Tech Research Chart 2

[Mark_Everson]

Lord God Jinnai:

OK, sounds like a plan. The GUI is probably going to be tough to get right on this because there's so many things happening in tech. Any thoughts on a layout for it? You might want to look over some of the old interface threads to see the general directions we're heading.

Mark

[Lord God Jinnai]

I have version 3.5 ready but I'm not releasing it yet mainly cuz I want some people form the other models to give me some brief info on how they think technology should effect them and some technologies they might like to see. This is important as we all have to have these models sync together eventually and its easier if its atleast started earlier.

Also I will be adding some techs for arts and stuff...these are going to be few since i'm mainly going to rely on basic techs for these because I can't think of any civ where anyone had direct control over what was developed in the arts. They may have had influence and promoted certain things, but no gov. body ever discovered them so this section should be off limits to direct control to the player, but he can promote/demote certain things.

Finnaly a while ago Mark said two things i've been mulling over, both having to do with basic techs.
1> the addition of a basic tech called education. I've can't figure out what u mean by that. Is it the current level of education u can teach ur citizens? Overall education level? how good the school sys is eff (i which case are's be below 50% hehe) the highest education ur people can achieve? And what would it work for...after all each of the base techs is in essince education, but of a specific area.

2>Mark u also said u didn't really want any more basic techs later on, well i really almost have to break that idea. I've added synthetics since the improv of these almost exactly models a basic tech chart approach and the other is transportation (space). Although i know u didn't really want this adding it can cut me 2 techs and poss up to 6. Besides with the gov now finacing private space flight and the use of eletro-magnetic propulsion into space, space travel may grow quite rapidly.

[Glak]

Well when designing the interface (talking about GUI here, not the programming term) just make a few lists

What you need to show, what the user needs to be able to manipulate. Then if possible give the user two or more ways to do everything.

Let's say I was remaking the civ1 tech selection screen. Well I would start off with depicting the tech tree as the background but I would make it vertical, so chariots was near the bottom and all the other techs were at the top. Each tech would be a button, pressing it would research the tech. Techs that you know would be depressed buttons (indicating that you can't press them) those that you can currently reseach would be sort of bright (indicating that you should press one) and those that you can't learn would still be buttons but not so inviting.

Below each button would be the picture or each unit, structure and government that you could get. If your mouse was over a button for half a second a little popup would popup and it would have a brief description. Clicking on the popup would take you to the full help entry.

Clicking on an actual button would begin tech research. If it was a tech that you couldn't learn it would bring up a little menu that would ask you which of the prereqs you wanted to learn. Each button would also have a keyboard button associated with it, though I'm not sure how since there are too many techs

Also in the corner somewhere would a number indicating how long each tech takes (since in civ they all take the same)

[Mark_Everson]

Lord God Jinnai:

I'll try to get you something on the effects of technology in the economic and military areas fairly soon. The big thing about the economic model with respect to technology is that improvements in basic techs are going to produce both changes in the number of sites available for economic activity, and possibly the cost to improve the sites when the technology is available. The cost of the various infrastructure types will also be keyed off of basic technologies, and some specific ones.

1 > The basic tech of education would have to do with how much you know about good ways to educate people. If you have a lousy concept of how to educate your people, no matter how much money you pour into education, they won't be very proficient at the tasks that require higher levels of education. The things I envision being in the education basic tech (although not handled explicitly) are your people's knowledge of things like libraries and schools, the University, universal public education, and things like that. Having a high basic education tech number will indicate that your civ has the tools to do a good job of educating the people If you put the appropriate resources into it. So I expect that the education basic tech level will generally be related to the actual education level of the people, but it's not the same. This general understanding of how to educate people goes above and beyond the specific knowledge in each technical area that you speak of IMO.

