Tech Research Chart 2

[Lord God Jinnai]

Mark:

First off i still think we should have future techs in there, however we can see about an on/off switch. The reason i want them is because i don't want to get to the point where i have tons of research in my basic techs and am not really producing anything new because it doesn't seem natural. Also take the case where my society decides to become extremely advanced in agriculture. So if i've gone above and beyond say what's been discovered in our own history what's next? I think the player should have more breakthrus because he might not want to switch to something else (ie it could be for economic reasons). Anyway like i said b4 we can see about and on/off switch, just so long as its in there i'll prob be happy.

On the second issue i hear u and understand it does have some advantages, but the one big disadvantage is how will we determine what sets the "standards" for each era. FE currently the us is the leader in agriculture by a very very very long shot. The closest country is France. Per acre we produces 400% more than they do so should the us set the srandard or france which is closer to the rest of the world? Also what happens as countries rised and fell during time? The americas and orient were more andvanced than europe for quite some time but then that reversed rather quickly. Plus the rates at which things progressed usually came in fits and starts. This is why i like the prev model because when u learn it at 0% ur assumed to have only the very basic knowledge nessasary and it is easy to chart in the fact that u can say "hey i've come that far!" or "I'm not developing much here i'd better research more." Plus it could be really off when ur really low on some techs because u've just not worried about them and suddenly "boom" u have electronics at 65% whereaz most of ur other ones are at 30%. It would look like ur really advanced in electronics when really ur not.

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

An on/off switch for the near-future is what I meant And perhaps another switch for far-future techs...

Electronics starts at 0% or 65% question:

"standards for each era" problem is Real, but is No different regardless of which alternative you pick, so I don't get your argument...

"Electronics at 65% when other techs are at 30%"... How on Earth could you get the starting level of electronics with a medieval or 1500s average tech level? If we do the job right only Very minor discrepancies could ever occur.

[Lord God Jinnai]

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An on/off switch for the near-future is what I meant And perhaps another switch for far-future techs...
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ok well the far-future 1 should be grayed if near future 1 is off also.

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Electronics starts at 0% or 65% question:

"standards for each era" problem is Real, but is No different regardless of which alternative you pick, so I don't get your argument...
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Well in my original proposal 100% would be double eff. as what 0% would be, the latter being just the very basics of what is ness for that tech.

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"Electronics at 65% when other techs are at 30%"... How on Earth could you get the starting level of electronics with a medieval or 1500s average tech level? If we do the job right only Very minor discrepancies could ever occur.
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First off i said in general. And second u could have low agriculture, religious and fine arts techs, um, lower transportation or just about anything cept sythetics or things actually needed for electronics.

[Mark_Everson]

I don't think you could have really low transportation or agriculture and still get to electronics. The reason is that without and economy that is rapidly becoming modern, electronics would never be socially useful anyway. Sure, one inventor could make a simple circuit or something. But my working definition of a technological advancement is that it is invented, and that society can practically use it.( And has a desire to use it) So although some Romans knew of steam power, and had some rudimentary inventions in that area, they didn't achieve the technological advancement of steam power IMO.

But back to the original point...
To be at Electronics, a lot of other things need to be at about, say, 65%. So how exactly is Electronics starting at 65% supposed to be jarring to the player? I think 0% is Much more out of synch.

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited December 06, 1999).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

There is still a big problem i see with starting out electronics anywhere other than 0 or 1 percent (depending on the interpret). This is beacuse this represents ur overall knowledge of the subject, not ness timelinewise because the way i'm implimenting it, it is relatively unaffected by what exact time period it is, only social/cultural age. As far as it being close to everything i think it will make less sense when a person finds out they discovered electronics and its already at 65% and after that it doesn't go up very much. Not only that, but what if they discover it really really early? or really really late? this just punishes those who learn it early on moreso than it does those who waited they get all most other techs high up. Put it anyway u want but in essence they'd have gotten many extra points of research for free because they chose to wait. And if 65% is set, it still wouldn't make sense. And it would be possible for some things to be low depending on how ur economy is based. FE a trade-based econmy such as italy once was wouldn't need to high in anything cept economics and transportain (and the ness rqs for electronics no matter what) to develope them while leaving farming and other stuff way behind. Buy having it start at square 1 no matter where u are it makes it easy for anyone to develope the basics rather quickly but the more advanced it gets, the more expensive it becomes.

