TECHNOLOGY (ver1.1): Hosted by Octopus

[Utrecht]

Music as a technology is rather interesting. Especially in regards to improving entrertainers.

A couple of thoughts

Ancient> Rythm +1 per Entertainer
Renisannce> Polyponic +1 per Entertainer

As stated above music would be a "dead-end" technology, but has a LOT of use for making citizens happy.

i.e. Civ improvement (a low power wonder available to all civs) : National Anthem. Requires Polyphonic music + Nationalism. Reduces War unhappiness by 1.

anacron,

Art has had a significant impact on history. Drafting, CAD, 3d modeling all are derived from the concept of "Art"

[This message has been edited by Utrecht (edited May 19, 1999).]

[Transcend]

Music and art were known to prehistoric cavemen. They had already been discovered at beginning of the Civilization and should be technological advances in this games. I think the mass entertainment, including pop music, is a more acceptable civilizational advance.

[the Octopus]

Zorloc: "For the tech underdog there should be one advantage, tech bleed."

Is this along the lines of what you mean?: Since technologies become pervasive in a society, they become more widely known. For example, modern countries can still make it difficult to steal technologies that are recently developed, like nuclear weapon designs, but how could we ever prevent a Zulu spy from sneaking in and stealing our prized "wheel" technology? Maybe it could be something like (diplomatic friendliness rating with other civ)*(length of time technology is known by other civ) = probability that tech bleeds off onto my civ. That way you quickly acquire things that your friends (who you routinely interact with) have known for a long time, but recent discoveries (especially discoveries by your enemies) would be impossible to acquire this way (you need real spies for that).

Kyle: While some of the things that the game allows should require some tech advances in the "real world", I think that might add unneeded complexity to the interface and detract from some of the fun. My feeling is that your suggestion falls into that class. Borders are probably a good idea for Civ III, but I think that trying to tie too much of the interface into the tech tree would be too frustrating, making those "key" techs to develop. Does anyone agree or disagree with that?

Ralph: I don't think we need to worry about Brian being willing to retain good stuff from previous Civs when going to Civ III. Remember, Brian is the one who took us from Civ I to Civ II. A lot of people criticized Civ II precisely because so much was the same.

I'll renew my call here for any on-line references to the tech-trees for the various civs. I haven't played CtP, and it's been a while since Civ II, so I don't know what to think about the "density" of the trees. Lacking some "concrete" info, does anyone have any subjective personal opinions either in agreement or disagreement with Ralph?

anachron: "this section is cross-posted from the Wonders section - is there or can there be a function to do this automatically?"

It's unlikely that there's an automatic way... I'll try to see if I can think of any tricky HTML ways... I agree that there are likely to be ideas that touch multiple List topics.

"For the Advancing the Arts thread"

The consensus so far seems to be that this suggestion should be scrapped, since arts and entertainment like music are generally just expressions of current technology (e.g. we have Movies and Television instead of dramas in the amphitheatre, but they all serve the same general purpose to us individually). Anyone with a different opinion?

SnowFire: "Now, if those specks controlled their destinies by their movements, I could see the significance, but these atheists don't."

I can't tell if you are kidding here, but this is almost an excellent example of why multiple paths are a good idea.

Scenario 1: Culture develops Mysticism, Mysticism leads to study of the stars, study of the stars leads to Navigation. Perfectly understandable and believable. Scenario 2: Culture doesn't develop Mysticism. Nobody in the entire society ever notices that there are sparkly lights in the sky, and that they move in predictable patters. Huh? Yes, Mysticism might lead you to discover Astronomy (maybe even a very strong possibility), but do we want to say it is the only way?

I think that SnowFire's system of "the research allocation that our society is familiar with is the optimal one" is pretty good. It does a good job of dealing with "intellectual inertia". It also seems like it would be simple enough to not get in the way of having fun with the game. Some overly-complex systems get in the way of the game. Does anyone else have any comments, or enhancements or anything, to this idea?

"However, if I discover "Religious fanaticism" AND "Standing armies," would I get a 3-1-1 unit?"

I was using a Civ-like military as the basis for this example, so there is a "spear-wielding fanatic" unit which is 2-1-1, and a "tight formation spear team" (fanatical devotion doesn't necessarily make you better at keeping in formation, maybe even the opposite...) unit which is a 2-1-1. It's just an example. I'd actually like a better one if somebody can suggest one. A possible implementation of this particular example would be that this is a "special ability", like in SMAC, where you can only have one per unit in the early parts of the game.


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[Trachmyr]

How about Art and Music giving a scoring bounus at game end, similar to FUTURE TECH. And in the same manner you can research this tech over and over. ??? maybe each time an advance is discovered, you gain a one-time bonus to happiness, that wains over time, until another advance is made in the arts.

