Designing The Ultimate Tech Tree

[Immortal Wombat]

The Ultimate Tech Tree

Don't know whether this will work or not, but here goes. I'm viewing this as a general Civ Gaming thread, not aimed at any game in particular. If it goes down like a fart in a crowded lift, then I'll start it again in the Civ3 fora, and pretend that's what I intended all along.

In an attempt to find out what the Civ Gaming population want in a tech tree, and in the hopes of some large scale attempt to design the perfect tech tree, here is a series of questions to probe your mind, and stimulate some thoughts.
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<b><font size=3>1. Starting Date</font></b>
Choose from:

<b>4000BC</b> - Every Civ game covered by Apolyton, with the obvious exception of Alpha Centauri begins in the fateful year, presumably because sometime, back in the distant days of Civ1, some game designer (Sid himself perhaps) decided that this was when the first nomads in Sumeria or Nicaragua or whatever, got fed up of chasing whatever passed for dinner across the wilderness, stuck the fattest ones in a cage, and then simultaneously, and quite unrelatedly, invented farming and prostitution, thereby becoming civilised. Whether you agree with the aforementioned techie, or are simply afraid of the wrath of Sid, and want to stick with tradition, 4000BC anyone?

<b>pre-4000BC</b> - Maybe you're one of those people who thinks Graham Hancock is an underrated genius, and that the lost civilisation of Atlantis was around 10,000 years ago, and was mysteriously vanished away by aliens in the year 7216BC (or something), thereby accounting for the alignments of the Giza pyramids with Orion's Belt, and the temples of Ankor Wat with the constellation Draco. Or maybe you just think the ancient age is the best one, and needs extending a few hundred turns.

<b>post-4000BC</b> - One city does not a civilisation make. Just because some dude in the desert had the good sense to water his crops, and not wait for the rain, does not mean civilisation started that early - make it later!
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<b><font size=3>2. Ending Date</font></b>

<b>pre-1900AD</b> - Buy AoK, and flee in shame.

<b>c. 2000AD</b> - Following in the grand tradition of Civ2, cut the game short in its prime. Er... I mean, end the tech tree in the modern age, and pretend all the scientists died of a fatal illness targeted to the curiosity gene. Leaving only Alabama populated.

<b>c. 2200AD</b> - A bit of future is nice, but spare me the cyber-punk and speculation. Realism is all.

<b>c. 3000AD</b> - To Infinity - And Beyond! Generic "future techs" suck. Give me some substance.

It has been pointed out, that the Dark Ages, a period of some 1000 years, between about 400 and 1400 AD, very little advancement was made in any field of human endeavour, except possibly package tours to the Middle East (single only). If your civ manages to survive the millenia without being ravaged by barbarians on all sides, and allows some tax gold for science (then well done, you can play Civ), and well done, chances are by 1400 you'll be marching rifleman through Babylon or Assyria, and complainign bitterly at their shoddy rail network (or that you can't use it).
Surely to have the tech tree desigined short, it will be dull to research "future techs" by 1800, yet to make it long, you risk not getting to the end of it, and conquering the world with tanks, and so missing out the potential fun to be had with a "XP3000 City Destroy-A-Tron", not to mention the "super-range biowarhead missile laser blaster artillery boomer" and the like.

So in short, to what extent is Civ a game of human history, and to what extent a game of human destiny?
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<b><font size=3>3. Ages - Yes/No</font></b>

Sounds like a stupid question, there's always ages in civ games. But apart from a nice little message saying "you have entered the industrial age" and a change of icons every now and again, what purpose do they serve?
Would it be easier to have a continuum of history, with no discrete blocks?
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<b><font size=3>3. Ages - Which?</font></b>

If you said YES to ages, you now get to choose which of the ones listed below you would like in your ideal tech tree.

