Final (5.3) Tech Dynamics

[Lord God Jinnai]

The second point is minor and can probably be overlooked. It is really the first one that bothers me. Your idea can work somewhat although me and Rich i believe had assumed we would have a state at which the player could still maintain things created when it was able to be produced, but at decresing abilities.

So say 20 was what you needed to start it, you could maintain the infrastructure back to 15, but it would deterorate in effeciancy slowly. You couldn't produce any more and say at level 17 you couldn't repair anything vital. How does that sound. That is my major concern is that i don't want it all or nothing nor do i want it to be considered safe once it has been achieved.

[Lord God Jinnai]

The second point is minor and can probably be overlooked. It is really the first one that bothers me. Your idea can work somewhat although me and Rich i believe had assumed we would have a state at which the player could still maintain things created when it was able to be produced, but at decresing abilities.

So say 20 was what you needed to start it, you could maintain the infrastructure back to 15, but it would deterorate in effeciancy slowly. You couldn't produce any more and say at level 17 you couldn't repair anything vital. How does that sound. That is my major concern is that i don't want it all or nothing nor do i want it to be considered safe once it has been achieved.

[Gary Thomas]

I do not believe that technology ever decays within the context of a sngle technology owner. Infrastructure may, but technological knowledge does not.

What, then, is technology level supposed to represent? Knowledge? Infrastructure? Some undefined combination?

Can anyone give an example of decaying technology that doesn't depend on either collapsing infrastructure, or change of ownership?

Cheers

[Richard Bruns]

Wow, lots of stuff to come back to after a vacation. I'll try to cover everything, but it might be a bit brief:

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 04-14-2001 10:13 AM Can you show me where this new plan is stated?

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/Forum...0246-2.html#69

quote: So the Civilization Activities have the following functionality: They determine RP production and feed those RP's to the technologies. They provide an easy way for the player and AI to deal with tech. They can simply say "Put effort into improving Infrastructire." This is what I mean by the interface. It is an intuitive way for the player to interact with the tech system. Of course, they can drill deeper if they wish, but this is an option so they don't have to get too involved if they don't want to. They help interpret the effects of technology and can alter other models based on technology growth. For example, the Health Civilization Activity would feed data on the overall health of the civ to the Disease model.

quote: All I can find in this thread is that what we used to call tags have been changed in name to Activities but still only have the traditional function of channeling RPs into different techs.

This isn't a new plan. Tags have always been designed to do more than the simple channeling of RP's. From the start, they did a lot.

quote: 1. The previous plan for tags had assumed for tractability a maximum number of something like 20.

As far as I know, that hasn't changed. This is the current draft of the list of Activities:

Agriculture
Disaster Prevention and Ecology
Education
Cash Flow and Economics
Exploration/Movement (includes mobile communication)
Government and Politics
Happiness and Social Control
Health
Infrastructure (includes fixed communication systems)
Military
Production
Prospecting and Extraction
Pure Science
Religion and Philosophy
Standard of Living

quote: If you want to use Activities as you stated above, then there will be many more than 20 for the economy model alone.

But Activity is just a new name. Nothing in the tech model has changed from the old plan. Did you make a lot of new infraclasses?

quote: Many production types beyond the 4 major ones need to be supported. Not to mention all the different types of infrastructure, each of which needs its own effectiveness. Are you comfortable with that?

That was always the plan. There would be a 1:1 correlation between Infraclasses and tech tags/Activities.

quote: What this will mean is we will need to reinstate something like the old 20-tags system for use by the AI and player.

Reinstate? I dodn't know it went away

quote: There used to be a tag called Food. When there was a food shortage all the ruler would have to do was put resources into the Food tag.

