[C4:AC] Revised tech tree discussion

[GeoModder]

The explanation makes sense, yes, I only envisioned basic terraforming linked with other technologies.

Applied Physics linked on mines makes sense, lasers would be useful for increasing mining output.
I wouldn't link farms with a technology. The afterlying idea is that it's always possible just to seed a field manually, just give it a +1 food output from the plot. Centauri Ecology or Bioengineering could then give an extra +1 food. Of course, in mind is that Planet has little edible stuff to start with, so most basic plots would be foodless.
Further more, how about keeping windturbines as a basic means of collecting energy (industrial base perhaps?), and non-upgradeble or increased output-capable at that, and placing solar collectors later in the tech tree as a more efficient way to collect energy. Also, I fail to see how windturbines could give + minerals. Extra power perhaps (+10% production/worked turbine plot?), but no direct extra minerals in the plot itself.

O yes, how about making a "former" unit buildable with for instance Centauri Ecology, but also having workers as a none-tech linked means of terraforming. Formers are faster of course.

[Rubin]

Some random addtional terraform thoughts:

The basic "+ energy" terraform option ("solar collector" in SMAC/X) is tied to a tier 2 technology. I think this would help balance the early game by requiring more research investment to be able to focus on energy (as opposed to growth and production). In Civ4 this is done using cottages; delaying the economic potential/economic focus.

It somehow makes sense to me to tie early "+ energy" to the Discover branch, however "Planetary Networks" does not sound like a potential candidate for this terraform option. Instead "Superconductor" would be a more obvious choice; Morgan's quote on Superconductor is:

Important? Yes! Critical? Absolutely. I would go so far as to say that Superconducting Fiber alone makes our present economy possible.

Hence, moving Superconductor from tier 4 to tier 2 and moving Planetary Networks from tier 2 to a higher tier. Of course, this requires some adjustments to several other technologies and the "Superconductor" technology ("Information Networks" as prerequisite) would become a new technology enabling a terraform option and possibly a facility/unit/Secret Project.

"Advanced Farms" could become available in the Discover branch too; perhaps a tier 3 technology requiring Biogenetics. Perhaps as a facility increasing nutrient output from nutrient resources, perhaps as a terraform option "Biogene Compound" for flat terrain adding +1 food and either +1 production or +1 energy. The drawback could be either -1 energy or -1 production. A balance option could be to only allow this improvement on nutrient resources (ignoring the flat terrain requirement, of course).

[ForesterSOF]

I also like it.

[GeoModder]

Well, nothing stops us from relabeling "build"-branch techs to the "discover"-branch.

Personally, I'm more inclined to putting things on a tech(label) which is logical for it, like I stated for the wind turbines.

The "discover" branch sounds to me more as the theoretical (ivory tower) direction to follow, resulting in understanding high-tech, not merely constructing it. We could always double up on things so that a discover branch tech linked with a more basic build branch also allows the construction of something which is otherwise possible with a higher-tier tech in the build branch.
ie. solar collectors can be constructed when Industrial Automation is researched OR when Industrial Base and Polymorphic Software is researched.
This allows a player to follow mostly a certain branch with only researching some basic technologies from other branches and still be able to construct the same improvements as other factions, thus being able to improve his territory in the same fashion when needed.

[Blake]

Interesting...

Here's my thoughts.

Terrain Types:
Grassland becomes Rainy, so there are Rainy Hills and Rainy Flatlands.
Plains are Moist.
Tundra are Arid.
Ice is Desolate. Nothing grows.

Rainy Flat: 2f
Rainy Hill: 1f 1h
Moist Flat: 1f
Moist Hill: 1h
Arid Flat: -1h
Arid Hill: -1f (Forests produce no food)
Desolate Flat: Nothing, limited improvements.
Desolate Hill: Nothing, limited improvements.

I think forests and fungus should ignore the positive yield of a tile, but be reduced by negative yields.
Forest 1-2-1 improved by facilities...
Fungus 0-0-0 improved by techs...

Negative yields would reduce the yield of a feature/improvement, but a tile would not actually yield a negative amount "for" the working base.


Here's an idea for a preliminary improvement list:

Wind Turbine (No Tech Requirement, Hills Only):
+3 energy.
10 Ecodamage.


Water Turbine (Industrial Base, River Only):
+1 hammer, +2 energy.
10 Ecodamage.


Mine (Industrial Base, Hill Only):
+2 hammer. +1h with Industrial Automation.
25 Ecodamage.


Farm (No Tech Requirement, Flatland Only):
+1 food, +1f with Gene Splicing, +1f with Adv.Eco.Engineering.
20 Ecodamage.