2 > Go For It - we'll see how it turns out. About synthetics, I wonder though. Is that really such an important thing that we need a basic tech dedicated to it? Perhaps we should call what used to be Metallurgy, Materials instead. Then synthetics would just be one aspect of an advanced materials science. There might be two Tech Advances, Plastics, and advanced synthetics or something like that. I agree completely that there's no real way to get around having a space transportation basic tech if the game is ever going to go much past the current day.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 11-10-1999 06:14 PM
1 > The basic tech of education would have to do with how much you know about good ways to educate people. If you have a lousy concept of how to educate your people, no matter how much money you pour into education, they won't be very proficient at the tasks that require higher levels of education. The things I envision being in the education basic tech (although not handled explicitly) are your people's knowledge of things like libraries and schools, the University, universal public education, and things like that. Having a high basic education tech number will indicate that your civ has the tools to do a good job of educating the people If you put the appropriate resources into it. So I expect that the education basic tech level will generally be related to the actual education level of the people, but it's not the same. This general understanding of how to educate people goes above and beyond the specific knowledge in each technical area that you speak of IMO.

Ok well university's, schools and ect are all now improvements rather than techs. Only public edu is still a tech. Also if it is going to be close to the actual edu level of the population is there really a need for it?

2 > Go For It - we'll see how it turns out. About synthetics, I wonder though. Is that really such an important thing that we need a basic tech dedicated to it? Perhaps we should call what used to be Metallurgy, Materials instead. Then synthetics would just be one aspect of an advanced materials science. There might be two Tech Advances, Plastics, and advanced synthetics or something like that. I agree completely that there's no real way to get around having a space transportation basic tech if the game is ever going to go much past the current day.

Well i also had other ideas for synthetics such as nylon, um that stuff shirts are often made of now...syntheic silk, and even more, well, orgainic would be soy milk. Although that isn't synthetic like plastic, it is a sythetic milk. Then we have fiberglass, some of those new low-fat foods, etc. Although hardly any would be techs.

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

Well, I think an Education basic tech is fairly important. How about we try it, and see how it works? If it turns out to be redundant, then we'll bag it.


All:

I have taken the liberty of copying a tech post over from a new post to keep all the tech stuff together. Please check out Richard Bruns' post below.

Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 11-13-1999 08:03 PM
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 Mark_Everson (edited November 14, 1999).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

>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.

I was planning on putting these as more of items/improvements rather than actual technologies.

>Processes are ways of building specific Things. Processes are verbs. They include ditch digging and shipbuilding.

I think this is basically handled with basic technologies as those refine the skills for the related fields.

>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.

Ok...hmmm maybe. Could u go into more detail, if u want i'll send u might current tech model to see what i have so far.

>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.

same as the latter.

>Ideas are philosophical and social, well, ideas. They are more related to the culture model. My model discusses how specific Ideas are created.

Got them but same as former 2.

Also what about the Fine Arts and other similar areas? I know these have to do with cultural area but i don't think they really handle very well with anything u have.

>The current Clash model deals mainly with Theory, Knowledge, and Processes, and does a good job of it. However, the connection

I think it also has much in the way of ideas.

>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.

I know it is simplifying but i don't remember reading how u propose to make the invention of things develope after the initial discovery of the required techs. All i know is it had somewhat to do with inventors, but the way u list the could be possibly 1000s or 10,000s of things. Atleast that's what i got.

>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

I also think idea should be added. And yes i agree with u there, although not ness the approach.

>Governments have only recently taken a hands on approach to science. In the past, they

Define recently? Within the last 20 years last century? Last 500 years?

>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

Um during golden ages in acient times this was not nessasarily the case such as india, china, greece (for ideas mainly).

>science entirely. They did not have the foresight to see that hiring a bunch of silly scholars could somehow improve things.

Again i beg to differ...Some places did. Greece for example considered scholars quite high. India revered them as near-gods (not the inventors maybe)

>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.

China did see the differance about as much as europe did, at that point, however they often disreguarded things if they didn't find them useful. (ie they were the first one to invent the car, but becuase no one wrote it down it is pretty much forgotten).

>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 . . . 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.

So how do u determine what they create then?

>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:

I like it, and yet i don't. I like the idea of not being in direct control and having it based on your culture, but i still think u should be able to influence the culture atleast through money and doctrines. Also there were some enlightened rulers who did fund technology and so i think if u want some money could be spent on research in general.

>Standard of living: If people are starving, they will not be inventive.

Duh! Unless its maybe a way to not starve anymore (desperate people will try new and desperate ideas)

>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.

Yes and no. Like in the example about the war machine. You can order people to do reasearch, the effiency might go down, depending on there pay, or potential pay. But on there own, prob not.

