Ancient Tech Tree revisited

[Ribannah]

I've tried to undo some of the mistakes in the original Civ3 tree and to improve gameplay, by creating distinct branches of research, at the same time.

The tree I propose looks like this:

Bronze Working -> Iron Working , + Mathematics -> Construction
Masonry -> Mathematics -> Currency, +Philosophy -> The Republic
Writing -> Code of Laws, + Warrior Code / Mysticism -> Monarchy / Philosophy
Pottery -> The Wheel, + Iron Working -> The Plough
Map Making, + Code of Laws -> Seafaring
Warrior Code, +Map Making -> Horseback Riding
Mysticism -> Mythology, +Writing -> Literature

This allows for seven traits, including Agricultural (starting with pottery).
Some points to make:
- Alphabet has gone. It was historically not needed to develop Writing and should rather be a Small Wonder. This makes Writing a basic tech. Code of Laws is now the most pivotal advance, feeding three branches.
- Horseback Riding and The Wheel are now unrelated, which is as it should be.
- Map Making is now basic. The skill is relevant to both land and sea exploration.
Also, Pottery as a prereq for Map Making is pretty weird. Let expansionist civs start with Map Making, but allow all civs to create scouts (which compensates for Chariots and Horsemen arriving a little later). To compensate, Expansionist civs could start with 2 scouts.
- The Wheel is no longer basic, but is derived from Pottery.
- Horseback Riding now has Map Making as a prerequisite. No inclination to ride far when you don't know your way back.
- Seafaring is new. It takes the original spot of Map Making and allows galleys, harbors and the Great Lighthouse.
- Ceremonial Burial is gone. It is pre-age knowledge and has nothing to do with building temples. This makes Mysticism basic, which now allows temples
- Polytheism is replaced with Mythology, explaining Literature. Polytheism is not an advance (neither is Monotheism). Real developments in religion are: worship, notions of spirit/soul/afterworld, and creator, so far all pre-age, about the thread/purpose of life (Mysticism) and finally rules of conduct (Ethics).
Mythology increases the effect of temples as Mysticism did before.
- Monarchy is linked to Code of Laws. Rules to play by are precisely the difference between Monarchy and Despotism.
- The Republic is linked to Currency. How else could people apply for a seat in the senate, after all. Note that it now takes two more techs to arrive at The Republic.
- The Plough is new, creating an agricultural branch. My suggestion would be that this advance lifts the limitation on food (instead of Monarchy/The Republic).

[SpencerH]

I've done something similar with my ancient and middle ages tech trees. I was aiming for 4 different lines of research: culture, warmonger, engineering, and exploration (I think). Since I dont see why it should require techs like map-making (for example) to develop feudalism I also changed the requirements for advancement to the next age to include only the first two techs in each line. The flipside to this is that I moved some of the wonders associated with the warmongers over to the other lines with the idea that it would provide a benefit to the non-warmonger civs.

I've played 1 game with it so far (only on monarch) and unfortunately I dont see much difference. The rapid tech trading just nullifies any changes (except that civs can have some Middle Age techs and some ancient techs).

One tech I've added in my mods that I think does work out by itself is stone working->masonery. Stone working gives a basic spearman defensive unit until copper or iron that give better spearmen.

I've kind of halted work on it until the next patch comes out.

[jsw363]

It doesn't make sense to me that Horseback Riding and Mapmaking should be connected. While horses were used for long-distance travel, people didn't need maps to learn to ride. Also could I suggest that you change "Horseback Riding" to simply "Riding" since people learned to ride other animals besides just horses (camels for instance).