AU mod: The ToE - Hoover beeline

[nbarclay]

Longevity is too much of a long-term investment to be an effective slingshot to Hoover. Indeed, to get a significant benefit from Longevity in your original core at all, you typically have to research Sanitation and build hospitals, which is a significant detour from a Hoover beeline. So swapping ToE and Longevity would not pose a problem of just replacing one slingshot to Hoover with another.

My ideal course of action would be:

1) Find an acceptable way to keep Longevity in the modern era.

2) Keep the Electronics requirement for tanks in our next AU game (the naval one that was planned before C3C came out), but in the next game after that, pick a type of game that lends itself to testing that proposed change. The real question in my mind is whether only third-world AIs would be likely to be stuck defending against the earlier tanks largely with riflemen or whether tank-vs.-riflemen battles would become easy enough to set up to be a problem.

3) Keep thinking about what else might be done to address the ToE/Hoover issue in a constructive way.

But if Longevity moves to the industrial era, I think swapping Longevity and ToE would be better than adding another wonder to the industial era without doing anything meaningful to offset that wonder's power.

Nathan

[Jeem]

Perhaps the main problem here is the beeline to Scientific Method, and the prebuilding of ToE?

I dunno if this can be modded or not, but if on completing the ToE, the player got the first two techs (from the left) that they hadn't already researched, get's them. No choice of techs in other words.

I know Scientific has changed to allow the choice whereas before in vanilla and PTW you got what the AI determined so I assume the reverse is also true for the ToE?

This way, the ToE will still be kept in the industrial era and still be worth two techs but not always the Atomic Theory/Electronics ones just about everyone chooses. If you've already researched everything up to that point, you haven't beelined for Scientific Method so you probably deserve it. More often than not, completing the ToE would get you stuff like Nationalism and Ironclads - especially if you've been pre-building it. Still good, but not awesome.

[Dominae]

Yes, if the tech choices were random we would have a suitable fix, but unfortunately we cannot do that in the editor. Incidentally, this is also the fix I would like to see with the free Philosophy tech.


Dominae

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dominae
Yes, if the tech choices were random we would have a suitable fix, but unfortunately we cannot do that in the editor. Incidentally, this is also the fix I would like to see with the free Philosophy tech.

In the initial Civ 3 release, ToE gave either (i) 2 random techs, or (ii) the 2 cheapest techs (I think it was the later but can't remember). If they didn't rip out that code and replace it wholesale, the possibility for modding the wonder to provide 2 techs that aren't of the player's choosing is still there, just waiting to be exposed via te editor. I suspect it was ripped and replaced, however.

Catt

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Catt
I suspect it was ripped and replaced, however.

I suspect it is still there, because a similar mechanism is needed to give a random tech to scientific civs when they advance to the next age.

[Kuciwalker]

Even if it is, though, I doubt it is reachable through the editor.

[Catt]

Originally posted by lockstep


I suspect it is still there, because a similar mechanism is needed to give a random tech to scientific civs when they advance to the next age.

True!

Catt

[Dominae]

Maybe they coded the Scientific selection routine badly, and hard-coded the options as the first-tier techs of every era...


Dominae

[Jeem]

Originally posted by Dominae
Maybe they coded the Scientific selection routine badly, and hard-coded the options as the first-tier techs of every era...


Dominae

This is probably the most likely case unfortunately. The two cheapest techs would also be a good alternative if that option is still hidden away somewhere (again, it's pretty unlikely). If it is still there, you'd probably end up with Ironclads and Sanitation unless you'd researched them during building the ToE. It's pretty unlikely you'd get both Atomic Theory and Electronics for sure.

[alexman]

The removal of the Electronics requirement from Motorized Transportation has been under consideration for over 3 weeks. Panel members: please cast your votes within 48 hours.

According to the discussion above, I would also like to place the following proposal under consideration:

• Move Longevity to Scientific Method
• Move Theory of Evolution to Genetics, and increase cost to 1000 shields

Any objections?

[Dominae]

Electronics requirement: let's try it out, although it does not solve the Theory of Evolution problem.

Theory of Evolution and Longevity: no, as I've argued above this is too much of a change for the AU mod.


Dominae

[alexman]

'No' to put it under consideration, or is that your actual vote?

My vote for the change to Motorized transport: yes

[Dominae]

'No', I object to the change AND I object to the vote, too.

If you reread the latter parts of this thread, it appears that most people think that change is a bad idea (I being the most vocal one). So why vote on it?


Dominae

[Theseus]

As always, I am in the 'go slow' camp.

Yes to Electronics, no to all else.

[sabrewolf]

go slow? isn't changing the tech tree quite radical?