Borehole [Quarry] (Ecological Engineering, Flatland Only):
4 hammer, 3 energy. +2e with Superconductor and +2h with Magtube route.
75 Ecodamage.


Solar Panel (Applied Physics):
+2 energy, +1 energy on hills. +1e with some "D3" tech.
15 Ecodamage.

Suburbs [Town] (Industrial Automation)
+1 Hab Limit in base. +1 with Planetary Transit System. +1 with Monopole Magnets.
May only be built on tiles adjacent to a base and provide the benefit only to the nearest base. No yield.
25 Ecodamage.
(Is that a fun idea of what?)


Forest Ideas:
I've already implemented SDK and XML changes to make Forest (optionally) overwrite the base yield values although I haven't made it plantable yet (I don't like the Greenmod solution so will probably write my own).

Ideas for forests:
Well like I said above I like the idea of some terrain types being just bad whatever you terraform it into, including for forests, so the terrain would be quite marginal even with hybrid forests.

I'd like (and it'd be easy to) implement "Forest Age", the age of a forest could have various effects, one possibility could be increasing yield although forests sort of need to be relatively useful from the start. I was thinking of each turn a forest exists it's age increases by 1, the age of the forest would determine three things:
1) Ecodamage reduction.
2) Chop yield.
3) Spread chance.

All being directly proportional to the age of the forest, with the maximum age being 100 turns. Maximum ED reduction would be 30.


Ecodamage Thoughts:
The ecodamage figures I've given have been in 100th of a mineral, so if an improvement is "10ed" that means that 10 improvements would generate as much as 1 mineral.

I think in terms of formula, I'd go with a clean mineral limit of 15 minerals, things like planet rating then raise the clean mineral limit, if for example you have +50% ecodamage it'd be 15/1.5, or any mineral past the 10th generates ED. With -200% ED you'd get a limit of 15 * 3.0 = 45.

Pop chance I think should scale with the proportion of minerals to adjusted CML, along the lines of:
Pop Chance = 100 * Excess / (CML + Excess + #pops)

That formula leads to the pop chance never reaching (or exceeding) 100%, also the #pops would not ever eliminate ecodamage and would instead just reduce the magnitude of it.

This ecodamage model would basically work the opposite of SMAC's, where being green can only reduce the magnitude while being abusive actually increases the clean mineral limit. So with my proposed model being green increases the clean mineral limit while being abusive only reduces the magnitude and the problem never goes away.


Mmm... that's a lot of stuff...
I'm going to go write the "plant forest" XML/SDK stuff. Fun fun fun!

[Rubin]

Originally posted by Blake
Terrain Types:
Grassland becomes Rainy, so there are Rainy Hills and Rainy Flatlands.
Plains are Moist.
Tundra are Arid.
Ice is Desolate. Nothing grows.

This makes sense to me.

What about mountains/peaks? It may be possible to change the graphics and allow them to become passable.

Edit: I forgot about desert tiles. If we consider desert, plains and peaks, it might be possible to have these all count as moist "flatland" terrain with the difference being flat/rolling/rocky. At mid-game terraforming options may appear that allow for flattening rolling and rocky terrain. This, in combination with certain facilities, could produce different yields. Just an idea.

Originally posted by Blake
Rainy Flat: 2f
Rainy Hill: 1f 1h
Moist Flat: 1f
Moist Hill: 1h
Arid Flat: -1h
Arid Hill: -1f (Forests produce no food)
Desolate Flat: Nothing, limited improvements.
Desolate Hill: Nothing, limited improvements.

Do I understand this correctly in that unimproved Arid terrain will net 0-0-0? Also, will rivers still confer a +1 energy to adjacent tiles?

I am not able to judge the specific values, but I guess it could work. Looks promising!

Originally posted by Blake
I think forests and fungus should ignore the positive yield of a tile, but be reduced by negative yields.
Forest 1-2-1 improved by facilities...
Fungus 0-0-0 improved by techs...

Negative yields would reduce the yield of a feature/improvement, but a tile would not actually yield a negative amount "for" the working base.

How about having fungus ignore terrain entirely; both the positive and negative yields? For fungus, the presence of a special resource may be affected by the negative tile yields. Otherwise, I agree on this.

Originally posted by Blake
Ideas for forests:
Well like I said above I like the idea of some terrain types being just bad whatever you terraform it into, including for forests, so the terrain would be quite marginal even with hybrid forests.

