Technology System Version 5.2

[F_Smith]

Richard:

I understand. You chose a more 'abstract' approach, in keeping with your preference of playing the game at the 'province' level. You prefer a similar abstract 'combat' system.

I respect your choice, altho I do disagree with it. I feel those should be options -- but the guts of the system should strive to model real-world objects in both cases.

And technically speaking, an 'ethnic group' as a 'component' of a civ does not 'inherit' anything from that civ. That would be 'subclassing' or 'extending' that civ object. I would not agree that an 'ethnic group' extends a 'civ'.

* * *

Boer:

That does indeed point out a major difference in approaches.

I am indeed of the opinion that a 'technology' is a 'knowledge' that allows an 'ethnic group' to take given inputs (resources and tools/infrastructure) to produce given outputs (buildings, food, etc).

The 'Technology' component that belongs to a 'civ' I would call 'infrastructure' -- in your example, the actual Nuclear Power Plant, Universities, etc. Because the people certainly would retain the knowledge on how to build a Nuclear Power Plant, along with all the realted infrastructure they built the first time, but the actual structures they could not take along.

And personally, I'd put the 'infrastructure' structures in the mapsquares they physically exist in -- because an enemy can destroy/capture that infrastructure.

* * *

Mark:

I respect the amount of time you put into that code. Please don't misunderstand me. You worked hard, and should be commended.

Altho I've seen this exact same pattern before. I know what caused that pattern then. And I believe I see the same dynamic playing here.

[Beör]

OK I might have been off mark on the infrastructure part. I just seemed to remember that it was decided that this would be a 'No buildings'-game. I will now study Axi's epos on the proposed infrastructure model to become wiser. In the meantime here is my analysis of representing tech levels as I see it in my newly achieved enlightenment:

So for now Tech=Knowledge, as in 'The theoretical capability to achieve and exploit technological advances'. It follows that this is a personal attribute, a part of a person (with his accompanying reference material). In game terms this is equivalent to being an EG attribute, since we don't model individuals (although an EG can have only one person in it, right? - mental note: make a suggestion in social thread: There should be a lower limit to the size of EGs. EGs below this limit should be incorporated into the civs main EG or the largest EG in the square)

There are now two distinct possibilites:

1 All persons in a civ have the same tech level.
This is what has been proposed by Richard above. The all-important advantage of this is that the player can perform any tech -related action in every square in his empire, and expect to get the same result. Another advantage is that we don't have to spend computer resources on storing individual tech levels, and programming/mental resources on constructing algoritms for inter-personal tech-interactions. The problem is that it is an all-or-none phenomenon:

1.1 What happens when a person migrates and settles as an independent civ:
1.1.1 He turns into a 'wandering civ' and carries with him all knowledge.
As proposed by Richard abov. The knowledge is in a volatile form subject to rapid decay if not put to use and maintained. This should work OK.
1.1.2 He carries with him no knowledge
We see the person turning into a complete imbecile in fact loosing the capability to even tie his shoelaces or whipe his behind. Ridiculous. This would effectively put an end to the formation of new civs.

1.2 What happens if a person migrates to another civ or is conquered:
1.2.1 He passes all knowledge to his new civ.
I foresee that this could lead to absurd situations, FE American Indians achieving monstrous capabilities after Little Big Horn or a single person migrating from a developed civ to an undeveloped one. If the tech-decay mechanism is sufficient, it might be possible to make these advantages useless to the conqueror and thus rapidly decaying. However, if migration is more or less continuous, 1 person one turn maybe 2 the next etc. the backward civ would be able to uphold the tech level, although they might not yet be able to put it to much use - yet. And remember: It takes only one turn for the new civ to pass on the knowledge to a potential rival civ, that is much more advanced, and therefore might be able to actually make use of the tech. Another problem is that with just a minimum of migration going on the tech level would effectively be evened out across the planet, rendering the whole system sort of obsolete.
1.2.2 He passes no knowledge per se to his new civ.
The new civ could in some way be recompensated by achieving some RPs, but still this could lead to absurdity when a low-tech civ conquers large parts of an advanced civ (like mongols conquering China) or large migratory movements of advanced persons to a backward civ (I can't really come up with any RL examples off my head). Instantaneously the conquered/migrating EGs loose most of their capabilities (in the above example they might loose the ability to farm or irrigate!) with disastrous consequences (both for the poor civ-citizens and in gameplay terms).

