Tech/Social Advances - All Model leaders respond PLZ!!!! (anyone else can too)

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well u were right that it does rep the research points needed. Anyway I don't understand what ur saying about it decreasing in the modern age, but yes i do need some help. I also need to lower the scale for those cultural tendancies that hinder technological growth.

When u come up with a formula can u explain better what u mean about the decrease in effectiveness as the game approaches the modern era?

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

You still haven't given me a description in words of Exactly what you want the formula to do. Are you looking for a complete formula for the research points needed for each advance? Before I can do that I need to know the scale of research points that you are generating by the population, government research spending, etc. If you just want a formula that modulates the research points needed according to cultural acceptance or rejection of the general area of technology, I can do that too. In that case it would be a multiplicative factor applied to the "normal" research points needed for the technology.

[Richard Bruns]

Harlikwin:

Many of your concerns have already been addressed in the new tech model. I have a preliminary organization plan for the military techs, but until I get the units list I can't complete it.

The general idea in the new model is that each application comes with a certain level of a basic technology. For example:

Leather Armor: Fabric/Leather 10%
Mail Armor: Metalworking 25%
Plate Armor: Metalworking 40%, Mechanical Engineering
Spear: Woodworking 2%, Metalworking
Sword: Metalworking 20%
Longsword: Metalworking 35%
Bow: Woodworking 5%
Crossbow: Mechanical Engineering 25%
Musket: Chemistry 30%, Metalworking 30%
Rifle: Chemistry 40%, Metalworking 40%, Physics(Mechanics) 30%
Hand Grenades: Chemistry 40%

The numbers will need to be refined, but you get the idea. The specifics of tech acquisition are more complicated, but you can see that any specific unit or application you ask for will be easily put into the tech tree by giving it a certain set of prerequisites.

PS In our model, your unit abilities would increase as your level of the basic techs increase. For example, Mechanical Engineering 45% means better crossbows than the prerequisite tech level of 25%. This would mean that not all crossbowmen are identical; some would be better than others depending on the tech level of their civ.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited January 19, 2000).]

[Harlikwin]

Re: Richard Burns

Outsdanding!

I really like this idea for a tech model. My concerns are will every civ with a certain % in a specific technology have the available advances...

I.e. I got bows at 75% does that mean I get 75% of all possible Bow units (I realize other techs are necessary for some but I'm trying to keep it simple) Or do I only get a few random (or otherwise determined) techs?

Also As for how the mil model / unit thing is going.

Way It looks now is this:
The map unit is a task force (TF) Made up of units (Rougly 5000 man units in modern era)
Each unit has a certain number of elements (Depednd on the unit) These are things like an infantry element, an artillery elemnt, a scout element, an armor element and so forth (we don't have a scale yet for elements (couple hundred guys seems likely)
What this means for the tech standpoint is alot of weapons that can be modeled.
Also we are toying with the idea of user defined tech, I.e. The musket armed charioteer... (This is going to be discussed but it is a possibility)
I like the idea of abstracting the better crosbow (etc) as a percentage, and this can pretty easily be modeled by the current comabt system (still in devlopment).
Anyway we shall try to get a list of stuff over to you guys once the system is a bit more worked out.

-Harli

[Lord God Jinnai]

Harli

Those techs represent the relevant basic tech. So ur bows wouldn't be at 75, but woodworking would be.

Anyway u prob wouldn't and here's why:

Like my example with the katana, u'd only get that if u had an oriental type culture, but the rapier would be for european types.

Anyway in the original model the reason i had katana was because it represented the best blade as far as metallurgy speaking goes. If the same priciple of how it was made would be applied to other swords they'd be much stonger (and much more expensive and harder to make)

[Youngsun]

Dear Lord

I don't wanna be so critical about your current model.(For most of it, I really have no objection. And for some, I really like the idea such as basic tech concept.)

I don't think it is fair to have a weapon like Katana which do not have much impact on other oriental Civs. You would put Katana for other oriental Civs and Rapier for European Civs. I don't think other European players would object to have a Rapier as thier weapon but Other Oriental players would be not happy to have Katana as thier weapon.