I'd like (and it'd be easy to) implement "Forest Age", the age of a forest could have various effects, one possibility could be increasing yield although forests sort of need to be relatively useful from the start. I was thinking of each turn a forest exists it's age increases by 1, the age of the forest would determine three things:
1) Ecodamage reduction.
2) Chop yield.
3) Spread chance.

All being directly proportional to the age of the forest, with the maximum age being 100 turns. Maximum ED reduction would be 30.

A very good idea! An alternative to "increasing forest yields" could be facilities that require a certain forest age in order to add a bonus to the worked tile.

[Blake]

A very good idea! An alternative to "increasing forest yields" could be facilities that require a certain forest age in order to add a bonus to the worked tile.

That could certainly work. Visual representation might be a problem unless there's some easy way to get it to display the forests as being thinner or something...

I've implemented plant forest pretty much




I guess I need to add some new XML tags for uh, building feature production for the tree farms and stuff...

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Rubin
- Enable multiple improvements on the same tile (i.e. farm/solar)

You could make farms features. Though then of course there would need to be former options to build features. Or farm/solar, farm/mine could simply be terrain improvements on their own.

Anyway, if we want to create a new SMAC, I'd suggest to rethink the concepts of shields/hammers/minerals and trade arrows/energy/commerce. Can anyone claim those make real sense?

Shields/hammers/minerals are two concepts thrown together: material resources and labour/production/processing capacity

Trade/energy/commerce is energy and general GDP thrown together.

Because of Civ4's higher focus on specialists, we finally have the option to rethink these concepts and make them more logical.

Food/nutrients remains logical of course: the stuff necessary to support people.

Hammers: I'd personally limit 'hammers' to production capacity alone. It could only be gained from buildings and specialists. In other words, production happens in bases and in bases alone. No hammers could be gained from working tiles.

Material resources I'd redefine as, well, resources as Civ4 knows them. They wouldn't provide any hammers directly at all. They would simply become a requirement to build certain buildings. Eg each nuclear plant would require one uranium resource. In XML language, each nuclear plant provides -1 Uranium. As a consequence you could make resources sort of quantitive.

'Commerce' as in Civ4 I'd redefine as energy, as in SMAC, and it could be gotten from terrain improvements such as windmills and base facilities (such as a nuclear plant). However I wouldn't make energy directly convertible to GDP, research or psych. That doesn't really make sense. Buildings and units would require energy, and you could make computer/artificial sentience specialists require energy instead of nutrients. Specialists, ie people or AIs would provide research.

Anyway, I think by starting anew instead of just taking over the age old Civ concepts, you could make a better game.

[Maniac]

Themes I see in the SMAC tech tree:

psi/resonance/consciousness
ecology with subdivisions farming and forestry
genetics/medicine
clean energy
computers/robotics/artificial intelligence
theoretical physics plus applications
nanonics
space tech

Anything I missed?
Of course most of the tech tree is these different branches interacting with each other.

[Rubin]

Originally posted by Blake
Here's an idea for a preliminary improvement list:

Wind Turbine (No Tech Requirement, Hills Only):
+3 energy.
10 Ecodamage.


Water Turbine (Industrial Base, River Only):
+1 hammer, +2 energy.
10 Ecodamage.


Mine (Industrial Base, Hill Only):
+2 hammer. +1h with Industrial Automation.
25 Ecodamage.


Farm (No Tech Requirement, Flatland Only):
+1 food, +1f with Gene Splicing, +1f with Adv.Eco.Engineering.
20 Ecodamage.


Borehole [Quarry] (Ecological Engineering, Flatland Only):
4 hammer, 3 energy. +2e with Superconductor and +2h with Magtube route.
75 Ecodamage.


Solar Panel (Applied Physics):
+2 energy, +1 energy on hills. +1e with some "D3" tech.
15 Ecodamage.

One of the strengths of this approach is easier "implementation and balancing". Technology branches do not offer a broader variety of improvements; instead, existing improvements get increased yields with new technologies.

I think we could try this approach, but I would be very interested in having technologies offer new terraform options and not just increased yields of existing improvements.

Originally posted by Maniac
Another big recommendation I’d like to make is to create branches in a tech tree, that allow a certain degree of specialization.

When I look at the SMAC/X technology tree I do not see clear branches and I see only two viable terraform strategies (Forests and Borehole/Condenser).

By applying improvement variants into each branch we could end up with a lot more room for specialization--both regarding time invested in doing the actual terraforming and the required research investment. If my facilities and improvements in the game are tied closely to the technology branch I've chosen, I would be less likely to switch technology branch and terraform strategy.

This kind of specialization would be much more difficult to balance and would probably require extensive technology tree changes, but I definitely want to try!