2 Persons (EGs) in the civ have varying knowledge.
This is F_Smith's approach where knowledge is tracked on the personal level. This is of course very much like real life, but very demanding in terms of memory and entails modelling/coding tech-interaction on an inter-personal level, particularly tech diffusion.

How does this individual tech level decide what can be performed in a square?
2.1 The actions that can be performed in a square is limited by the maximum tech level present in any EG in the square.
As a major advantage there are no problems with migration or conquest of EGs: The knowledge follows the EG. There is one huge/humunguos/terrible/disastrous disadvantage: A player might be able to do something in one square and not do the same thing in the neighbouring square (very frustrating, micromanagement extreme etc. - we just lost 99.99% of all prospective customers!)
2.2 The actions that can be performed in a square is limited by the tech level of the civ
Individual tech levels are only there to handle what happens when a person is conquered or migrates. This consitutes sort of a compromise between the different approaches. This could take place on the province level instead, indeed encouraging the player to make large provinces, but then again provinces would differ in their capability to do tech-related stuff. This would add complexity, but might be fun to play. (Micromanagement of which squares go into which provinces etc).

What remains to be decided for this hybrid approach is how the tech level of the civ relates to the tech {edited} levels of its EG-constituents.
2.2.1 The tech level of the civ is defined as the maximum level of any EG in the empire.
Relatively easy to handle, but with some of the same disadvantages as in 1.2.1. The disadvantages would be scaled down somewhat, since conquered/migrating EGs will probably originate from marginal provinces with a diffused tech level as compared to the core provinces. Depending on the rate of migrations taking place it would still tend to even out the tech level to a rather high degree - it only takes so long for people from the core provinces to migrate across the borders
2.2.2 The tech level of the civ is some function of the tech level of all EGs in the empire.
You would thus have EGs with higher tech level than the civ tech level, but as a player controlling a civ you would not be able to put these techs to any use! (Whether the models controlling FE infrastructure in individual squares should be permitted to make use of the advanced tech leve remains a question). The closer to the center of the empire the more the tech level of an EG would be able to increase the civ tech level. If the EG was discriminated it would not influence the tech level as much as if it was of the same 'nationality' (I'm still waiting for rodrigo's explanation of this term in the social thread ) as the civ. This approach would further slow down dissemination of tech from one civ to another.

My conclusion:
I find that the absurdities of 1.2.1. and 1.2.2 in effect rules out the one-civ/one-tech-level approach when migration comes in to play. This means that we would have to model Tech level on the EG level. 2.1 is definitely out, so we are stuck with a choice between 2.2.1 and 2.2.2. I actually think 2.2.2 would be fun to play, but maybe too complicated.
So: 'The winner iiiis:……….. 2.2.1' (Hysterically applause, fanfare etc)
Tech levels on the EG level was not my original standpoint, so credit to F_Smith for insisting on it ('… it seems so clear'). Now someone pleeease, show me that we are wrong .


[This message has been edited by Beör (edited September 19, 2000).]

[F_Smith]

I do have one comment:

What level of control will a player actually have over a civ's tech/production?

Will a player be able to go into a specific mapsquare and order them to produce things, god-like? Or will people just produce on their own, based upon general guidelines set by the player's government?

If the latter, then there's no problem with individual ethnic groups having varying levels of technical knowledge. There is no micromanagement. The player will never specifically be able to manage an EG's knowledge or production.

In fact, it adds a layer of interesting depth -- you can have one EG in your civ that are expert weaponsmiths, say. And one EG can have a long history of seamanship and boatmaking skill. Like that.

It also creates the potential for a real 'Clash of Cultures' -- as I said before, an 'American' Civ with both 'English' and 'Native' EGs. The 'Natives' can be prevented/slowed from learning new techs/skills, by setting the govt 'ethnic discrimination' of 'Natives' high.

And it creates a realistic game basis for 'slavery'. You come into contact with a 'YabbaDabba' civ with a high 'boatmaking' skill/tech (silly simplifications, but you know what I mean). One option could be to conquer them, then enslave the pop, and move the EG forcibly into your territory, bringing their knowledge and skills with them.

That sort of thing.
[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited September 18, 2000).]

[Richard Bruns]

This has given me a lot to think about. I will respond later, after I have a chance to consider these issues some more.

[Beör]

quote: Originally posted by F_Smith on 09-18-2000 09:04 AM What level of control will a player actually have over a civ's tech/production? Will a player be able to go into a specific mapsquare and order them to produce things, god-like? Or will people just produce on their own, based upon general guidelines set by the player's government?[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited September 18, 2000).]