?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.

I tend to disaggree with this. Most commoners, as i will call them, didn't have time to think of new social and philosophical ideas back then since their day to day life took too much time. Occasionly one might, but it was the exception rather than the norm. You'd need priests or philosophers for that.

>Infrastrucure and trade: Roads, cities, and contact with other people all increase the chances of people exploring new ideas.

Right on and the diffustion of current techs.

>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.

Really i'm not using tech levels. Once u see my tech tree u should see why.

>??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

I think pay/gifts/benifits and governmental type should basically solve the need for this.

>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:

And tells the ruler....

>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.)

What would be the point of this? What benifit would the player/AI gain?

>"Reward the inventor." The person is praised and a small cash reward is given. This option can be chosen in addition to the following.

Should also set a way such as money amount, title, land, another gift, marrige to daughter, etc.

>"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.

I don't know if this is such as good idea since this may make the tech model much more complicated. First u have to know what type of inventor he/she is, age and life expentancy, general like/dislike for the ruler or government, how much better tech progression will be with a hired inventor as well as his salary (it could over time get worse and should since he prob has a secure job in most cases, ie the rule of first impressions, so long as he contributes and if we're still doing it the "dynasty" factor.

>"Spread the word." The invention becomes available to your entire country. The inventor might be unhappy about the idea

depends, he also may want it to be widely spread and so may be more happy.

>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.

Again this should have some advantage otherwise the player/AI will never take it.

>"Disapprove of the idea." A milder way to stop the idea. This is not as effective but will not scare philosophers away as much.

Again must have an advantage

>"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.

Also maybe one above it to attempt to spread it actively with other civs (mainly friendly/neutral since opposing ones will prob not like it, unless its an enlightened one for lower class and the lower class of the opposing civ is not well treated).

>(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.)

I think it could be possible, depending on how its implimented...give me more info.

>The next time period is Colleges and Inventors. It starts when some private citizen founds a college or academy somewhere.

Ok, are u talking about a physical structure here? Since u don't really need one, just a group of people willing to learn and a few to teach this could happen almost immediatly in an open government.

>"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.

And should have negative effects, in fact it may do the opposite u intended....

>"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.)

Wholy agree with that and eventually there should be a cap also since u could invest 100,000,000,000,000,000 theoretically. Also though since u are a government u can dictate how this money is to be spent in general.

>"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.)

Well i don't think its nessasarily need to pay, but they would certainly be more inclined if they were payed. BTW where was the transition to scientists?

>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.

I think there should be some way of getting a general pool of them, such as more of the theorists as opposed to the more practical ones (ie inventor-like ones) and maybe researchers.

>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.

>Specialization can occur earlier as u mentioned above in ur making of the catapult. They chose to specialise in mechanics rather than chemistry because they were more interested in the former.

>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.

Unless u told them to build a bomber, fighter or scout airplane (u may have a reason).


>The only time you give a specific goal is if you want improve an existing thing or copy something that another civ has invented.

Hmmm that's kinda hard since the only way to improve is through the basic technologies really.

>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.

What about the future? We will be doing somewhat in that area.

>My system has a very large list of technologies and inventions, but a civ would

Can u give me a copy of ur list?

>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.

Change is almost always an option, its just how much.

>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.

Yes i know that's why i'm also adding some techs that make others harder to learn, FE the developement of "Discovery of Chi" makes it slightly harder to learn medicine and vise versa only more so.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited November 14, 1999).]

[Mark_Everson]

Richard:

Although I think it's more historically realistic, I think your proposal has several problems, especially in the playability and Fun area.

1. By isolating the achievement of a technology from the immediate benefit of allowing the player to build or do a new Thing you would, IMO, take most of the Fun out of achieving a technological breakthrough. Realism is a laudable goal, but if it takes the fun out for most of our target audience then it does more harm than good.

2. The player would have to churn through numerous instances of things being invented, even if they're not interested in technology. Of course, you can put an adviser in charge of automating the process. However, then you're basically at the point where we are now, where the player would say I'm Prepared to spend money on any Agricultural improvement, vs. now they say I am spending money to accelerate agricultural innovation. In practicality I think there is no difference between the two. I personally would be one of the people who would put an adviser in charge, even though I am extremely interested in technology.

