Technology System Version 5.1

[Richard Bruns]

The logarithms do cancel out. Dividing by ln(2) fixes the expression. 10/ln(2)*ln(2^(x/10)) equals x. So there is no problem with the formula.

We should choose the one that will compute faster. Does anyone know which one will be processed more effeciently?

[Mark_Everson]

Richard:

I would like to put in a bid for you to reconsider things like techs that start at level 10% in 1750. That seems to me to be an Extremely Confusing way to go about it. (LGJ and I have had this argument before) The applications already provide a way for making things change in effectiveness faster or slower than the overall tech percentage. My take on it is that it is a good unifying concept to have all the technologies of player is likely to have at a given time at something like the same level + or -10%. Also, if we keep them all on the same scale the player can have a meaningful Overall technology level (although obviously some things will be higher or lower).

I understand why you want to do it the other way. It's clearly better if you want to keep a rigorous scale on the knowledge doubling. But the "knowledge amount" is frankly a completely arbitrary scale anyway. I just think that the way that I have put it above will be much simpler for the player to keep track of. I think that having a simple rule of thumb that allows the player to gauge which are there more advanced technologies, and which are laggards, is of much more value than knowing that computers start at 10 percent with 1950s technology.

In your opinion, is the next major thing for discussion of the specification on how RPs are actually generated?

I know I still owe you an economics technology model... hopefully most of the early stuff for that is something I can finish this weekend.

[Richard Bruns]

You do have a point about gameplay. The model is flexible enough to do things either way, so we don't have to worry about it now. Your way is easier, so we can stick with that for Demo 5. I think that there could be problems with techs being set to a scale that rigorous, but those extra application constants you didn't want might allow us to compensate for that

[F_Smith]

Richard:

Only one thought -- unless this project is radically different from most, this will only resemble the final, coded tech system. If the code only duplicated the functionality of the algorithms here, it would almost certainly be poor, slow code and neither customizable nor upgrade-able. Object-oriented systems do not work in algorithms, they are much more refined systems of objects and interactions, and forcing them to only do subroutines of algorithms robs the code of most of it's power and flexibility.

Just be aware that there are quite a few major architecture issues central to the model that ya'll have not addressed yet.

Garth now has to take this proposed requirement and analyze it, break it into objects, then he has to decide upon an architecture/hierarchy for those objects. If he does a thorough job, coding won't be able to start for a while. And ya'll should probably be involved in many of those decisions.

[Richard Bruns]

I don't understand. How can you say that the system is not customizable? The user has the ability to change every relevant part of the system. And as for the part about algorithms, I have seen java code at my school that easily runs complex physics simulations, which I know are based on equations like the ones I have.

Garth never mentioned any problems with the system, even though I have repeatedly asked for critiques.

[Richard Bruns]

This is what I sent to Garth to be coded:

These equations are the same for all levels of technologies. The only real difference between Level 1, 2, and 3 technologies is the way the interface treats them.

Constants and Variables for Tech Growth:

MV and GV: These determine the overall rate of tech change based on knowledge increase. MV means Multiplier Variable and GV means Growth Variable. The overall knowledge is multiplied by MV for every GV rise in tech level. MV used to be set at 2 and GV used to be set at 10.

Tn: The tech level on the turn before the calculations.

Tn+1: The tech level after the calculations.

m: This constant determines the effect that RP’s have on the growth and maintenance of a certain technology. It will probably be set to about 0.01, but can be changed for each tech.

c: This constant determines the amount of upkeep that a certain technology requires. It will usually be around 0.02, but can be different for different techs.

Ts: This is the level that a technology is at when it is first discovered.

E: This variable influences the difficulty of maintaining a technology. It will be influenced by the social and government model, among other things. It will not be functional for Demo 5, but we should prepare a place for it. For now, it will be equal to one.

