Is it me or is tech tree seriously flawed?????

[Nikolai]

quote: Originally posted by jkadabomb on 11-27-2000 09:36 PM Maximus42 you are not very smart. The Ice Age was millions of years ago and has no chance of fitting into the Civ time periods.

Well, that's a bit wrong.....

We had a ice age for circa 10.000 years ago. Then Europe from Scandinavia in north, to Germany(half) in south, was just ice!

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Who am I? What am I? Do we need Civ? Yes!!
birteaw@online.no

[JamesJKirk]

What's that over there?!?! The topic? Oh. Anyway, what's the deal with having both Jet Propulsion and Supersonic Flight advances? They're practically the same advance (I DID say practically). And JP giving you the bomber? Methinks I'll just call it Advanced Flight to sooth my nerves

[Dissident Aggressor]

Well I just wanted to make a point about techs. If we had the last 6000 years to relive we would never get the same result twice. Who knows we may discover atomic power in the 18th century if we had it all to do again. Much is due to chance. A civ game shouldn't play exactly as our history has (that would be pretty boring). The point of civ games is to make our own history. This means getting techs at different times than actually happened. Would you want some algorithm that says you can only research nuclear fission from the turns in 1940 and 1945 (not exact but you get my point). Now an exciting part would be to randamize the tech tree (impossible I know). But with mods you can do all sorts of things... I think I haven't purchased the game yet (later today)

One question though. Do you research exact techs or are there general areas you can research like in SMAC. That is the accurate thing about smac that was nice. Realistically especially in ancient times, advances came on luck not on putting forth a concerted effort.
[This message has been edited by Dissident Aggressor (edited November 28, 2000).]

[CyberGnu]

DA, yes and no.

Atomic power can't be discovered before quantum physics/relativity and metallurgy. QP can't be discovered without a sound base in chemistry and wave physics. Chemistry springs from alchemy and biology. Wave physics comes from optics. Metallurgy also comes from chemistry and civil engineering, etc etc. (OK, this is pretty simplified, but you get he idea).

So essentially you do need a tech tree.

But in one way you are right. The advantage of SMACs techtree is that the different branches are independent. Whether you have discovered optics should not influnce whether you discover democracy. (Then again, the abolishment of slavery came from the invention of the horse collar, so they do have some overlap... but I think that is a little bit outside the scope of the game). So, someone concentrating on atomic power should be able to get it in the 1800's, providing he ignores, say, advances in social science. You see?

Regarding CTPII's tech tree, I can't say I think much of it... Fascism as a requirement for democracy? OK...

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Gnu Ex Machina - the Gnu in the Machine

[Dissident Aggressor]

you're kidding about that last line aren't you. Maybe I'm regretting buying the game. I should be playing not posting here.

How easily is the tree modified?

[Depp]

Well, weather was the force that set the wheels in motion for development. When the climate changed 10 000 BC or so, it made all the open grasslands dissaper and with them the large animals that made it possible to live on hunting alone, and still support a tribe. So people eventually settled down and starting farming due to this change in the climate.
And there are more changes in the climate later on that pushed people in different directions. Pretty interesting.

And the techtree is ok, but could be done better. I would like to see different paths that could be take which would give different cultures which different goods/bads etc. After all, all countries are different, and whereas the large discoveries spread rather quick people often tend to take different angles to it.

And maybe the possibility to enchance your units by putting some science into them and getting a better version of it.

But anyway...

[Rollo Tomasi]

Hey, how does the the invention of the horse collar relate to the abolishment of slavery ? Sounds like something from James Burke's Connections

[jkadabomb]

"I think people are missing Max42s argument a bit. For someone to say the game isnt' historically accurate is a bit unrealistic, because there are hundreds and thousands of things that have affected history."

Well actually what I meant was the tech tree had lots of stuff out of order and prerequisites for some stuff I think is wrong and etc.

[CyberGnu]

DA,

Rollo: Before the invention of the horse collar, the only way you could get work out of a horse was to put a rope around its neck. Unfortunatley, when the horse applied pressure on the rope, it effectively choked itself, so it could only use a fraction of its strength. Consequently, a horse could do the work of four men, but ate as much as five... Therefore it was more economical to keep slaves for farmduty.

When the horse collar was invented, the horse (or ox) could use its full strength. Now the horse could do the work of ten men, but still eat (fairly) the same. Naturally, this makes owning a horse more economical than slaves.

It should be said, I guess, that it doesn't eliminate slavery all together, slaves were still used for more qualified labor, but the era when most slaves were used more for brute strength than their intelligence ended. Compare the societies prior to the horse collar (greek, roman, etc) to the medieval societies after.


Depp, considering you being in Lule I understand your name... How many hours of sunlight do you guys have right now?

