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Proposed Technology Modification
Greetings and Salutations.
I have been following the Clash of Civilizations project for some time and I am very impressed with everyone's work on this game. I never felt the need to post anything or offer ideas until recently. It seems to me that, while the core technology model for Clash is very good, there is a slight problem in two things. One is the way that specific applications are generated. The other is the player interface.
I have already run these ideas by Mark Everson and he gave good criticism and helped me fix some communication difficulties. Here is my proposal; it should be at least 95% compatible with what you already have while helping to improve a few things.
Before I give my model ideas, I think some historical background and justification is in order. Also, a definition of my terms would help communication.
As I see it, there are five types of technological progress. These are Things, Processes, Knowledge, Theory, and Ideas. This is not a radical new idea; it is just a 'big picture' view of what you are already modeling.
Things are concrete nouns. They are what governments in the past have manipulated directly. They are concrete items like irrigation ditches, catapults, or Stealth Bombers. They are the end result of technology. My proposal deals mainly with Things.
Processes are ways of building specific Things. Processes are verbs. They include ditch digging and shipbuilding.
Knowledge is abstract nouns. It is a general thing that your people know how to do. Some examples of Knowledge are Iron Working, Navigation, and Architecture.
Theory is the pure sciences, like Physics or Biology. In ancient times there is little need for it, as Knowledge and Processes come mostly from experience. But in modern times, a good grasp of Theory is needed for almost anything.
Ideas are philosophical and social, well, ideas. They are more related to the culture model. My model discusses how specific Ideas are created.
The current Clash model deals mainly with Theory, Knowledge, and Processes, and does a good job of it. However, the connection between these and Things is what I see as a minor problem. The model assumes that Things come instantly whan the correct Process is discovered. While this may be a justifyable simplifying assumption, I think I can make the model more historically accurate while adding a new and hopefully good dimension to the game.
Now for the history. In my ideal historically accurate game, the player has no direct control over Theory, Knowlege, and Processes in ancient times. They grow naturally using the current Clash model. However, Mark pointed out that most players want to influence these things. I will discuss gameplay aspects of my proposal after it is finished. I promise I will get to the proposal eventually, but all the intro is needed for good communication.
Governments have only recently taken a hands on approach to science. In the past, they were more concerned with immediate things like policing (and taxing) the people, defending from invaders, and maybe building public works. Most of the time they ignored science entirely. They did not have the foresight to see that hiring a bunch of silly scholars could somehow improve things. We know that basic science leads to good technology because we have thousands of years of historical hindsight. They did not. Thus they invested almost no effort in science. This leads to gameplay problems, which I will discuss later.
Education was almost entirely a private sector activity. Someone got curious about the world, and started studying things. Then that person might teach other curious people in a private academy. They rarely were trying to reach a goal. They never said, "If I play with these fun chemicals long enough, I will be able to make Greek Fire and our navy will be more powerful." They wanted pure Theory, while the government wanted to make Things. People didn't see the connection between the two until the Renaissance in Europe, and to a lesser extent in China and some Arab countries after about 1000 AD. Thus the government ususlly ignored or even supressed scientists.
On the rare occasions that the government did deal with scientists, it was to give them an immediate goal. I will use an example from ancient Greece. During one of their many wars, the leader of some city (I think it was Syracuse) gathered up a bunch of scientists and told them to biuld military devices. That was it. He never said, "I want 60% of you to invent a ballista and 40% of you to work on basic math so we will know how to aim the thing."
It turned out that the scientists did build the ballista, as well as an improved catapult. But that was essentially a random invention based on their education under private philosophers. If they had been curious about chemistry instead of physics and math, they might have invented a simple hand grenade or other pyrotechnic device.
Once the goods were delivered, the leader paid the scientists and they went home. He never offered to build a university so they could stay, just as he never paid for their initial education. He didn't have the foresight to encourage them to study for a few years so they could build something better. In some cases (not this one) leaders actually had the scientists killed so they could not tell anyone else how to do something.
What does this mean for gameplay? There are several concerns with using a tech model that is accurate to the ancient world. The main one is that players will, unlike ancient governments, know to invest heavily in science. This means that players of Clash would advance in tech much faster than people historically did. One of the project goals, which I approve of, is to have the game be mostly accurate to the real world at any given time. While random events may change tech leval by a few hundred years, it will not do to have armored divisions in 1000 BC. To prevent this, there are two options. The common option is to allow players to control research while making it much more expensive than it historically was. This model is unhistorical, while potentially causing gameplay problems.