[GeoModder]

Just a short nitpick while I'm digesting the greater picture.

I never understood where minerals/hammers would come from with a energy producing improvement like Blake suggests with the Water Turbine.

As on your previous post, Rubin, I think it would for the community at large more interesting to create a SMAC-like mod with interesting differences then a half-clone of the real game. Nor mussel nor fish as we're saying here.

[Rubin]

Originally posted by Blake
Visual representation might be a problem unless there's some easy way to get it to display the forests as being thinner or something...

Perhaps it is possible to simply scale the forest 3D graphics. Scaling is pure xml modding.

[Blake]

Ideally I would prefer to have the forest grow smoothly rather than having seperately defined "young" and "old" forests but pursuing the XML tags will give me an idea of where to start hunting in the SDK, a quick look indicates I may be able to do this...

[Blake]

Originally posted by GeoModder
Just a short nitpick while I'm digesting the greater picture.

I never understood where minerals/hammers would come from with a energy producing improvement like Blake suggests with the Water Turbine.

As on your previous post, Rubin, I think it would for the community at large more interesting to create a SMAC-like mod with interesting differences then a half-clone of the real game. Nor mussel nor fish as we're saying here.

I think that the community would want some familiarity... in other words the vast majority would indeed by happy with a f/h/c yield system.

Just to digress whimsically, the ideal economic model would probably use along the lines of:

1) Raw Materials.
2) Workforce.
3) Education. (or general population quality)
4) Infrastructure.

Your primary resource is your population. The tasks your population is good at varies based on it's education, indoctrination, genetic enhancement and so on, broadly lumped together under "Education".

Workforce is needed for pretty much everything and can be combined with raw materials to build stuff (Industry) or with less materials to generate stuff like research (Commerce/Service).

Infrastructure can have various effects such as reducing workforce requirements, reducing material requirements, improving population quality.

Specialization would be done through workforce being more or less efficient at certain tasks, for example a low education would allow for strong construction and plenty of military recruits, but very bad research, a high education would reduce the raw ability of the population to build stuff slightly but they'd be a lot better at things like research.

I'm not suggesting to do anything like that, it's just how I would design an economy model in a game .


Anyway so far as the CIV way goes, it's basically an abstraction, like a Water Turbine (basically a hydrodam) provides a concentrated source of power for running heavy machinery suitable for primary manufacturing, along with ample water for use in industrial processes - as such having a hammer on such an improvement is not unreasonable. Of course it would help a lot to think about things like this and name the thing appropriately and give it appropriate penalties - for example if the river-side improvement is indeed using water in industrial processes it should create heavy ecodamage.

When a tile provides hammers - like a mine - it has to be assumed that the workforce on it both extracts the resources and turns them into stuff, we could assume that the difference between a 3h tile and a 4h tile is that the 4h tile involves less labor intensive extraction - less labor is needed to extract and more labor is available to "build". For example in SMAC adding a road to a mine creates +1 hammer, which we can assume means less time is spent lugging the minerals back to base and thus more time is available to extract and build.

Of course in SMAC the crawlers break that horribly, it is nessecary to assume that crawlers are also both extractors and builders, which is unreasonable given their extremely low tech levels. Suitably, Crawlers were equally broken balance-wise in SMAC as they are broken reality-wise. As such I cannot condone the return of crawlers to SMAC, if crawlers are to exist they'd have to be balanced by consuming a pop point - basically the crawler would result in one pop point being converted into "Crawler Crew" which would display much like a specialist, the crawler would thus only be useful to essentially transport the workers to a distant site (to balance this, it would extract 100% of the resources and make the bonus resource available).

To return to the abstraction issue, I don't find it's a big deal, in terms of gameplay a f/h/c yield system works just fine and that's the important thing.

[Darrell01]

Outside perspective:
Ecodamage - Ecodamage is cool and all. Just make sure there is a good reason to go "Free Market" as opposed to "Green". It looks to me like you guys are making it just completely better to go Green because it gives you more minerals energy and food, while the Free Market just gives you this extra oomph that isn't all that great. Perhaps certain facilities give you different bonuses if you are running Green, Planned, or Free Market.

Forest Age: This idea sounds interesting. Possible extra ideas are facilities that artificially speed up the aging of forests, facilities or projects that give a newly planted or spreading forest +age, and facilities that might slow the aging of forests, but give a certain benefit. There are also bad things that happen to forests if they get too old. This might be a way to keep forests at some arbitrary "peak" age. Roads and magtubes might make it so the negatives for having forests that are too old go away.