Anyway, something I've always found odd about the civ genre is the fact that you will still pay upkeep for a phalanx even when the SAME CITY is churning out tanks... I think there should a function where you could upgrade a unit for a small fee and say, five turns in a city.


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Gnu Ex Machina - the Gnu in the Machine

[Dissident Aggressor]

Ok I started my first game. can anyone please tell me why I start out with Archers in 4000 B.C.? And why is religion a starting tech? I miss ceremonial bariel
This tech tree sucks ass, but I'm trying not to let it bother me, and am trying to enjoy the game.

[jbs]

I thought the tech tree in CTP 1 was bad and have spent the last year trying to rewrite it to make it historically balanced and still have good game play (getting close after having more than doubled the amount of techs). I can see some minor deviations from history depending on choices along the tech path, but certain basics are still necessary. From all the reviews and comments I am getting the impression that the tech tree in CTP2 is as bad or worse than the tech tree in CTP1. Since CTP2 has the same limitations in mod development as CTP 1, I am seeing less and less reasons to buy CTP 2. The only consistent good comment is diplomacy, even borders have their problems. I thought the growing city radius is a good idea, but the averaging of city tiles is obviously a bad implementation. So diplomacy, borders, and growing city radius are good game improvements. Averaging city tiles is bad, the tech tree is bad, and critical units are missing. I would rather buy a $20 add-on that fixed diplomacy and added borders and just an expanding city radius to CTP1 then buy another flawed game. Then add in that CTP2 has no hot seat, and has memory leakage problems and I see NO reason to buy the game for $49. Maybe for $20, I would give it a try.

[jbs]

My understanding is 128 techs or less - no problems. More than 128 techs and the number of techs cause some minor to major (depending on view point) annoyances. Basically, the game is very slow to initially load. When you encounter a ruin that will give you an advance the game appears to lock up, but you just need to be patient. 1-2 mins later you get the advance from the ruin and the game continues. (This could be bypassed by disabling the ruin giving advances feature) Time from turn to turn increases slightly - in seconds (which I thought was acceptable). An advance can be a perquisite to another advance no more than 4 times, or strange things happen to the game. Also beware of the logical preq problem. If advance A is a preq to Advance B and C, but C is also a preq to B, than really only C is the preq to B. If the advance.txt file has both A and C as preq to B, than strange things happen to the game.

Now back to the 128 limit. I am told that this number is for indexed advances with references to the Great Library. If you put NO INDEX in the advance.txt file than the speed increases, of course all the GL files I worked hard on (to polish the game) are then disabled. I tried this and saw a noticeable increase in speed, but still not as fast as having only 128 non future techs. I think something was done to the code for future techs in addition to the NO INDEX flag that speeds up the game.

I even optimized the Advance.txt file in order of advances (instead of just adding new ones to the end) to see if that would help (it only caused me to rewrite every preq).

My understanding is that these same limitations are in CTP 2, so adding techs to flush out and correct the tech tree still has the same problems/constraints/limitations.

If my understanding on these limitations is wrong, or someone knows additional information, I will be glad to discuss my observations.

[jbs]

Also no more than 64 buildings/wonders and no more that 200 units. I never found these to be major constraints especially the units. Maybe increasing the improvements/wonders would be good. I am sure Wes would like an increase in the amount of wonders.

[MarkG]

well the number of possible advances is not the only thing that matter in mod development....

btw, how many advances do you need for a "correct" tech tree? how many turns would it take you to discover an advance with this total? would it really be more fun?

[jbs]

The tech tree should be consistent, should be somewhat historically accurate and make logical sense. CTP1 covered from ancient to space, thus covering more ground than Civ2 and thus requiring more techs than Civ2. CTP1 tried to cover more ground with the same amount of techs resulting in large gaps. I thought getting advances in CTP1 was too easy and too fast. City Walls came almost immediately and then the rush to pikeman meaning all the ancient units except for the phalanx were only good for killing barbarians. I wanted to make each age distinct so that you could fight a protracted ancient war and feel the constraints of the original city gov size. I wanted to feel like I built the Greek/Roman Empire from scratch and then took it into the modern and future ages. Civ2 gave me that feeling while CTP1 did not. Yes I slowed down the game and increased the number of turns. Instead of now being how quickly I can get to Pikeman or the modern age it is how quickly I can get to city walls. Civilization is not a game that you should be able to finish in a weekend. I want to spend the time to build it and then experience the fruits of my labor. To me Civilization is a game you play over multiple weekends. I more than doubled the amount of non future original techs ending up with a total of 200 non future techs - added some improvements bringing the total to 64 and added some more units like the Caravel and the Ion Cannon. I will send it to you within the next two weeks (pending any bugs) so you can post it if you want to or delete the e-mail if you desire.