As you all have already discussed, early technology Things were usually simple and easily copied. For example, the wheel is something that is very hard to keep to yourself. Someone sees it and they know how to make it.
If this is modeled accurately while asking the player to put loads of effort into research, they will be mad and probably will learn not to research at all, and just mooch off everyone else. Technology would never advance if this happened under a standard research seytem and the AI was also smart enought to figure out that research was useless.
And if this technology sharing is not modeled, you have ridiculus situations such as having to spend two hundred years of game time researching the wheel even after barbarians in chariots have attacked you several times.
Historically, it is not realistic to make research so hard. Almost all ancient Things, and several modern ones, were made by a few people working without official support for short perods of time.
Thus the only realistic option is to allow simple techs to spread rapidly, make research require little effort, and prevent people from advancing too fast. This would seem like incompatible goals, but I think my model allows all of these.
Once again, this solution is very similar to what you already have. This is my intention. This proposal is meant as an alternate interface for your excellent models.
The Proposal (finally)
The player's ability to alter technology progress changes as history progresses. There is a different type of involvement for each time period. The time periods change due to game events, and are as follows:
Inventors Only
The player cannot order research, as the government does not know anything about scientific development. Things and Ideas are randomly generated by people in the civ. Processes, Knowledge, and Theory are modeled, but the player does not see or influence them.
Thie random generation is affected by several factors. These factors are calculated by province, so having lots of underdeveloped provinces will not hurt tech generation in cultural centers. The factors are:
Standard of living: If people are starving, they will not be inventive.
Freedom and free time allowed the people: This makes a trade-off between controlling your civ well and advancing. Repressive regimes stifle creativity while usually being more efficient.
Number of people doing a certain job: A province with lots of farmers will generate farming advances, and provinces with lots of production and craftsmen people will have a higher chance of making new things like iron. Social and philosophical ideas can be generated by anyone.
Infrastrucure and trade: Roads, cities, and contact with other people all increase the chances of people exploring new ideas.
Current province Tech Level (Knowledge, Processes, and Theory): Inventors with more to build on are more successful and produce higher technology Things. Physical technology and social ideas have independent tech levels. Tech levels for Ideas are modeled on the culture model.
??Reward level: This starts out at zero and changes as you react to inventors. If you praise inventors, reward them handsomely, and hire them to implement their idea, then the level will increase and many others will work on ideas. If you suppress and ignore ideas, this will go down and people will not work on new ideas. If this level is very high, you might attract inventors from neighboring civs. (This could lead to gameplay problems, as Mark pointed out. Players might overinvest. But I think this needs to be modeled. The entire model needs input of course, but this area especially does.)
Whan someone invents something, the player will get a message like: "A craftsman in has made something new called XYZ. What shall we do about this?" The player has several options, as follows:
Things
"Do nothing about it." The invention and inventor are ignored. Some inventions should actually be worthless enough to deserve this option.
(If this is chosen, the inventor might go to a civ with a high reward level and give them the idea.)
"Reward the inventor." The person is praised and a small cash reward is given. This option can be chosen in addition to the following.
"Archive the invention." The invention is not pursued, but it stays as an option for future use.
"Hire the inventor." The inventors get the most benefit out of this one, and it will encourage more inventions. The Thing can only be made in the province of origin and only that province gets access to higher tech levels offered by the Thing.
"Spread the word." The invention becomes available to your entire country. The inventor might be unhappy about the idea being stolen. This option is still available later if Archive or Hire are chosen.
Social Ideas
"Suppress the idea." This is for dangerous ideas that could cause problems for the government. There should be a signifigant chance of this happening so this option gets serious thought. Doing this will greatly reduce the chances of people announcing social ideas, but the idea will no longer be a problem.
"Disapprove of the idea." A milder way to stop the idea. This is not as effective but will not scare philosophers away as much.
"Ignore the idea." The government does nothing, and the idea might spread a little, but only in its home province.
"Approve of the idea." The govermnent agrees with the idea but does not actively spread it.
