"Knowledge" is not an arbitrary amount. It is a very real quantity, but there is no number that the computer stores to represent it. It is something that I designed to be an inherent part of the tech level number. The knowledge amount has a direct linear correlation to the helper effect of that technology and any applications based on that technology. It also is directly related to how much tech level an RP gives you. Anything that changes the knowledge amount that is inherent in a tech level will cause problems. Your scaling change will warp the relationship between knowledge and tech level.

If you start Computers at Level 70 and have them be Level 100 in the year 2000, then you are telling the helper technology and application effectiveness formulas that today's computers only provide a benefit of eight times the benefit of the first computer. This is what I meant when I referred to the equations gatting fouled up. If you cram all of computer development into 30 tech levels, then a growth in computer technology will be much less important than it should be.

Think of an application that depends on computers and something else. If G is the default and L is zero, then the device will take 20 tech levels to become obsolete. Those 20 levels represent almost all of the development of computers, meaning that the thing has a ridiculously long lifetime. But if you make G smaller, then the application will become obsolete with only a small rise in the other technology.

This can be gotten around by making h values for computer technologies a lot higher than the h values for other technologies. But you will have to alter the h values for every technology like computers that violates the 2x per 10 scaling rule. This will mean a huge amount of work fine-tuning the system, and then there would probably still be bugs and problems.

Anything that makes tech rise at a rate other than 2x knowledge per 10 levels will force us to alter the h constants in every helper tech and application formula. We will also have to change some other things, like m and DR, to make it work the way you want it to. This alteration will take forever and opens the door for lots of bugs.

Keeping a strict 2x per 10 rule will not destroy the 'unity and flow' of the system. It is in fact the only way to preserve the unity of tech growth. Under your system, a rise in tech level would mean a different thing for every technology. Players would have to remember that a rise in agriculture means a lot less than a rise in electronics. They would remain forever confused about how much effort is required to get to a goal that is some number if tech levels in the future. I think that this would be worse than having different tech levels for different fields of study.

You seem to be imagining a tech scaling ideal that was never actually in the system. There would almost never be a time when every tech was at the same level. There would always be a lot of variation, except about 2000 AD. If you try to fix things so that all techs are at the same level all of the time, you will have to alter a lot of constants for almost every tech and application on the tree.

It makes a lot of sense to me to set technologies so that the level of a tech always represents some fraction of the knowledge in the modern era. If a tech level of 60 always means that your civ has 1/16th of modern knowledge in that field, then the tech nombers actually mean something.

People understand that techs will naturally rise at a different rate; it shouldn't be a problem to have a new technology be lower than some others. Everyone knows that computers in 1960 were a lot more 'primitive' than agriculture in 1960, so why would it be bad for them to have a lower tech level to represent that?

You seem to be imagining that tech levels are something they were not meant to be. I didn't explain exactly what a tech level is, which caused some of this confusion. So:

A tech level is a number on a logarithmic scale that represents your civ's knowledge in some specific field relative to human knowledge in that field at the end of the 20th century.

Or more simply:

A tech level is a number that represents knowledge relative to human knowledge at the end of the 20th century.

I would say that our ability to put computers to practical use has doubled about every seven or eight years. Hardware specs have risen a lot faster, but that is not what we are measuring.
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I don't think there's any way that you can claim that the "knowledge" in the computer manufacturing industry currently is more than the sum total of all other knowledge in all other areas (with perhaps a few exceptions) from 5000 B.C.
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I never made that claim. What I said was that the ratio of current computer ability to 1960's computer ability is similar to the ratio of current agricultural ability to the agricultural ability of the ancient Sumerians.

I have been thinking in terms of what a thing can do, not the amount of data that has been collected or the technical specs of something. Knowledge is the ability of the thing to aid your civ by doing something useful; the knowledge of its practical applications.

Well, like I said above, I think we have sufficient agreement to allow a test of the technology system. We could argue the minutiae of agricultural vs computer progress and such forever, and I don't think it will help our cause much.

There will also be a Linkage button which will allow you to create the dependancies that a technology has.
So you will select a technology, and then select another parent technology, and the percentage the child is dependant on the parent.

