area, and not being able to make progress in other areas of research.

Actually that is on purpose to force you choose one weapon and defence branch and not to have everything.

Perhaps you should look at the research tree as a tool which you need to alter depending on your current strategy. If you pursue an influence victory, research those techs, if you go to galactic conquest, concentrate on weapons and invasion technology, etc. It's not as in X-Com, MOO etc. where you'll eventually research everything. In GalCiv2 you have to concentrate your research depending on your current needs. Imho this concept is quite fun and will make your games vary wildly because of that.

Actually I disagree, even setting research to slow (and really slow) I find that I research certain techs too quickly and that this actually hurts my civilization's progress as my planets are always upgrading their infrastructure...

Also I've found that by waiting as long as you can for weapons tech research you can research multiple weapons and/or defensive technologies simultaneously—wait until space weapons has been at 1 week for a while and then research it… you’ll get 5-6 extra techs. In an average game I’m able to research most if not all the defensive technology (which is absolutely necessary as different AIs will research different weapons branches) but usually start with armor (as its cheap research point wise).

What I dislike about the tech tree is how certain technologies are implemented, and the face that each race doesn’t have unique technologies (like in the back story how the reason Humans developed hyperspace engines was that they had developed ways of producing mass amounts of cheap energy—cold fusion) which would make things a little more interesting for example if the Yor could develop computer virus based weapons that could turn your ships against you in combat, or render your shielding inoperative…

"Actually that is on purpose to force you choose one weapon and defence branch and not to have everything."

Unless you have high diplomacy skill .

"wait until space weapons has been at 1 week for a while and then research it… you’ll get 5-6 extra techs"

Hmm, really? Interesting. That explains a lot.

They seem to take too long

Like Hal, I actually found tech progress too quickly even at the slowest setting. I have to constantly update my shipdesigns and buildings.

There is so much to research, that it would seem to offer differentiation in style, strategy, and approach in many ways, but the way it works now, it requires a myopic and singular approach at the expense of most all other research elements.

so... what is this singular approach? I have played about twenty some games so far, and have yet research techs in the same (or even similar) path. never had two games with similar techs (even with the same race).

While MOO may have had more interesting options on their research tree, it was even worse because you had to choose between them and were never able to research the other choices. Now that didn't make any sense to me.

Also I've found that by waiting as long as you can for weapons tech research you can research multiple weapons and/or defensive technologies simultaneously—wait until space weapons has been at 1 week for a while and then research it… you’ll get 5-6 extra techs. In an average game I’m able to research most if not all the defensive technology (which is absolutely necessary as different AIs will research different weapons branches) but usually start with armor (as its cheap research point wise).

Hmmm, not sure what to make of this, other than, "there's things about the game's functionality that I don't understand," but I can't say that I understand what you're saying.

Anyway, thanks for the inputs, its interesting to see different solutions and perspectives. Gonna stew on it and try to sort it out.

Ya, it just happened to me. It seems that if your resource point production is far in excess of what is required for a given tech, you will get that tech plus a bonus toward future techs. If that bonus is large enough, you'll essentially get "free" techs when you research the first tech.

It's not really a bonus, it's that techs have a set cost, and if you produce more than that cost in a single week the balance is automatically applied to the next tech.

Otherwise you would be getting screwed over in the scenario detailed above where they wait until the last minute to research weapons techs. You'd essentially be throwing away research points every week if they didn't carry over.

Still it makes leaving military research until its needed nice... I wait until one of the "bad" races starts to get all threatening and then ramp up the military research and blow them away with how quickly I can crank out the combat vessels....

And Scarpa's right its not a bonus, but it sure feels nice to see multiple discoveries in one week... makes all that money wasted on research centres feel like it was worth it...

Otherwise you would be getting screwed over in the scenario detailed above where they wait until the last minute to research weapons techs. You'd essentially be throwing away research points every week if they didn't carry over.

No, that would be if the game choose to throw them away. In Civ, for example, at the exact moment you finish researching something (ie: the moment when it's iterating over your cities and adding their research points into the global pool), it asks you what you want to research next. You have to pick something. So if you had the research to get 2 techs in a turn, you would get a choice as to what those two techs are.

GC2 doesn't let you have that choice. It applies those tech points to the "next" tech. The game ought to allow you to choose where the research goes, rather than just assuming that you want the next one. Granted, you get to change techs after it's totalled up everything from your planets, but that's not as good as being able to research the multiple techs that you truly want.

@Alfonse: Ehh, i like it this way. Keeps it nice and simple. Less microing=GOOD!

GC2 doesn't let you have that choice. It applies those tech points to the "next" tech. The game ought to allow you to choose where the research goes, rather than just assuming that you want the next one.

So it's misapplying a fraction of a week's production. BFD. It's not losing any research points, and you'll probably want those follow-on techs eventually.