I think that to be a Civ or nation-specific unit or weapon they have to have some impact on other Civs or Nations such as Phalanx and Legion.

It is a Portugese-introduced musket that gave an edge for Japanese ground force when they invaded Korea during the 7years of war. After the war the Koreans made vigorous attempts to copy the musket not Katana.

Even in internal unification process of Japan, it is the musket which enable to accomplish such a process not Katana. With weapons like Katana I much doubt it about that the Japanese could finally got unified country(if possible in much slower phase)

Also I don't like the idea of having a unit of Samurai. Just like any other Oriental Civs(Only agriculture based economy), the main body of Japanese army was peasant conscripts called Ashigaru(literllay means foot soldier)and their main weapon were spear. Samurais were like lieutenant, captain and general for thier commanding structure. It would be weird to have a unit comprised of wholly lieutenants or captains. Their mounted force would look like samurai but they were called Kibatai(literlly means cavalry)

If you really wanna keep Katana and Samurai in your model, I suggest that you include other Ancient Oriental civs' weapons and formation.

For example;
Manchurian: 8 banner cavalry
Mongol:Magudai
Korean:Sam-Ji(Trident spear), Ironclad(surprise! World first but sailed not steam engined)
Japanese:Tetpodai(Musketeer)
Chinese:Mao,Kuk,Chang(All spears not pike as they can not fend off cavalry charge)
Ren-Nao(Closed to European ballista)
I can't think of South-East Asian weapons. sorry.

Wow, that would be some fun to other players but for some, just bunch of similar weapons in different names. Frankly, I like the idea of generalisation and simplification of weapons like just calling spear and sword or long spear and improved sword.

So if you want to have generalised terms go with it or Civ-specific that's also alright as long as you are not favouring only one Civ.

Thanks



[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited January 24, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited January 24, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

I don't think it is fair to have a weapon like Katana which do not have much impact on other oriental Civs. You would put Katana for other oriental Civs and Rapier for European Civs. I don't think other European players would object to have a Rapier as thier weapon but Other Oriental players would be not happy to have Katana as thier weapon.

I think that to be a Civ or nation-specific unit or weapon they have to have some impact on other Civs or Nations such as Phalanx and Legion.

It is a Portugese-introduced musket that gave an edge for Japanese ground force when they invaded Korea during the 7years of war. After the war the Koreans made vigorous attempts to copy the musket not Katana.

Even in internal unification process of Japan, it is the musket which enable to accomplish such a process not Katana. With weapons like Katana I much doubt it about that the Japanese could finally got unified country(if possible in much slower phase)
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Ok, but can u tell me any generally used oriental weapons. I know a few pretty much were such as shurikens and beu. Here's the thing: Up until modern times, Japan, China and SE Asia will be lumped together as Oriental type civilizations for model simplicity.

Note: Although the Katana was used mostly in Japan, other oriental nations did use them.


Also I don't like the idea of having a unit of Samurai. Just like any other Oriental Civs(Only agriculture based economy), the main body of Japanese army was peasant conscripts called Ashigaru(literllay means foot soldier)and their main weapon were spear. Samurais were like lieutenant, captain and general for thier commanding structure. It would be weird to have a unit comprised of wholly lieutenants or captains. Their mounted force would look like samurai but they were called Kibatai(literlly means cavalry)
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Here's the thing: Most european armies also didn't have huge number of Knights and relied mainly on infantry, although usually not peasant infantry.

For example;
Manchurian: 8 banner cavalry
Mongol:Magudai
Korean:Sam-Ji(Trident spear), Ironclad(surprise! World first but sailed not steam engined)
Japanese:Tetpodai(Musketeer)
Chinese:Mao,Kuk,Chang(All spears not pike as they can not fend off cavalry charge)
Ren-Nao(Closed to European ballista)
I can't think of South-East Asian weapons. sorry.
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Thanks. That helps. I may know someone who does.