<b>Prehistoric</b> - By definition should not be inlcuded, but you get all sorts of nutters.
<b>Ancient</b> - Egypt, Sumeria etc. Golden age of 'smiting' and living inside city walls.
<b>Classical</b> - Slavery gave the upper classes time to poder more amusing ways to kill their enemies, their slaves, and their mothers. The practical upshot of which was mathematics, science and a whole load of sycophantic poetry.
<b>Dark Ages</b> - In technological terms, more like the lack of an age. About the best thing to emerge from this period was a better type of plough.
<b>Middle Ages</b> - Like the Dark Ages II - different name, same religious bigotry.
<b>Renaissance</b> - Still some debate over whether this actually took place or is merely the imagination of modern sholars run wild, this period was when people again had time to ponder. The practical upshot being roughly similar: maths, science, more philosophies than you'd feel comfortable shaking a stick at, and a whole load of sycophantic paintings.
<b>Age of Reason/Age of Discovery</b>Abolition, Equality, Potatoes, and some pretty cool naval warfare.
<b>Industrial Age</b> - Canals, railways, factories, coal mines, steam engines, global empire. No doubt you did something fun in America too.
<b>Modern Age</b> - Depending on your point of view, this starts anywhere from between 1800 (industrialisation) and the early 1900s (industrial revolution over) and ends from between 1960s (computers) and 2020 (eugenics, just you wait...)
<b>Information Age</b> - With the advent of comupting, human beings found lots of new ways to kill each other, on a larger and more impersonal scale than ever before. People insist that quality of life has improved. Labour saving devices have tripled the amount of time people spend doing housework. Digital watches.
<b>Space Age</b> - Similar to the Information Age, but extends later, to c. 2100, when we get manned missions to Mars, and an experimental moon base. Begins c. 1970, and fashion grinds to a halt, leading to a hundred years of white bell-bottoms and square computers. The only saving grace is the absense of MS Windows.
Culminates in the invention of high temperature superconductors, and cold fusion, which presumably combine to form some sort of normal temperature energy device.
<b>Genetic Age</b> - Not just because it is in CtP; the next technological revolution will be biotech. Life extension, gene therapy, cloning, cyborgs maybe, genetic computers, designer babies and foodstuffs.
<b>Nano-Age</b> - Probably the next, and possibly the last foreseeable technological revolution, nanotechnology will bring about super-fast engineering projects, and invisible robots to serve any foreseeable purpose, in fantastic quantities.
<b>'Diamond Age'</b> - As CtP says: The age where the physical and biological fields become united. Cue forcefields, holograms, genetic computers, neural interfaces, warp drives, and sycophancy on a scale that we can't even begin to imagine.
<b>The Future</b> - Insert this at the point of your choice. Involves 10 or so nameless "future techs" that add to your score, or somesuch nonsense.
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<b><font size=3>4. How Many Advances?</font></b>

How many advances should there be? Obviously it will depend on the scale of your ideal tree, some might prefer many, quick advances, others fewer, more expensive advances.
For comparison (and not including future techs):
Civ3 has 82
Civ2 has 89
CtP has 102
CtP2 has 106
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<b><font size=3>5. Linearity vs. Holisticness</font></b>

I don't know how many people here play Planetarion, but as it seems to be populated by '733t-ist pre-pubescent teenagers, I doubt it is many. In any case, it has (or had when I last played, and realised it was populated by '733t-ist pre-pubescent teenagers) the most linear tech-tree I have ever seen.

	A -> B -> C -> D
	E -> F -> G -> H
	I -> J -> K -> L

and so on. More of a tech seaweed really.

There are in total about 6 branches (or strands) all remaining separate.
At the opposite nd of the spectrum is a classic Civesque tech tree, where you have to research almost everything before reaching 'the end'. The tree is more tangled than a really tangled thing.

While I feel a certain degree of interconnectedness is important, planning a route through the mess can often lead to little room for strategy, especially if the advances are discovered quite quickly. It just becomes a case of working through it, taking the quickest one, unless you are likely to become embroiled in a long war or something.

In an ideal world, I would like to see three or more different tech trees, almost entirely separate, which the player can choose to research down. However, because humanity only went down one tech tree (mostly), devising the other two is going to be very hard, wthout delving into fantasy and sci-fi.
So a better way would be to have semi-distinct branches of the tree, which relate at important points, and crucially, have one way prerequisites. ie.

	A -> B -> C -> D
	 \-> E -> F -> G
	      \-> H -> I

Only more complex. That way, each branch becomes an optional thing, and if you want, you can research only the main one or two branches, the expensive ones.
However, I don't know how easy that would be to map onto a real-world technology progression, so thoughts would be welcome.