3. Designing a good AI to handle the tech model as it exists now is already going to be Frighteningly difficult. Your modification would make the job Much harder IMO. The reason is that at least now once a technology is achieved We Know some improvement has been made in the capability of the civ, and can attempt to deduce the value of that improvement. In the case of your model, all we get out of a tech is a Possibility of a doing something somewhere down the road. That's a lot harder to evaluate.

What I consider we are modeling in the current tech model is not the instance of invention. It is the invention plus sufficient social acceptance to make the advancements actually used in society. Leonardo designed a helicopter, but neither sufficient capital, nor interest by people in the society, nor adequate materials technology were available at the time. IMO an individual invention is Absolutely Useless at a civ-game level of abstraction. Unless the society has a need for the invention it will never be usable in a practical way, at least by that culture. Anyway, we talk about what is involved in this in the first tech thread.

Also, your proposed system does not help with the major realism defect in the current one, which is that players know the general importance of technology, and which advances are critical. However, I don't think there is anyway around this problem since in a civ-type game people Expect to have this knowledge and be able to exploit it. So IMO we just have to live with that.

You mentioned, in terms of game balance, that if the system includes technology diffusion, and "buying" the techs is expensive, then many players will just mooch off others. IMO, Mooching It is a valid strategy, especially in the ancient world. Obviously, if it turns out that putting nothing into any sort of technology is the best strategy, we would need to re-balanced things a bit so that the two approaches are roughly equal.

Incidentally, I think the mutual choice to push technology or not in given regions of the world by the civs within them could be a very interesting dynamic within the game. Clearly, if only one society in an area is putting effort into innovation, and innovation takes awhile to pay off, that single civ will be at a disadvantage since the others will have proportionately larger armies. If everyone in a region of the world decides to be a "moocher"... well, I'd call that technological stagnation. It would be a level playing field in that part of the world, until someone shows up with much better technology and shows them the error of their ways .

For play balance alone, I think the player has to be able to influence technology all the way through the game. I think we can certainly go in the direction of history by making that influence much less cost-effective in the ancient period. But has LGJ points out rulers Did try, and sometimes succeeded at, influencing technological and social progress even in the ancient era.

Mark

[Richard Bruns]

Okay, you convinced me that my model would not improve the game much. I could defend/argue things more, but playablity is more important than history and you agree that my model has problems for gameplay.
I still think it would be good to have random inventions every now and then. While there are exceptions, almost all inventions came from private people with no government support. Also, this would be a nice, visible way of rewarding the player for a good domestic policy.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Richard:

I agree, and actually that gives me an idea. We were planning on having characters to give the game flavor. (See characters I and II) One flavor of character would be a thinker/inventor/scientist. They could be brought to the players' attention by generating a free advance in their area of specialty. I think that'd be cool. Whatcha think? LGJ?

[Lord God Jinnai]

Yea that's fine. Are we doing it like in the dynasty models that was talked about a while ago? I still think that was a good idea and added a lot of flavor to the game. We also need something(s) differnt from other games other than more realistic if it is to have much of a chance at selling.

BTW i though of a way to allow the player to choose what techs they can create so they feel they have some control while still limiting it somewhat.

First off, the way they develope basic techs will be limited to the cultural way of the civ. A civ that values agriculture most of all and is relatively peaceful will not allow too much to be put into military. This can be increased with characters.

Second, in the begginning we limit the techs a person can choose from, somewhat like civ2, only its not random but based on culture, location and current situations. dunno exactly how this will work but i don't want it to be purely random.

Finally when i put my fine arts ( or Cultural, dunno what to call it) advancement chart up these will not be able to be controled by the player directly whatsoever, but only indirectly through influencing (money, restictions, culture, religions, location, and maybe characters, ie such as hiring a famous dancer).

[Mark_Everson]

Lord God Jinnai:

Well, I think we have many things going for us besides realism, but I'll resist getting on that soap box right now .

