DESIGN: Increasing scientific/time realism

[MrBaggins]

Just wanted to note this here, so it doesn't get lost, and can perhaps be commented on...

A fairly consistant problem in tech games is that the techs that players have developed will often get out of whack with when they should be roughly, and the "world age" is often out of sync with the date.

So you might have nukes and modern armor and navies in the 15th century.

I was thinking that it might be nice to have a suggested game turn listed in the advances table. If the tech leader (in gross science developed, to make determining the leader the easiest) is behind this figure then all players get a multiplier to speed up development.. the further behind , the greater the multiplier... although it should generally be modest... like 1.1 or so. The same would be true in the reverse, except it would be a reduction... hopefully around .9 or .8 or so...

Since everyone would be effected evenly, it won't affect game balance, though it should affect sanity *smiles*

It obviously should be an option that you can turn on or off.

[Solver]

I'd play with the option off... for me, competing against the real-world advance times is one of factors... like developing Flight 3 centuries earlier than it actually happened.

And I think that CtP2 research rates are slow enough as it is .

[Martin Gühmann]

If you look into the DiffDB.txt teh you see that there is already something like this in the game, well AI and human players are treated diffirently. But it is there and actual it is just a question of finding the right values. For example the AI is penelized if it gets a tech lead and this shouldn't be the case.

But actual the main problem is that the AI doesn't know how to conquer, and one problem is the path finding algorithm. It doesn't recalculate the path if it notices that the original path is blocked. Then the army is fortified or what ever, the result is it doesn't reach its destination. So I have to relase the lastest version of GoodMod at least as beta, to show you how to make the AI aggressive.

-Martin

[MrBaggins]

The figures in the DiffDB are static bonuses. A mod maker merely guesses at when tech advances happen, and tweaks values based on based on his experience. The static bonuses know nothing of comparitive turn numbers.

This suggestion has nothing whatsoever to do with game balance or the AI.

Its simply to have the in-game tech development roughly with the year that they "should be" developed.

Its cosmetic, really.

[Martin Gühmann]

So you want to add something like we have for tech leading and tech lagging for players also for time periods?

Well then I don't like this to add something artifical to synchronize with the years, actual in the acient period tech progress was rather randomly, not because there were a lot of scientists and labs and unis to search for new techs. But a human player do the science buisness like in modern times, he looks from our present and not from the past, the human player is in a tech race from the begin of the game. Take the steam engine as an example in some other thread here was mentioned that it was already invented in the Roman Empire, the world would look much different today or at least could look much different if the Romans used it actually. So we have to balance the tech costs a little bit, well the values in ApolytonPack are too high so I think we should double them, and accept it when a player researches a tech much too early as long as all the other players achieve the same level of technology.

-Martin

[MrBaggins]

I can absolutely understand your reasoning.

Different players will have different ideas as to which options should be in a game.

I'm often more disappointed more than impressed when tech development massively differs from world history, when I'm playing an epic game. I don't believe I'm alone. Its a suspension of disbelief, for me.

Having said all that, its simple to implement, doesn't change game balance and it can be implemented so that it can be turned off, should a player desire.

[The Big Mc]

A lot want this and a lot forget about a thing called the dark ages which put us back three centuries

[child of Thor]

I agree that maybe the synch of tech development seems a little weird when by 'cheating' the system i can get muskets long before they appeared in the real world. But i think forcing all civs to catch up is the wrong way to go about it, lots of civilisations didnt invent gunpowder - and the first they knew of its existance was when they faced it with spears in their hands!

How about this - increase the chance of these less developed civs getting hold of the tech if they come into contact with a civ that has it. The whole diplomatic area could be improved in this area, where you could get the less advanced civ only agreeing to trade/treaties if they came with guns etc.........a bit like the way things spread in our world? The important bit here is establishing contact.....i'm not sure how CTP2 would handle that?

Also i suppose you could add an 'age pre-requisite' for advances, where by you narrowed down the window in the timeline when you could get a certain advance, maybe have it 'greyed out' in the science/advances screen, atleast for the civ first discovering it - then diplomacy/trade/knowledge dissemination could do the rest??

Hmmm this all just extra veg to put in the stew

[Solver]

But, if my gunpowder army comes accross some guys who just entered the middle ages, they should have a chance of learning of gunpowder? Seems weird in game terms...

[child of Thor]

well not quite like that, but i guess it sums it up nicely. lets take the example of what happened to the Native American Indians. Europeans turned up on the scene with their 19th centuary technology - the Native Americans were around 10-11th centuary(roughly) in their technology.
It didnt take long for them to get hold of or master the use of the europeans technology. In fact the culture shock of that tech and its affect on them almost destroyed them......still maybe that is a bit out of the bounds of CTP2 to model.

Once contact with a superior technological civ has been made there should be an increased chance of getting to 'discover' that technology........maybe you could just buy the units of the other civ to start with then after a while(however long that is), you could start to build your own.

Or how about this: the two technologicaly different armies meet for battle, some of the europeans will fall to Americans arrows/slings......the battle over some of the surviving Americans find a few of the enemies deadly boom-sticks and start to experiment......so it could be an event after a succesfull battle against superior forces?

Maybe this isn't for CTP2, maybe to complex? But it's just a way to model the spread of technology that happened in our history with all the different levels of our own civilisations.....

[The Big Mc]

Lets re run history Columbus failed to reach America and it was left to they year 1920 there is no way that the native Americans could have been able to replicate a tank

Or we could go back to the glory days of civ2 where if you gave a primitive society lets say a interceptor they could discover bridge making