Tweet
Well, this is just the sicnece part of my own fantasy cvi4 model, which would be a radical redesign.
In civ games up to know you are as a God, creating and moving the broad strokes of hisotry as your civ grows. While that is fun, I think going in a bit more would be more chalenging (abnd for me, fun). I would like civ to be mroe about the statesmanship of gvernance, not some Godlike rule form above.
Now, how does this apply to tech? While chosing which tech is next (and thus planning far haead of time your road to victory), I think blind research is better. Both SMAC and MOO1 had good blind reserach options (specially MOO1). IN MOO1, what techs you got were the result of how you invested resoruces, or, what your policy was. This is the sort of thing I want from the next civ. So, how would it work? and what changes wou;ld be in store?
1. Tech progress (the amount of 'reserach points" accumulated) would be figured out by a set of algoriths, each taking into account a few important variables of your civ:
a. Economic structure: what type of economy does your civ have? Is is a stratefied and static one? (agrarian, nomadic?) or is it a commercial or industrial one? The more trade and profit motive in an economy, the more impetus to innovate.
b. Population and skills: More people, more ideas, first of all. Second, certain activities and skills lead to more innovation. The more you invest to educate your people, the more likely new ideas would come up.
c. Social structure: Much like with economics, the more rigid your society is the less innovation you get and vice versa.
d. Contact with others:simply by being in contact and trading with other peoples you (and them as well) gain the ability to share ideas, and thus advance faster.
So, general advancement in tech is the outcome of creating a more open, cosmopolitan, free thinkin society (which certainly has some costs as well, costs that would have to seriously be addressed. This means that sometimes, unlike in previous civ games, more tech advancements at a certain time may NOT be what is called for)
Now the big change in the tech tree itself would be the creation of two different tech types: The "Big Ideas" and "The Details". BI's are "tech" that are more about way of doing something and ways of thinking. For example, Writing, Agriculture, Animal Domestication, Architecture: these would be some of the key early BI's, new notions that open up a whole set of possibilities. Under each BI then come the Details. Now that you have a notion about, lets say, the idea of writing, well, ho9w do you do it? Under the BI of "Writing" then, comes TD of "paper"."alphabet", and latter on "printing" and so forth.
So, what is the point of this division? The point is two fold, and it goes back to dealing with how we advance in tech.
One of the things civ players love to do is build huge tech leads: but as we see, one of the most important ways to tech advancement is to trade and share ideas with others, thus greatly increasing the chances that your techs will end up in thier hands. How can you build a tech lead thus? Well, in this system, all techs have a chance of being transmitted, but the two differen types do transmit at very different rates. The big ideas travel fast: once one civ finds writing, very quikly everyone else will have it too. But the details of how to do it: that traves slowly. You can still take advantage of a tech lead, but rarely in the BI catgory, mainly in the details one. Now,another distinction made is whehter your civ is good at BI or TD. Now, vibrant economies are good at tech advancement, but as such, thyey are very good not at BI, but at ever improving the details of a tech. An open society on the other hand is better at BI than the details. It becomes possiblie then to be a huge producer of BI and still fail to ever develop them quickly enough for a lead, or you can try to build your success on the ever increasing efficency of one idea, while being bad at making new ones.
By allowing such diverse paths, more varied strategies could be attempted by the player, and historical realities could be better modelled fr scenerio making.
In civ games up to know you are as a God, creating and moving the broad strokes of hisotry as your civ grows. While that is fun, I think going in a bit more would be more chalenging (abnd for me, fun). I would like civ to be mroe about the statesmanship of gvernance, not some Godlike rule form above.
Now, how does this apply to tech? While chosing which tech is next (and thus planning far haead of time your road to victory), I think blind research is better. Both SMAC and MOO1 had good blind reserach options (specially MOO1). IN MOO1, what techs you got were the result of how you invested resoruces, or, what your policy was. This is the sort of thing I want from the next civ. So, how would it work? and what changes wou;ld be in store?
1. Tech progress (the amount of 'reserach points" accumulated) would be figured out by a set of algoriths, each taking into account a few important variables of your civ:
a. Economic structure: what type of economy does your civ have? Is is a stratefied and static one? (agrarian, nomadic?) or is it a commercial or industrial one? The more trade and profit motive in an economy, the more impetus to innovate.
b. Population and skills: More people, more ideas, first of all. Second, certain activities and skills lead to more innovation. The more you invest to educate your people, the more likely new ideas would come up.
c. Social structure: Much like with economics, the more rigid your society is the less innovation you get and vice versa.
d. Contact with others:simply by being in contact and trading with other peoples you (and them as well) gain the ability to share ideas, and thus advance faster.
So, general advancement in tech is the outcome of creating a more open, cosmopolitan, free thinkin society (which certainly has some costs as well, costs that would have to seriously be addressed. This means that sometimes, unlike in previous civ games, more tech advancements at a certain time may NOT be what is called for)
Now the big change in the tech tree itself would be the creation of two different tech types: The "Big Ideas" and "The Details". BI's are "tech" that are more about way of doing something and ways of thinking. For example, Writing, Agriculture, Animal Domestication, Architecture: these would be some of the key early BI's, new notions that open up a whole set of possibilities. Under each BI then come the Details. Now that you have a notion about, lets say, the idea of writing, well, ho9w do you do it? Under the BI of "Writing" then, comes TD of "paper"."alphabet", and latter on "printing" and so forth.
So, what is the point of this division? The point is two fold, and it goes back to dealing with how we advance in tech.
One of the things civ players love to do is build huge tech leads: but as we see, one of the most important ways to tech advancement is to trade and share ideas with others, thus greatly increasing the chances that your techs will end up in thier hands. How can you build a tech lead thus? Well, in this system, all techs have a chance of being transmitted, but the two differen types do transmit at very different rates. The big ideas travel fast: once one civ finds writing, very quikly everyone else will have it too. But the details of how to do it: that traves slowly. You can still take advantage of a tech lead, but rarely in the BI catgory, mainly in the details one. Now,another distinction made is whehter your civ is good at BI or TD. Now, vibrant economies are good at tech advancement, but as such, thyey are very good not at BI, but at ever improving the details of a tech. An open society on the other hand is better at BI than the details. It becomes possiblie then to be a huge producer of BI and still fail to ever develop them quickly enough for a lead, or you can try to build your success on the ever increasing efficency of one idea, while being bad at making new ones.
By allowing such diverse paths, more varied strategies could be attempted by the player, and historical realities could be better modelled fr scenerio making.
Comment