Technology Test Scenario: Development & Discussion Thread

[alms66]

I've just finished replying to one of Mark's emails and most of what I said to him seemed equally appropriate here, so:

My general goal for this scenario is to provide a tree with 6 tier 1 techs each having x tier two techs and each of those having y tier 3 techs, though x and y are still up in the air at the moment. I'm thinking of shooting for 6 at each level (which is a moderate amount IMO, but that would give us 6 + 36 (6*6) + 216 (6*6*6) = 258 Techs! At the moment, very little has actually been done, other than to build up the tech tree with usable ancient techs (except writing & Alphabet).

Reading the tech model and actually working with it are two different beasts. When I read the tech model I loved it, working with it has forced me to witness one glaring shortcoming. That is that the model puts far too much weight on the scenario designer. I've got two ideas that may help with this, one changes the way activities work somewhat, the other changes tiers somewhat, though both would ease the workload on future tree designers by a truckload. These ideas are probably not 8.1 material, but should follow soon after if we're to keep expanding the tree in future versions.

[alms66]

Reserved for future use...

[LDiCesare]

Could you explain what the problems are and what your proposed solution is?
The problem I see is that it's hard to know what value a (set of) tech will have after receiving X RPs. IF that is your problem, there is a test case that can be adapted in order to provide the answer to that. Otherwise, please explain. Your current post is frustrating as we know ideas are somewhere but we don't know what they are.

[Mark_Everson]

First, I'd like to say that I'm really looking forward to the scenario! Once this and diplomacy get going will have a pretty cool game!

Originally posted by alms66
My general goal for this scenario is to provide a tree with 6 tier 1 techs each having x tier two techs and each of those having y tier 3 techs, though x and y are still up in the air at the moment. I'm thinking of shooting for 6 at each level (which is a moderate amount IMO, but that would give us 6 + 36 (6*6) + 216 (6*6*6) = 258 Techs! At the moment, very little has actually been done, other than to build up the tech tree with usable ancient techs (except writing & Alphabet).

I think that a hundred or more techs to start this out is way too ambitious. We don't have the interface elements necessary for the player to really understand what's going on. I think it is better to shoot for something like 30-50 total technologies with something like 10-20 having solid game effects, and the others being helper technologies. There are something like five or six that are already in the previous scenarios that already have hookups, although some of them like "Production" are kind of lame (overly generic). Only after we get the bugs kicked out for this intermediate tech case should IMO you consider going to something as big as what you originally were thinking of.

For the record what we have so far with game hookups are: Metallurgy, Farming , Production, Biology, Military Tactics , and horses. Note, for some reason horses ended up not being capitalized when the others are. Activities are only: Food, Manufacturing, Combat, and Military. See the technology.XML and activity.XML files for more information. If the old names are appropriate, I would stick with them, but some of these are kluges, so if they don't seem to make sense, feel free to propose that they be replaced or modified.

I look forward to hearing your ideas on reducing the work involved in designing a tech tree, or modifying one for scenario design.

One issue I would like to raise is one that alms and I have been discussing by e-mail. The problem is that the current structure of Activities puts RP's into a very narrow slice of the technologies, leaving the other technologies with no input. Alms, could you post the current tech tree here so that people can see it? that would facilitate discussion. The main issue is that the player certainly needs levers that can be used to influence directly important areas like Farming, but there also needs to be ways for either the society itself, or the player, to invest in broad areas. My take on this is to have some activities that are very tightly targeted in key areas, and others that are very broad, perhaps investing in a whole area like "transportation and communications" that would put RP's in a lot of different transportation and communication technologies, and also their helpers. I think with something like 10 targeted activities and 5-10 broad ones, we can cover the whole field of technologies for this scenario. Once we get a list of Activities settled upon, we can also decide what activities that the people themselves might undertake would be that would feed into those activities. For example, merchants pursuing commerce could certainly feed into the transportation and communication activity.

[alms66]

I have two problems with the tech model (not the model really, but the work that has to go into setting it up).

1. Tiers are useless. I thought they would be of some help to design a tree, but they aren't. So I say, let's remove them from the scenario designer's workload. They will still exist, for player interface reasons, but they'll be automated.

With the new 'requirement' tag you added, Laurent, it's a fairly simple process of setting up the tiers automatically. If a tech has no requirements, it's tier 1. If it has a requirement then it belongs on the tier+1 of it's largest requirement. For example, if TechD requires TechA (tier1), TechB (tier2) and TechC (tier2), then TechD is on the third tier (largest tier number + 1).

