{The List} - Technology

[Kuciwalker]

There should be no tech-whoring, but you should be able to trade a chosen amount of research points (RP) so if you are behind, you can eventually catch up if you got a lot of desirable goods and you are nice to people. The reason for this is that tech-whoring makes up an unrealistic and sometimes unbalanced game... S

I think a lot of merchant empires (or whatever you want to call them) could be considered "tech-whoring".

[ThePlagueRat]

No, ideas and invetions were floating over the borders as the population became more liberated to do thinking, especially during the renneissance, and later during the industrial revolution.

The Hanseatic league and Netherlands, etc. were such merchant empires. Tech-fragments (RP) was often floating to and from those empires who were closest and had much trade. Usually the diplomats had nothing to do with it, but the state often rallied foreign intellectuals and engineers (RP) to certains tasks.

In WW2 the great powers managed to hold their techs more or less a secret, but skilled scientists flew to USA from Germany,
giving USA, quite a few RPs.

[okblacke]

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
In WW2 the great powers managed to hold their techs more or less a secret, but skilled scientists flew to USA from Germany, giving USA, quite a few RPs.

And culture points. Otto Preminger ("Laura", "Anatomy of a Murder"), Fritz Lange ("Metropolis", "M") and Billy Wilder ("Sunset Blvd.", "Some Like It Hot"). Three of Americas greatest directors.

Boy, wouldn't [i] that just kill Fascism as a government in Civ? When you switch to it, your opponents all get a boost in culture and research.

[ok]

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Filippo
Sorry man but you can't win this debate. The science of Medicine is WAY older than Sanitation. Actually in Civ it comes by far too late, and you want to delay it even more ? How can there be any sanitation or health care, without Medicine ?

Oh really? How old is the 'science' of medicine then? Presumably bloodletting and pigeon-dropping poultices are scientific cures, then?

Before medicine adopted a scientific approach, it was largely useless.

It's quite simple how there can be sanitation without medicine: you don't need a germ theory to realise the link between filth and disease, and you don't need doctors to build pipes.

[ThePlagueRat]

Originally posted by okblacke

Boy, wouldn't [i] that just kill Fascism as a government in Civ? When you switch to it, your opponents all get a boost in culture and research.

[ok]

Spain had Fascism until the 80's. That worked pretty much as a dictatorship republic. It was just because Germany prosecuted so many individuals, that they fled to USA. It was a safe haven far away. It was not because of fascism in itself, in fact they were National-Sozializt, hence the word Nazi.

[okblacke]

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat Spain had Fascism until the 80's. That worked pretty much as a dictatorship republic. It was just because Germany prosecuted so many individuals, that they fled to USA. It was a safe haven far away. It was not because of fascism in itself, in fact they were National-Sozializt, hence the word Nazi.

Right. It'd be a one time boost.

Actually, I suppose you could represent it by redistributing the player's vanishing pop points. Say, half. The other half assumed dead.

[ok]

"This just in: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." -- Jane Curtin, Weekend Update, "Saturday Night Live"

[marcthornton]

Originally posted by Filippo

Make research a complex tree and not a linear one. For every era, there should be some "important discoveries" (3-4),

I like the idea of a very non-linear path. You and the AI should be able to choose a path that suits your Civilization, and the items around you to your benefit. It would be very easy to make this system modable as well so that you could make any number of changes to it.

I like the idea of having tech requirements, however let's change it a little so that you must have this there are some explicit requirements, and some you can opt out of... I could see the path being very divergent, but me and the AI both getting to railroad, and then maybe diverging again. Some people also noted that maybe I want irrigation but not mines, I would expnad on this and say that maybe it is in my interest at the moment to research an advanced form of irrigation that would allow my civ to grow faster but to do it I need to have acquired a certain base knowledge.

I would also like to see greatly varying costs to research items, say opportunity cost. It could cost more to research one thing without having another. I like the idea of some research just going to a few things out there that you could be working on.

Lot's of ideas here. Let me know what you think.

[CiverDan]

It drove me nuts in one Civ3 MP game when I my opponent didn't have Printing Press yet was in the Industrial Age. I say get rid of ages per se. Currently the same techs are often skipped because they are optional. I never research Monarchy for example.

Some Specific comments:

1. Why do I need the Wheel to know Horseback Riding? Make the wheel a Pre-requisite of Mathematics instead. Catapults without Wheels are silly and the circle is very important in math. People will need the wheel to build horsemen anyways because the tech shows you where the horses are.

2. Modern Age is still a problem, mainly because its a means to and end, building a spaceship, that cannot be built with todays tech. Superconductor for Fuel Cells? nonsence. do you really plan on getting to Alpha Centuri with Chemical Rockets/Nuclear Propulsion. Start thinking Antimatter if you want to be more realistic. Make the goal Mars if you want to end it with todays tech.

Someone brought up the resource connection to techs. not needed. For example a civ may have discovered
Iron Working from a small amount of iron, but did not have a suitable source of ore to build a sword army, or lay rails for that matter.

I agree that certain techs must be learned and not bought or stolen. This limits certain tactics, such as living off the Great Library and mass tech bribing, and makes the game tougher at the hardest levels where these tactics are used to keep tech parity.

I know people dislike future techs, but certain current and near future techs could be included

Cloning - Req. Genetics - Gives food bonus to cities to represent longer lifespan and benefits to food production.
Electrogravitics (aka Anti-gravity) - Req. Stealth: a few people believe our government already knows this - important Spaceship tech which also allows better air units also
Fusion Power - Req. The Laser - Fusion Plants, Spaceship tech
Magnetic Levitation - Req. ??? - Better Railroads - These should allow no movement cost. The first rails should be 1/6 movement cost.
Nanomachines - Req. Robotics & Synthetic Fibers.- ???