This is a veeeery good point, especially after having read Axis proposed infrastructure model:

It seems that the player will have very little direct control on what kind of infrastructure (including military units!)will be produced in a square. As it looks right now, the player won't even be able to decide what kind of military units will be produced. There will be no buildings - except as a kind of metaphore for infraclasses. All the player really does is tax certain infraclasses, subsidize others, recircle a certain amount of the tax revenue and have an influence on the relative weight of infraclasses in the budget.
The infrastructure model can be run on either square, province or civ level. The implications of this are not clear to me at the moment.

As F_Smith stated above the low degree of player control on what is actually done in each square/province removes one of the major objections to 2.1 and 2.2.1/2.2.2 run on the province level. There would still be some micromanagement: The ruler must decide which squares/provinces should receive the major part of recycled taxes based on the tech-level. If I desperately need a strong naval unit, I must provide sufficient funds in a square/hex where the level of naval techs are high. I might be lucky enough to have the people construct the Bismarck, but then again they may opt for electricity or public schooling, while the neighbouring provinces produce cheap, but rather inept war canoes.

On the other hand I am not quite sure what the implications of a tech-level differing from EG to EG will mean to the infrastructure model. I will make a post to this effect in the infrastructure thread.

[Richard Bruns]

This is a copy of what I posted in the infrastructure thread:
---
Idea: All infraclasses should be tech tags. Since the technology is designed to reflect what people do, I can fix the tech model so that there is a tech tag for every infraclass this model has. This way, the tech model can generate exactly what the econ model wants. Each infraclass will then have an ideal tech level T and an actual tech level A.

The connection helps the tech model as well. Investment in a certain infraclass would generate tagged RP's for that tech tag. These RP's are then distributed among the techs. This should be a relatively painless way to connect RP production to economic activity.

I'll post this to the tech model as well. Or if you all would prefer, I could start a new thread devoted to tech-econ interactions. I'm confident that relating infraclasses to tech tags will be a good way to connect the models.
---
So the current list of tech tags would be:

Infraclasses:
Food (All Agricultural research)*
Consumed goods (Standard of Living?)
Welfare (Standard of Living?)
Education
Research (Pure Science)
Religion (and Philosophy)
Housing
Durable Goods (?)
Health Care
Water & Sewage
Power & Heating
Communications & Media
Transportation
Recreation & Luxuries
Administration (Government and Politics)
Financial Infrastructure (Cash Flow and Economics?)
Nature Preservation (Disaster Prevention and Ecological Studies?)
Military Infrastructure
Military Units
Kapital Investment (Production Technologies)

*The names in parentheses are the previous names for the tech tags. In some cases I had to extend the infraclass definition a little to get them to match. A question mark means I'm not sure what the infraclass means or I'm not sure if the match is good, so please give feedback on this.

Others:
Exploration/Movement
Diplomacy and Propaganda
Prospecting and Extraction
Something I'm Forgetting?

I still thinking about the EG tech modeling situation. But to try to clear up confusion, I will describe tech diffusion:

Tech diffusion occurs due to contact, not movement. That is an important distinction. The amount of tech diffusion that takes place will depend on the tech levels involved and the amount of contact between the source and recipient.

So if you are far away and have a few trade routes, tech will diffuse slowly. If you are adjacent to each other there will be more tech diffusion because more contact will occur. And if you conquer a province, you get the most tech diffusion because you can take apart and analyze everything.

The amount of tech diffusion in a conquered province will be based on the actual province infraclass tech factor A. The conqueror gets tagged RP's based on the various infraclasses. For example, if someone takes a province with a very high Power & Heating tech factor, that person will get a lot of RP's with the Power & Heating tag.

So it is not an all or nothing situation like Beör described in 1.2.1 and 1.2.2. The conqueror gets very real gains, but they do not get everything instantaneously. It is a balance. So there would not be a big problem with modeling tech by civ alone. But modeling by EG could provide some benefits. I'm still not sure if the complication is worth it, however. I still need to consider the ramifications.

[Lord God Jinnai]

There is one big problem about storing the tech info via EG that everyone seems to have conviently forgotten about. Each EG in each square might exist in squares where a tech is useless to them. FE an EG that is spead over a large penesula where there is a lot of coast and a lot of mountainous regions. Now then because the people at the coast would know how to fish and shipbuild so would the people in the mountains? This isn't right...because the people down below devote more to farming they people in the mountains get better at it? Again i don't think so, espically if they have little contact. Also you are forgetting the fact that when two places have an advanced culture come in, the advanced culture is quickly adapted as far as technology by the old and thus after a few turns you have loads of redundant information that must be caclulated (yes must because of RP production...no way around this...can't assume things don't change here, because RP production which calculates tech levels is suppose to be volitile so that the player can try to correct tech loss or curtail tech advancement that might lead to an overthrowing of his rule. These are the reasons i say at the most it should be done square-by-square, any more is just adding the detail which will bog down this system.