H: This variable is the total influence of all helper technologies. It is determined by the following constants, variables, and equations:

HT1 through HTx are the technology levels of the tech’s helper technologies. These would logically have to be the technology levels at the previous turn. A level of technology that was just calculated would not be able to impact something that is theoretically happening simultaneously. For this reason, Tn for every tech should be stored until all of the tech level calculations are finished.

h1 through hx are constants that determine the influence of each helper technology. O1 through Ox are the tech level offsets applied to each helper technology. They give a bonus or penalty to the helper tech levels so that research is easier or harder.

W determines the overall influence of the helper techs. After all of the playtesting is done, we might fix this at a single value, but for now we should keep the ability to alter it so we can test different values. It is defined as something times the gain variable GV, so if we change GV all of the helper equations will still be accurate.

RHL = (h1*(HT1n +O1-Tn)+...+hx*(HTxn+Ox-Tn))

H = MV^(RHL/W)

I: This variable influences the difficulty of raising technology levels. Like E, It will be influenced by the social and government model, among other things. Also like E, it will not be functional for Demo 5, but we should prepare for its inclusion and set it equal to one for now.

DR: This determines what diminishing returns, if any, will be applied to excess RP generation. Like W, it is here for testing purposes and might be fixed in the final model.

The steps from RP to tech change are as follows. V will describe some quantity based on RP’s that is carried over from one step to the next.

1) V1 = RP*m - E*c*(MV^((Tn-Ts)/GV))

2) If V1 < 0, then V2 = V1.
Otherwise:

V2 = H*I*V1^DR

3) Tn+1 = GV/ln(MV)*ln((MV^((Tn-Ts)/GV))+(V2))+Ts

After this process is completed for every technology, the effects of the technology change must be calculated. Some technologies like Sanitation have direct effects on other models based on their level. These effects will probably not be in Demo 5, but we will have to prepare for that functionality in the tech model.

To ensure flexibility, each technology will have to have "Alter Variable" commands that can be defined in the tech editor. All of the variables in other models are defined independently of the technologies. Each individual technology would have the ability to affect those variables in some way. For example, the disease model might define some variable named CLEAN. The number of new people infected by a disease is divided by his variable. The Sanitation technology would then have an Alter Variable command like, "CLEAN=CLEAN*(.04T)" As the tech level increased, CLEAN would increase and disease spread would slow.

Another effect of technology increase is to allow access to a new technology. If the requirements for some technology are met, then that technology is set to its starting tech level and the player is notified of its invention. On the next turn, the tech level of that technology is recalculated.

The main effect of technology, and the one that will be included in Demo 5, will be applications and application factors. The application factors will be calculated for each application as follows:

E is the application effectiveness factor. If the application is a unit, it changes the unit's power. If the application is an improvement, it changes the effect that the thing has.

T1 through Tx are the levels of the technologies that are requirements for the application. R1 through Rx are the tech level requirements for the application. h1 through hx are constants that determine the influence of each required technology on the growth of the application.

L is a constant defined for each application that determines the expected lifetime of the application. G determines the short term growth of the application. F determines how fast the application factor falls with a decline of tech level. G and F have to be defined in terms of GV so a change in GV won't foul things up.

RTL = (h1*(T1-R1)+...+hx*(Tx-Rx))/(h1+...hx)

E=RTL*G+(1+.1*(MV-1)*L)^(RTL/GV) when RTL is positive or zero.
E=(GV+RTL)*F when RTL is negative.

Applications should also eventually have an Alter Variable command. The effect that the application has on some other thing is determined by the application level. For example, a sewer system would have an Alter Variable equation like, "CLEAN=CLEAN*(.2E)" There should also be a tag that tells how much of the civ is affected by this application. In this case, only a small area is influenced. But that is still pretty far in the future.

I would like the tech tree utility to do the following things. If anything here is not feasible, let me know.