[Mark_Everson]

Well, I think you have some things in mind about how the numbers in the model work, that I'm not aware of. I suggest we just table the discussion about the starting level for "advanced" basic techs. After the write-up comes out with the details we can take it up again if necessary. In any case it's a detail that would be relatively easy to change...

[shimmin]

Would it work to have the initial Electronics level start out as a weighted average of (f.e. 40% engineering, 40% physics, 20% chemistry) other basic tech levels at the time the advance is discovered?

The only problem I see with this is that (somewhat paradoxically) the sooner you discover something, the more work you have to do to improve it -- although this problem may not in practice exist due to two compensating effects
1) If you have a number of prereqs, research is cheap, and you should rapidly catch up to where you "should" be if you are initially behind. Conversely, if you start out far ahead of where you "should" be, then further research will be nigh impossible until other things catch up.
2) The player that discovers electronics "late" had to advance a lot of basic techs without the benefit of electronics (making it more expensive to do so), whereas the player that discovers electronics early will have to advance electronics seperately from other basic techs, but will be able to make those advances more cheaply.

I think in the end, the benefits from early discovery should outweigh the downside of advancing the basic tech to where it would have been had you discovered it later. (Or at least it is in principle possible that a properly balanced tech web could provide this.)

This is acheived by making the "modern" basic tech a prereq to contributing basic techs, either directly or indirectly (i.e. Electronics 75% could be a prereq to Computing, and Computing 85% could be a prereq to Physics), so boosting Physics to high levels to get "free" Electronics levels when you first discover it is impracticable.)

[Blade Runner]

I hope it is not off-topic. :-)

Every advance cost some money. This price is relative to the level of the advance. FE the map making cost something like 1000$. If the player wants to research the fusion power without map making, gun powder, etc. It is possible but the price will be at time enormous something like 100000$, so practically not worth to research in ancient time. The time being the economy start to produce huge amount of money, so the player can start to pump enough money to research the FE fusion power.
This way we can produce a flexible, but realistic research system without strict research tree climbing.

Blade

[Lord God Jinnai]

Everything does cost money, or rather resources (one of which is money). The thing is the research points u get is basically the money that was put over to research and if u put additional money in u get more research points. Dunno the exact ratio yet though. Also even in acient times u'd not be able to research fusion engine because there are some fundimental things u need to know before u can design. That doesn't mean its going to be a stringent tree like civ2 was where u had to have all these techs before u could develope this, but u will need some basic techs at certain levels and a few non-basic techs. FE u can't develope a car without knowing how combustion works or having even the knowledge of the wheel.

[shimmin]

I had a minor epiphany as I woke up this morning. Rather than display the player's progress in basic techs as an absolute number, why not show it as a fraction of the highest level attained by any player at that point in the game?

The number used internally is still 0-100+ % (based on present day tech), but this avoids the problem of deciding whether it is more intuitive to start at 1% or at a level commensurate with progress in other areas at the time.
[This message has been edited by shimmin (edited December 15, 1999).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

That could give too much info on weather ur country is too far behind or ahead because u may not come in contact with other civs for a while and u would still know where u stand.

[Mark_Everson]

I just checked out the UNITS version 3.0 thread in the civ three list forum. There is a wealth of information they are about what sort of technology is required for a variety of weapons types, ship hull types, etc. the information there might be able to save you some time when working on specific technologies that are necessary for various military units.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Thanx Mark. I'll forward a link to richard also.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well I'll let u know a little ahead of time. Rich will be done with his version of the revision on the 10th then I'll review it so be expexting a completly new tech chart! This won't just be a facelift, but a major overhall! The fundimentals will still be the same, flexibility, culturally based, use of basic techs, but It'll be radically differnt. We've been working on this since october so be prepared!

[Mark_Everson]

Sounds great, I can't wait!