Technologies tree in CIV III

[Iman]

Hi all,

I want to talk of something which i guess i haven't seen any discussion so far and that's about advances tree. I have understood that in CIVIII unlike its two precedors tech tree is devided into eras and you must discover all techonologies till you can go to other era and i'm heavily against it. Since it's neither realistic nor good for the game. In the real world we know that many civilization have the improvments far beyond the era there were living in. The obvious example is Egyptions or Mayan however they didn't have all other tehnologies that we think they must posses too.

Moreover if we look to some countries like afganistan we see that they have the most modern weapons but from other aspects of civilization they are living in the dawn of civilization. Also it make the game a power game rather than a strategy one. Since one who has a better geographic position will have better and more cities and so more advanced in technology and so will capture more cities and grow stornger. In civ1 and civ2 i had an strategy to go after technology branches most useful to face this superpower civilization and will let the other technologies be discovered later when i had a better time.

I'll be happy to hear your ideas about it,
Iman

[connorkimbro]

I think perhaps you've misunderstood.

From the way I understand, if you've got the prerequisites for a tech, you can research that tech. The era's have more to do with the game atmosphere. . how do your adviosors look? what graphics set is used for your cities? etc etc... It's not like you have to research EVERY ancient tech in order to get your first middle age tech . .

[hetairoi22]

No Connor, I think Iman is correct. At least I have also heard what he has. You don't have to discover ALL techs in one era though. Not the arts technologies like republik and philosophy, but all "material" techs, like The Wheel, Iron Working and Monarchy.

Regards,

Macedonian General

[Dauphin]

Is it actually restricting you from researching the next era's techs, or are they merely making the research costs prohibitive?

[Iman]

Actually i got these informations from one preview but if you look at the screen shots of tech tree you will see that there is now link between the technologies of frist column in an era with the previous one or links between advances at the last column with the next era. As i said that would really prohibitive. I think if they believe that certain advances needs more than one or two perquistie then they can set it so but for example researchin on cure for cancer has nothing to do with gunpowder or conscription that we have to research them. Any way I wish that Dan sees these discussion too so we can hear his comments.

Best for you,
Iman

[korn469]

posted by Iman
Also it make the game a power game rather than a strategy one. Since one who has a better geographic position will have better and more cities and so more advanced in technology and so will capture more cities and grow stornger. In civ1 and civ2 i had an strategy to go after technology branches most useful to face this superpower civilization and will let the other technologies be discovered later when i had a better time.

Iman as far as i've heard hetairoi22 describes how the tech tree works

but what you described above is why i think firaxis changed the way the tech tree worked...however, there is one little thing that you didn't described correctly, the superpower civ is almost invariably the human player

the AI in civ games isn't good at rushing for a specific tech that would give it either a military or economic advantaged...in SMAC the human would either rush for crawlers and tree farms if they were going for a powerful economy or they would go rover rover/impact weapons for an early rush, or airpower/fusion reactors for a midgame military domination...the AI would just pick techs at random...in civ2 it wasn't rare for one side to have fighters while the other had phalanxes, and i believe that this is done mostly to make the AI more competitive with the player

as for realism this makes the tech tree conform more to an abstract western only timeline of technological innovation...but really there is nothing at all realistic about the tech tree: only recently did the government fund research, and even then this doesn't take into account the large amount of private research that goes on, edison didn't invent the lightbulb for the government; also more than one tech gets researched at a time, and i can go on with more examples of how unrealistic it is...so it makes no point to argue over that aspect

but for gameplay, the new tech tree rules should make it simpler to create a tech tree since it appears that they dropped the two tech requirement (many techs appear to only have one requirement), it should make it more difficult for a player to rush for important military or economic techs and skip over items that are less important to their strategy, and this will make the AI at least a little more competant, plus it might have also made programming the AI a little easier

that is why i think they changed the tech tree

[Iman]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by korn469

Hi Korn,

thanking you for your justification,i must say that i don't agree with you and I will persuade my ideas below.

the AI in civ games isn't good at rushing for a specific tech that would give it either a military or economic advantaged...in SMAC the human would either rush for crawlers and tree farms if they were going for a powerful economy or they would go rover rover/impact weapons for an early rush, or airpower/fusion reactors for a midgame military domination...the AI would just pick techs at random...in civ2 it wasn't rare for one side to have fighters while the other had phalanxes, and i believe that this is done mostly to make the AI more competitive with the player
but for gameplay, the new tech tree rules should make it simpler to create a tech tree since it appears that they dropped the two tech requirement (many techs appear to only have one requirement), it should make it more difficult for a player to rush for important military or economic techs and skip over items that are less important to their strategy, and this will make the AI at least a little more competant, plus it might have also made programming the AI a little easier

As i am working on AI systems as part of my MSc thesis I'm familar with so much to say that improving the AI system to rush for some strategic advances than making such restriction for players. In fact I'm saying that they must think of enhancing AI system which i know it's quite possible not tying our hands to strengthen the AI. Moreover please notice that we wil have giant
possibilities of multiplayer games and that would really weaken that part since every player which is playing as American or Russia or Zulu because of large mass of useful lands will lead the game not because of his strategy but because of his strat up place. So I think this justification is not rational.

Best regards,
Iman

[korn469]

posted by Iman
Moreover please notice that we wil have giant possibilities of multiplayer games and that would really weaken that part since every player which is playing as American or Russia or Zulu because of large mass of useful lands will lead the game not because of his strategy but because of his strat up place.

well Iman i still disagree with you...if you are playing a multiplayer game, then we should assume that both human players are of equal skill...if one has a much better starting position than the other, then i don't think that the new tech tree will hurt the player in the horrible start position, in fact by preventing the player in the better start position to be able to rush for gunpowder for example the quality of the units will stay closer longer, and that could give the player in the worse starting position time to hang around in a game and not get totally wiped out, because crusaders are suddenly attacking his phalanxes...over time the good start position of the other player could be overcame

eventually you can only go so far in one direction on the tech tree before you have to research some earlier things you skipped, and civ3 just speeds this up slightly