This has always been the case, to my knowledge. Nothing has changed except the name. I used the word "Agriculture" to designate all forms of food production.

quote: We will now have Activities like Agriculture, Fishing, and Herding

What? When was this decided? Are you making infraclasses for all of those? If not, they will not be Activities.

quote: The new Food tag would have the job the old one did -- allocating resources when the ruler of a modern economy says "invest this money to give me more food production, I don't care how"

This hasn't changed. I must have caused confusion by using "Agriculture" in place of "Food."

quote: It makes no sense in this context to use the effectiveness numbers to generate ActivityEffect values since then in modern times Crop Plants would come out as more important that Farm Machinery using the equation above. That is the Wrong answer!

The numbers for RP input certainly do not have to be the same numbers for effect output. We would keep the existing number to determine where RP's go, and then we would move your effectiveness output constants into the Activity object. The numbers are not changed at all; this is just a way to organize things by functionality. The system you outlined hasn't really been changed at all.

quote: You previously maintained that there was a substantial difference between the old level 3 techs and applications,

My mistake. Please consider that ancient discussion void. That was before I learned about good OO design practices. Now I believe that Applications and Techs, as programmed, are both derived from the same object, with certain bevaviors turned on or off. So we might be able to blur the boundaries between them if we need to. Level 3 techs could certainly have application functionality.

quote: I think my proposed change to add longevities would require an additional something like 20 lines of code...

Again, my mistake. I wasn't thinking straight. By all means, feel freee to blur the boudaries between level 3 and 4, adding functionality as you wish. Level 3 can be thought of as "half application/half technology."

Nothing prevents scenario designers from using Mark's 'historical' method. They could use it or any variation of it they wanted. They could design a system so that all techs start the scenario with the same value and grow from there. They could decide to make a new scale for WW2, where techs are set to 100 in 1940, and then grow to 200 by 1945. Or there could be a sci-fi scenario where all current techs are set to 10 and then grow to 200 as the player makes a galactic empire.

But for the default world history scenario, I don't think it would work too well. In addition to the math difficulties, here is a question of what historical standard to use. Is 'level 40' supposed to be set to the Roman Empire's techs, the Chinese tech level, the Celtic tribes' knowledge, or possibly some average of all of those? How do we deal with the fact that certain techs were worse in 1000AD than they were a milennium earlier? How can the model make any sense if level 50 is set to be the 'historical' water systems tech in 1000 AD and level 40 is set to be the Roman aqueduct system?

Different cultures have had vastly different tech levels. At a certain time period, each group may have had vastly different knowledge levels. Does that make one group better or worse than another? no, they are just developing differently. But Mark's plan seems to imply that everybody should be the same at any given point, that all civilizations should develop the same way and at the same rate. That would work fine for a WW2 scenario, but for the main game it just doesn't seem right.

Most people tend to think of history in terms of our current world. Textbooks are full of things like "The Roman plumbing systems were almost as good as the ones we have today." or "These peasants could only grow 1/50'th as much food per acre as a modern farmer." The system I use simply puts those common comparisons into numbers.

quote: Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai on 04-14-2001 10:50 PM 1> What will be decided for the levels for things we have yet to put to any practical use but may soon such as cybernetics?

They already have some cybernetics, like the new artificial heart they are getting ready to test. They say it may add a year to a person's life. If that is level 100, a heart that extends the patient's lifespan two years is level 110. Level 200 would be when a person can be made to live about 2000 years with cybernetics. Kidney dialysis machines would also count as cybernetics, so we do have a reasonable baseline to go by.

quote: 2> Since the beginning of the Idustrial Age and moreso since the dawn of the Information Age, Technology growth has been speeding up at a very rapid pace. Within the 60 or so years that computers have been around for practical use they have grown at an extrondiary technological rate which is unparrelled in our history. In fact it has come so far spped wise that if a computer is out on market, it is considered obsolete.

I said before that the flops per second is not what we are measuring. We are tracking what you can do with the technology. That measn that we look at the kind of scientific and engineering uses of computers, not raw numbers. The doubling of problem solving skill is a lot slower than the doubling of processor speed and hard drive space.

quote: Since it is not my job to write the specification for the model, I omit the formulae by which research points are transformed into technology levels. You will have to take my word for the fact that they represent the formulae specified in some ancient post or other.

