Atarlost wrote: ↑Tue Feb 26, 2019 1:55 amResearch losing relevance is not a serious problem. Running out of tech to research defines an endgame stage, but doesn't suck all of the fun out of the game if multiple players reach this stage near enough the same time for victory to remain in contention.
Depends on what you see as a "serious problem". If by "not a serious problem" you mean "does not break the game", yeah, sure, it's not
that serious.
But IMO it
is a serious problem, because research is one of the central, essential game mechanics, and therefore must stay relevant until game over. Some 4X games (e.g. Stellaris) solve this by having infinitely repeatable techs at the end of the tech tree. Not the most exiting and fun solution, but still better than having research become completely irrelevant in late game.
The much better approach in my eyes is to have an extensive tech tree, large enough so it's almost impossible to research everything over the course of an average game.
There are plenty of games that just don't have a research component at all but still manage to be fun.
Sure, but in those games research isn't a central, essential game mechanic.
Someone achieving an insurmountable tech lead does suck all of the fun out of the game.
Also true, but a different issue, which needs to be dealt with separately. And the underlying problem is not one specific to research, but a general one you have with all mechanics where you can "build up". One can achieve an insurmountable lead in all kinds of areas, e.g. production, which would lead to the exact same problem (sucking the fun out of the game).
The point is to make it sufficiently
difficult to achieve such an insurmountable lead, but not
impossible. After all, striving to achieve such a lead is what you normally do in a 4X game to win, so it needs to be possible to do so.