TECHNOLOGY (ver1.2): Hosted by Octopus

[Koyaanisqatsi]

OK, now people are reading more complexity into the system than is necessary.

Shining1 writes:
1) Bell assumes that you can get to different advances by taking different paths.

Well, that's half of it. There really wouldn't be very much flexibility in the tech tree itself, only four ways maximum, and only three of them are practicle. The extra options come in from diplomacy and combat, both of which can give you prereq points as I described.

2) In addition, the points system seems difficult to easily understand, and is at any rate completely subjective, as in point 1. Who's to say that bronze working is 10% of the way to iron working or 90%?

There isn't going to be that level of complexity involved. There are simply two types of prereqs--one of which gives you half the points necessary, and the other which gives you a quarter of the points necessary. Every tech has two prereqs, and four related techs. Like I said, a good deal of the variety comes from what you do in the game itself.

3) The amount of work required in given each technology a prereq percentage to determine it's relevance to other advances (some of which may also be prereqs to that tech!) is mindboggling. I mean, how much did pottery influence mechanised warfare? Both the algorithm required to handle this and the encyclopaedia entry for the tech are work better spent elsewhere, IMO.

Like I said, you're overcomplicating the system. All it requires is the standard prereq system as it already exists, and then picking 4 techs that show up about the same time on the tech tree and which are related to the goal tech. There's not any big "well, pottery gives me 3.6% of mechanized warfare" stuff, it's all in simple halves and quarters.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The Masked Poster writes:
B. Techs should be hard to accquire ( many more points of research ), to force cultures to trade techs between themselfs
( like in real history, no single country discovered the entire tech tree ).

I don't like this, it takes away a major gameplay option (isolationism). We're trying to increase variety in gameplay, not reduce it.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

SnowFire writes:
But if I research physics first, and then research calculus, are you telling me I shouldn't get my syngery bonus?

Yes, because that's not a synergy bonus, that's a prerequisite bonus. Synergy comes into being because two people are doing two related but different things at the same time, and they feed off each other to get a better product than either would have gotten alone. How long do you think it would have taken the US electrical industry to get into high gear if Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse hadn't all been around at the same time doing the same thing, competing with each other and feeding off each others ideas? If Tesla hadn't come on the scene until the 1950's, he wouldn't have had Edison's mind to play off of, or Westinghouse's competition to use to advance his own theories. And we may even have been locked into DC by that time, so Tesla's inventions might never have happened. No, prereqs are prereqs, and synergy is synergy.

Now, I can see your point if you still get the synergy bonus when the other member of a pair has already been researched. But otherwise...

That doesn't make sense . . . if you always get a bonus, it isn't really a bonus, is it?

I've achieved stone, sling, and recurved bow. It's a CivII system where number of technologies determines how had it is to research the next thing. I can research either Longbow or Crossbow. Since they cost the same, I research Crossbow (duh).

Yes, but there may be other benefits of researching Longbow (Maybe not in this example, since they're too closely related, but in others this is the theory.) Maybe if you take the lower tech, it fills out the prereq points necessary for another tech. If you leapfrog as high as you can go each time, you're going to be missing a lot of techs, and thus a lot of buildings or units. Some of them could be missed easily enough, but not huge stretches of them.

It's still a simplification, but it's much more realistic, IMHO.

Maybe more realistic, but breaking up the tech tree like that reduces choices and makes research less fun. CivII's research is much more fun than MoO2's which is like the system you're proposing.

Anyways, I think people are reading too much complexity into what I write. Prereqs and related techs could be easily identified on the tech tree chart with colors that would make them simple to follow.

[HolyWarrior]

Just a note that I oppose adding the tech "Music" to the game. In my view, your culture already starts with it--can anyone name one culture, even stone-age, without it?

My 2 cents

[Michael Daumen]

I don't know if this is the place for this observation, but here goes.

I think that each time a tech is discovered by an additional civ, the cost for the remaining civs to discover the tech should decline. This is parallel with the real world -- England invented or applied most Industrial technologies first, and France, Germany, Russia and Japan caught up very quickly -- 30 years for Japan! This could make runaway games more interesting.

[Stefu]

Just a small idea.

Remember those Alien Artifacts in SMAC? Well, I'm thinking of Artifacts as well. These would be small things found in huts, artifacts not quite from the time-like steam doors of those Greek temples (okay, okay, they were propably not found from some hut.) Crystal heads, clockwork mechanisms, primitive batteries, advanced theories about atoms and such. These, when taken to libraries, would give you easier time (it takes less research points) to strive for the tech they'd actually belong to. For instance, clockwork mechanisms help you in path to research clockworks, obviously.

[Kerris]

If you have a COMPUTERS technology I think there should be a Programming technology and maybe a Systems Analysis tech or maybe a Systems Analyist unit that can shut down the computers in a city?

[Utrecht]

Shining1

Why would providing differentiation between the civs in regards to tech (or anything else) be offensive?

I do not see it as an issue so long as the bonuses/penalties are balanced.

[Harel]

First thing, Octupos, I can now take the credit, i managed to create an account

My suggestion is A. Some critical-old-age techs ( remember however, my post about vital food farming techs ) B. About wonders.
C. Arts... where are the arts?
First I'll tell about tech basical tech tree:

Arts ( require nothing )
Math ( require nothing, Alphabet? )
Masonry
Engineering ( Math and masonry )
Sculpture ( Arts and masonry )
Painting ( Arts )
Architecture ( Arts and Enginerring )
The Bow ( Architecture )

The bow should allow temples to be built.
My suggestion is very obivous: Wonders needs architecture. Before you discover it, you can't build wonders. Quite basical, you can't build a huge hanging garden, for example, before you have the know-how on how to build at all!