"Embrace the idea." The philospher spreads the idea to your entire civ with your support.
(There are always exceptions. Some Ideas might spread everywhere even if you try to suppress them. Perhaps each idea can have a factor that determines how popular it is. Positive means it will spread well, zero has the effect listed above, and negative will be rejected even if you support it. Ideas with a high positive factor will have a life of their own and will be a force to reckon with, having a big impact on society. I think I will start a new thread on this sometime, as it could be very cool if it is done well. It is not essential for the game, however.)
The next time period is Colleges and Inventors. It starts when some private citizen founds a college or academy somewhere. It has everything the previous time period had, but now you have a group of smart people in one place. This college appears as a submenu in the province menu, and you can interact with it as follows:
"Suppress college" If you are troubled by the college inciting the masses, you can shut it down. Again, there should be some situations where this is needed.
"Ignore college" This is also what happens if you never select the college menu. The college continues educating people and generating inventions at its own pace.
"Support college" Paying the college money raises the effectiveness of education and invention production. More money produces more results, but there is a point of diminishing returns based on all of the invention factors listed earlier. (Care must be taken to prevent people from raising technology too quickly. I had an idea for doing this, but Mark gave it the death it deserved. Input would be helpful.)
"Give a goal" Here you give general research goals to the college like, "Make our farms work better." This is only possible if you pay the scientists. This results in a slower pace of invention as the scientists are not doing exactly what they wnat to, but you achieve the needed result instead of random ones. (This is similar to the current research system, but my contention is that it not be available until this point in the game.)
After technology raises past a certain point, every scientist starts to develop a specialty but your government does not know enough to classify the scientists. People work best at their specialty. If you have many colleges with different goals, they will gravitate toward the college with the goal that suits them. In the next period, however, your government knows the specialties.
In these periods of early technology, almost all techs spread easily. But then techs start to grow more complex and cannot be copied easily. This and the specialization and advance of science are the cues for the current model of things, the Government Involvement time period. In this period, all of the other options are still available but your government knows enought about science to use it intellegently.
In this model, you will pay for schools and research labs and give them more specific goals. However, the end product is still slighly random. For example, you can tell engineers to make a military aircraft (planes being introduced by a random private inventor). They might make a fighter or a bomber or just a scout.
A difference between this and previous models is that the random inventors will not always come with completed things. There is a random chance of them having an idea, but that idea might be so complex that it would need support to complete.
The only time you give a specific goal is if you want improve an existing thing or copy something that another civ has invented. Other civs will of course do the same. The copies are initially not as good, but further research might make them better than the original.
This last time period is almost exactly like the current system with random inventors. My argument is that early governmrnts should not have access to this kind of control.
My system has a very large list of technologies and inventions, but a civ would never have to have all of them. Indeed, most of the Things would simply appear once you have the basic technologies required. For example, airplanes need certain things to be built, but you cannot tell someone to work on a flying maching. The government is not that creative. A private inventor will have the idea once your society has the needed technologies.
I think that covers the general technology ideas. It might be a bit presumptuous of me to suggect the change, but my extensive study of history and technology made me think it was needed.
In addition to the realism aspect, there is a gameplay aspect. I think it is important for players to know that inventions are beyond their control and they can only give a suitable environment for their growth. If there is a tech tree of some sort that they have control over, then some players, if not most, will feel the need to micromanage and climb the tree perfectly. Given the size of everyone's proposed tech trees this would be a nightmare. I think it will give players more freedom if they do not feel the need to control this perfectly. Under the existing model, there is a some potential for this. My model makes it clear that players are not guiding the tree; they are only fertilizing the soil.)
Ask questions, offer critiques, poke holes, make your own proposals, ect. I will deal with the Idea aspect in more detail later, so please direct your responses to the Things aspect.
PS Here is a short bio to give you some idea of who I am.
Age: 17
Hobbies: The study of History and Technology and how they are connected, chess, computer strategy games, reading, hiking.
Research Papers: American logistics and economics in World War Two and their effect on the Outcome of the war; Roman and Parthian military strategies and conflicts
Favorite Computer Games: Civ 2 (despite its flaws); X-Com: UFO Defense; Warlords 3: Darklords Rising; Sim-City; and Seven Cities of Gold (An ancient new world exploration game)
Thank you for your consideration and thought.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited November 13, 1999).]