1. Set values for MV and GV, and set default values for m, c, W, and DR. It would be good if W was defined in terms of the default GV (GV times something)

2. For every technology, input:
a. Technology name and text description.
b. The level of the technology.
c. Technology requirements and Ts.
d. Values for m, c, and DR. It would be a big help if these were defined in terms of the defaults (default c times some value). This way, we can change the default values and not have to redo individual values; they would keep the same ratio.
e. Helper technologies with O and h for each helper tech, as well as a W value defined in terms of the default value.

It would be nice if parts a through e were in different sections. Also, space should be left for the the Alter Variable section and sections dealing with E and I.

3. For every application, input:
a. Application name and text description.
b. The L, G, and F values of the application. G and F are defined as something times the inverse of the GV value. The default is 1/GV, and we should be able to multiply this by something to change the rate of application change.
c. Technology requirements with an h value for each requirement.

Later, the application editor should have much more functionality, but that is all we need for now.

With this editor, we should be able to define a technology like:

a. Farm Machinery and Equipment
b. Level 3
c. Requires: Agriculture 10% Ts: 10
d. c=default*.7 m=default DR=default
e. Helpers: W=default
Agriculture h=3 O=0
Mechanical Engineering h=2 O=2
f. (later) E=default
g. (later) I=default
h. (later) Alter Variable commands (more food, etc.)

The applications would be defined like:

a. Bombard Cannon
b. L=3 G=default F=default
c. Chemistry--Level 40--h=2
Metallurgy--Level 50--h=3
Physics-Mechanics--Level 30--h=1

This should be the final, coded tech system. Once it is all done, we will be able to build the actual tech tree.

[Mark_Everson]

Here is my revised (5.1) proposal for the economics technology tree structure. Due to some thinking on my part, I have gone off in the direction that I didn't really intend. For that reason, I am going to wait for feedback before going beyond the farming area.

I'm Certain I've missed some important stuff here. I'm also doing this according to what I think is the most recent agreed approach to level for technologies , and am assuming for our recent agreement that those that are not available at the start run on the same scale as the rest of them. So here there is no Explosives 0%. Explosives would start with the effective use of Gunpowder and might be something like the 20% level. The advantage of doing it this way is that the scales are still the same for all technologies.

Just to make this posting more or less self-contained, I am quoting what the relevant variable names are for the technologies. I have trimmed some parts of the quote and added other parts to make it more understandable...

quote: For level 3 techs and above... HT1 through HTx are the technology levels of the tech’s helper technologies. h1 through hx are constants that determine the influence of each helper technology. O1 through Ox are the tech level offsets applied to each helper technology. They give a bonus or penalty to the helper tech levels so that research is easier or harder. (Added) RHL is a factor similar to the tech level that determines how the level of the helper technologies influence gains in the technology currently being considered. Tn is the technology level for the tech of interest. RHL = (h1*(HT1n +O1-Tn) + . . . + hx*(HTxn +Ox-Tn)) For level 4 applications... RTL = (h1*(T1 - R1) + . . . + hx*(Tx - Rx))/(h1+ . . .hx) E= RTL*G + (1+.1*(MV-1)*L) ^ (RTL/GV) when RTL is positive or zero.

If the above doesn't make any sense to you, you need to read further up in this thread, and also the thread entitled Final (5.3) tech...

Numbers after a technology indicate offset percentages (Ox above) in the case of level 3 technologies, and required levels Rx for level 4 technologies, and how important the helper technology is to the target technology or application (hx above). So for instance a listing of requisites for a level for a technology of Civil Engineering 5% 3 means that the offset level is +5% (or the required level is 5%), and the strength is three. If there is no entry with a% then the offset level or required level is 0%. For applications I'll also list the longevity L and short-term growth G (although so far I haven't used G). If there is a technology that I want to use as a prerequisite, but that I don't see anywhere, I will precede it with an "?".