They are specified in the spreadsheet and its instructions, which is assumed to be the final guide to number-crunching. Everything else you describe looks really good. We attempted to do some object oriented design a while ago, but I managed to sabotage that somehow and nothing seemed to come of it. Good work!

Mark, number 7 looks right to me. That was basically what I listed earlier in teh tree of objects used.

Ok, I see now what you wanted to do with historical effects and longevity. Yes, that certainly could work mathematically. But the problem is that the players would no longer care about the tech level. Why should they care, if the tech level does not mean anything? It would essentially be meaningless, since level 60 agriculture might have an effectiveness that is very different from level 60 architecture. The longevity is what determines effectiveness, so they would care about the longevity, not the level.

So we would have a nice syatem where all tech levels are the same in a certain year. But now the player doesn't care about the tech levels at all, since a difference of five tech levels in computers is astronomical and a difference of five tech levels in architecture is miniscule. They want to know their effectiveness, and how it compares to a rival's effectiveness.

So we are right back to the starting problem, where the numbers are very confusing. The player would want to know what the "longevity" means and how it determines what they can do. How would we explain longevity and its effect on things?

Player: "Why is the level even in there, if it has almost nothing to do with effectiveness?"
Help File: "You should be at a level of 60 in 1650 AD.
Player: "Um, ok. I am at level 55. So how do I compare to my neighbors?"
Help File: "Longevity 12 and level 60 means an effectiveness of 456"
Help File: "Longevity 12 and level 55 means an effectiveness of 362"

This results in a system where one has to be intimately familiar with the technologies to answer a question like, "What would the effectiveness be in the Crop Rotation technology in 1650? *Does Research* Ok, an effectiveness of 466 looks right. We know that the level is 60, so what longevity should I program to make the effectiveness be 456 in at level 60?"

LGJ, a tech can be used the instant it is listed. The starting level is a minimal level of usefulness (k=1). Think of it as a breakthrough, like the Wright brothers. Once made, the tech or idea will never go away. It is certainly possible to build an airplane worse then theirs, but the idea of airplanes will never die once discovered (Unless the whole civilization falls and nobody else has the tech at all.)

If it falls below the strating level, k will go into fractions. I've tested this, and the model doesn't break down or anything. It works fine. So we can have a tech fall below the starting level and it will have an effect, but a very small one. I say once it is discovered, we let it stay around with that tiny effect. The breakthrough has already been made and people know about it, but most practical knowledge is lost.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited April 16, 2001).]

[LDiCesare]

quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas on 04-16-2001 05:57 PM I do not believe that technology ever decays within the context of a sngle technology owner. Infrastructure may, but technological knowledge does not. What, then, is technology level supposed to represent? Knowledge? Infrastructure? Some undefined combination? Can anyone give an example of decaying technology that doesn't depend on either collapsing infrastructure, or change of ownership? Cheers

What about the fact that we no longer know how to build bricks as solid as the Romans? The Eastern Roman Empire survived long enough and still lost that knowledge.
Another example: Greek alphabet: Nobody knew how to read linear B (I may have the name wrong, might be linear A) after all the scholar caste was struck down (must have been a plague if I remember well but I'm not good in history).

[Richard Bruns]

Sorry, I didn't notice this before.

quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas on 04-16-2001 05:57 PM What, then, is technology level supposed to represent? Knowledge? Infrastructure? Some undefined combination?

The tech level represents knowledge. In most cases it is not raw academic knowledge, but the ability to apply knowledge to the problems of the civilization. The upkeep required is the amount of effort needed to teack the next generation the skills of teh civilization.

It might be considered a tangible asset in the form of human capital. The tech level also represents your pool of skilled workers, the perople who can make things or develop new items or techniques.

quote: Can anyone give an example of decaying technology that doesn't depend on either collapsing infrastructure, or change of ownership?