Wow, that would be some fun to other players but for some, just bunch of similar weapons in different names. Frankly, I like the idea of generalisation and simplification of weapons like just calling spear and sword or long spear and improved sword.
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We are doing this because I really don't want to have this slanted toward any certain region as much as humanly possible.

[Youngsun]

I believe it is so important to have a spearman element in Oriental civs in their army formation.

Generally, there were two styles of civ model in Oriental world.

One is the northern nomadic tribe style:
1.Main economy:Fur trading,stockbreeding in large scale
2.Class structure:Men=Warriors,hunters,shepherds
3.Army:All warriors are mounted!(No infantry element)
4.Government:Tribes-Divided(struggle for survival)-united(A conquering machine)
5.Culture:small or no time to cultivate(inferior to agiculture based economy)
6.Examples:Manchurian,Mongol,etc

Another is agriculture based style:
1.Main economy:specialised goods trading, vast amount of grain production
2.Class structure:Scholars,farmers,craftsmen, merchants,priests
3.Army:small number of elite standing army(Peace time)mixed with large number of peasant conscript(War time)
4.Government:Centralised(Emperor,king,shogun)
5.Culture:enough time to cultivate(rich culture)
6.Examples:China,Korea,Japan,Vietnam,Siam,etc

The power of nomadic kindoms comes from their strong cavalry force and that of more civilised kingdoms comes from sheer number of conscripts(mostly spearman). It had been a duel between the quality and quantity.

I'd like to see this aspect to be reflected in the game. Just imagine that a Mongol player assembling his hordes and waiting for right moment to attack while a Chinese player pumping out his peasant population for oncoming onslaught(ready for full mobilisation).

In present tech tree, there are pikeman and knight elements for European Civs(what a well balanced structure that is).Each element is specilised so any players would produce both of them. I mean there won't be any abandoned or ill-treated unit.

Mounted Archer would be one to be reckoned as primary unit of nomadic kingdoms but what unit for the other agriculture based Civs?
Spearman? Who would produce such a weak unit when there is a stronger unit available to produce such as Samurai?. Furthermore, having a taskforce or army group of samurai will be invincible and historically inaccurate.

The dilemma can be solved by raising the cost of maintaining a large standing army(Can be applied to both Western and Eastern Civs)

The point is that there is no standing army for the nomads since their armies do not get paid regulary so plunder is essential to boost morale whereas a standing army has to be paid and fed to maintain its discipline and morale.The regular standing army may plunder,too but that will decrease its discipline. So for other more civilised kingdoms, there will be small number of elite force with large peasant population waiting to be mobilised for whatever purpose such as grand project like building a wonder or conscription for a war.

There should be a penalty to mobilise large number of peasant for a long time such as social unrest or crop failure.

So what goodies for the nomad civ players? when there is no peasant population present to perform lots of nice things(building wonders & total defense).Conquer! Steal! Aren't they good words for them? With supeiority in military aspect, it will be fun to conquer other civilised nations.

With such a threat,the other civilised civs have spent some time to build fortifications to slow down nomads invasion.

I'd like to propose that a civs or nations can have thier own arsenal to store whatever weapons they produce such as spears,sword,Bows,etc. When army is mobilised the weapons in the arsenal will equip the conscripts. That will further reduce for the need to maintain large number of standing army.

But each weapons will need to have training requirement like:

spear:little requirement
Sword:effect reduced if non-masters use
Bow:Longer time for training

So if there is no modern trained reserve system, spear would be a good choice for raw recruits during Ancient time.

By the way, is there any world event in the game model? If not, I have some suggestion.

1.Olympics/Other sporting event
2.A World's fair/Expo
3.World conference/convention/prize/award
(Political,scientific,ecological,economic,etc)

1.Olympics/Other sporting event:
One of candidate cities will be chosen and it should be optional to take part in the game. The holding city's trade will be boosted by increase of tourists. The game results will reflect the Civs relevant tech level and social interest(more athletic interested society means more gold medals).Good results will increase the civ's status or some sort of bonus for the sociey(decreased discontent for specific period of time)

2.A World's fair/Expo
One of cities from tech-leading civs will be chosen. Also the effect of boosting Trade will be added. Competition should be held to get more score for most advanced Civs for all sorts of area of tech. Winning Civs will receive some bonus in research fields(Scientists produce more reaserch points.etc)and increase in status.