Much of the discussion by Richard of my previous proposal centered around making a lot of things into level 3. In my first shot at this proposal I did just that. But then when I thought about going from the tech level numbers to actual effectiveness as I use it in the economic model, everything changed. I Could use the tech levels of level 3 techs in an arbitrary formula to get the effectiveness of farms. This seems counterproductive to me given that we have already gone to all the effort to determine the way to handle effectiveness for level 4 applications. Also, this would then make the economic stuff have a bunch of special cases that didn't follow the general formulas that, for instance, were used for effectiveness in the military area. For that reason I have put together a proposal using primarily level 4 applications. In doing this one can simply get an effectiveness of the farm sector by adding up the effectiveness of all relevant farm applications. This seems Much simpler to me. I have left a version of the old way of doing it after my preferred way. What do you think?

"Level 4 method" (preferred)
Food Area [all are tagged Economy, Sub-Tag Food]
level 2 Agriculture (Biology 4 Earth Sciences 2)
Level 4 Irrigation (Agriculture 3, Civil Engineering 2, Management 2, Mechanical Engineering 2) L = 2; G = 0.1 (the default)
Level 4 Crop Plants (Agriculture 3, Breeding/Genetics 5) L = 3
Level 4 Farm Tools [Plows and Early Agricultural Machines] (Agriculture 2, Mechanical Engineering -3% 2, Draft Animals 5, Metallurgy 3% 3) L = 4
Level 4 Farm Machinery [starts around 40%] (Agriculture 35% 3, Engines 40% 4, Mechanical Engineering 45% 3, Metallurgy 40% 2) L = 13
Level 4 Crop Rotation (Agriculture 5, Ecology 3) L = 3

Within this approach, the effectiveness of the overall farm sector is simply a weighted sum of the effectiveness of all the farming technologies. For instance in arid and hot climates Irrigation will be extremely important, whereas in some other climates it will be unimportant. Farm Tools are essential for progress in early agriculture, but are not nearly as important in modern farm productivity. For heavy soils, Farm Tools would need to exceed some threshold value (indicating heavy plows) for those soils to be farmed effectively. Farm Machinery is what allows true modern agriculture to really take off in terms of productivity (note the high longevity). The boost to overall farming effectiveness in the modern age will also be due to the introduction of some other innovations that I have sketched out below. Note that Farm Tools and Farm Machinery have different prerequisites, and IMO cannot be combined into a single technology without ridiculous results (for instance having modern agriculture being strongly dependent on draft animals!).

Other Level 4 Applications will be Fertilizers & Pesticides, perhaps "modern farming" (computerization, better weather forecasting, etc.) and Specialization (Cash Crops...)
Also need a level 3 technology of Drainage somewhere, maybe under Civil Engineering


"Level 3 method" (which I do not prefer)
Food Area [all are tagged Economy, Sub-Tag Food]
level 2 Agriculture (Biology, Earth Sciences)
Level 3 Irrigation (Agriculture 3, Civil Engineering 2, Management 5% 2, Mechanical Engineering 3% 2)
Level 3 Crop Plants (Agriculture 3, Breeding/Genetics 5)
Level 3 Farm Tools [Plows and Early Agricultural Machines] (Agriculture 2, Mechanical Engineering 3% 2, Draft Animals 5, Metallurgy - 3% 3)
Level 3 Farm Machinery [starts at 40%] (Agriculture 3, Engines 4, Mechanical Engineering 3, Metallurgy 2)
Level 3 Crop Rotation (Agriculture 5, Ecology 3)

Using the latter method I would basically have to duplicate what I do in the "level 4" method in terms of generating something like a longevity to give farm productivity the right scaling with technology.

For now I am stopping here so I can get some feedback before hashing out the details further. Please let me know as soon as possible what you think about the "level 4" approach.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I've been thinking about the tech levels and I beleieve we shouldn't ness have all the basic techs be 100% at the current date (dec 31, 2000) because many of these are much more modern in r&d and haven't been around since the dawn of time. This also allieviates some problems with starting things out at say 40% and having a long time to drop below that point before reaching zero, which is also wrong. It also keeps from techs going too fast in the way it was with Rich's model (ie everything is 100% at that time in theory).