Connecting the technology to the culture of the civ is indeed important. I don't remember what exactly is written down in the older tech model, but it has always been in the plan to have such a strong connection between technology and culture and government. Rather than arbitrarily allowing some things and not allowing others, though, the system I had in mind would make techs that don't fit with the culture increasingly more difficult for the culture to obtain without any specific prohibitions. There is significant discussion of this in the older "research system" thread. Basically culture ties into tech in two important ways. First, the innovative people in your society will focus mostly on areas that are important to the cast of your culture. So more "idea points" are generated in the areas that your culture finds most important, and far fewer in areas it does not consider important. Second, a culture that's vitally interested in, say, agriculture will act on an agricultural innovation much sooner than it would in other areas. In model terms the idea point cost of an agricultural innovation is less in this society. Similarly, who holds power in the government, and how corrupt that government is, will also have big effects on technological progress.

I like the thought of limiting techs the player can obtain by culture. I'm not sure whether these should be outright prohibitions, or just things that are very much harder than normal. However, I'm not sure how to make the basic idea work. The problem is that given diffusion of technology, and the ability to trade technologies, such prohibitions will be easily gotten around by the player. We had some discussion of this before, IIRC, and thought that the increased point cost for techs that the culture isn't interested in might help in this regard. If your culture were very resistant to a particular innovation, it would take a very long time for the idea to diffuse. In terms of trading techs (I'm making this one up as I go along) there might be a chance that the traded tech would not be accepted by the culture. The player would, of course, have to have some warning of which techs were likely to "bounce" or we'd have a lot of infuriated players.

In your bit on fine arts you talk about the only way a player can influence them would be in money... The position I've been pushing in the tech area for quite some time (although we never had agreement on it) is that the factors you list for fine arts would apply for all techs. I Really don't like the nonsense in civ about your people focusing exclusively on one particular technological area for a time period, and then turning on a dime and switching over to something completely different (The Monty Python tech paradigm ). The obvious way to fix this IMO is to have the people doing their own innovation automatically in many areas, and only allowing the player to augment that in a way they see fit. In other words, spending money and recruiting characters are the Only direct influence the player has on tech. The player Would Not pick a single tech, or even a set of them, for the people to exclusively work on.

Of course in addition to the direct influences the player has, there are other indirect influences, like what the player initially picks for the culture, and how the culture evolves thereafter. Also, who (primarily military classes, or primarily upper classes, etc.) is in control of the government is another indirect factor. So, guided by the culture, diffusion from other civs, economic circumstances, etc. (some of the factors Richard talked about) the civ automatically makes some progress in all areas. Although the progress will be vanishingly small in many. In Addition, to speed up progress in certain areas, the player can spend money, or hire inventor characters that are good in that area.

Having said all this, I feel the need for one further comment. Any civ that tried to "go it alone" in tech, in the way that's possible in civ, would have exceptionally slow progress. This is another ramification of the tie-in between culture and tech. In the Clash world I envision, (and you seem to be oriented in the same direction) the cultures with affinity for particular areas will tend to be the ones that make the discoveries in those areas. Those technologies will then diffuse to other cultures. A single civ in a vacuum might achieve some of the things it is most attuned to fairly quickly, but after that would tend to stagnate technologically. It's progress would, at a guess, be 10 to 100 times slower than that of a dynamic group of civilizations, each with its own cultural proclivities.

Anyway, that's my point of view on what the tech model should do. Whatcha think?

[Lord God Jinnai]

Ok so then basically we just have to figure out what things cost and the prereqs...and what cultural and governmental and geographical modifiers affect them. Like i said before though, there will be techs that will make learning others harder which might make richard's idea of trying to stifle that tech's influence good, atleast temporairily for the learning of a tech or permenatly if ur trying to keep the people in line.

Also on the trading of techs. No matter what the traded tech shouldn't be allowed automatcially since u won't initially understand all the details. Instead it should raise the appropriate basic tech(s) some and decrease its cost by 2/3.

[Richard Bruns]

I have a proposal that could solve the culture and technology problem. Before I outline it, I will review goals I think we all have.
1. Model many diverse cultures.
2. Keep the tech a civ discovers appropriate to its culture.
3. Make a tech tree that will not remind players of a massive knot.

If every major cultural tech is given a place on the basic tech tree, it will be very hard to meet all of these goals. While the problem can be partially solved by Boolean prerequisites and such, I think my proposal will keep thing simpler and make the game less confusing.

