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Okay, let's continue refining and combining ideas:
First of all, let's have set technology amounts to research. A Level 1 technology takes 50 points to research, period. A Level 3 technology takes 600 points. Now, there are several modifiers to this. I say this because I hated, in CivI, how it would take 15 turns for my Industrial Revolution society to go back and research Pottery (since in CivI it was a useless dead end). Now, of course, there can be a bunch of percentage bonuses and penalties to this. First and foremost, ones that are based on difficulty level, and that are applied across the board at the beginning of the game (you're playing on Chieftain? Fine, 20% bonus for you and 30% penalty for the computer). Secondly, things like the "basic research" idea mentioned before, i.e. "Discovery of Atomic Physics speeds all physics research by 10%." Furthermore, since the prices of a level of technology are set in stone, if my society which never bothered to learn pottery tried to research it, I'd easily get the 50 measly points (unless the reason why I never researched it was because I had my allocation set to 0% in whatever category pottery is in).
So, I'm seeing a tech tree just like in CivII, except slightly less interdependent. Each tech has a color as well that represents it's field of study. Some possible categories:
Philosophy (a lot of general learning type advancements. Gives you the most government types as well, and the category most heavily dependent on prerequisites that are outside the category, or in other words, the most intertwined category. Setting this to 0% is suicide).
Psychology (includes religion & theology as well as other people-contenters for Octopus's atheists, the arts, and some spy-improving techs)
Mathematics & Physics (starts out with simple war machines and math ideas, leads to astronomy, magnetism, railroads, flight, space travel, and the atom bomb.)
Agriculture & Biology (Pretty much as it says. Starts out with better irrigation techniques, moves on to medicines and even chemical warfare later)
Economics (Starts out with Trade 101 with currency & caravans, and eventually hits industrialization, mass capitalism, and (indirectly) communism.)
There are probably other categories, but it's best to keep it small- 5 categories means easier manipulation of your society's research focus (Not "Do I make applied transportation 6% or 7%?"). And if I didn't mention before, these are using my idea of setting research allocations for a category, which determines your research speed for your scientists in each category. No more "Okay, my entire society of philosophers that discovered the Republic now become economics majors and study trade.") Also note that there is no "Military science" category- that would make it to easy to pursue a straight military buildup, and with multiple paths to military might like in the previous ideas, that shouldn't be a big problem.
First of all, let's have set technology amounts to research. A Level 1 technology takes 50 points to research, period. A Level 3 technology takes 600 points. Now, there are several modifiers to this. I say this because I hated, in CivI, how it would take 15 turns for my Industrial Revolution society to go back and research Pottery (since in CivI it was a useless dead end). Now, of course, there can be a bunch of percentage bonuses and penalties to this. First and foremost, ones that are based on difficulty level, and that are applied across the board at the beginning of the game (you're playing on Chieftain? Fine, 20% bonus for you and 30% penalty for the computer). Secondly, things like the "basic research" idea mentioned before, i.e. "Discovery of Atomic Physics speeds all physics research by 10%." Furthermore, since the prices of a level of technology are set in stone, if my society which never bothered to learn pottery tried to research it, I'd easily get the 50 measly points (unless the reason why I never researched it was because I had my allocation set to 0% in whatever category pottery is in).
So, I'm seeing a tech tree just like in CivII, except slightly less interdependent. Each tech has a color as well that represents it's field of study. Some possible categories:
Philosophy (a lot of general learning type advancements. Gives you the most government types as well, and the category most heavily dependent on prerequisites that are outside the category, or in other words, the most intertwined category. Setting this to 0% is suicide).
Psychology (includes religion & theology as well as other people-contenters for Octopus's atheists, the arts, and some spy-improving techs)
Mathematics & Physics (starts out with simple war machines and math ideas, leads to astronomy, magnetism, railroads, flight, space travel, and the atom bomb.)
Agriculture & Biology (Pretty much as it says. Starts out with better irrigation techniques, moves on to medicines and even chemical warfare later)
Economics (Starts out with Trade 101 with currency & caravans, and eventually hits industrialization, mass capitalism, and (indirectly) communism.)
There are probably other categories, but it's best to keep it small- 5 categories means easier manipulation of your society's research focus (Not "Do I make applied transportation 6% or 7%?"). And if I didn't mention before, these are using my idea of setting research allocations for a category, which determines your research speed for your scientists in each category. No more "Okay, my entire society of philosophers that discovered the Republic now become economics majors and study trade.") Also note that there is no "Military science" category- that would make it to easy to pursue a straight military buildup, and with multiple paths to military might like in the previous ideas, that shouldn't be a big problem.
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