The USSR and many former Societ Bloc countries are currently losing knowledge and skills. Scientists, technicians, and engineers are leaving the country and very few new ones are being ecucated.

A fall in infrastructure and a fall in tech level are two symptoms of teh same thing, so they usually occur together. When the economy and/or government and/or society no longer functions properly, many aspects of the civ will start to fail due to lack of maintenence.

[Gary Thomas]

quote: My apologies that I thought you meant using the Same coefficients for RP allocation and effectiveness. That was silly. So in terms of the code changes needed I'd say CivilizationActivity "has a" RP_Allocator and "has an" Effectiveness or whatever names suit. Sound ok Gary?

I cheated a bit. The technology interface method getEffect(String name) will actually work if given an Application name, an Activity name, or a Technology name. The search order (in case there are things with the same name) is: Technology names, then Activity names then Application names.

So, all you have to do is design an activity to do what you want, and then never assign research points to it, just use the getEffect.

From a programming point of view these entities (Technology, Application, Activity) hardly differ in behaviour. Personally, I would have preferred to design the system so they did not differ at all, but it is a bit late now.

I actually cheated a bit more. The isBuldable(String name) also works on technologies, applications, and activies (in that search order). So if you want to have an activity that merely checks to see that a certain level is reached in each of a specified list of technologies (a different level for each technology) and only then have Einstein appear (or some other elevant event), then you can do it.

I made one other invisible change. Activities now have a multiplier parameter. The total effect is multiplied by that factor before returning. It defaults to 1.0. The idea was that for research point assignment it could be set to 1/(Sum of recipient factors) to make them add up to 1, without hard coding it, or requiring the person entering the data to make sure they add to 1. I am glad I did not hard code the adding to 1, the effect on the effect would have been that an activity effect would always be 1.

Why is there an obsession with only 20 activities? The real world has billions. Is there some good design reason for this limitation?

Cheers

[This message has been edited by Gary Thomas (edited April 17, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Gary Thomas (edited April 17, 2001).]

[Mark_Everson]

Historical levels vs current standard... My perspective

quote: In addition to the math difficulties, here is a question of what historical standard to use. Is 'level 40' supposed to be set to the Roman Empire's techs, the Chinese tech level, the Celtic tribes' knowledge, or possibly some average of all of those?

What I think is correct is to use whatever the leading-edge technology in the world at that time was/is to establish the level. That assumption is I believe implicitly used in the current system. Technologies aren't by any means uniform today, even with our awesome level of communications technology. Level-100 tech includes nuclear weapons capabilities because the leading-edge countries have them. It is irrelevant that Yanomami tribesmen still mostly have stone age technology in 2000...

quote: How do we deal with the fact that certain techs were worse in 1000AD than they were a milennium earlier? How can the model make any sense if level 50 is set to be the 'historical' water systems tech in 1000 AD and level 40 is set to be the Roman aqueduct system?

Leading-edge techs I believe don't show that behavior. While perhaps some techs did decline in the European middle ages, there was simultaneously at least maintenence of Roman technology in the Byzantine empire, and surpassing of that in China. If you are technologically behind you have a level in at least some techs that's below the leading-edge countries. So the historical model has no problem modeling a civ that regresses or stagnates as others move on.

Is growth always absolutely uniform even for leading-edge civs' techs? Of course not, but its a reasonable abstraction to hold in a game. And cultural acceptance of technologies and player actions should make each civ's tech unique. I am confident that levels will not move forward in lock-step unless the player has a goal to make them do so.

quote: But Mark's plan seems to imply that everybody should be the same at any given point, that all civilizations should develop the same way and at the same rate. That would work fine for a WW2 scenario, but for the main game it just doesn't seem right.