Ideally, we'll have a visual editor that will show which tier the tech is placed on to the designer.

2. The Activity structure could stand a little automation as well. In fact, the entire Activity structure can be eliminated by placing an activity tag in the Technology structure. So you have this, for example:

<technology>
<name>Ironworking</name>
<activity>
  <military>
    <rank>2</rank> (this is the automation explained below)
  </military>
</activity>
<tier>3</tier>
<growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
<upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
<helper>
  <name>Metallurgy</name>
  <requirement>0.0</requirement>
  <effect>0.5</effect>
</helper>
</technology>

This technology only receives RPs from the Military activity, though other activities could be placed in the activity tag as well. The rank tag replaces the proportion tag in the current Activity structure, and makes RP handouts automated to an extent, so the designer doesn’t have to go back and recalculate these when he adds a single technology to a set of 40 or more, for example. I’d suggest the rank be limited to a number from 1-x (I’m not sure how high we’re going to need to go here), with 1 being the lowest rank.

Now, we’ve already established that this technology only gets Military activity RPs, but how many? First we take the total Military RPs, divide them into the priorities. For the sake of this example, I’ll assume we use 1-4 priorities. 1+2+3+4=10, and if you multiply that by 10 you get a percentage. So the highest rank of technologies get 40% of all Military activity RPs generated, rank 3 gets 30%, rank 20 20% and rank 1 10%. These RPs (that have been divided by rank first) then get divided equally into all technologies of the same rank.

That should ease the workload on the scenario designer a bit. This way the only thing he needs to worry about are defining the techs, setting their requirements and helpers and he’s done with the tech stuff (except for what’s in the element structure, of course).

I haven’t spent much time or thought on either of these two, so there could be some problem that I’ve missed with what I’ve described. Be sure to read it carefully and think over whether it would be a good move.

Laurent,
What you mention is also a big problem, though not what I was referring to. As it currently stands, the only way to know how quickly a tech will rise is to play the scenario, make changes, rinse and repeat. It will most certainly get frustrating in the long run.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Your current post is frustrating as we know ideas are somewhere but we don't know what they are.

I got tired of writing long posts that were reviewed and promptly ignored by everyone, so from now on, let's just say, if you want more, let me know, and if you have questions ask, and I’ll gladly answer.

[alms66]

The tech tree:

<!-- ================***** TECHNOLOGY MODEL *****================== -->

<globals>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <diminishingreturns>1.0</diminishingreturns>
</globals>

<!-- ======================= Technologies ========================= -->
<!-- ========================= Tier One =========================== -->

<technology>
  <name>Communications</name>
  <tier>1</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>0.0</upkeep>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Transportation</name>
  <tier>1</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>0.0</upkeep>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Military</name>
  <tier>1</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>0.0</upkeep>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Science</name>
  <tier>1</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>0.0</upkeep>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Social</name>
  <tier>1</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>0.0</upkeep>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Infrastructure</name>
  <tier>1</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>0.0</upkeep>
</technology>

<!-- ========================= Tier Two =========================== -->

<technology>
  <name>Signaling</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Communications</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Writing</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Communications</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Ground Transportation</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Transportation</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Naval Transportation</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Transportation</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Metallurgy</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Science</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Domestication</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Science</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Agriculture</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Science</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Fortifications</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Infrastructure</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Strategies/Tactics</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Military</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Naval Warfare</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Military</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Ground Warfare</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Military</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Siege Warfare</name>
  <tier>2</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Military</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<!-- ======================== Tier Three ========================== -->

<technology>
  <name>Alphabet</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Writing</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Wheels</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Ground Transportation</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Harnessing</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Ground Transportation</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
  <helper>
    <name>Domestication</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Oars</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Naval Transportation</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Formations</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Strategies/Tactics</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Boatbuilding</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Naval Warfare</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Shipbuilding</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Naval Warfare</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Siege Weapons</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Siege Warfare</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Mining</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Smelting</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Alloys</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Copperworking</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Bronzeworking</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
  <helper>
    <name>Alloys</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Ironworking</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Steelworking</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Metallurgy</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
  <helper>
    <name>Alloys</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Animal Husbandry</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Domestication</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Horse Domestication</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Domestication</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Elephant Domestication</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Domestication</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Camel Domestication</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Domestication</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

<technology>
  <name>Plant Husbandry</name>
  <tier>3</tier>
  <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
  <upkeep>1.0</upkeep>
  <helper>
    <name>Agriculture</name>
    <requirement>0.0</requirement>
    <effect>0.5</effect>
  </helper>
</technology>

[alms66]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
I think that a hundred or more techs to start this out is way too ambitious. We don't have the interface elements necessary for the player to really understand what's going on. I think it is better to shoot for something like 30-50 total technologies with something like 10-20 having solid game effects, and the others being helper technologies. There are something like five or six that are already in the previous scenarios that already have hookups, although some of them like "Production" are kind of lame (overly generic). Only after we get the bugs kicked out for this intermediate tech case should IMO you consider going to something as big as what you originally were thinking of.