It is intersting to hote the real-time advancement of tech itself from the release of Civ1 to Civ3. When Civ1 was released, The Internet was not in common usage, certainly not worthy of a wonder at the time, and existance of Stealth aircraft had only recently be decalssified.

[lajzar]

Boolean tech requirements. Instead of a simple X and Y allows Z, allow for complex AND / OR / NOT statements. The NOt would probably be irrelevant to conventional progress, but it would allow you to do interesting things with magitech and differented national techs. For example:

fireball NEEDS pyromancy NOT hydromancy
zerg towers NEEDS zerg_tech NOT (terran_tech OR protoss_tech)

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Next idea. Have maintenance for your technology. As you gain technology, you should need to spend increasing amounts of science simply to maintain what you have. If you don't, the beakers for you newer projects diminish, and if that goes on long enough, you lose a tech.

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Get rid of ages. I found it too constraining, although perhaps that was teh graphical representation they forced on us. It makes it almost impossible to have a decent amount of customisation (on that point, go wild on the number of different tech allowed). Modders who want them can use a long boolean AND string anyway.

[POTUS]

That might work.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by lajzar
Boolean tech requirements.

*gapes*

why didn't I think of that?

That is an AMAZINGLY good idea. all the way

[lajzar]

Here's an idea on how eras could be used.

Every tech is placed in a particular era. These eras have no direct in-game effect regarding research.

At the start of a game, players select two options. The first is the starting era, the second is the ending era. Suppose the eras are:

Ancient
Medieval
Industrial
Modern
Near Future
Far Future

Basically, if the player chooses to start in an era more advanced than ancient, then all techs from an earlier era start off as being already researched, or perhaps researchable at token costs.

Second, any techs designated as being in an era more advanced than the chosen ending era are forever unreachable. If you want no futuristic techs at all, you'll choose to end at the modern era. This leaves the option present for those who want a longer game.

The algorithm for the number of beakers required per tech should adjust so that if the tech tree gets shortened, the time taken to research gets increased.

"Future Tech" can be handled as follows. Any time the "what can I research next" algorithm cannot find a valid tech, it gives future tech as the only research option.

Thoughts?

[ThePlagueRat]

Originally posted by lajzar

Next idea. Have maintenance for your technology. As you gain technology, you should need to spend increasing amounts of science simply to maintain what you have. If you don't, the beakers for you newer projects diminish, and if that goes on long enough, you lose a tech.

Nice one...
Would be more realistic than the well known "failing budget --> building sold" messages. Ok, you fire the professors rather than tearing down the university to sell out nice red bricks.
So we gotta figure a realistic way of implementing that. Perhaps each population unit could have those values attached to itself, such as culture, knowledge, wealth, etc. ?

The sum of all pop-values would make up the city's tax and tech output, as well as cultural level. ( The entertainer special pop could have a + on cultural value, but a - on wealth and tech. )
A professor would in effect just be part of a happy pop-unit who had accumulated much knowledge by being part of a flourishing city for some time. Together with all other pops, that would be the knowledge basis. If you lose too much of that basis, techs would be forgotten, and if you lose just some of your that basis, then your tech-budget would be less efficient. The tech-output could just be a multiple of the knowledge basis * budget spending, plus modifiers...

e.g.
A small 1-pop-settlement w\library, 75% reaserch spending:
(1 * 0.75 + 0.50 = 1.25 rp ) rp > knowledge basis,
thus the pop-unit's knowledge increases slightly.

A small 1-pop-settlement w\library, no reaserch spending:
(1 * 0.00 + 0.50 = 0.50 rp ) rp < knowledge basis,
thus the pop-unit's knowledge decreases slightly.

Ok, this first example shows a way of building a knowledge basis though libraries and positioning the slider. In Civ3 the slider doesn't work right, it opens for exploits and funny stuff.
So that it the first thing they have to make right if they create Civ4. By this, you would gain a customised basis for both knowledge, wealth and culture by positioning the slider to your taste, and you population will reflect that as well !

This feature would be even more realistic if they implement pop-unit migration from one civ to another instead of that city-flipping @$€¤&# shït. Thus, knowledge, culture and wealth values would change on certain events, making your pops prone to both global and local effects.

[Rasputin]

the only thing i hate about civ3 tech tree is the "fill in techs"
techs that give you nothinhg but are jsut techs you have to research along the path,

I want all techs to give sometihng, whther it be new units , wonders or city imoprovments


Hoepfully all techs will have an attached gain for it.

[lajzar]

Would be more realistic than the well known "failing budget --> building sold" messages. Ok, you fire the professors rather than tearing down the university to sell out nice red bricks.

I was actually figuring this as an addition to the sold buildings, not a replacement. Screw your economy, lose buildings (or whatever uses gold as maintenance). Screw your beakers, and whatever uses beakers for maintenance (techs) will be lost.

So we gotta figure a realistic way of implementing that. Perhaps each population unit could have those values attached to itself, such as culture, knowledge, wealth, etc. ?

I think I see where you're going with this, but I don't like it. It places more attributes on individual population points, something that seems to have killed gamespeed in Civ3, and it makes the tie between tech and population too close. The current system favours cities built in deserts, plains and grasslands. Your system would give an extra reason to build in mountains.