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**Mark_Everson** · October 2, 1999, 22:39

Some quick responses to your responses...

I will try and look carefully at the ancient end of your tech tree as soon as I can. With luck that'll be tomorrow.

On military tactics, why don't we see how the notion of military tactics and organizational advances, etc. fit into the ancient part of the tree (I'll try to include thoughts on this in my comments) and take it from there?

I think if we can get the ancient part of the tree working sensibly when playtested then generating the semi-final version for the rest will be a lot easier. We'll already know what Sort of things work, or are too complicated etc. So I'm happy leaving the contentious parts of our discussions somewhat on hold, and mostly making progress on places where there's already substantial agreement.

I get the feeling we might be mis-communicating on the set-back in basic techs. Can you give a simple example, but using several techs, of what you envision. So, FE, pick a basic tech X, and several techs A-C that are related to it. First describe what happens when you discover A. Then when you discover B what effects the set-back in the basic tech X has upon A in terms of its effectiveness, etc. I think a simple example with made-up numbers Might show that I just don't understand exactly what you mean and vice versa. If nothing else it will serve as a useful base for further discussions.

Glad you thought my other ideas might be doable. We can discuss them in the light of firming up the ancient end of the tree and see if we want to try them in the first shot.

I understood your point about Japan and copper-working. But to accomodate that one little bit of history we'd need to add a whole new special to the game. Things are getting Very complicated, and I'm just trying to keep somewhat of a lid on it as much as possible. But we can see in playtesting whether my concerns are warranted.

On java tutorials... You can look around the web, there are a bunch available. Also, several old java books are available for free in electronic format on the web. I can't give you specifics right now, but you can probably find some info after a little web searching. If you find a really good source, please post it so others can skip that step...

If you could get a start on coding up the tech model it'd be Great! My code so far already has a crude tech model in it. I'm not sure how much of it you'd want to use, but starting using it as a basis would probably get you going faster provided the general objects are the right ones (which I think they are). It would also mean you could learn java by modifying existing code, which I find to be generally easier than creating code from scratch when learning a new language. Just let me know if you want me to send you the source.

Must Go... Cya,

Mark

**Lord God Jinnai** · October 3, 1999, 00:42

Okay here it is I'll use another example:

I'm using physics as the base technology.

The related techs:
a> Gunpowder
b> Flight
c> Theory of Quantumphysics

First we discover gunpowder. Physics would be at 35% needed and would prob not change since gunpowder doesn't really change the fundimentals of physics.
Then after a while of increasing our techs we dicover Flight. Flight has to have physics at say 60%, but lets say it was at 66%, well because flight doesn't change what we basically know about physics, it can remain the same.
Now its on to quantumphysics. We need, amongsth other things, a physics tech level at say 75%. Quantumphysics doesn't change our understanding of physics as Isaac Newton knew them, but allows for understanding of why atoms don't seem to react to his model. Thus because we had to reevaluate how physics works at such micorscopic levels our understanding as a whole on physics is lowered, say to 70%... If it were at 90% when i discovered this it would be down to prob 79% because I have to relearn more of how physics applies to science. Remember before this i didn't know how to explain why an atom works the way it does and so didn't compute it into my understanding of physics in general

Another example in case that didn't explain that is to use Biology.

a> ecology
b> theory of evolution
c> genetics

Ecology needs say 10% biology...after discovering it, it doesn't really change what you currently know about biology, just allows to understand why an animal lives here instead of there. The understanding of what its made of and how it came to be there is the same.
The Theory of Evolution is a radical change in the thinking of creation and biology. This really did turn the world upside down with its ideas once accepted. Lets say it needs 40% to be learned and u happen to have that...well because this is a radical revaluation of how organisms came to be, even if incomplete, it would require several years of rethinking fundimental thoughts on biology. Thus bilogy would be lowered about 50% or to 20.
Genetics doesn't really change anything like the theory of evolution does, but adds credince to it and other ideas. It does however allow a much more in depth look at how organisms work. Lets say biology rq is 70% and you have 90%. It would prob lower this, but not as much as evolution did....it would prob be lowered to 80%.

I hope this does clear things up and not make them worse.