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<b><font size=3>6. Occidentocentrism, and Cause and Effect in <i>Civilization</i></font></b>

Civ tech trees are very much based on the western progression of knowledge. Mesopotamia -> Mediterranean -> Renaissance Europe -> Industrial Europe -> 'Western Culture' Europe/USA

Is this 'right'? From the point of view of selling games, 'medicine' and 'horse riding' go down better than 'aromatherapy' and 'elephant training', but it seems to be rather selfish. The Chinese had gunpowder centuries before Europeans. According to Civ2 this means they also had Engineering and Invention. So why didn't they build Leonardo's workshop? The greeks had rudimentary atomic theory, without Gravity. And the link between Democracy and Banking eludes me completely.
Do prerequisite chains in tech trees always hold true? Are they real prerequisites, or just models of what happened in Europe? for instance, Currency -> Pikemen. I read that this particular line of logic was true because of the mercenary pikemen running around getting employed in Swiss marketplaces. A nice explaination, but the social and political climate had much more to do with it than just currency, and I think cause and effect are hard to model accurately simply in terms of knowledge.

Ideally, the tech tree would have OR gates in it, eg. you get Pikemen if you have 'Iron Working' (make the pikes) AND EITHER 'Currency' (hire mercenaries) OR 'Feudalism' (emperor's guard)

However, only one game currently lets you do this, so for games designed by people such as the ones quoted in my signature, we can but dream, and pray, and find dodgy workarounds, half-solutions, and the blueprints for small incendary devices.
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<b><font size=3>7. Other Stuff</font></b>

<b>7.1 Governments:</b>
Should they be enabled by their own advance, or come along with something?
eg.

		Democracy. Gives: Democracy (gov)

OR

		Beaurocracy. Gives: Diplomat (unit)
				    Republic (gov)

Should their advance be an enabling advance, ie. in the main tech tree?
eg.

		Religion -> Theocracy [theocracy (gov)] -> Cathedral Building

OR

		Religion -> Cathedral Building -> Catholicism 
		            \-> Theocracy [theocracy (gov)]

Should governmental advances give anything else. I can't see why Communism should give you police stations... I can see a case for Democracy giving the Egalitarian Act, but would it be better with something like Age Of Reason giving the Act and being a prereq for a Democracy advance?

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If I've missed anything out, tell me, and I'll edit it in.

So, answers on a postcard, or just post here:
<b>Starting Date?
Ending Date?
Ages?
Which Ages?
Number of Advances?
Structure of Tree?
Thoughts on Occidentocentrism?
Thoughts on Specific and General Cause and Effect?
Governmental Advances?
Other?</b>

Thankyou for your thoughts.

[Felch]

1. I'd go post 4000 B.C., but not by much. Possibly bumping it ahead to 3500 or 3000, and stretching out the time in the ancient era a la Civ 3.

2. I favor a slightly futuristic ending date, possibly 2050 or 2100. Give people time to play around in the post-modern age, but don't let it drag on to silliness.

3. I would prefer it if ages were slightly fuzzier, like with in-between periods giving a little transition. But really I don't care enough to make a big deal of it.

4. I'd go with ancient, medieval, discovery, industrialization, modern, and post-modern.

5. I favor lots of minor advances, like around 100. But every advance should give an immediate benefit, like access to a new unit or building, or something like that.

6. Your branching tree seems good.

7. It targeted to Westerners, and it's the story of a rise to dominance. The West dominates and it's the historical timeline that people are most familiar with. However, it could certainly be adjusted.

8, 9, and 10. I really never thought too much of these, you seem to have a good ideas though.

[War4ever]

post modern could also be classified as the "information age" which we seem to be in right now....

no further than 2050 is needed.....

Starting around 4000bc is just fine....

[Locutus]

Re: Designing The Ultimate Tech Tree

1. Starting Date: I actually like 3000 BCE. That's just around the time the first true civilizations arose, so it makes sense if your game is called 'Civilization' Also, it works out nicely for the ages, see below.

2. Ending Date: Well, I certainly hate Future techs, so I like going into the future, but I feel no strong urge to play with all sorts of weird sci-fi units either. So 2200-2300 CE sounds about right. It would be cool to have more Future Advances after that but they should have cool names, so Teleportation or Warp travel (I know, very cheesy) instead of Future Tech 7.