I have been following the Clash of Civilizations project for some time and I am very impressed with everyone's work on this game. I never felt the need to post anything or offer ideas until recently. It seems to me that, while the core technology model for Clash is very good, there is a slight problem in two things. One is the way that specific applications are generated. The other is the player interface.
I have already run these ideas by Mark Everson and he gave good criticism and helped me fix some communication difficulties. Here is my proposal; it should be at least 95% compatible with what you already have while helping to improve a few things.
Before I give my model ideas, I think some historical background and justification is in order. Also, a definition of my terms would help communication.
As I see it, there are five types of technological progress. These are Things, Processes, Knowledge, Theory, and Ideas. This is not a radical new idea; it is just a 'big picture' view of what you are already modeling.
Things are concrete nouns. They are what governments in the past have manipulated directly. They are concrete items like irrigation ditches, catapults, or Stealth Bombers. They are the end result of technology. My proposal deals mainly with Things.
Processes are ways of building specific Things. Processes are verbs. They include ditch digging and shipbuilding.
Knowledge is abstract nouns. It is a general thing that your people know how to do. Some examples of Knowledge are Iron Working, Navigation, and Architecture.
Theory is the pure sciences, like Physics or Biology. In ancient times there is little need for it, as Knowledge and Processes come mostly from experience. But in modern times, a good grasp of Theory is needed for almost anything.
Ideas are philosophical and social, well, ideas. They are more related to the culture model. My model discusses how specific Ideas are created.
The current Clash model deals mainly with Theory, Knowledge, and Processes, and does a good job of it. However, the connection between these and Things is what I see as a minor problem. The model assumes that Things come instantly whan the correct Process is discovered. While this may be a justifyable simplifying assumption, I think I can make the model more historically accurate while adding a new and hopefully good dimension to the game.
Now for the history. In my ideal historically accurate game, the player has no direct control over Theory, Knowlege, and Processes in ancient times. They grow naturally using the current Clash model. However, Mark pointed out that most players want to influence these things. I will discuss gameplay aspects of my proposal after it is finished. I promise I will get to the proposal eventually, but all the intro is needed for good communication.
Governments have only recently taken a hands on approach to science. In the past, they were more concerned with immediate things like policing (and taxing) the people, defending from invaders, and maybe building public works. Most of the time they ignored science entirely. They did not have the foresight to see that hiring a bunch of silly scholars could somehow improve things. We know that basic science leads to good technology because we have thousands of years of historical hindsight. They did not. Thus they invested almost no effort in science. This leads to gameplay problems, which I will discuss later.
Education was almost entirely a private sector activity. Someone got curious about the world, and started studying things. Then that person might teach other curious people in a private academy. They rarely were trying to reach a goal. They never said, "If I play with these fun chemicals long enough, I will be able to make Greek Fire and our navy will be more powerful." They wanted pure Theory, while the government wanted to make Things. People didn't see the connection between the two until the Renaissance in Europe, and to a lesser extent in China and some Arab countries after about 1000 AD. Thus the government ususlly ignored or even supressed scientists.
On the rare occasions that the government did deal with scientists, it was to give them an immediate goal. I will use an example from ancient Greece. During one of their many wars, the leader of some city (I think it was Syracuse) gathered up a bunch of scientists and told them to biuld military devices. That was it. He never said, "I want 60% of you to invent a ballista and 40% of you to work on basic math so we will know how to aim the thing."
It turned out that the scientists did build the ballista, as well as an improved catapult. But that was essentially a random invention based on their education under private philosophers. If they had been curious about chemistry instead of physics and math, they might have invented a simple hand grenade or other pyrotechnic device.
Once the goods were delivered, the leader paid the scientists and they went home. He never offered to build a university so they could stay, just as he never paid for their initial education. He didn't have the foresight to encourage them to study for a few years so they could build something better. In some cases (not this one) leaders actually had the scientists killed so they could not tell anyone else how to do something.
What does this mean for gameplay? There are several concerns with using a tech model that is accurate to the ancient world. The main one is that players will, unlike ancient governments, know to invest heavily in science. This means that players of Clash would advance in tech much faster than people historically did. One of the project goals, which I approve of, is to have the game be mostly accurate to the real world at any given time. While random events may change tech leval by a few hundred years, it will not do to have armored divisions in 1000 BC. To prevent this, there are two options. The common option is to allow players to control research while making it much more expensive than it historically was. This model is unhistorical, while potentially causing gameplay problems.