**Mark_Everson** · October 3, 1999, 02:21

Well, I think your examples neither helped nor hurt

What bothers me is when you use the base technology number (say physics for flight) to gauge the effectiveness for the related tech. At least as far as I know this is a major rationale for this system. And in fact I Really Like the general idea...

But, Taking your first example, let me describe what bothers me about your proposal and you can confirm or deny my take of how your system works. So we have:

Physics as the base technology, enabling:
a> Gunpowder
b> Flight
c> Theory of Quantumphysics

I assume you take physics as an enabler of Gunpowder in that knowledge of ballistics enhances the capabilities of gunpowder weapons, esp. cannon. So, looking at it from a modern perspective, the higher my Physics number, the more effective my artillery would be. So we have some relationship between Physics # and artillery firepower. So far so good. Its not necessarily rigorously true, but Clash is a Game .

Physics enables Flight and similarly you can make better planes the more you know about aerodynamics.

Now lets take your example that we are at Physics = 90% and are about to discover quantum physics. I will use made up effectiveness for gunpowder and airplanes to illustrate my problem with your model. I assume that for each tech there is a pre-determined connection between its enhancement in effectiveness and the base tech number. These enhancements will, at most get to the 2x better than usual level when the base tech gets extremely advanced. I think this basically agrees with what you've said about the issue before IIRC.

So lets look at two years in Clash, the one before I discover quantum physics, and the one immediately after.

Just Before Discovery of Quantum Physics

Physics = 90%

Any artillery I build has effectiveness 2x base # from my better ballistics knowledge. This is because if some other civ that has only Physics 35% captures plans for my artillery piece and copies them, they can only use it at half effectiveness since they don't understand ballistics well. Their effective firepower is diminished since their shells don't go where they want them to.

Similarly my airplanes are at x1.5 base effectiveness due to knowledge of aerodynamics.

Just After I Discover Quantum Physics

Physics = 79% due to your desired drop in base tech when a 'revolutionary' tech is discovered.

Now any artillery I build has effectiveness 1.9x base # from my ballistics knowledge. My Artillery is Less Effective because my scientists are concerned about wave-particle duality!

Similarly my airplanes are Now at x1.4 of base effectiveness.

It is the Loss of Effectiveness of all the other Enabled Technologies that leads me to believe that, in the model, you Shouldn't Lower basic tech levels upon the discovery of a new and revolutionary technique. So IMO either you need to ditch the whole machinery connecting effectiveness to basic techs (which I rather like) or you have to give up the idea that the basic tech should decrease upon discovering a revolutionary tech.

I think the problem is we're using Physics as an umbrella for a lot of different areas of knowledge. The fact that things are in turmoil in the atomic and particle physics community in my civ has No Effect on the knowledge of military ballistics experts or aviation physicists in the society. But you are making it have one with your model as I understand it.

I know that as a player I would find it Maddening to have the discovery of quantum physics Screw Up my fighter-bombers while I'm fighting a war!

Now you can tell me if I have the idea right or wrong... and if wrong where my error lies.

Cya,

Mark

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited October 03, 1999).]

**Kanzid Stonebreath** · October 3, 1999, 04:24

Prehaps instead of lowering the basic tecnology level, it should increase the level required before you can get certain other technologys.

e.g. before quantum mechanics.
Space flight would require 60% electronics.
After quantum mechanics
Space flight would require 75% electronics.

How does that sound ?

**Mark_Everson** · October 3, 1999, 08:12

Hi Kanzid:

Welcome back! (At least in a visible presence, you may have been lurking for all I know )

On your idea... at least its much less objectionable from the player's perspective IMO . I just don't see why having one sub-set of the scientific establishment being occupied in radical re-thinking of their world view should affect completely different parts of the community's projects. Now for Similar projects maybe something should be done.

How about some kind of random-length 'blackout period' after getting a revolutionary tech before you can do a related one. So, after getting quantum physics you'd need to wait at least 20 turns before trying to get the tech for the Manhattan Project.