Most research should be unaffected by this and can still use the dec 31, 2000 as a 100% mark, its just things developed recently (i'd say since the industrial revolitution) as far as new basic tech that these will have a differnt point it will reach 100%

[Richard Bruns]

I think that we can compromise on the 4/3 split Mark wrote about. IMO, some of the things you listed should be Level 3 and some should be Level 4.

The original definitions were that Level 3 techs represented knowledge or skill, while Level 4 applications represented a physical thing. A Level 3 thing has instant, global effects, while a Level 4 thing is constructed as per the economic model. A Level 3 thing is something you do, while a Level 4 thing is something you make.

I like these definitions. I think that they should be the rule of thumb. Also, remember that there is no way to give arbitrary bonuses to Level 4 applications. To keep things manageable, these should only depend on technology level.

Based on these definitions, I suggest the following split:

Level 3 Crop Plants (Agriculture 3, Breeding/Genetics 5)
Level 3 Crop Rotation (Agriculture 5, Ecology 3)

These are basically constant over the civ, so they should be Level 3. Exploration would generate free RP's for the Crop Plants tech, which is something you couldn't do if it were an application.

Level 4 Drainage
Level 4 Farm Tools [Plows and Early Agricultural Machines] (Agriculture 2, Mechanical Engineering -3% 2, Draft Animals 5, Metallurgy 3% 3) L = 4
Level 4 Farm Machinery (Agriculture 35% 3, Engines 40% 4, Mechanical Engineering 45% 3, Metallurgy 40% 2) L = 13
Level 4 Fertilizers and Pesticides
Level 4 Irrigation (Agriculture 3, Civil Engineering 2, Management 2, Mechanical Engineering 2) L = 2

These could vary by province; they are things that must be built and maintained. Of course, the player wouldn't direct the building of farm tools themselves, but I think that the level of province infrastructure and its production capacity should have a local effect on these things. A farm's overall effectiveness would depend on all of these techs, but in the case of the Level 4 equipment, the farm's effectiveness can be penalized if the province has bad infrastructure.

In my opinion, you shouldn't get the full benefit of Farm Machinery 90% on a farm in a province lacks the infrastructure to supply gasoline to the tractors.

Irrigation and Drainage are both such large and important projects that they should probably be supervised by the player. The two main functions of governments in ancient Mesopotamia were defense and the upkeep of the irrigation systems.

I think that a seperate tech for "Modern Farming" would be pointless. For things like weather forecasting, it would be better to simply put those effects directly into the tech effects list.

How were you planning on doing cash crops in the player interface? I wouldn't want a sudden food shortage because my people decided to grow nothing but tobacco, but it would also be tedious to micromanage this kind of thing.

I think we should keep the Year 2000 Level 100 rule. It gives a simple, clear yardstick for tech performance. By the way, a tech is lost of its knowledge level ever goes below the starting level, so if something starts at Level 40 it will never be at Level 30.

As for techs rising too fast, I agree with LGJ on that one. I want to keep a strict 10 levels equals double knowledge scale. If you start Electronics out at 70% to make it the same level as everything else, the tech growth scale and the equations will be all messed up and the scale will make a lot less sense. I would like to start things out at some starting tech level that is based on how many times our knowledge in that tech has doubled.

I based all of the tech equations on the principle that ten tech level increases means a doubling of knowledge or skill. After considering Mark's plan, I have found that the system is flexible enough to compensate, but it will take a lot of messing with the constants I have the fear that it will generate a lot of bugs. I think that with a mathematical system this complex, we have to stick with simple rules or we will get chaos. By making the progression of every individual technology different, Mark's plan makes the system a lot harder to deal with.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi guys:

The compromise proposed at the top of Richard's comments looks reasonable to me. My brain is fuzzy at the moment, so I need to reflect on it a bit, but it seems basically sound. The proposed compromise will make the economic model effectiveness a little harder to present, but it does preserve the integrity of the tech system, which is certainly worthwhile.