I knew the 6 at tier one. I have a list of 6 at tier two for Military, Communications & Transportation, though none at Social, One at Infrastructure and I have no idea how I’m going to cram science into only 6 techs, but I’d really like to since this is the only one that would have to break the pattern. Now the ‘y’ I mentioned, tier 3, is really up in the air, and I knew I didn’t want it to be over 100 (thus the exclamation point behind 258) for the first run. That’s why I stopped work and sent it out to you guys, because at 6+36, I’m at 42, plus the 20 I currently have at tier 3, gives us 62. I figure that’s a good first run, being slightly less than 1/4 of the total techs at the full 258. Now, some of the 6 I have in the list for tier two are not appropriate for ancient scenarios, so I left them out (such as Aerial Warfare and Aerial Transportation). This means that the full 42 before tier 3 techs isn’t in there either, leaving a total of 38 techs in the first run.

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
For the record what we have so far with game hookups are: Metallurgy, Farming , Production, Biology, Military Tactics , and horses. Note, for some reason horses ended up not being capitalized when the others are. Activities are only: Food, Manufacturing, Combat, and Military. See the technology.XML and activity.XML files for more information. If the old names are appropriate, I would stick with them, but some of these are kluges, so if they don't seem to make sense, feel free to propose that they be replaced or modified.

Metallurgy is fine, Farming is fine, Biology is fine.
Production has to change, eventually, though I’ll have to get back to you on it. You’re right. It is lame.
Military Tactics I’d like to see changed to Strategies & Tactics, though I can live with it for now.
Horses I’d also like to change to Horse Domestication, though I can live with it as well.

What I truly don’t understand is why these technologies have to be named in a certain way. Is this legacy code from older versions of Clash that require these specific names? There’s no reason I can think of that the program should require a specific name on a specific tech. If it’s not code you’re referring to but to keeping compatibility with older scenarios, don’t sweat it, I’ll make any needed changes on those.

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
One issue I would like to raise is one that alms and I have been discussing by e-mail. The problem is that the current structure of Activities puts RP's into a very narrow slice of the technologies, leaving the other technologies with no input. Alms, could you post the current tech tree here so that people can see it? that would facilitate discussion. The main issue is that the player certainly needs levers that can be used to influence directly important areas like Farming, but there also needs to be ways for either the society itself, or the player, to invest in broad areas. My take on this is to have some activities that are very tightly targeted in key areas, and others that are very broad, perhaps investing in a whole area like "transportation and communications" that would put RP's in a lot of different transportation and communication technologies, and also their helpers. I think with something like 10 targeted activities and 5-10 broad ones, we can cover the whole field of technologies for this scenario. Once we get a list of Activities settled upon, we can also decide what activities that the people themselves might undertake would be that would feed into those activities. For example, merchants pursuing commerce could certainly feed into the transportation and communication activity.

I like the idea of broad and narrow activities.

I posted this in the demo 8 comments, figuring I’d get an answer eventually, but I’ll cross-post it here since it’s relevant:

10. Need more activities. Speaking of which, why is Dawn the only scenario to use the Domestication activity? Also, what activities are planned for the future?

12. Since Tiers are merely cosmetic properties anyhow, why put an artificial limit? Allow 4 or more tiers of technology.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by alms66
What I truly don’t understand is why these technologies have to be named in a certain way.

The military hookups are done right with tech so that you can specify tech effects in the xml. The econ code however requires those specific names b/c all the hookups are done by hand. Eventually it will work like military, but we're not there now. I don't know when we will be. To make all the scenarios work properly then with tech changes the econ code requires the names to be the same. The inclusion of econ in the xml is not all that tough, just a bit time consuming. And time is what I don't have in abundance now or in the near future.

I like the idea of broad and narrow activities.

Great, seemed like a simple solution to me. Your tier 1s almost seem like the right broad categories as they are.

10. Need more activities. Speaking of which, why is Dawn the only scenario to use the Domestication activity? Also, what activities are planned for the future?