Sorry, that's just because of my lack of presentation skills... There can be very large variations in tech levels from the 'target' level for a given age. There's of course Lots of room to fall behind, since the spec is a best-in-class measure. And effectiveness will vary as greatly from civ to civ as they would under the current model.

All the historical scale is supposed to do is allow a player to quickly gauge some aspects of their civ's technological progress.

1. How good am I on average, and how does it compare to the other guy?
2. Where am I relatively good, and where deficient? Can I accept that, or must I take action?
3. How close am I to achieving that critical application like Muskets?

I think these three things are most directly tied into player Fun, and that's why I'm being so abnoxious about this... I feel that the current system fails in each of these three areas. First a little more on fun.

I think the most fun thing in the tech model for the player is in being able to reach that critical Application that allows them to do something great! FE getting Muskets just as the Mongols are about to roll over your civ. I'll use #3 as an example, I think you can see why the current system fails in #1 and #2 from this example also.

The current model has Muskets of course. But lets look at what happens when I the player needs to find out whether they might get Muskets in time (say 5 years as they plow through my neighbor)? [just making up numbers]

Current system: (Muskets require Chemistry 40, Mechanisms 2, Metalworking 28) I assume here that Mechanisms grow by more than a factor of 1000 in effectiveness over the game and start at something like -30 because of that. So the current system means the player needs to look it up every time for a while because the numbers are so screwy. Then you need to do an item-by-item comparison to see how close you are.

Historical system: (Muskets require Chemistry 40, Mechanisms 43, Metalworking 38) In this system we will frequently have numbers bunched closely together because the critical requisites come from the same general period in history. The player may well already know correct historical period for muskets, and that the 'level' for that period is 40. If the player's overall level is 30, and they aren't superlative in any of the cited areas, there's no reason to look further. Look to other deus ex machinae.

Of course we can put in an aid for the players to figure out whether Muskets are attainable. But the thing I really dislike about the current system is the level numbers are all over the place and you need interface help for even a trivial thing like figuring whether Muskets are achievable or not. There are a bunch of disjointed techs each with its own level, and there is no way to get an overall sense for how you're doing. Now for the historical system, there's still a learning curve for what level corresponds to what basic year or package of technologies. But the player can know that when things get near 40 they are close to the package of techs that consist of Muskets, Rifled Cannon, Naval Chronometers, Microscopes and Telescopes etc. (I'm not sure that all these rigoruosly go together, just making up a quick example)

quote: But the problem is that the players would no longer care about the tech level. Why should they care, if the tech level does not mean anything? It would essentially be meaningless, since level 60 agriculture might have an effectiveness that is very different from level 60 architecture. The longevity is what determines effectiveness, so they would care about the longevity, not the level.

I simply don't believe that evaluating effectiveness is a fundamental and fun activity for the player! It will be done, but the breakthrough applications are the most important fun aspect in the tech model I strongly believe. And gauging when they happen will be IMO Much better with the historical system. If figuring out 10-20% effectiveness differences were the main fun area for the player (God help us ) I would agree that the current system is better. It is certainly rigorous, at least if we can ever get the factors right.

Even in this area though I don't think the historical levels are too far behind the current system. Players will fairly quickly pick up the effectiveness change rates for the main technologies. If they want to look at longevities they will know that a 20-point difference in architecture is roughly equivalent to 10 points in agriculture or whatever. They don't need to use numbers, just have three mental bins for effectivenesses that are fast-changing, medium, and slow.

Conclusion

I am really certain that effectiveness evaluation is not the main fun factor in the tech model. Breakthrough Applications are where the fun is at... Therefore defining the system such that something that isn't fun is expedited at the expense of something that is, well, seems like the wrong direction to me. Since both the current system and the historical one will produce the same effectiveness numbers, many of the defects of each can clearly be addressed in the interface. So many of the points we have been going back and forth about may in the fullness of time become irrelevant. (I just realized that - doh!)