As you all have already discussed, early technology Things were usually simple and easily copied. For example, the wheel is something that is very hard to keep to yourself. Someone sees it and they know how to make it.
If this is modeled accurately while asking the player to put loads of effort into research, they will be mad and probably will learn not to research at all, and just mooch off everyone else. Technology would never advance if this happened under a standard research seytem and the AI was also smart enought to figure out that research was useless.
And if this technology sharing is not modeled, you have ridiculus situations such as having to spend two hundred years of game time researching the wheel even after barbarians in chariots have attacked you several times.
Historically, it is not realistic to make research so hard. Almost all ancient Things, and several modern ones, were made by a few people working without official support for short perods of time.
Thus the only realistic option is to allow simple techs to spread rapidly, make research require little effort, and prevent people from advancing too fast. This would seem like incompatible goals, but I think my model allows all of these.
Once again, this solution is very similar to what you already have. This is my intention. This proposal is meant as an alternate interface for your excellent models.
The Proposal (finally)
The player's ability to alter technology progress changes as history progresses. There is a different type of involvement for each time period. The time periods change due to game events, and are as follows:
Inventors Only
The player cannot order research, as the government does not know anything about scientific development. Things and Ideas are randomly generated by people in the civ. Processes, Knowledge, and Theory are modeled, but the player does not see or influence them.
Thie random generation is affected by several factors. These factors are calculated by province, so having lots of underdeveloped provinces will not hurt tech generation in cultural centers. The factors are:
Standard of living: If people are starving, they will not be inventive.
Freedom and free time allowed the people: This makes a trade-off between controlling your civ well and advancing. Repressive regimes stifle creativity while usually being more efficient.
Number of people doing a certain job: A province with lots of farmers will generate farming advances, and provinces with lots of production and craftsmen people will have a higher chance of making new things like iron. Social and philosophical ideas can be generated by anyone.
Infrastrucure and trade: Roads, cities, and contact with other people all increase the chances of people exploring new ideas.
Current province Tech Level (Knowledge, Processes, and Theory): Inventors with more to build on are more successful and produce higher technology Things. Physical technology and social ideas have independent tech levels. Tech levels for Ideas are modeled on the culture model.
??Reward level: This starts out at zero and changes as you react to inventors. If you praise inventors, reward them handsomely, and hire them to implement their idea, then the level will increase and many others will work on ideas. If you suppress and ignore ideas, this will go down and people will not work on new ideas. If this level is very high, you might attract inventors from neighboring civs. (This could lead to gameplay problems, as Mark pointed out. Players might overinvest. But I think this needs to be modeled. The entire model needs input of course, but this area especially does.)
Whan someone invents something, the player will get a message like: "A craftsman in
Things
"Do nothing about it." The invention and inventor are ignored. Some inventions should actually be worthless enough to deserve this option.
(If this is chosen, the inventor might go to a civ with a high reward level and give them the idea.)
"Reward the inventor." The person is praised and a small cash reward is given. This option can be chosen in addition to the following.
"Archive the invention." The invention is not pursued, but it stays as an option for future use.
"Hire the inventor." The inventors get the most benefit out of this one, and it will encourage more inventions. The Thing can only be made in the province of origin and only that province gets access to higher tech levels offered by the Thing.
"Spread the word." The invention becomes available to your entire country. The inventor might be unhappy about the idea being stolen. This option is still available later if Archive or Hire are chosen.
Social Ideas
"Suppress the idea." This is for dangerous ideas that could cause problems for the government. There should be a signifigant chance of this happening so this option gets serious thought. Doing this will greatly reduce the chances of people announcing social ideas, but the idea will no longer be a problem.
"Disapprove of the idea." A milder way to stop the idea. This is not as effective but will not scare philosophers away as much.
"Ignore the idea." The government does nothing, and the idea might spread a little, but only in its home province.
"Approve of the idea." The govermnent agrees with the idea but does not actively spread it.
"Embrace the idea." The philospher spreads the idea to your entire civ with your support.