Go ahead and propose them. just put them into Activities.xml. Just remember that for now tech activities hookups (Where the RPs come from) need to be done by hand, so limit as I suggested above.

12. Since Tiers are merely cosmetic properties anyhow, why put an artificial limit? Allow 4 or more tiers of technology.

I don't care about this one one way or the other. The broad definitions that we had before seemed to be useful.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Great, seemed like a simple solution to me. Your tier 1s almost seem like the right broad categories as they are.

I meant to suggest that, I guess I forgot.

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Go ahead and propose them. just put them into Activities.xml. Just remember that for now tech activities hookups (Where the RPs come from) need to be done by hand, so limit as I suggested above.

If you're willing to take a little time to walk me through setting one up, I'd be able to do this myself and save you from having to take the time to do it. With "my computer troubles" here though, I couldn't compile them, thus I'd hve to email them to you or Laurent for testing before uploading to the server. I spent a short time searching for it in the code, but didn't find it, yet, but I'll look again later.

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
I don't care about this one one way or the other. The broad definitions that we had before seemed to be useful.

I thought so too at first, but if we remove them, coupled with the new requirement tag, we basically have a highly advanced version of a typical Civ tech tree. Interface-wise I wouldn't want to show 258+ technologies in the same tree format that Civ does, but the structure of it is basically the same.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by alms66
If you're willing to take a little time to walk me through setting one up, I'd be able to do this myself and save you from having to take the time to do it.

Thanks for being willing, but this is best done by the person familiar with the particular model code anyway. It would also likely take more time to explain how to do it than to do it.

[LDiCesare]

A few small things:
- Combat activity is the only thing hardcoded in the military code. So Military Tactics can be renamed to whatever or skipped entirely. I can also divide this activity in to Siege/Naval/Ground combat (+ air later).
- I added a "start" tag so a helper tech would now look like:
<helper>
<name> Example </name>
<requirement> 2.0 </requirement>
<effect> 0.5 </effect>
<start> 1.0 </start>
</helper>
means knowing "Example" to at least 1 is required in order to be able to use this tech at all. Having Example at knowledge less than 2 is harmful (reduces RPS). At 2 it is neutral, at more than 2 it actually helps by increasing the number of RPs received.
The name requirement is already used, so I kept it but start would probably be better named requirement and requirement renamed to something else. If you think it'd be worth renaming, give me a name, I'll change the code (note all the xml files will have to follow, but I'll do that at the same time for the existing ones).

Tiers are indeed useless. You can already skip them in the xml files, I don't think it will hurt in any way.

As for activity, your proposal looks feasible. The current code is made in such a way that indeed you have to compute the proportions by yourself, which I agree is bad, and inactive techs receive 0 RPs but that doesn't change the others' proportions so there is effectively some wasted RPs. All this is quite easy to change, so I can do it this week if everyone agrees on having the activity tag inside the tech. I don't like the word 'rank' though but prefer 'weight' since it could be anything and not necessarily an integer (if you made ranks of 1,2,3 in 20 places and suddenly need something between 1 and 2 it's better to put 1.5 than double the values in 20 files).

On the tech tree itself: Wheel should have a helper of domestication (or big quadruped domestication - horse/ox/donkey). It's not mandatory in order to develop wheels, but it helps a lot. (Aztecs knew the wheel but never did anything out of it for lack of big mammals to put in front of the wheels.)

[alms66]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Thanks for being willing, but this is best done by the person familiar with the particular model code anyway. It would also likely take more time to explain how to do it than to do it.

You're right that it's best done by the most familiar, but if the task is confined to a single file, and you pointed me to that file, I might just figure it out without any help at all. If spread over multiple files it could get a bit tricky, but knowing beforehand what files to look in would go a long way. Having an IDE would help too.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
A few small things:
- Combat activity is the only thing hardcoded in the military code. So Military Tactics can be renamed to whatever or skipped entirely. I can also divide this activity in to Siege/Naval/Ground combat (+ air later).

I'll leave it alone for now. I've still got quite a bit of work to do for this thing to really be ready and I can live with the names as is until after the first version is out, or even later.
If I push this and the tutorials out by mid/late January, I'll be doing good.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
The name requirement is already used, so I kept it but start would probably be better named requirement and requirement renamed to something else. If you think it'd be worth renaming, give me a name, I'll change the code (note all the xml files will have to follow, but I'll do that at the same time for the existing ones).