**Lord God Jinnai** · October 3, 1999, 13:30

Hehe...i see what u mean. Anyway there still should be some kind of slowdown do to fundimental rethinking when several techs are learned. The blackout period may be a good idea or maybe simply a 1/2 rate of RP if devoted to a tech that requires that particular base tech during that time period of 20 years.

**Mark_Everson** · October 3, 1999, 14:08

Wooohoo we've achieved understanding!

I'm not sure we even need a special rule for this type of thing... Why don't we wait until there are concrete instances of this in the tech tree in the parts of Clash that get into playtesting first, and see what works best. It may be that the structure of the tech tree means that tweaks are generally not needed anyway. I really dislike putting in special rules to make things just a little more realistic when our models are getting Very complicated in general... For one thing the more special rules the tougher it is to write the AI. And that's a daunting task already!

I'll try to get back to you on the ancient ends of the tech tree later today. I want to wrap up part of the coding first. Do you have a tree-like diagram available, or do I have to look through the whole alphabetized chart to pick out what I need to look at?

**Lord God Jinnai** · October 3, 1999, 16:48

sorry bot that...i was trying to get away from a "true" treelike stucture. I've also been busy trying to learn java so that cuts in timewise. Anyway atleast it is alphebetized.

**Osiris** · October 3, 1999, 22:46

Well I just scanned through this but there is somthing I want to add about scientific developement. I t does concern physics, I would like to give a little histroy concerning physics.....

a Mathametician named Maxwell over a 100 years ago made a unified field theory that actually works, why, the scientist Tesla creditied all his inventions from that theory.
Then another professor translated Maxwells theory and 'simplified' it that made it our now 3d model of the atom, chich through that thinking split natures forces of gravity, magnetics, and electricity. In Maxwell's theory there were 4 dimensions(minus time). And because Einstein was taught the simplified version of Maxwells theory it split gravity and electricity even more, and at the end of his life someone told him about Maxwells actuall unified field theory, but Einstein was less than a year from dieing when he found out about that. Quantom Mechanics is just starting to barely touch what Maxwell disovered 100 years ago, the reason this theory isn't used? Because that one professor 'simplified' Maxwells theory and then said that was the theory, and the simplified version is what is taught anywhere.

Some of the benefits this theory would give if we perfected it and engineered with it...
1. A type of energy recourse that makes thousands more energy than fusion in one cubic centimeter.
2. Gravity Control, i.e. anti-gravity.
3. Hyperdimensional travel.

If you are interested in looking at this further just E-mail me, I was rather shocked when I first came across a report on it too.

In conclusion, there can be anti-developement because of dumb scientists or the 'main stream', or a 'lost theory' that could bring enormous discoverys if rediscovered.
[This message has been edited by Osiris (edited October 03, 1999).]

**Mark_Everson** · October 4, 1999, 08:13

Uhhh... I'm a physicist by training and I'm sorry to say, but this sounds like some whacko's rantings to me... Maxwell's equations that I know of have not much to do directly with quantum mechanics, although they're Very important. I'd like to have incredibly cheap energy and anti-gravity as much as the next guy... But I'll bet you dollars to donuts there's nothing in that alleged theory that'll really get us there.

I think the General point about people sometimes following 'bad' tracks in science is clearly legitimate. Lysenko's (sp?) bizarre version of Lamarkian inheritance in early Soviet genetic science is one that comes to mind. However I don't think this sort of thing is so all-pervasive that it belongs in a Game that models the real world fairly sketchily.

**Mark_Everson** · October 7, 1999, 00:19

I just saw a post by Diodorus Sicilus in the Civ3 List technology thread that had a really good idea. He mentioned that a model that includes tech diffusion between civs needs to include how easy it is for each tech to diffuse. Really easy ones are like the stirrup or the wheel, in that all it takes is someone to see it (and needed precursor techs if any) and it is pretty easy to duplicate. At the other extreme are things like Philosophy or Physics that take intense study and the Direct cooperation of groups of teachers to really transmit the tech.

IMO we should include this. Whatcha think?

Matter of fact, there's A Lot of good stuff in the Tech summary and thread. If you haven't seen it, check it out!