Where I think the main difference remains between the models is in two areas: playtesting before all the bells and whistles are there, and also in Activity effectiveness designing by model leads that I've mentioned above. (The Agricultural Effectiveness discssion and aftermath.) I found and find the current model extremely unintuitive to work with for activity effectiveness design. It is very difficult to dock to history unless you know off the top of your head what fraction of modern effectiveness all the technologies required had at a certain date. I certainly don't and I'm very interested history and the history of technology. I think our playtesters before the final interface will wonder what drugs we were on if the current system is used.

If we do stick with the current model I think the y2k=100 scale should be dropped. Just start every tech at 0 or 1 when its first available. Way back in the past when I proposed the y2k=100 level scale it was with approximately uniform tech progression in mind. Having a system where techs can start at negative levels, or start at 5000BC with a value of 50 is just too odd for me... What do others think?

[Mark_Everson]

Gary, shame on you for taking all those liberties with the code Good ones too, in anticipating where we want to go. But you're not out of a job yet I'm sure .

The 20-Activity limit was imposed because we thought we'd like to get them all into a single window in the interface. But anyways, as I said above, we should just do the correct design with arbitrary number, and if its a problem, then cut it down in the interface somehow.

On the tech decline issue, I'd phrase your questions another way...

All:

Is tech loss So important an effect that we should devote parameters and mental bandwidth to it in the model. If your civilization is collapsing your tech is at least going to stagnate anyway, and your infrastructure will crumble. I was originally a big proponent of tech loss, but whenever I think I have a firm case, it turns out to not quite be correct. FE I thought there were no aqueducts in post-Roman Europe for about 700 years. Turns out there were several constructed in different cities during that time period. So the tech wasn't lost, just barely anybody used it for social and practical reasons.

So I'll echo what I think is Gary's question. Do we really need this in the model. Remember that we will get a benefit of somewhat easier tuning on average for every parameter we remove. That is not a negligible benefit, just hard to quantify.

[Richard Bruns]

Mark, I thought already agreed to a 'virtual' rescaling of the technology for interface purposes. The guts of the model say that the techs are 30, 70, and 50, but the top-level player interface says that they are 62, 58, and 60. The player sees these interface numbers, not the guts of the model.

I'll go one step further. In the front-screen interface can leave out the concept of "Level" entirely. For the purpose of the interface, we could easily assign every tech level a year in our timeline. So "Computers level 10" is interpreted as "Computers 1950 AD (American)" and "Road Construction level 50" is listed in the player interface as "Roads 200 BC (Roman)"

So the guts of the model purr along with the vital 2x=10 scaling rule intact, and the player sees a uniform scale like you want.

I thought that we had already agreed to alter the player interface like that. I agree with you that the average player would like to see something like that. But I still maintain that the core math and scenario design is a lot easier if the hidden mathematical guts of the model follow that 2x=10 rule with the modern world as a solid reference point.

"Tech loss" is already in the model and math. The current equations give tech loss behavior without any effort on our part. The level dips below the strat level, and the effectiveness shrinks to practically nothing but the tech doesn't disappear. So we don't need to do anything at all.

[Gary Thomas]

I have to say that I would class all of the technology loss counter-examples that have been presented as actually examples of infrastructure decay or change of "owner".

I remain unconvinced and unrepentant.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Richard:

When did we come to the 'virtual interface' agreement?
Doesn't ring any bells
If so I sincerely apologize for wasting lots of your (and my) time.

Hopefully on the next go-around on the tech editor Gary can put in a way so I can mindlessly see historical numbers when doing the Activity tuning. Then I won't gripe anymore! Do we need a spec for that or is it obvious enough how to do it?

quote: "Tech loss" is already in the model and math. (snip) So we don't need to do anything at all.

Just because its in the model and math doesn't mean you won't get trouble from it when tuning. Hopefully that won't be the case, but without a detailed mathematical stability analysis up front its hard to be sure...

Gary, couldn't you repent just a little bit?