3. Ages - Yes/No: The must be some sort of progression from spearman to tank and this is in Civilization one that goes in discrete and clearly defined steps (e.g. Spearman -> Hoplite -> Pikeman -> Musketeer -> Machine Gunner), so sorting these steps in ages makes sense to me. The only thing that I hate is that in all civ-games ages are awfully Western-centric, it would be nice if this could be at least somewhat reduced.

3. Ages - Which: Very hard to determine since very few developments took place at the same time over the entire planet but I would go for:

Ancient: 3000 BCE - 320 BCE (up to Alexander)
Classical: 320 BCE - 620 CE (up to Muhammed)
Medieval: 620 CE - 1220 CE (up to Genghis)
Emperial: 1220 CE - 1520 CE (up to Columbus) - Time of Inca, Aztec, Mongol, Ottoman, Ming, Mali, Ethiopian and Habsburg empires (among others)
Colonial: 1520 CE - 1780 CE (up to Watt/Napoleon) Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, English colonial empires
Industrial: 1780 CE - 1880 CE (up to rise of Germany/Japan/US)
Modern: 1880 CE - 1960 CE (up to space race/microchip/television)
Information: 1960 CE - 2040 CE (up to large-scale cloning/genetic engineering?)
Genetic: 2040 CE - 2100 CE
Nano: 2100 CE - 2200 CE

So the Ancient age lasts somewhat more than 2500 years, the Classical age about 1000, the Medieval roughly 500, Emperial and Colonial both 300, Industrial and beyond all around 100 years. Nice round numbers, just the way I like it...

4. How Many Advances: well, ideally one should reseach something new every 6-8 turns, while the ideal game lasts roughly 600-800 turns, so the game should have about 100-120 advances (excluding future techs).

5. Linearity vs. Holisticness: I like trees where it's possible to specialize a bit, so there shouldn't be too much interdependence, but too linear trees are boring too. Let's say that with 8-10 branches, it should be possible to advance one branch into the next age while a few others advance halfway through the age (to support the advancing branch) and the others hardly advance at all.

6. Occidentocentrism, and Cause and Effect:

I hate Western-centrism. Crossbows and Longbows are NOT Medieval British inventions, Concrete is NOT modern and Gunpowder has been mentioned. Contrary to elephants, horses are an almost global phenomenon so I don't object to Horse Riding vs Elephant Training but the Caliphate is just as good a government type as Monarchy and Angkor Wat deserves to be a wonder way more than the Statue of Liberty.

I like tech trees with OR gates, but generally speaking The concept of technological advancement is way too complex to model realistically in the way Civ does, so weird connections can't be avoided anyway, I don't object strongly to that. However, it *can* be reduced by letting actual historians putting a high-quality tech tree together (such as what happened for MedMod2 for CtP2) and by having OR gates and the like.

BTW, only one game currently lets you have OR gates? I'm pretty sure *both* CtP1 and CtP2 can do this (with SLIC, of course)...

Absolutely LOVE the sig, BTW

7.1 Governments:
They should be part of the rest of the tech tree, to put them seperately leaves less room for other important advances, their always too little room anyway...

[Urban Ranger]

Womby,

Can you reformat your message so that it isn't wider than a screen? Thanks.

[loinburger]

Starting Date: 4000 BC works for me.

Ending Date: 3000 AD would be nice, but it would also significantly change the substance of the game; it is silly to give anything past 2200 as an ending date without incorporating interstellar colonization, at which point the Earth becomes fairly insignificant in light of the fact that your empire has several dozen planets in it. So, I say 2200 AD (with the option of ending at 2000 AD level tech and making the rest of the future techs generic, i.e. instead of Fusion Power, you'd get a generic power-related Future Tech that slightly increases the efficiency of your regular power plants), unless the game turns into Masters of Orion past a certain tech age.

Ages: Why bother? I could see dividing the game into ages if interstellar colonization were incorporated (the Earth would become much more abstracted past a certain point), but otherwise there's no point to breaking the continuity.

How Many Advances? Lots.

Linearity vs. Holisticness: I'd divide the tech tree into "major" and "minor" advances.