On the 2000/100 rule... I agree with Richard we should stick with it.

quote: As for techs rising too fast, I agree with LGJ on that one. I want to keep a strict 10 levels equals double knowledge scale. If you start Electronics out at 70% to make it the same level as everything else, the tech growth scale and the equations will be all messed up and the scale will make a lot less sense. I would like to start things out at some starting tech level that is based on how many times our knowledge in that tech has doubled.

Starting Electronics out at 70% in no way that I can see violates keeping a strict 10 levels equals double knowledge scale. Because it's a logarithmic scale you can start it anywhere you want! The difference is only an offset that does not violate the scaling law. The only reason I can see that starting Electronics at 70% will mess up the equations and their results is because of Ts in the tech level change formula. If that's the only problem I would vote to make that term go away. Can you please explain to me what the fundamental difficulty is??? To my mind, a scale where Electronics is at 20% when everything else is at 70% Makes No Sense Whatsoever. I think players will be forever scratching their heads wondering how we had this system where almost everything runs on a 0 [~5000BC] through 100 [now] scale and yet there are these odd little technologies that stick out like sore thumbs. The players don't care one bit about your equations, they will want something that is thematically whole and easy to understand! Of course we could do it, it clearly won't fatally wound the system, but it just makes a lot less sense to me. It also will require a lot of memorization by the players that Electronics 20% is approximately equivalent to Mechanical Engineering 80% and such.

I very strongly feel that upsetting the unity and flow of the technology level system in the way you propose is a Very Bad idea. Please think about it very carefully before deciding that that is the way we Must go.

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited March 06, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

Mark: your proposal will have a lot of problems for people with far-future technologies (and the way its looking in the pole most people want them, however i'm gonna wait till it gets to ~100 or so befor stopping it). Anyway the problem is because some of these technologies would be so far advanced they would be hard to put a % number to start out with without being to arbitrary. With the other method, we already have a set number that we know they will start at and we can use the same method of doubling. The only thing we'd need to figure out is the rate.

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

The tech poll is interesting, and it certainly supports the future stuff you've been pushing!

On your main point...
Huh? The future tech levels ARE arbitrary. They are someone's guess against anyone elses. So you start Subspace travel at 250. What exactly is the problem with that? Please give an example as to what the issue is, because I read your words, but don't understand the issue you are trying to present.

LGJ & Richard:

I propose to both of you that we drop the % handle for techs regardless. It just sounds nerdy IMO. Some will be alienated by the use of %s. Lets just call them Levels, and have the level corresponding to now be 100.

[Lord God Jinnai]

My point is why make an arbitrary guess when no matter what you pick someone will be usper and say "no it should be higher/lower." By having everything, including non-future techs start at 0 then we eliminate this problem. The only other way to avoid this with you system is an overly complex one of figuring out the where the current techs all are, where the main ones are in particular and write a forumla to derive a starting point which is totally unrealistic.

Also if we don't use that last overlly complex approach and instead assign exact numbers say 80% or whatever then those who develope it earlier will still have advantages over those who develope it later if the time periods are too far apart. either that or because of there inablity to keep up costs for RP production they will be much worse off later because someone developed that technology for them too early. If they all start at 0 then everyone will have the same chance at success and if they get ahead too early will slide back down while if they are behind will be able to catch up much more quickly. Plus they know they can't go below 0 so if they loose it, then they know that they will haveto start out at 0 again
besides yours might have a problem is that tech starts at 30 and it goes down to say 5 because of lack of RP in a scenerio where they developed it too early, well its then easier for them too go down to 0 and loose the tech and then rediscover it at 30 then it is to make up the extra 25%. If you force them once they discover it and loose it to start at scratch (0) the second time your still favoring those who took there time to develope it in a more hirstorical manner (some people might not like that idea).

Having everything start at 0 will make things easier for balance, coding and shouldn't really affect the players perception if it is explained.

