Stopping Tech

[Trax06]

Hello, I have often wanted to halt tech around the Middle ages but have never quite found that option. Airplanes are great and everything, but with my playstyle I never have more then a defensive force until near the end of tech. I rarely get involved in middle age battles, and would love to be able to concentrate on military before planes are flying around. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Blake]

Well once you get Cannons it's pretty easy to overrun the world. That can be a good point to stop research.

However stopping research doesn't really help you conquer fast even if researching wont help you conquer faster either.

The reason is that the best civic for the final war is Police State, you can only spend the gold on upgrades, but since you've stopped research you wont get more advanced units to upgrade to...

So "Stopping tech" really means stalling tech to completely upgrade your armies, then resuming research for want of anything better to do. Of course you can also heavily rely on the culture slider to keep everyone productive... but chances are you'll still have more commerce than can you use.

[Trax06]

Thanks for the reply. Let me try and clarify. I want to stop all techs from advancing past a certain point to essentially freeze the game into a time frame.

[DirtyMartini]

play on epic or marathon. this won't freeze it, but will slow it down significantly.

[wodan11]

Or, go into the xml and edit the files. Shouldn't be too hard to make a half dozen key techs require 10 bazillion beakers each.

Wodan

[Calvin Vu]

Originally posted by wodan11
Or, go into the xml and edit the files. Shouldn't be too hard to make a half dozen key techs require 10 bazillion beakers each.

Wodan

Ha ha ... That's a good idea but it can be a bit of a cheat on the AI since they may still try to spend 80% of their income on researching those 10 bazillion beaker techs while the human player is building up his army.

It takes more work but if you can tripple the cost of all techs without increasing the number of turns then when the clock runs out, the best civs can probably advance a little better than the Middle Ages.

But I think the point of this thread is that, after getting to the Middle Ages, Trax06 wants to concentrate on building military units and going to wars without being afraid of being left behind in techs by the peaceful civs otherwise he will just have to catch up with the techs and can never build a big invasion army. In that case, none of the suggestions will help and the only thing which can be done is some kind of tech on/off switch, or a tech-cap slider which applies to all civs and can be admisterred right in the middle of a game.

But, com'on. Without the tech pressure from other civs, going to war against the AIs is too easy, it takes away all the challenges and fun in the game . The only difficulty is the balance between tech advancement and war-mongering.

[Quillan]

I wonder if it's possible to made a mod where there are no techs beyond, say, Astronomy? Just remove all techs beyond the middle ages, whatever those are decided to be. Gunpowder? Knights? Replaceable Parts?

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally posted by Quillan
I wonder if it's possible to made a mod where there are no techs beyond, say, Astronomy? Just remove all techs beyond the middle ages, whatever those are decided to be. Gunpowder? Knights? Replaceable Parts?

Removing the techs is a straighforward exercise in editing the xml file.

I don't know what happens if the AI completely runs out of techs to research. Out of the box, it can't... because it can keep researching future techs. The right answer might be to leave future tech in place, but change the pre-requisites.

Then there's the additional problem that the AI isn't going to recognize that the tech tree has been pruned. Oh, it will adjust the priorities that it uses in teching, but the released version of the AI isn't likely to realize that space and diplomatic wins are no longer possible.

[Ming]

Oh, it will adjust the priorities that it uses in teching, but the released version of the AI isn't likely to realize that space and diplomatic wins are no longer possible.

Not a problem... just turn off those victory conditions when you set up the game

[Solver]

Well, actually, the AI won't try to build a spaceship if the techs aren't there. So it'd work fine even without turning off those victory conditions. But the real problem is that, without Modern techs, the AI doesn't really (except with Blake's mod) stand a shot at victory.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Solver
Well, actually, the AI won't try to build a spaceship if the techs aren't there. So it'd work fine even without turning off those victory conditions. But the real problem is that, without Modern techs, the AI doesn't really (except with Blake's mod) stand a shot at victory.

Surely I'm misunderstanding you, Solver. Are you saying you've never lost a game short of the modern era?

Wodan

[Quillan]

He'll have to answer that for himself, but for me that would depend on how you define "lost". If you mean one of the AIs actually achieved a victory condition, then I have never lost a game before the industrial/modern era. There have been a number of games where I recognized an unrecoverable position and quit, and once or twice where I was actually wiped out, but the only games where the AI has achieved total victory were either spaceship, score, or diplomatic victories. I have never seen an AI come close to conquest, domination, or cultural victory.

[zeace]

With Blake's AI I've seen them pull off Cultural victories. You have to keep an eye on the top cultural cities. If you hear Lizzie or Mansa get really quiet around the time of free religion, keep your eye on them.

Still, they don't usually actually win until Modern times.

[snoopy369]

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=51359_MedievalTechMod.zip

This was made for another poster (and for Warlords, fyi) but does what was requested above (eliminates all techs past medieval). It also lengthens eras selectively to make the game actually interesting rather than just an RTS post-medieval.

[wodan11]

Right... that's what I'm saying. A human will "recognize an unrecoverable position and quit."

To me, that's losing.

I also agree with zeace... Blake's AI does quite well to get cultural victories. I haven't seen the default AI do it at all, but the BetterAI mod does it very well.

BetterAI also does a very good job at domination, especially on pangaea. One AI will start subjugating rivals and just keep going on a roll.

Conquest... probably impossible for the AI.

Space happens quite often. Sometimes the AI will try for space but not really be set up to complete it in time... it's not smart enough to recognize that. But OTOH sometimes it gets such a tech lead that it'll easily complete.

Again... I'm talking about BetterAI.

Wodan