(There are always exceptions. Some Ideas might spread everywhere even if you try to suppress them. Perhaps each idea can have a factor that determines how popular it is. Positive means it will spread well, zero has the effect listed above, and negative will be rejected even if you support it. Ideas with a high positive factor will have a life of their own and will be a force to reckon with, having a big impact on society. I think I will start a new thread on this sometime, as it could be very cool if it is done well. It is not essential for the game, however.)
The next time period is Colleges and Inventors. It starts when some private citizen founds a college or academy somewhere. It has everything the previous time period had, but now you have a group of smart people in one place. This college appears as a submenu in the province menu, and you can interact with it as follows:
"Suppress college" If you are troubled by the college inciting the masses, you can shut it down. Again, there should be some situations where this is needed.
"Ignore college" This is also what happens if you never select the college menu. The college continues educating people and generating inventions at its own pace.
"Support college" Paying the college money raises the effectiveness of education and invention production. More money produces more results, but there is a point of diminishing returns based on all of the invention factors listed earlier. (Care must be taken to prevent people from raising technology too quickly. I had an idea for doing this, but Mark gave it the death it deserved. Input would be helpful.)
"Give a goal" Here you give general research goals to the college like, "Make our farms work better." This is only possible if you pay the scientists. This results in a slower pace of invention as the scientists are not doing exactly what they wnat to, but you achieve the needed result instead of random ones. (This is similar to the current research system, but my contention is that it not be available until this point in the game.)
After technology raises past a certain point, every scientist starts to develop a specialty but your government does not know enough to classify the scientists. People work best at their specialty. If you have many colleges with different goals, they will gravitate toward the college with the goal that suits them. In the next period, however, your government knows the specialties.
In these periods of early technology, almost all techs spread easily. But then techs start to grow more complex and cannot be copied easily. This and the specialization and advance of science are the cues for the current model of things, the Government Involvement time period. In this period, all of the other options are still available but your government knows enought about science to use it intellegently.
In this model, you will pay for schools and research labs and give them more specific goals. However, the end product is still slighly random. For example, you can tell engineers to make a military aircraft (planes being introduced by a random private inventor). They might make a fighter or a bomber or just a scout.
A difference between this and previous models is that the random inventors will not always come with completed things. There is a random chance of them having an idea, but that idea might be so complex that it would need support to complete.
The only time you give a specific goal is if you want improve an existing thing or copy something that another civ has invented. Other civs will of course do the same. The copies are initially not as good, but further research might make them better than the original.
This last time period is almost exactly like the current system with random inventors. My argument is that early governmrnts should not have access to this kind of control.
My system has a very large list of technologies and inventions, but a civ would never have to have all of them. Indeed, most of the Things would simply appear once you have the basic technologies required. For example, airplanes need certain things to be built, but you cannot tell someone to work on a flying maching. The government is not that creative. A private inventor will have the idea once your society has the needed technologies.
I think that covers the general technology ideas. It might be a bit presumptuous of me to suggect the change, but my extensive study of history and technology made me think it was needed.
In addition to the realism aspect, there is a gameplay aspect. I think it is important for players to know that inventions are beyond their control and they can only give a suitable environment for their growth. If there is a tech tree of some sort that they have control over, then some players, if not most, will feel the need to micromanage and climb the tree perfectly. Given the size of everyone's proposed tech trees this would be a nightmare. I think it will give players more freedom if they do not feel the need to control this perfectly. Under the existing model, there is a some potential for this. My model makes it clear that players are not guiding the tree; they are only fertilizing the soil.)
Ask questions, offer critiques, poke holes, make your own proposals, ect. I will deal with the Idea aspect in more detail later, so please direct your responses to the Things aspect.
PS Here is a short bio to give you some idea of who I am.
Age: 17
Hobbies: The study of History and Technology and how they are connected, chess, computer strategy games, reading, hiking.
Research Papers: American logistics and economics in World War Two and their effect on the Outcome of the war; Roman and Parthian military strategies and conflicts
Favorite Computer Games: Civ 2 (despite its flaws); X-Com: UFO Defense; Warlords 3: Darklords Rising; Sim-City; and Seven Cities of Gold (An ancient new world exploration game)
Thank you for your consideration and thought.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited November 13, 1999).]
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