[roquijad]

Hi all.
Only recently I've been reading about the tech model, so I don't know much about it. Please don't get upset if my following question is something you've already discussed.

It seems to me the current model gives no special value to communications. IMO much of the recent exponential tech growth in the world can be explained by the availability of info about theories, applications, procedures, etc. Once you know what has been done and you can read in detail about a lot of current techs, you can create based on that, so tech development is faster. It's like com techs being a "synergy multiplier". Does this fit into your model?

[Richard Bruns]

Mark Everson:
---
On the 2000/100 rule... I agree with Richard we should stick with it.
Starting Electronics out at 70% in no way that I can see violates keeping a strict 10 levels equals double knowledge scale.
---
How can you say both of these things? The only way they could both be true is if you believe that today's computers are only eight times as good as ENIAC.

"Knowledge" is not an arbitrary amount. It is a very real quantity, but there is no number that the computer stores to represent it. It is something that I designed to be an inherent part of the tech level number. The knowledge amount has a direct linear correlation to the helper effect of that technology and any applications based on that technology. It also is directly related to how much tech level an RP gives you. Anything that changes the knowledge amount that is inherent in a tech level will cause problems. Your scaling change will warp the relationship between knowledge and tech level.

If you start Computers at Level 70 and have them be Level 100 in the year 2000, then you are telling the helper technology and application effectiveness formulas that today's computers only provide a benefit of eight times the benefit of the first computer. This is what I meant when I referred to the equations gatting fouled up. If you cram all of computer development into 30 tech levels, then a growth in computer technology will be much less important than it should be.

Think of an application that depends on computers and something else. If G is the default and L is zero, then the device will take 20 tech levels to become obsolete. Those 20 levels represent almost all of the development of computers, meaning that the thing has a ridiculously long lifetime. But if you make G smaller, then the application will become obsolete with only a small rise in the other technology.

This can be gotten around by making h values for computer technologies a lot higher than the h values for other technologies. But you will have to alter the h values for every technology like computers that violates the 2x per 10 scaling rule. This will mean a huge amount of work fine-tuning the system, and then there would probably still be bugs and problems.

Anything that makes tech rise at a rate other than 2x knowledge per 10 levels will force us to alter the h constants in every helper tech and application formula. We will also have to change some other things, like m and DR, to make it work the way you want it to. This alteration will take forever and opens the door for lots of bugs.

Keeping a strict 2x per 10 rule will not destroy the 'unity and flow' of the system. It is in fact the only way to preserve the unity of tech growth. Under your system, a rise in tech level would mean a different thing for every technology. Players would have to remember that a rise in agriculture means a lot less than a rise in electronics. They would remain forever confused about how much effort is required to get to a goal that is some number if tech levels in the future. I think that this would be worse than having different tech levels for different fields of study.

You seem to be imagining a tech scaling ideal that was never actually in the system. There would almost never be a time when every tech was at the same level. There would always be a lot of variation, except about 2000 AD. If you try to fix things so that all techs are at the same level all of the time, you will have to alter a lot of constants for almost every tech and application on the tree.

It makes a lot of sense to me to set technologies so that the level of a tech always represents some fraction of the knowledge in the modern era. If a tech level of 60 always means that your civ has 1/16th of modern knowledge in that field, then the tech nombers actually mean something.

People understand that techs will naturally rise at a different rate; it shouldn't be a problem to have a new technology be lower than some others. Everyone knows that computers in 1960 were a lot more 'primitive' than agriculture in 1960, so why would it be bad for them to have a lower tech level to represent that?

You seem to be imagining that tech levels are something they were not meant to be. I didn't explain exactly what a tech level is, which caused some of this confusion. So:

A tech level is a number on a logarithmic scale that represents your civ's knowledge in some specific field relative to human knowledge in that field at the end of the 20th century.

Or more simply:

A tech level is a number that represents knowledge relative to human knowledge at the end of the 20th century.

So unless you assume that knowledge in every field has been increasing at the same rate, you can't have all tech levels be the same at all times.