This percentage should add up to 100%.

This will then be saved to a text file.
You will also have the ability to load an existing tech tree up into it.

I am also considering writing a tech development simulator where you watch time go buy with certain resources and you
can allocate your development and see how your technology ability grows over time.
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So ya'll have decided to use encapsulation instead of an object inheritance hierarchy, it seems?

One basic 'tech' object, with properties that can be set?

This choice carries serious costs, as I'm sure ya'll know. Have those choices been discussed yet? Specifically, this means that the techs can not be too involved, in terms of how they interact with other models. Gains in flexibility have a cost. The other choice is to 'inherit'. It would be somewhat less simple to create custom techs 'on the fly', but the techs would be much, much more powerful and unique. It looks like Lordy has chosen 'inheritance' for the 'Wonder' model.

With this approach, would a tech be able to modify another object (wonder, unit, resource)?

For example, can a tech decrease wonder build time? Or could a tech increase the speed/power/armor of a single, specific unit? Or could a tech increase the processing speed of grain (not all food, just grain)? Would a tech be able to increase the speed of aircraft? The range of a single weapon-type?

With an object hierarchy, you have that power, that uniqueness, that customizability of behavior. That is usually what you give up when you use encapsulation. Encapsulation is usually used when you will change something often, on the fly, like in the middle of a game. And it doesn't seem like you will be doing that. Does this 'model' allow for those kinds of tech, in some way I missed?

With this approach, would a tech be able to modify another object (wonder, unit, resource)?
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Theoretically it could certain objects, but not everything. It just depends on the type of object. FE infantry can have upgraded weapons and armor as well as tactics, but things like city walls unless you pretty much rebuild them won't be able to gain anything much (few exceptions like towers FE).

For example, can a tech decrease wonder build time?
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Prob not

Or could a tech increase the speed/power/armor of a single, specific unit?
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Specific unit or unit type. No and yes.

Or could a tech increase the processing speed of grain (not all food, just grain)?
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Um not sure. I would think so.

Would a tech be able to increase the speed of aircraft?
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Yes.

The range of a single weapon-type?
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Yes, and accuracy and effectiveness.

Each thing u decibed that i agreed to can only be done so much the burden of diminishing returns on improvements.

Actually, the reason I'm going on and on about OOA for the tech system is that this is not going to be powerful, as it currently stands.

They have already made that design choice. There is no object hierarchy for tech objects. All tech objects will use a single method to apply their bonuses. Which means two things:

1. That method will have a switch statement with 100+ parts, and associated methods -- one for each tech (a coding nightmare!!!).
   
2. All tech objects will have to behave in a basically similar way.
   

Using an object approach, you can just have the 'applyTechBonus()' method take an 'object' parameter. And that parameter can be anything. So that tech can change anything in that object. Pass in a Wonder object, and you can modify anything in that wonder with that tech. Same with units -- individual or type. Or resource, or civ, or mapsquare, and on, and on. Any object. Any modification in that object.

This is what you give up when you choose not to use an object hierarchy. They can try and simulate this behavior with a switch statement, but with so many different cases that will be almost totally impossible, for a half-dozen reasons. And it means you have to re-code the basic tech object for every new tech 'type'. And if whoever does that modification makes a mistake, it can bring down the whole tech system.

And that's why I'm on about doing some OOA on this tech system before they get started coding!!!

How would this 'alter variable' command be coded?

I don't see how this works, with your current design. The coding will be a huge mess.

Has Garth indicated how he plans this part? Specifically, how can ya'll use this command/method to apply to any variable in the game?

Wouldn't it require variables to have unique names across all models -- no name duplication allowed from model to model? That would be a nightmare, too.

This means that a certain rise in tech level always corresponds to a certain gain in knowledge or ability. A rise of ten tech levels will always mean a doubling of knowledge or skill. Also, it is easy to judge your progress in a technology. A tech level of 70 always means that your technology is one eighth as good as modern technology.