As far as what's retained imo...i guess the best idea is to use 'functional tech level' as is what they bring with them...in this case people from rural areas who migrate might not be bringing as advanced tech, except maybe in agriculute, hearding, etc. where is would be more advanced.+

[Richard Bruns]

LGJ:

The same problems you bring up with EG tech could be applied to tech at the civ level. According to the standard model, the people on the mountains have the same maximum tech level as the people in the coast. But the province infraclass tech factor A will be different if there is no investment in that tech tag. So they are not good at building boats in that province, even though the ideal tech level says they are. The same would be true if tech was modeled by EG. The result is the same way no matter what group the tech is modeled under.

I thought the same thing about tech diffusion initially, and I made that point earlier. But it is possible to keep a certain ethnic group backward by discriminating against them, as F_Smith pointed out. It does have the potential to provide an interesting social dynamic, but we'll have to get input from the social model people about that. I asked for info in that thread.

I was assuming that the tech would be modeled once per ethnic group per civ. That would multiply the CPU load by whatever number of EG's there are. That is reasinable, but if the equations are modeled in any more detail then that, I don't think it can work. Once per province per ethnic group or something like that would be madness IMO.

You are right about migrating with only the functional tech level A. THat is a good point.

It may seem that I support the EG plan, but I really don't. I wouldn't want to play it and I think it is not worth the extra effort. But I really can't argue against it. The OO system with state triggers would make it easy enough to add as an option, and if people want it and have the CPU power, they could be given the option. If the social model makes it worthwhile and I can't think of any big problems, I would accept it.

I don't understand the square by square comment. I thought we agreed:

1) RP is calculated by the economic model at whatever level of complexity it is using. Previously, this was done by square but if we use axi's plan it will be calculated by province. But the place of calculation doesn't matter much because:

2) All RP calculation in the civ is summed and run through the equations. This generates an ideal tech level for the civ.

3) Actual tech level is applied at the province level. Each province has an A value for tech which determines what the province can do.

[F_Smith]

Quick Thought:

Boatbuilders in the mountains will actually only happen in the 'civ-level' tech model, won't they?

If you store a group's tech knowledge in the group object, they will not know techs they haven't learned. Someone would have to specifically import the knowledge and teach a mountain tribe to build boats, or else it would never happen.

But if you allow a group access to all knowledge anywhere in a civ, then you can have boatbuilders in the mountains. The boatbuilders aren't as good as the boatbuilders on the shore, but they can build boats.

Just thinking out loud.

[Richard Bruns]

Like LGJ said, some EG members could be in the mountains and some could be in the coast. It is just like the civ system.

But I think the problem is academic bacause the ability to do things depends on infrastructure and A. If the infrastructure isn't there, it doesn't makker what you "know".

Anyway, they have built boats in the mountains. During WW2, America made ships inland factories. These factories prefabricated all of the parts of the ship, which were then sent to shipyards on the coast and quickly assembled. So the tech level gave anyone in the civ the ability to do things.

[Lord God Jinnai]

There is one problem with the EG modeling apporach. It works fine throughout most of history, but it breaks down in modern industrialized countries where almost everyone has acess to the same information and the people that advance the technologies are either the government or businesses. The differance here is that the tech level for them which may incompance many EG and for businesses from differnt civs is seperate and independant of the rest of the society even if they would have the infrastructure to create what might be available to the maximum tech level, there is a point where some technologies would be listed as secret for the corperation or government. Now then perhaps modeling those as seperate entities when dealing with new technologies would help, but FE having a factory that produces computer parts for another place in a 3-rd world country ins't the same as having a technology capable of supporting factories as a whole. I mean in that area where would the functional tech level be listed and what would be the norm? The factory producers because they have the highest? The EGs because they live there? or both? In the former two cases in discriminates against the other and in the latter come modern times with tons of 2nd and 3rd world countries it could become quite complex.

Anyway i still see a differance in my model of the costal/mountain living people of the same EG. What need would they have of building ships? And what need would they need of bringing that with them when they migrated. If they came to a costal area and wanted to live/cross there they'd haveto learn from scratch pretty much just like the costal people would haveto learn to live in the mountains.

