Tech Tree Poster

[Shogun Gunner]

I know this idea has no chance of being implemented in cIV (my fav abbreviation of the new release), but for nostaglia's sake I'll bring it up.

In Civ2 and CtP1 (not sure about CtP2 since I didn't buy that game) the game came with a seperate poster showing a graphical flow chart of the science tech tree. The Civ2 poster had units, governments etc. in addition to the science tech tree. This was hung above my computer in my home office so I could reference it during the game. The CtP1 poster had the tech tree on one side and lot of information about terrain, units, wonders, etc on the flip side. Very nice!

I would love to see this in cIV, but I would assume there no chance of this ever being done again. This nicety and highly utilitarian component cannot be provided due to recent versions being released before completion. It seems the development teams wish to make changes months after product release. If that is the plan or expectation, then how could they deliver a nice foldout tech tree poster when changes will invalidate part of the poster? I am opposed to this business practice - it allows for sloppy programming as bugs, features, changes can be "fixed in the next patch" and made well after delivery of the product.

[petermarkab]

i know what you mean; i was fond of the Civ 1 fold out in the back of the manual. there wasn't a time i played SMAC that i didn't pore over the research tree planning the best strategy for future trading!

Thing is, many people have produced excellent reference charts, tools and graphics that can be printed out and displayed prominently on one's bedroom wall. granted, they're not the real McCoy but they are accurate.

I suppose Firaxis could also release an electronic (printable) guide once in a while for those of us who need it.

[Earthling7]

I agree, Shogun Gunner. I know you never played SMAC, but I can tell you, that poster was a beauty.

Given the long development of cIV, I am hoping that the game will actually be complete on release. This should make a tech poster possible again. Sure there will be expansions, but they would include an updated poster or something clever.

Let there never be another CivIII Biscuit Tin fiasco...

[Apocalypse]

I don't think that there is no chance of a tech tree poster. Actually, since the tech tree is supposed to be more complicated than any of the previous games, I think there is a very really chance.

[Earthling7]

The fact that cIV won't be as rushed as CivIII is also helpful. CivIII went gold a couple of weeks before the release date. They were rushing to finish the game in time. I bet the packaging was done way before the game was, hence the screenshot printouts in the box.

[Apocalypse]

Well, packaging is normally done before the game goes gold...and two weeks before the release date isn't odd for golds. SMAC would have been fairly similar if the gold didn't break. Twice if I remember right.

[Gramphos]

It is good that the developers have the ability to fix things after release, but it should not be abused. The aim should always be to create a complete and bugfree softwere ready for release. But the complexity of todays games makes it really hard to have evertything working on all possible systems.

However, balancing and game design is something that doesn't depend on the computer, and that should be possible to develop completely, in no need of changes after the release. However, balance issues require conciderable more play-testing time than finding bugs does. There can be exploits not thought of by the developer, that is dicovered by a player after release, which completely ruins game balance. Hopefully the basic tech tree design will be complete long ennough before release for the developers to spot any obvious issues with it, and then have it printed on a poster boxed with the game.