3.World conference.etc
politicians/scientists/leading coporate executives/entertainers will exchange their ideas and talk about the agenda.
The more entertainers you have, the more chance to get a award.more scientists more chance to get a prize.

Times up I have to go sorry.


[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited March 05, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

Youngsun:

An official welcome to the forum!

If you want your comments to do the most good they should go in the most recent thread for each area. You have comments in here for more economics and military areas rather than tech per se IMO. (BTW in the economic area your thoughts are very much in line with what we intend to do.) Go to the web site at clash.apolyton.net and go to the page for each. The most recent thread is noted on each model topic's web page.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Mark:
I need to know if the listing of cultural parameters u gave will pretty much be the end results because me and rich need to have a pretty sturdy foundation for these and other aspects of the social model before we can put up our new tech model because of the very nature of social advances.

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

I'm Sure its not the final version. Sorry, but you two are just going to have to deal with it for now... Even if we had a 'final' list, it would be Certain to change during playtesting. IMO just don't spend much time optimizing RPs to current characteristics, since it would most likely be time wasted.

[Krenske]

Hello everyone.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around the tech system. I'll throw what I think are the basics and you can shoot them down if I am wrong.

We will have a set of basic tech areas. These will increase gradually over time. Certain developments will become available when the required levels of base knowledge are reached.

Assuming I am right so far are these tech developments automatically discovered or do they still rely on that fairly random spark of brilliance. An example of this is the wheel barrow, it requires "the Wheel", "basic Wood work" and maybe "basic physics". Most Civs would reach this stage very quickly in the game. Historically though the Wheelbarrow was a middle ages invention probably brought over from China where it was invented around 300BC. My point is that just because you have the basic knowledge to develop a device etc does not mean you get it.

Will there be a randomness factor for a development actually being accepted? (This may already have been mentioned somewhere but I do not remember seeing it.)

A follow up question is the idea of lost knowledge. The greeks developed a light hunting crossbow around 500 BC. It was not particularly powerful but the potential for improvement was there. The greeks then forgot about it and the Chinese reinvented it later followed by the Europeans. Is there a loss of knowledge concept? (It has been eluded to, but what is the process that is being looked at?)
[This message has been edited by Krenske (edited January 27, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

Assuming I am right so far are these tech developments automatically discovered or do they still rely on that fairly random spark of brilliance. An example of this is the wheel barrow, it requires "the Wheel", "basic Wood work" and maybe "basic physics". Most Civs would reach this stage very quickly in the game. Historically though the Wheelbarrow was a middle ages invention probably brought over from China where it was invented around 300BC. My point is that just because you have the basic knowledge to develop a device etc does not mean you get it.
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You right and wrong. Things still have certain levels for discovery, but just because u meat that level doesn't mean u've discovered it. When u reach that level u have a chance of discovering, modified upwards if u've discovered some relavant, but not essentail application techs. As the basic techs increase, the chance goes up till it reaches 100%.

Also item/improv/structures are developed seperatly. So just because u might have "automotive technolgoy" doesn't mean u automatically get cars and trucks, but they have a slightly higher prereq, but not too much. BTW the wheelbarrel would also be considered an item.

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Will there be a randomness factor for a development actually being accepted? (This may already have been mentioned somewhere but I do not remember seeing it.)
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It hasn't until the above paragraph.