I agree it's better to rename it, but we've got more important things to worry about for now, so I'd write note to do it later.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Tiers are indeed useless. You can already skip them in the xml files, I don't think it will hurt in any way.

Do you know if I can have a tier 4, 5, or higher without causing errors? I have an excel file with the tiers listed in colums, and it would help me organize it a tiny bit if I could, but it's not major. I can always have tiers 4,5, etc. in the excel file and make them tier 3 in the xml file.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
As for activity, your proposal looks feasible. The current code is made in such a way that indeed you have to compute the proportions by yourself, which I agree is bad, and inactive techs receive 0 RPs but that doesn't change the others' proportions so there is effectively some wasted RPs. All this is quite easy to change, so I can do it this week if everyone agrees on having the activity tag inside the tech. I don't like the word 'rank' though but prefer 'weight' since it could be anything and not necessarily an integer (if you made ranks of 1,2,3 in 20 places and suddenly need something between 1 and 2 it's better to put 1.5 than double the values in 20 files).

How exactly do techs that start as inactive become active currently?
Rank can be weight, it was just an example afterall, and I figured it would be a float... again, just an example.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
On the tech tree itself: Wheel should have a helper of domestication (or big quadruped domestication - horse/ox/donkey). It's not mandatory in order to develop wheels, but it helps a lot. (Aztecs knew the wheel but never did anything out of it for lack of big mammals to put in front of the wheels.)

I'll keep that in mind for later. I'm not ready to balance out the helpers though. I just threw stuff in here and there until it was working. The only thing that is even tentatively final (for the first run) at this point are the actual technology's namesb themselves.

[LDiCesare]

Do you know if I can have a tier 4, 5, or higher without causing errors? I have an excel file with the tiers listed in colums, and it would help me organize it a tiny bit if I could, but it's not major. I can always have tiers 4,5, etc. in the excel file and make them tier 3 in the xml file.

You can put whatever value you like in the tiers or skip them entirely, it's just a value stored in the tech but never used anywhere in the code.

How exactly do techs that start as inactive become active currently?

It depends on their helper techs. Prior to my latest code change, they were always active (though they might not have been in D7 - the code that changed this must have occurred around 7.1 or some such) unless they had a helper tech whose knowledge was below the minimum knowledge defined for that tech (but that minimum knowledge was always 0)...
Anyway, from now on:
If all the helper techs are above their "start" knowledge, then the tech is active. Otherwise it is not.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Great, seemed like a simple solution to me. Your tier 1s almost seem like the right broad categories as they are.

Actually, the tier 2 techs could be activities as well, though for now, just Tier 1 is ok, because Tier 2 isn't finalized yet.

And, this is a post about a game I played last night. I wrote some last night and some this morning, but then got caught up with new posts and other stuff, so finally I'm writing the rest this afternoon.

I played the Tech test scenario for around 1040 turns or so. There's not much to do, so I populated the entire map with 500 people on each square in between hitting end turn, all the while watching tech growth and...

The more I play this scenario, the more I feel something is totally screwy with the tech growth. Tier 1 techs are supposed to be general theories, Tier 2 more detailed areas of study, and Tier 3 specific areas of study, right? Why then do Tier 3 technologies advance 1/20th the speed of Tier 1 technologies? It seems intuitive to me that the more specific areas of study would progress to their full potential much faster than the theory techs.

This implies one of two things, either Tier 3 techs should be helpers to the Tier 1 & 2 techs and not the other way around (which seems backwards and completely wrong) or the "cost" of researching a Tier 1 tech should be much greater than researching a Tier 2 tech, and even greater than researching a Tier 3 tech.

So how would I do this? Set Tier 1 techs growthrate to 0.1, Tier 2 to 0.5 and Tier 3 to 1.0?

Also, copied directly from the tech model

Another effect of technology increase is to allow access to a new technology. If the requirements for some technology are met, then that technology is set to its starting tech level and the player is notified of its invention. On the next turn, the tech level of that technology is recalculated.

This mentions starting tech levels. Personally, I prefer having all techs start at 0.0. It 'feels' better to me than having a tech immediately start at 10.0 or something else. So, if it hasn't been decided already, I'd recommend leaving this out for good.

-Edit- Reply to Laurent

Originally posted by LDiCesare
You can put whatever value you like in the tiers or skip them entirely, it's just a value stored in the tech but never used anywhere in the code.

Great. Then I'm officially breaking the Tier barrier.

[LDiCesare]

Techs had been decided to start at 1.0 at some point in the last Tech model thread. That or 0.0 is the same. All techs should start at the same level indeed.