Major advances would be fundamental advances that most civs would eventually acquire ("The Wheel," "Carpentry," or "Engineering," for example), and are almost always the prerequesite for another advance (you can't get "Engineering" without "Mathematic," let's say). Some major techs can be skipped, and there is a fair amount of freedom given for the order in which you research your techs (you might be able to advance quite far in Medicine without advancing at all in Mathematics, for example).

You never need to research a Minor tech in order to continue down the tech tree (minor advances are never prerequesites for major advances, and are rarely prerequesites for minor advances either). These are more applied advances (Civ-specific might be another way of describing them), such as Horseback Riding or Feudalism. Minor advances can often help you out in the short run, but researching too many can slow down your overall rate of tech advancement. Even though Minor tech advances are never prerequesites for Major tech advances (and are rarely prerequesites for Minor tech advances), they can often speed up the rate at which you research Major and Minor tech advances (occasionally to the point that it is faster to research a Minor tech and then a Major tech than to just research the Major tech).

Occidentocentrism, and Cause and Effect in Civilization: It would be nice to have OR gates with the Major tech advances. Minor techs will help to eliminate this problem as well.

Governments: No opinion.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Womby,
Can you reformat your message so that it isn't wider than a screen? Thanks.

Done, so long as you post

Originally posted by Locutus
BTW, only one game currently lets you have OR gates? I'm pretty sure *both* CtP1 and CtP2 can do this (with SLIC, of course)...

I don't know... whatever. I though the mod_ functions were a SLIC2 addition though? Or is it possible the long way, with return STOP thingummies?

Absolutely LOVE the sig, BTW

That Simon Newcombe always cracks me up

Originally posted by loinburger
I'd divide the tech tree into "major" and "minor" advances.

That looks like a good system. Kind of similar, only I was thinking of minor advances as minor branches.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
I don't know... whatever. I though the mod_ functions were a SLIC2 addition though? Or is it possible the long way, with return STOP thingummies?

D'oh! You're right. I was thinking of using !HasAdvance, but come to think of it, I don't think there's a way of actually influencing the build queue from SLIC with it. Not without ugly workarounds anyway. (FE one could use a combination of Is[Unit|Building|Wonder]InBuildList and ClearBuildQueue to kick 'illegal' units/building/wonders out of the queue).

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Designing The Ultimate Tech Tree

<b>1. Starting Date</b>.
<em>MoM II</em> has a good idea that we can borrow. The player can choose from between 4000 BCE, pre-4000 BCE, or post-4000 BCE. The 4000 BCE is the standard setup. Pre-4000 BCE gives the player less starting teches, or maybe even none, but he has more time to build cities. Post-4000 BCE just gives more starting teches depending on how long after 4000 BCE the game starts. For multiplayer games I suppose a simple vote is sufficient.

<b>2. Ending Date.</b>
c. 2200 CE is fine. If nothing else I don't want too much overlap with sci-fi based games.

<blockquote><em>"It has been pointed out, that the Dark Ages, a period of some 1000 years, between about 400 and 1400 AD, very little advancement was made in any field of human endeavour, except possibly package tours to the Middle East (single only)."</em></blockquote>

That seems to apply only to Europe. As one of my professor said, "If you were an alien who visited the earth around the 10th century, you would't go to Europe. It's a boring place."

<b>3. Ages - Yes/No</b>.
Yes. This is to stop a player from exploiting a strategy of uneven development, i.e., attempting to runaway with the game by just making R&D in military advances. Make a number of civ advances a prerequisite to advance to the next Age.

<b>3. Number of Ages.</b>
5 or 6 sounds about right.

<b>Ancient</b>
<b>Middle Ages</b>
<b>Renaissance</b>.
<b>Industrial Age</b>
<b>Modern Age</b>
<b>Space Age</b>

<b>4. Number of advances</b>.
My preference is a large number of smaller advances. This should make each civ more unique. Or perhaps a number of major advances with a number of minor advances. Minor advances are refinements to major advances but are not prerequisites to anything else. For example, one can have Horse Archery as a minor advance. This allows, say, Horse Archers that are faster moving Archers.

<b>5. Linearity vs. Holisticness</b>.
Interconnectedness is the way to go. This fits in well with the idea of Ages and the reasoning behind it. For example, it takes Archery and Horseback Riding as prerequisites for Horse Archery.