[Mark_Everson]

Hmm, I'll respond to some important issues one at at time, and hopefully will get what I want to say out before I run out of lunch hour...

Activities used for both RP allocation and effectiveness determination:

This is a good idea and we should do it IMO. It would only require a small amount of extra coding work. Richard, I saw that third bullet you cited on using Activites for effectiveness. It didn't say "for effectiveness" to me, but anyway what I interpreted it to mean isn't relevant.

My apologies that I thought you meant using the Same coefficients for RP allocation and effectiveness. That was silly. So in terms of the code changes needed I'd say CivilizationActivity "has a" RP_Allocator and "has an" Effectiveness or whatever names suit.
Sound ok Gary?

Number of Activites needed:

The short answer is we probably need more than 20. I frankly hadn't thought much about tech activites per se when coding the econ model in a more compartmentalized format... . What the new architecture really does is handle each economic special (fishing, wine making) on its own. (As a unique sector of the economy just like Agriculture.) These specials should very probably have their own effectiveness, now requiring their own Activity. I think this is a good object model, and we can simplify the Activites the player sees if needed. A similar issue is that with the tag 'Food' (or Agriculture) used only for RP allocation (where I thought we were...) I had in mind that we could just send the Food RPs split between Agriculture, Fishing and Herding using an estimator for how much food each activity generated. But if we're going to use activities for effectiveness this is no longer acceptable. ("Sire, we have discovered a new type of Field Rotation that has vastly improved our fishing capabilities" ) We don't absolutely Have to be realistic in these areas, but lets do it the right way for the first take, and we can thrift later if needed.

BTW, I think you (Richard) got the wrong list of tags from the archive
Here is a post on tags from my notes on tags in a text file. It is the updated list I'd like to work from. I propose we accept as current spec the qoted list in the quote. It includes the Food tag we'd decided on previously. Then we can start adding to the top one as necessary. The post has some other useful stuff in it, so I'll quote it all.

quote: Richard Bruns Prince NC, USA Nov 1999 posted September 18, 2000 20:46 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.

Proposed action items:

1. Reinstate more complete Activities list (starts with Food). Actually Merging the two would be best, since the mining one doesn't show up on the 'Food' one. I will then add anything further I need for demo 5 soon, and we keep the list current as new functionality is added. Only immediate changes for new Activities list is Food should be changed to Agriculture (Fishing and Herding will come later, or can be added now for completeness). Also we need to add a Services Sector Activity (as in productivity of services sector) and also a Gold Mining Activity (This could be handled with the more generic Mining just fine).

2. Code in Activity Effectiveness. For now this should simply be a weighted sum of effectiveness from the list of techs and applications for the Activity. So I think we need as a ripple effect to also implement effectiveness for all techs. Lets discuss this one first, but it seems to me the right thing to do. What do people think?


I think I've addressed this one topic in sufficient detail. I'll have to return to talk about the Great Level Debate in another post.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Ok Gary here's the differance between just assuming infra loss as opposed to actual tech loss. If I loose the knowledge of how to build a factory after i build some because of various situations, I must relearn that. I haveto figure out how its done from scratch. Depending on how long its been I may not even ave that factory left intact and would not know what one was if someone told me. This was true of the Sewage and other sanition systems implimented during roman era. All but the very basic sanition was lost and anyone seeing an intact sewer system 500 years later could not reproduce it. Ifrastructure can be lost and easily regained when you have money, technology loss is much more permenant.

[Gary Thomas]

quote: This was true of the Sewage and other sanition systems implimented during roman era. All but the very basic sanition was lost and anyone seeing an intact sewer system 500 years later could not reproduce it.

I did say that technology can be lost if the technology owner is destoyed. The case you cite is one in which the complete civilization was destroyed, together with its technology levels. This was not a case of gradually forgetting. The forgetting was complete and traumatic (and quick).

My objection is to the idea of technology eroding within a continuing civilization.

Still unconvinced etc.

Cheers