Another problem is that it is harder to define a starting point for the tech. Is level zero agriculture the kind the Egyptians had in 6000 BC or the kind of agriculture the Sumerians had at the same time? Once you lose the clear tech level standard, the model becomes less coherent.

What technologies have doubleed more then ten times in history? Remember that the tech level is based on what you can do with the tech, not technical specifications.

Another problem is that it is harder to define a starting point for the tech. Is level zero agriculture the kind the Egyptians had in 6000 BC or the kind of agriculture the Sumerians had at the same time? Once you lose the clear tech level standard, the model becomes less coherent.
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What do you mean the meaning is lost? The players would still know that there scores are doubling every 10 or 1 (whatever scale we use) in effiency, productivity whatever. That's easier than trying to define everything based on modern day. It also has the problem when dealing with future techs what we shall define them as.

Also we don't have to base the starting value on any of theirs. The starting value is the minimum ness for anyone. FE minimum agriculture would be that you know how to plant your own plants that you would other scavange for.

What technologies have doubleed more then ten times in history? Remember that the tech level is based on what you can do with the tech, not technical specifications.
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I would say transportation is one. We've gone from travel by foot and small canoe-like boats to cars, huge steel ships capable of ocean travel, air and space flight have also been achieved.

Medicine and related fields have done so. From herbal remedies shrouded in obscurity to on the verge of eliminating diseases that have plauged mankind for eons.

Mathematics could possibly be one, if not it comes close. I mean how many people back in the BCE era needed imaginary numbers? They didn't even have the number 0 (with the exception of China later on).

Now there are many fields that will fit nicely into here like agriculture, physics, chemistry, economics, etc. I just don't think we should base it on 1 time period and if we do it shouldn't be at modern day, but when we begin the game. People will understand more then because they can compare it to when they started the game and how they grow from there instead of trying to see how they compare to present day because on dec 31, 2000 probably no one will ever have everything equal to modern day.

I have a hard time imagining that our medicine or any other tech is well over 1024 times as good as they were in ancient civilizations. Are people more than 1024 times as healthy or over 1024 times less likely to die of a disease? I know that the amount of raw data we have has doubled more then ten times, but the application and effects of that data have not grown nearly as much. Ten doublings is a huge change, and should be more than enough to cover the scope of human history to the present.

If we double skill for every one tech level, then we have to display only one digit or a decimal number. People will want to know tech with more precision then a doubling (think of the military consequences of tech levels) and I think decimals are a lot uglier and messier than a two-digit number.

I was trying to be good, and keep my nose out of things, but since opinions were solicited!

I wasn't really suggesting a complete overhaul, but rather some tweaking. One easy place to modify the 2x per 10 is in the handling of applications. They already have a structure for increasing faster or slower.

So my suggestion would be that we go from 1 to 100 with 2x per 10 as the nominal value for every tech. But where we think that isn't appropriate we can make corrections in application effectiveness to somewhat compensate. I think that this would work well enough for a game, although there will clearly be some irregularities.

I just want to avoid really turning most players off by things like having Medicine inexplicably start at 30, or -20! If computers start at 40 when everything else is at 60, as we have discussed before, I don't think is a big deal, and we can do it the way you envision.

For a tech to go from 0 to 100 when it normally would not, we have to change all of the following numbers:

m and c for the technology
h and O for every technology that is affected by the tech
h and O for every technology that helps this tech.
The W value for the tech.
h, L, G, and F for every application that is affected by the technology.

How about we do everything Exactly as you have it worked out now, but with one modification. Just for the player interface, re-scale all the model tech level numbers to the admittedly arbitrary 0-100 scale.

So if Agriculture fits naturally on the 0-100 scale it is just left as is. But if Medicine starts at the beginning of the game at +30 so as to keep the 2x scaling right, just apply a simple linear formula to rescale the 30-100 range so that the player sees to 0-100. No modifications are necessary except in the interface, and those are trivial. Trust me, virtually nobody will care that the exact 2x per 10 scaling is slightly broken for Medicine... and players will have something they can make sense out of.

LGJ:

Assuming you were responding to me, what problems are caused for future techs by the 0-100 scale???

Richard: