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This thread is dedicated to generating a list of ideas for Brian Reynolds to incorporate into Civ III regarding technology. I serve as "Thread Master" for this thread, which makes me a facilitator of discussions and summarizer of things past. I have no desire to squash ideas, misrepresent people's ideas, etc. The list will be delievered as a concise list of ideas, each with a brief explanation. At the end of the list, the names of all of the posters who have contributed to the list will be included. If, in any of my summaries, you believe that I have missed something, changed something inappropriately, or could explain something better, please point it out. My goal with the summaries is to convey ideas as clearly and quickly as possible. Any and all discussion of any idea is allowed and encouraged, just becasue something appears in a summary does not make it "official" or "final". This is your list, I'm just trying to help you compile it.
This summary includes items that were posted on <a href=http://alpha.owo.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000300.html>the SMAC forums technology thread</a> and also <a href=http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/000511.html>CIV3: THE MASTER LIST (v1.0)-TECHNOLOGY</a> from the "Civ3 General" Forum.
1) REDUNDANT TECHS -- have multiple different ways to achieve the same in-game effect (say, a 2-1-1 unit or a "makes one unhappy person content" building) with different technological paths (for example, either "Religious Fanatacism" or "Professional Standing Army" techs might allow the 2-1-1 unit over the 1-1-1 unit). This allows different civilizations to take a less "cookie-cutter" approach to technological development, since there are no longer an "vital" technologies.
2) MULTIPLE PATHS TO A PARTICULAR ADVANCE -- Instead of having rigid prerequisites, allow several different ways to achieve a particular advance (for example, the prerequisite for "Labor Union" might be "Capitalism" and "Assembly Line", because the workers band together naturally to fight for rights, OR "Communism" and "Mass Media", because the communist activists are able to convince large numbers of workers to bargain collectively. However, "Capitalism" and "Mass Media" wouldn't do anything to advance "Labor Unions" without the other techs.).
3) RANDOM!!!! -- As long as there are multiple paths to each tech, there can be a probability that each path may or may not exist in a particular game. This adds to the excitement, and also the realism, since you can never quite be sure what your scientists will come up with until they come up with it.
4) CONCEPTS vs. APPLICATIONS -- Instead of an "all techs are equivalent" way of looking at the world, break techs into "concepts" and "applications". A "concept" might be "Gunpowder", while an "application" might be "Musketeer" or "Tunnel Construction".
5) TECH SYNERGY -- you can research multiple techs simultaneously, and researching related techs provides synnergistic effects, i.e. researching "Physics" and "Calculus" together would get you done faster than researching "Physics" and "Communism".
6) PREREQUISITE EQUIVALENCE -- instead of having a hard and fast prerequisite, allow some of them to be 'equivalence classed'. For example, if you wanted to develop "Technocracy", you need the advance on "Microchip", as well as knowledge of three government types, such as "Democracy", "Fascism", and "Monarchy".
7) PREREQUISITE POINTS -- Number 6 is actually a special case of this. In this suggestion, different technologies each contribute a certain point value to satisfying the prerequisite of a follow-on technology. For example, If you were interested in researching "Trench Warfare", you might need to gather 10 prereq points, where "Machine Guns" would give you 4, "Artillery" would give you 7, "Chemical Warfare" would give you 3, and "Conscription" would give you 3. Bell - can you help me summarize this better? I think I may have mangled it a bit.
8) NEW TECH: MUSIC -- A dead end tech that adds +50% to the effectiveness of entertainers. So an entertainer gains an early boost of +100% with the discover of music and construction of a market place.
9) FACTION/CIVILIZATION SPECIFIC TECH TREES -- different cultures look at the world in different ways, so it wouldn't be surprising to see that they would follow different paths or discover different technologies in different orders.
10) MAKE TECH TREE REFLECT GAME SITUATION -- the current game situation should affect the tech tree. A land-locked civ is unlikely to develop "Navigation", and a civ with poor mineral resources is unlikely to develop "Advanced Mining".
11) GREATER EMPHASIS ON THE ARTS -- The tech tree in general focuses on military hardware and hard science, leaving the Arts somewhat unaddressed (this suggestion probably needs to be fleshed out more).
12) MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE TECHNOLOGY -- Developing one technology might not make sense when another one already existed. "Green Industries" and "Advanced Toxic Waste Disposal" might be examples of this.
13) REVERSE ENGINEERING -- Fighting and destroying or capturing enemy units with superior technology should aid in the discovery of that technology.
14) LESS DETERMINISTIC RESEARCH PROGRESS -- Instead of just "100 Research Points gets you an advance" it should be "100 Research Points gives you a 5% chance of discovering tech, 110 RP gives you 10%, etc". This should follow some sort of curve (A bell curve was suggested, but I think other curves might be interesting -- discussion?)
15) BASIC THEORETICAL RESEARCH -- Have some reserch points devoted to "basic research" that isn't likely to produce any specific advances (i.e. won't give you a specific building or unit or something), but which enhance research in other areas (e.g. research in "Basic Physics" might enhance the speed at which you research "Lasers", "Nuclear Fission", and "Nuclear Fusion", but you could achieve those advances without doing the basic research, just at a higher cost. This would be a tradeoff -- Do I want Fission now, or do I want to invest a little more up front, and be sure of getting all three sooner in the long run, even though I wouldn't get any specific advance until later).
16) RESEARCH SYNERGY THROUGH DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS -- We should get bonuses to our technology development rate if we are on friendly diplomatic terms with other civs researching similar technology because of international science conferences, wider circulation technical journals, access to each other's research, etc.
17) HAVE GOVERNMENT/DIPLOMATIC CHOICES AFFECT TECH DEVELOPMENT -- Would a Democratic government ever research "Doctrine: Loyalty"?
18) AI TECH TRADING INTELLIGENCE -- Make sure that the AIs only make tech trades that make sense. Why trade for "Mass Transit" if you don't have "Automobile"?
19) FORBID 'OUT-OF-ORDER' TECH -- If you don't have the prereqs for a tech, you shouldn't be able to use it, even if you trade for it, etc. If (through some quirk of fate) Columbus has plans for an A-Bomb, and traded them to the Native Americans he met, it is unlikely that they would have been able to nuke Europe, since they didn't have the infrastructure to make use of the idea.
20) DEVELOPMENT INERTIA -- It doesn't make sense that the same researchers who just gave you "Nuclear Fission" would be able to turn around and give you "Television, because they are only peripherally related. Scientists are specialized, and can't easily be pushed around to different fields. You should have multiple "teams", each of which is working on a different project. When they are done with one, they will research a second project in the same field at a faster rate than an unrelated field (or pay a higher cost to research an "outside our expertise" field -- the effect is the same). This idea can work closely with 21...
21) HISTORICAL ERA SHOULD PLAY A ROLE -- Since in ancient times scholars studied a wide variety of fields (they were real Renaissance men
) it makes sense to have tech specialization only play a role in more modern types of research (e.g. an ancient Greek philosopher might have contemplated both the role and practice of government as well as the laws of motion).
22) LOCATION DEPENDENT RESEARCH -- Research is done in labs and universities, and labs and universities have to actually exist somewhere. If you are counting on your scientists who are developing "Nuclear Fission" to win the war for you, but the city they are conducting the research in gets captured, you should be up a creek...
23) MULTIPLE TECHS RESEARCHED SIMULTANEOUSLY -- Some of the previous ideas require this. Only really makes sense if there is some benefit to doing things in parallel rather than in series (e.g. the "research point interest" in MoO does this, as do some other schemes put forward in the suggestion threads)
24) DIFFERENTIATED 'SCIENCE BUILDINGS' -- Have buildings which enhance the scientific output of a city differentiated: You have your choice of a Physics Lab, a Biological Research Hospital, etc., which only add their bonus when the city is contributing to the appropriate kind of research.
25) BLIND TECH -- People seem to either love or hate the blind research from SMAC.
Let the suggestions and discussion continue!
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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"
This summary includes items that were posted on <a href=http://alpha.owo.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000300.html>the SMAC forums technology thread</a> and also <a href=http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/000511.html>CIV3: THE MASTER LIST (v1.0)-TECHNOLOGY</a> from the "Civ3 General" Forum.
1) REDUNDANT TECHS -- have multiple different ways to achieve the same in-game effect (say, a 2-1-1 unit or a "makes one unhappy person content" building) with different technological paths (for example, either "Religious Fanatacism" or "Professional Standing Army" techs might allow the 2-1-1 unit over the 1-1-1 unit). This allows different civilizations to take a less "cookie-cutter" approach to technological development, since there are no longer an "vital" technologies.
2) MULTIPLE PATHS TO A PARTICULAR ADVANCE -- Instead of having rigid prerequisites, allow several different ways to achieve a particular advance (for example, the prerequisite for "Labor Union" might be "Capitalism" and "Assembly Line", because the workers band together naturally to fight for rights, OR "Communism" and "Mass Media", because the communist activists are able to convince large numbers of workers to bargain collectively. However, "Capitalism" and "Mass Media" wouldn't do anything to advance "Labor Unions" without the other techs.).
3) RANDOM!!!! -- As long as there are multiple paths to each tech, there can be a probability that each path may or may not exist in a particular game. This adds to the excitement, and also the realism, since you can never quite be sure what your scientists will come up with until they come up with it.
4) CONCEPTS vs. APPLICATIONS -- Instead of an "all techs are equivalent" way of looking at the world, break techs into "concepts" and "applications". A "concept" might be "Gunpowder", while an "application" might be "Musketeer" or "Tunnel Construction".
5) TECH SYNERGY -- you can research multiple techs simultaneously, and researching related techs provides synnergistic effects, i.e. researching "Physics" and "Calculus" together would get you done faster than researching "Physics" and "Communism".
6) PREREQUISITE EQUIVALENCE -- instead of having a hard and fast prerequisite, allow some of them to be 'equivalence classed'. For example, if you wanted to develop "Technocracy", you need the advance on "Microchip", as well as knowledge of three government types, such as "Democracy", "Fascism", and "Monarchy".
7) PREREQUISITE POINTS -- Number 6 is actually a special case of this. In this suggestion, different technologies each contribute a certain point value to satisfying the prerequisite of a follow-on technology. For example, If you were interested in researching "Trench Warfare", you might need to gather 10 prereq points, where "Machine Guns" would give you 4, "Artillery" would give you 7, "Chemical Warfare" would give you 3, and "Conscription" would give you 3. Bell - can you help me summarize this better? I think I may have mangled it a bit.
8) NEW TECH: MUSIC -- A dead end tech that adds +50% to the effectiveness of entertainers. So an entertainer gains an early boost of +100% with the discover of music and construction of a market place.
9) FACTION/CIVILIZATION SPECIFIC TECH TREES -- different cultures look at the world in different ways, so it wouldn't be surprising to see that they would follow different paths or discover different technologies in different orders.
10) MAKE TECH TREE REFLECT GAME SITUATION -- the current game situation should affect the tech tree. A land-locked civ is unlikely to develop "Navigation", and a civ with poor mineral resources is unlikely to develop "Advanced Mining".
11) GREATER EMPHASIS ON THE ARTS -- The tech tree in general focuses on military hardware and hard science, leaving the Arts somewhat unaddressed (this suggestion probably needs to be fleshed out more).
12) MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE TECHNOLOGY -- Developing one technology might not make sense when another one already existed. "Green Industries" and "Advanced Toxic Waste Disposal" might be examples of this.
13) REVERSE ENGINEERING -- Fighting and destroying or capturing enemy units with superior technology should aid in the discovery of that technology.
14) LESS DETERMINISTIC RESEARCH PROGRESS -- Instead of just "100 Research Points gets you an advance" it should be "100 Research Points gives you a 5% chance of discovering tech, 110 RP gives you 10%, etc". This should follow some sort of curve (A bell curve was suggested, but I think other curves might be interesting -- discussion?)
15) BASIC THEORETICAL RESEARCH -- Have some reserch points devoted to "basic research" that isn't likely to produce any specific advances (i.e. won't give you a specific building or unit or something), but which enhance research in other areas (e.g. research in "Basic Physics" might enhance the speed at which you research "Lasers", "Nuclear Fission", and "Nuclear Fusion", but you could achieve those advances without doing the basic research, just at a higher cost. This would be a tradeoff -- Do I want Fission now, or do I want to invest a little more up front, and be sure of getting all three sooner in the long run, even though I wouldn't get any specific advance until later).
16) RESEARCH SYNERGY THROUGH DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS -- We should get bonuses to our technology development rate if we are on friendly diplomatic terms with other civs researching similar technology because of international science conferences, wider circulation technical journals, access to each other's research, etc.
17) HAVE GOVERNMENT/DIPLOMATIC CHOICES AFFECT TECH DEVELOPMENT -- Would a Democratic government ever research "Doctrine: Loyalty"?
18) AI TECH TRADING INTELLIGENCE -- Make sure that the AIs only make tech trades that make sense. Why trade for "Mass Transit" if you don't have "Automobile"?
19) FORBID 'OUT-OF-ORDER' TECH -- If you don't have the prereqs for a tech, you shouldn't be able to use it, even if you trade for it, etc. If (through some quirk of fate) Columbus has plans for an A-Bomb, and traded them to the Native Americans he met, it is unlikely that they would have been able to nuke Europe, since they didn't have the infrastructure to make use of the idea.
20) DEVELOPMENT INERTIA -- It doesn't make sense that the same researchers who just gave you "Nuclear Fission" would be able to turn around and give you "Television, because they are only peripherally related. Scientists are specialized, and can't easily be pushed around to different fields. You should have multiple "teams", each of which is working on a different project. When they are done with one, they will research a second project in the same field at a faster rate than an unrelated field (or pay a higher cost to research an "outside our expertise" field -- the effect is the same). This idea can work closely with 21...
21) HISTORICAL ERA SHOULD PLAY A ROLE -- Since in ancient times scholars studied a wide variety of fields (they were real Renaissance men
) it makes sense to have tech specialization only play a role in more modern types of research (e.g. an ancient Greek philosopher might have contemplated both the role and practice of government as well as the laws of motion).22) LOCATION DEPENDENT RESEARCH -- Research is done in labs and universities, and labs and universities have to actually exist somewhere. If you are counting on your scientists who are developing "Nuclear Fission" to win the war for you, but the city they are conducting the research in gets captured, you should be up a creek...
23) MULTIPLE TECHS RESEARCHED SIMULTANEOUSLY -- Some of the previous ideas require this. Only really makes sense if there is some benefit to doing things in parallel rather than in series (e.g. the "research point interest" in MoO does this, as do some other schemes put forward in the suggestion threads)
24) DIFFERENTIATED 'SCIENCE BUILDINGS' -- Have buildings which enhance the scientific output of a city differentiated: You have your choice of a Physics Lab, a Biological Research Hospital, etc., which only add their bonus when the city is contributing to the appropriate kind of research.
25) BLIND TECH -- People seem to either love or hate the blind research from SMAC.
Let the suggestions and discussion continue!
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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"
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