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A follow up question is the idea of lost knowledge. The greeks developed a light hunting crossbow around 500 BC. It was not particularly powerful but the potential for improvement was there. The greeks then forgot about it and the Chinese reinvented it later followed by the Europeans. Is there a loss of knowledge concept? (It has been eluded to, but what is the process that is being looked at?)
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Definatly. First off to be a "lost tech" u need to have discovered it first. Once that is achieved so long as u keep the all ness areas at or above the prereq mark they won't be lost. However, if it drops below, u don't automatically loose it, but u can't develope any more if its an item/improv/structure. If its an application tech like genetics, ur people don't quite understand it, but because of old documents lying around they know it exists and understand a little about it. Basic techs that have other basic tech prereq. will begin to drop rapidly if this happes. I'd say to show this we could increase the rate of increasing the tech levels by 1% by multiplying the end result by 10, then if they actually would be able to go to the next percentage, they can't, but instead just stay the same. If things continue to decline, ur ability to repair and maintain becomes worse and worse until the amount u understand it reaches 0, in which case it is then considered "lost." "Lost" techs must be redisovered as if they were never before discovered. However if ur tech levels rise up at/above the prereq. before the tech becomes "lost," u can once again use it normally.

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One a differnt note:
Will it be too complicated to impliment decimal points for the % system, ie 25.43 (no further)? Both me and rich perfer this over integer model, but if its too complicated we'll leave it at integers.

Also, if anyone has any items/improv/structures they want to be put on in the game, please respond.

items: weapons, carts, statues, cars, planes, etc.

improv: anything that improvs a civ that could be seen from the surface other than structures (also anything below the surface that may have similar counterparts) Irrigation, canals, sewer systems, etc.

stuctures: buildings mainly. These don't have to be surface oriented. They can be in the air, water, space, or below ground.

We might put out our new model soon to help with this area, however it will lack social advances prob for now as these will have to be very much intigrated with the cultural model.

[Mark_Everson]

I'll get my list of economic improvements up very soon. It would be Very useful to see even an incomplete model asap, since it would make 'handshaking' between tech and elsewhere a Lot easier. I'm sure the other model leads will be like me and not have descriptions of what Exactly every item is, so docking tech to the other models will be a back-and-forth thing.

BTW I don't think %s are very 'sexy'. Even though they Are %s could we just start calling them levels from 0 - 100+?... What do you guys think?

I think the fractional levels 22.34 are a good idea for continuity of the system. We just won't tell the player... Maybe we shouldn't even tell them 22 as F_Smith says. But we can work that out in playtesting.

F_Smith:

The Tech levels aren't linear... a level of 40% is a Revolutionary advance over 30%! So although in the usual linear system like Civ's attack vs defense '3' vs '4' isn't a big difference here it means (other things relatively equal) basically a sure thing that the 40 will win.

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited January 28, 2000).]

[F_Smith]

Mark:

That makes sense. Altho (and probably because I'm more a real-time/wargame/tactical-type player/programmer) I still feel that a reliance on numbers is the wrong way to go.

Personally, I don't like being told "Unit X has 90% experience". I prefer something like "Unit X is a veteran unit". The numbers, to me, are just too sterile and un-specific. You have to memorize what each % means. For a behind-the-scenes system like overall tech ability, I guess it's okay, but I would still prefer a more specific, realistic approach. Something along the lines of:

[*]You have 15 universities engaged in research. One of those has had a breakthru and mastered atomic physics (see weapons labs).[*]You have 35 type-4 steel mills. They are somewhat experienced at producing steel, and are beginning to find ways to make steel lighter and stronger (level 3 steel is approx 1 year away).[*]You have 2 weapons research labs. They have both mastered ballistics, and are now beginning to understand how to make a nuclear fission bomb (level 1 nuke bomb approx 2 years away).[*]You have a thriving electronics industry. They have mastered the public electric lighting, and are now working on 'television camera'.[*]You have 3 fledgling aircraft manufacturers. They have mastered simple flight, and are now beginning to explore basic aerodynamics (level 2 flight is 5 years away).[/list]

I usually prefer specifics over aggregate statistics. Behind the scenes it can be handled any way you think best. But to enhance game playing, I would like the model design to be focused on the player, not the number-crunching game engine. Instead of %s, I'd give each 'level' a name and a realistic effect. Not just a % better chance to win.

But again, this is just my mind tossing it's cookies onto a page.

(They should probably know better than to give me an internet connection at work!)