The key to the proposal is to make the tech tree contain no culture specific advances. The advances on the tree are generalized ideas, and the specific cultural ideas are simply a difference in the name and graphics. For example, consider the idea of Spiritual War. Many cultures had this and it took many forms, such as Chivalry, Way of the Blade, Tales of Valhalla, and Jihad.

While there were many differences between these, they all had similar effects and can all be modeled by the same technology of

"Spiritual War -- New military unit with X% more power is now available."

This generalized technology has a tag attached that, based on your civ's dominant culture, changes the name of the advance as well as the name and picture of the new unit.

If the advance is acquired from a different civ, your civ chooses the tag that suits it best. This makes sense, as people often change the ideas of others to suit their own culture. This would solve the problem of gaining a tech that is not suitable for your people.

This proposal combines tech tree simplicity with the modeling of many different cultures. Another advantage is that of customization. By rewriting the tags, a player could easily make a custom civilization without messing with the tech tree.

PS
Another possibility is having the general techs be modified by things other than culture. For example, a simple bow, a sling, an atl-atl, and an advanced spear like the pilum all have about the same power and range. These could all be modeled by the general tech 'Missile Weapons 2.' The specific advance chosen would depend on local materials or the
existing skills of your people, but all of them would do the same thing. This would help make your civilization unique and would make the game more interesting in my opinion. But if you think the player would be confused by this you could only use general techs for culture.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 11-16-1999 07:12 PM
>1. Model many diverse cultures.
>2. Keep the tech a civ discovers appropriate to its culture.
>3. Make a tech tree that will not remind players of a massive knot.

Maybe 4. Not to make a tech tree that reminds players there being led down a path

>graphics. For example, consider the idea of Spiritual War. Many cultures had this and it took many forms, such as Chivalry, Way of the Blade, Tales of Valhalla, and Jihad.

>While there were many differences between these, they all had similar effects and can all be modeled by the same technology of

>"Spiritual War -- New military unit with X% more power is now available."

I think that's pretty good idea for that specific one, however some things can't be done that way. FE Chi is only really an eastern type idea, and although it did surface for a breef moment in greece, it was snuffed out by all the other philosophers before it got a hold and most people don't even know about it today.

What I'm trying to say is that although some things can be simplified for cross-cultural purposes, others can't.

>This generalized technology has a tag attached that, based on your civ's dominant culture, changes the name of the advance as well as the name and picture of the new unit.

This is a good idea, but being that there are so many variables in culture i don't know if this is possible. Plus, although we are trying to make it close to simulating history pretty good, we're not nessarily using the same cultures as history has had.

>If the advance is acquired from a different civ, your civ chooses the tag that suits it best. This makes sense, as people often change the ideas of others to suit their own culture. This would solve the problem of gaining a tech that is not suitable for your people.

Not nessasarily. If your society is very strcitly arocratic and heirarchial and democracy was introduced it prob would bounce.

This proposal combines tech tree simplicity with the modeling of many different cultures. Another advantage is that of customization. By rewriting the tags, a player could easily make a custom civilization without messing with the tech tree.

This is true, however whatever culture u pick will still impact how u advance alomg the tree.

>Another possibility is having the general techs be modified by things other than culture. For example, a simple bow, a sling, an atl-atl, and an advanced spear like the pilum all have about the same power and range. These could all be modeled by

This is a good idea, but may be hard to code. I don't know though for sure since i don't code, but just reading it gives me that idea.

>the general tech 'Missile Weapons 2.' The

Prob its just me but i never liked the titles "advanced" or numbers after techs. Why? Well advanced is saying that's its very hard to achieve that level of tech. And advanced is a very relative term. What is advanced to us may seem like child's play to someone else. FE we call our metallurgy adanced compared to yesterday (era periods i'm talking about) and what about tomorrow? Also the Katana, the stongest sword ever made, we cannot make today and it uses advanced technology since if we could with our new metals it would be even stronger.

I don't like the numbers because it doesn't really give good desciptions. Wow i've just dicovered missiles 2! Well what's the big deal? What's so great about missiles 2 that sets it apart from missiles? If they're just more advanced we don't even need them now cuz of the basic technologies and if there's something new like radar guidance, well then call them Guided missiles or something more desciptive. Its not too hard and u'd be surprised at the effect it has.