[EnochF]

Good suggestions, Wheathin. I still think Germ Theory should simply be called Antibiotics, but I'm glad somebody else suggested Botany. It's an early tech that could flesh out the technology of 1000-1700 A.D., which is almost entirely missing in Civ II and gets barely a glance in CtP.

I'd also suggest Genetics, a fairly early technology, not as advanced as it sounds (on the level of Mendel).

Evolution and DNA would make decent advances, as well. The Loom. Algebra. Relativity. Venture Capitalism. Herbalism. The Pump. Gearworks. Mercenary Warfare. Aristocracy. It's time to fill in the gaps!

You've already suggested Crop Rotation, which is a must. Same with Periodic Table. I knew I wasn't the only person who thought that should be an advance! Brewing, yes!

(Naturally, the more techs there are, the faster the progression would be from one to the next. It would keep the less warlike players interested.)

[EnochF]

Okay, okay, future tech. I'm rather in the middle of designing a far-future Civ II modpack at the moment, and it borrows equally from science fiction and science fact. Of course, Civ III will often not have the luxury of being able to lift directly from famous science fiction sources. Here's a few examples:

Science fact, extrapolated:
cloning
orbital construction
commercial spacefaring
wakeways
artificial intelligence
spaceport
xenobiology (exobiology)
terraforming
eugenics
metallic foam
neural interface
nanotechnology
laser induced fusion
zero point energy
hydroponics
microgee agriculture
xenopsychology
cryogenics
nanomedicine (cell repair)
personality constructs
mass drivers

Not all of these are future tech, of course, but their practical uses are.

Science fiction inspired:
warp drive
psychohistory
robopsychology
ICE
eptification
elite conscription
phaser
turbolaser
artificial gravity (antigravity)
universal translator
scrith
hyperatomic motivator
twin ion engine
liquid metal (mimetic polyalloy)
positronic matrix
spindizzy generator
planckscale machines
antimatter containment
ekumen
matter replication

Most of the sci-fi techs are impossible and as such don't belong in a Civ game. (But I'll gladly put them in my modpack, of course.) A few might actually work. ICE is a fairly well established concept now, for example, and a universal translator might be a possibility in the next century. But at the moment I'm just throwing them out as ideas to inspire other ideas.

[wheathin]

Enoch F, you reminded me of a few others I had forgotten.

More modern techs
- Geology, Evolutionary Biology
- Alloys,
- Imperialism, Total War
- Internal Combustion Engine
- Submersibles, Oceanography
- after robotics, "Microbotics" (preq to nanotech), "Astrobotics", and "Hydrobotics"
- Satellites (after space flight)
- Superstrings (after q. mech)
- Environmental Ethic (after conservation, but before recycling)
- MultiNat Corp, Keynesian Econ, Entrpreneurialism, Globalization

More old techs from 1000-1700
- Money Economy (13th-14th cent, contemporaneous with banks, but more of a social tech, results in "cash crops")
- Surgery (15th-16th cent, before physiology - they could do amputations and simple operations well before they figured out how everything else worked. Not that I would've trusted such a "sawbones" )
- Gunnery (as in cannons), Fortifications (16th-17th cent)
- Humanism (14th cent, before Age of Reason, but req Heliocentrism), - Experiment (or Empiricism - 15th cent)
- Simple Machines, Clockwork
- Calendar, Astrology (needed preq to astronomy)

Nuke warfighting techs, each is a preq to next:
Nuclear Weapons,
N. Deterrence (allows ICBMs),
N. Warfighting (allows tactical nuke units (if any) and cruise missiles),
N. Defence (future tech allows Nuclear terrorist units and SDI),
N. Disarm (far future tech allows Nanite Defuser or equivalent).

I'll post my tech tree when it's done - numbers close to 200 techs thru roughly 2000 a.d.

wheathin

[wheathin]

Future techs - some of my favorites:

Psycho-history - though I doubt they could get the copyrights.
Artificial Stupidity - the all-important preq to A.I.
Anti- anything (matter, gravity, realisty...)
Microbotics, Astrobotics, Hydrobotics (see above post)
Kinetic Weapons
Inertia Nullification (thanks to the space operas of E.E. "Doc" Smith)
<star trek techno-babble of your choice>

wheathin

[Travathian]

Dyson Sphere

The ultimate future tech, I think this should be a end game option.

(for those of you unfamiliar with this, the Dyson Sphere is the theory that by surrounding a star by a giant sphere you could theoretically inhabit the entire interior, thus maximizing the use of the suns energy)

[Shining1]

Utrecht: Balance is irrelevant. The suggestion that some races are smart than others should be kept out of CivIII is what I'm saying. As should all non historical reference to religion.

Adding minor techs according to their historical accuracy doesn't make unfair assumptions about races - because this stuff actually happened. But adding SMAC style bonuses to each race is a bad judgement call - it makes assumptions are can be highly offensive and which have no way of being backed up.

Travathian: Aren't Dyson sphere's meant to be highly unstable. Not to mention CivIII ends around 2100 - or else it doesn't connect to Alpha Centauri properly.

Maybe this is an idea best used in the third part of the broom of time.

Bell: Sounds quite simple when you put it like that - BUT I think the idea is too subjective when put into practise. Which four techs are responsible for

As for the music tech - I agree, this does need to be adjusted. Call it "composition", and make it a minor tech for writing or something similar. This represents the ability of a person to write music and allow other people to play it - something which is essential to all modern music but which was NOT present in ancient cultures.

Finally, I hope everything along the lines of Women's Suffrage in CivII gets included in the tech tree - this is a necessary social progression, not a 'Wonder'.