As far as the WWII example goes, that was with people trained in shipbuilding and the ships were built there for strategic reasons, non-EG based.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well I may have a way around one objection which i will discuss in the social model thread, but we still need to have some differentiating factor for business and government technology as apposed to, for lack of better term, ethnic technology. This may not be important for early development, but if you want to have funtional technology levels based on enthic groups, you must also realize that with globalization and the introduction of coorperations and many things in the post-industrial age there is a need for these also to be seperate.

Here's a proposal i have, and yes, its far from perfect cuz i just now thought of it. Government technology could easily be assumed to be the 'maximum tech level' as it has been defined. In addition for things that may be of 'classified' or 'secret' technologies that only the government would know of could be specially marked by that country. This would almost haveto be case by case because what one country may view as national threat may differ to another. Also technologies change and become obsolete. Like i said this is off the top of my head almost so you can probably punch many holes in it if you want or strengthen it.

As for businesses/corperations, especially multi-civ ones it is necessary to treat them with special consideration like treating in some ways atleast in the beginning for modeling purposes like a colony without acutal land assettes. This is because these companies will draw initially upon the technology of the parent nation and then spread it over the world. This spreading doesn't necessarily mean that it teaches the native populance more than the rudimentary fundimentals, enough to make the product. There is still posibility of copycat companies emerging in these 3rd and 2nd world countries, but it is less common and laws and business preasure may prevent this. This model would haveto change somewhat for this era of new businesses which are internet based and thus draw alot of the technology from around the world, even in 3rd world countries, although it is much rarer there too.

Anyway the bottom line is even if you don't like these proposals, we need some way of dealing with this problem that will arise later on if we use the EG approach originally proposed by F_Smith.

[Beör]

Richard

Re tech diffusion

So what you're saying is:
If I have contact with a civ geographically distant from me, I will receive small 'amounts' of tech in the form of RPs.
If I am adjacent to the other civ it will be considerably more RPs.
The more trade routes there are between my civ and another civ the more RPs will be generated for a given geographical distance.
If I conquer a province I will get a substantial amount of RPs.
But if a large proportion of the population of a neighbouring civ voluntarily chooses to migrate to my civ I will gain no RPs at all?!

Another point:
What exactly constitutes the conquering of a province for the purpose of reaping the RPs?
If I have to conquer the whole province I had better do it in one turn, or the owner of the province will be able to add more squares to the province, in fact making it impossible to conquer it untill the last square of the rivalling civ falls!(=nothing )
If I will get RPs for conquering a part of the province, I had better do it one square at a time, since I will gain RPs every time! (=all )

I know that this is not the intention of the system, but it will be exploited by the players.
[This message has been edited by Beör (edited September 19, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

As far as i know, you gain no new knowledge for conquering anything beyond the first square, unless we use the 'functional tech level' then the best place to conquer would be the big cities for most stuff and rural areas for agricultural and the like. If their technology is signifigantly higher than yours, there would be a bonus, but not ness all in one turn as these things are learned as a process over time. What differs is the amount of land you control, ie the more generally means more RP, but again that might not be the case if it lowers the infrastructure then the cost effectiveness of what RP is produced would be drowned out. This is to balance small countries like Japan that have really advanced far in technological fields in short periods of time, not once, but twice within the last 200-300 years approximatly.

[Richard Bruns]

Beör:

quote: But if a large proportion of the population of a neighbouring civ voluntarily chooses to migrate to my civ I will gain no RPs at all?!

No, I never said that! If people migrated into your civ they would carry a lot of tech with them. There would be a lot of contact, about as much as if you had conquered them. I know I left this example out, but that list was not meant to be all-inclusive. You get RP's from many sources, and I just listed a few as examples.

You don't get RP's at the time of conquest. You get them based on the amount of land you own at the beginning of the turn and the difference between that tech level and yours. You get the benefit every turn you hold the land, until your tech raises to that level or the infrastructure decays to your tech level. So if you have 30 squares with the same infrastructure, you get 30 times as many RP's as you would get from one square. It doesn't matter when you conquered them, it only matters that you own them.

LGJ:

Eventually I was hoping to be able to model businesses in as much detail as civs. I'd love to play a massively multiplayer game with dozens of countries, global corporations, and cultural leaders all pursuing greatness. But that is a very long way in the future, probably about Demo 12. We shouldn't worry with businesses right now.

I do like the idea for tagging techs as national secrets. It would be a good option for more player interaction with the tech system. Of course, we shouldn't force the players to deal with that if they don't want to.