Cool new idea
Instead of having hard and soft prerequisites for techs, why not just have a weighting put on all tech prereqs. Then we can tune them to be as hard or soft as we want. The weighting factor would affect the cost to put one point into getting the tech. For purposes of demonstration just assume each prereq has a weight which divides the points put into the tech if you don't have that prereq, and that all the modifiers are multiplied together.

Suppose we have the tech Navigation with the pre-requisites Astronomy (formerly hard), Compass (formerly soft) and Seafaring (formerly soft). In my proposed method it might look like this (don't worry about the specific numbers, this is just for demo):

Navigation (100points)
Astronomy (5)
Compass (2)
Seafaring(3)

So if you have none of the pre-reqs each point of Navigation would cost 5x2x3 = 30points. So all of Navigation would cost the Enormous amount of 3000 idea points. If you have Astronomy and Seafaring it would cost 200. Of course with all three pre-reqs the cost would be the base cost of 100.

What this does is mean that:
1) there aren't just two flavors of pre-requisites and things can be more fine-tuned
2) civilizations can use novel approaches to get around any pre-reqs if they're enough of an innovative society, but of course it will be slower than what they'd do with the pre-reqs
3) the transition when you get a pre-req isn't abrupt, just the progress in the area will pick up speed

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited October 07, 1999).]

**don Don** · October 8, 1999, 07:25

That is an wonderful idea for prereqs and I'd offer that dollars-to-doughnuts bet that Firaxas will never attempt anything like it.

About the problem you brought up earlier, it might be better to have a finite incremental scale instead of a percentage scale. Then your Physics knowledge can be 0.9 out of 1.0 just before discovery of universal gravitation, and afterwards 0.9 out of 2.0. Then later on you're at 1.9 out of 2.0 and you discover QM. Now you're at 1.9 out of 3.0. Then you could also use the actual Physics number for your base effectiveness for artillery. You still have the problem of how QM makes it possible to arbitrarily improve you artillery proficiency above what had been a maximum level of 2.0… That might be cleaned up with the fact that after QM significant discoveries may be greatly stretched out in time (I don't think we'll see superconductivity in military hardware or consumer goods for many years).

**Lord God Jinnai** · October 8, 1999, 22:12

That sounds like a much better idea mark!!! It'll also make it much easier to impliment the basic technologies also.

BTW I'll redo this for the next tech chart update...

Anyway my java programming isn't going to great...In fact all i've been able to do is figure out that the current tech tree model won't work the way my techs are done.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited October 08, 1999).]

**Mark_Everson** · October 8, 1999, 23:39

don Don:

Welcome Back. It occurs to me I may have to rework my figures of speach because with the slow advance of inflation the dollar:donut ratio ain't what it used to be

On the incremental scale you brought up...
I'm still trying to get my mind around whether it'd give us a real advantage in modeling things to do it as you suggest. The previous discussion about artillery vs. physics doesn't worry me all that much because as I see it good physics Would be a big bonus for say up to Napoleonic artillery, somewhat of a bonus up to WWI type pieces, but by the time you get to WWII, physics at the level of decent ballistics knowledge is more of a pre-req than a bonus enabler if you get my drift. However I certainly can't say that would be so for all basic techs and related techs. I'll have to get back to you on my take on it after i've thought a bit.

Lord God Jinnai:

Glad you like the idea... It does seem to take care of several issues. I Think it could even be used for the basic techs in a way... I'm still trying to work something out, but the basic path is that you'd pile all the various pre-reqs at the start of say agriculture. So chemistry 50% (2) for fertilizers might be there. If you just make the points to get the early parts of agriculture somewhat easier than 'before' (because now everything early costs 2x as much because you don't have chem 50%) then everything flows smoothly, and chemistry 50% or whatever just kicks in to boost things whenever you get it. So it might end up that chem 50% gives you a bonus before explorers to the new world bring back potatoes, or maybe the other way around. I'm not quite happy with my solution yet but I thought I'd throw it out for everyone else to think about and maybe we'd get somewhere!

What is the big problem with taking parts of the old tech tree model? Some parts are clearly not appropriate, and obviously I don't have some things like the new tags in there... I just want to make sure we don't put you to more work than necessary

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited October 08, 1999).]

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