[Shining1]

Optopus: Some very good ideas. I have similar stuff in mind - here are two points from the city interface stuff:

Priest/Entertainer citizens:
Priests get improved by temples, making two unhappy citizens happy (normally one). Entertainers are improved by the CivII combination of Banks, Marketplace, etc. Each makes one citizen happy.

The entertainers are also given a +50% boost (+1 luxury) for the dead end tech 'music' - making them more effective at the end of the game, but only half as effective as a well supported priest to begin with.


The ideal balance is a mix of both, because priests don't affect 'normal' citizens, only unhappy ones. In CivIII, I'm suggesting that their be resource penalties for drone workers - they don't work as hard as normal or happy citizens - so making the entire population happy is your first priority.


The rest of your tech ideas seem very ambitious, but I like the random idea a lot.
However, it would take a LOT of work on the 'master' tree to fit everything together properly. Good luck.

Shining1

[the Octopus]

About Bell's "Point System" post from the other thread:

It seems to me that this system is needlessly complicated. It has introduced a new game principle (prereq points) but it isn't clear that this has value above and beyond the traditional tech tree or the "multiple paths" proposal. It might begin to make sense if there were a lot of techs, but I think that if there are too many technologies, they run the risk of losing the intuitive grasp that most of us have for the concepts in Civ because they may lose their distintiveness. The number of techs in a Civ game is an important play balance question -- too few and you lose interest, too many and you can't keep track of them all.

As I see it, Bell's system incorporates a) multiple paths, with boolean prereqs. b) research synergy (which requires multi-topic research). c) reverse engineering. and d) "basic research" (i.e. long term investment or short term gain).

It rolls them all into the "prereq points" framework, but I am not sure that is necessary or helpful. I don't really see why the different ideas are as interdependent as Bell claims.

At its core, "prereq points" seem to be a generalization of boolean prereqs. I'm not sure that this is an idea that needs to be generalized.

Does anyone else have any other comments about Bell's system, or comments about my comments?


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[Trachmyr]

I must agree that I don't see the need for a lose "prereq point" system. Just use Boolean logic with about 4 fields for techs to be entered

[the Octopus]

What are people's feelings on the resource gathering limits linked to techs that were implemented in SMAC? I hated them. They felt artificially restrictive and were exceedingly frustrating. What were other people's thoughts? Is this something that should be continued?

Were they:
a) A bad idea
b) A good idea, but a bad implementation
or
c) A good idea, and a good implementation.


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[the Octopus]

What are people's feelings on the resource gathering limits linked to techs that were implemented in SMAC? I hated them. They felt artificially restrictive and were exceedingly frustrating. What were other people's thoughts? Is this something that should be continued?

Were they:
a) A bad idea
b) A good idea, but a bad implementation
or
c) A good idea, and a good implementation.


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[Kyle]

In regards to borders and how they can relate to technology. First, Cartography should be discovered in order to allow game area to be displayed. By this I mean, before being discovered, areas of the map are shown when units move in. When they move away, the "fog of war" comes over. When cartography is discovered, this allows the "FOW" to go away, allowing the player to see the territory. Of course, in order to be updated, you will need to send units to the area to have up to date maps.

And Surveying. With this, civilizations will now be able to draw true borders between empires, instead of the simple zones of control of the more primitive civs (ie Civ, Civ2 and CTP). This will reflect a more realistic approach to national boundries.

[the Octopus]

Bell: I don't think you should repost. I think that is is possible to summarize what you are trying to say. I have some criticisms of your system (possible constructive ) but I don't have time now. I feel that we must limit the list to only "bullet point" suggestions, otherwise I will need to pick and choose among everybody's "pet system" for final inclusion. We can't expect Brian to have to wade through thirty or forty posts of the length and complexity of yours, or my original post on the SMAC forums. If you can't explain something concisely, it means you aren't trying hard enough .


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[yin26]

Octopus,

You're up and running again! (I hope...)

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**"un"Officially Making Lists for Firaxis Since SMAC Enhancement 3!**

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I feel that we must limit the list to only "bullet point" suggestions, otherwise I will need to pick and choose among everybody's "pet system" for final inclusion.

I don't really agree with this. Why should it be necessary to do that? Just submit it as a really big bullet point . . . but really, the whole point of making a post like that is to show how related systems would interact. The whole is more than the sum of the parts, and really, the parts don't make much sense by themselves. I can try to condense the entire post, but breaking it into components doesn't work. And I don't see the problem with sending a detailed list to BR . . . yes, an effort should be made at keeping it short, but if you're only going to send half-thoughts and shadows of ideas, what's the point of sending it at all?

[Kerris]

Let the Science city improvements play a bigger role in achieving technology advances rather than a gold rush! In CTP an academy and university are just about worthless but a marketplace and bank will give your science a healthy boost.

[the Octopus]

Thanks, yin!


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"