<b>6. Occidentocentrism, and Cause and Effect in <i>Civilization</i></b>.
This is not necessary right, but the West has been dominating in science and technology after the Industrial Revolution. As you know that's when discoveries and inventions started to accelerate.

You are correct that the Chinese had gunpowder centuries before Europe, and they did had Engineering and Invention to some degree.

But what are the effects of removing Occidentocentrism? Will it be a simple renaming of civ advances and having tanks in 1600 CE? Or will it be a lot more involved and takes a lot of speculation of where everything will go?

<blockquote><em>"Do prerequisite chains in tech trees always hold true? Are they real prerequisites, or just models of what happened in Europe?"</em></blockquote>

It seems to me that it's more of the latter. But if we are completely revamping the tech tree we can always throw out the old relations.

OR gate is a good idea.

<b>7.1 Governments.</b>

Half of one and six dozen of the other, or something like that

I suppose the thing we really need to look at is whether changing the tech tree will make the game more realistic without taking away the fun. We should always keep an eye on the fun factor and make sure any changes won't distract from it.


BTW Womby, where did you copied that article from?

[Immortal Wombat]

I wrote it...

[Ecthy]

Re: Re: Designing The Ultimate Tech Tree

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
<em>MoM II</em> has a good idea that we can borrow.

There is such a freaking thing as MoM 2? Why did noone tell me about that?

[Skanky Burns]

Im presuming he meant MOO II.
As in the game that not only has that feature, but has also been coded and released...

[fezick31]

Starting Date Earlier is better. I would like to see an option to start as far back as 6000 BC and then have to research roads, irrigation, & mining

Ending Date Later is better. i wouldn't mind going all "Star Trek" in techs, as long as you could enable win options that went into effect earlier than that. Say 4000 AD at the most, but make optional win points at 2000 AD, and 3000 AD). Tis would make for a long game especially on a huge map (maybe your grand kids can finish the game for you).

Ages i like civ 2's ages better. They weren't as pronounced, and you could advance all the way to the "modern" age and still be completely backwards elsewhere. Civ3's ages don't let you advance until you have almost every tech in that age. I'm not as big a fan of that.

Which Ages I think these would be good: (with different city styles for each)<ul>
<li>Stone Age
<li>Copper Age
<li>Bronze Age
<li>Iron Age
<li>Classical Age
<li>Feudal Age (medieval for Europe, feudal for Asia - I'm fuzzy on Asia history, so correct me if they are not aprrx. equal)
<li>Empirialist/Colonial Age
<li>Industrial Age
<li>Modern Age
<li>Global Age (shift from normal person caring only for local to caring for gloabl issues)
<li>Information Age
<li>Space Age
</ul>
Number of Advances I like the idea of major and minor techs. I would say 50-60 major techs, and maybe 100 minor techs.

Structure of Tree Clump Birch. It should be possible for two civs to be equal in power and rating, yet to have followed two almost unique research paths.

Thoughts on Occidentocentrism Not sure if this would work, but couldit be possible tohave the world advance according to the viewpoint of the civ you are playing? For example, it would be a very different game if you played from the perspective of the Japanese versus the English. Maybe there could be seperate tech trees and ages for each different civ or cultural grouping.

Governmental Advances A separate tree for governements could be interesting, otherwise i would tie them other techs.

Other The above would probably be a nightmare unless you enjoy micromanagement, bt i don't mind it that much. I like really involved games, and the deeper they go into detail, the better.

[Myrddin]

Starting date

Happy with arbitary 4000 BC(but this is Occidentocentrist in itself)


Ending Date

Genetic age is fine c2100

Ages

Yes, there have to be enough new ideas, in enough fields to cross-polinate to generate real changes in society. This however is a peripheral matter - you name the ages to fit the design rather than vice-versa

Number of advances

c100, ie more than Civ3, with many optional advances

Structure of trees

This needs enough branches to allow strategic choice of directions, but what those choices should be is a topic in itself (and a major part of game design)

Occidentocentrism

Try to avoid

Governments

Need to be triggered by other advances

Other

One of the parts of SMAC that I liked was the research method, where you could pick a field for research, but not the topic, which is a far better simulation of how development comes than the linearity of Civ3

[civman2000]

I enjoy micromanagement