I like the general idea, but IMO it is tough to implement without really screwing the player over sometimes. I did like the tech approach in master of Orion, where the player was prohibited from researching many techs, but could trade for them. I do favor something of the sort, but we may need to wait for playtesting and just try out several potential ways to do it.

It's rather good, and definitely shows a lot of positive effot, but being a one-man effort, the tech tree seems to show the primary interests of that one man. It was with some amusement that I noticed that it listed separately just about every data storage medium of the last 20 years as advances on par with iron working, the railroad, and interchangeable parts. Then, looking at the "basic tech" section at the bottom of the page, I saw mostly general fields of human knowlege, with one specific application of technical art -- electronics. LGJ, are you, or are you studying to be, an electrical engineer or computer scientist?

Douse this message liberally with smileys. Really, the tech chart is quite a good effort.

Nonetheless, it might be worthwhile to use a large number of "basic knowleges", perhaps one for each general science, and one for each general technical art, and by doing so subsume the vast majority of the tech tree into these?

The specific example that brought this thought to me was when I was compiling my list of sea trasnports. Between 1100 and 1850, the range of European sailing vessels went from a few hundred miles to several thousand, their speeds from 3 to 20 knots, and their drafts from 100 to 3000 tons. Nonetheless, in this time, there were no watershed technologies that directly improved the sailing shipbuilder's art. Rather, shipwrights improved their craft over the centuries. So instead, I used tech advances involving improved navigation and increased industrail capcacity which closely paralleled the development of the sailing ship in the West.

I feel odd tying ship capacity to general tech "communication" -- else telephones and the Internet make my navy faster, bigger, and more far-reaching. (well, they might in a sense, but...)

In the "many basic techs" model, I have a basic tech "naval architecture" that determines all this, and continues on into the age of steamships, steel ships, and so forth.

As far as the advancement of sea transportation goes (along with others) i'm using basic technologies to increase the range, speed and other aspects of those ships u mentioned. This also includes ocean-faring vessels which i believe is just an increase in hull str, sails, navigation and various other small aspects that impove with water transportation.

Sounds Great,

I think some of the tech model ideas are a next logical thing to try to get feedback on in the demos.

I can (or maybe Anton, who expressed interest) fairly quickly modify my old tech model and interface for the dry run. Once we're satisfied that the new tech model works ok, then we can do a full-blown model and start work on an interface.

The things we need to figure out before the demo 4 version of tech are what the cost profile will be for basic techs, and of course specific costs and prerequisites. For the basic tech cost profile I think something that costs exponentially more the higher the level should work well. That's because civ growth will also be exponential.

Probably we could use basic techs in the army area, production, and maybe something like metallurgy. Further suggestions?

Specific techs could be flexible units, iron working (together allowing Legion-type flexible heavy infantry) and maybe a few others.

I'm going to post two things here today relating to the Tech model. The first one, in this post, is a proposal for the specific way we should handle basic techs. Since Anton/rentgen is interested in coding up the model we need to get some specifics going for how things work. I thought about it some yesterday, and I'll present what I came up with.

The second post will be a proposal for how to use the approach in this post to take a first shot at coding up a small tech model for demo 3. That way we can hopefully get some feedback about how people like the general aspects of the Tech model, which I think is Really Good :-)

Proposal for how to handle basic techs...

Assumptions:

Personally, I think only the 60 or so most crucial achievements of humanity should be regular techs. And All the regular techs should allow you to Build or Do something Really new. Basic techs should also have some techs embedded in them IMO. This would allow for some advances that are pretty much on the standard track to be covered, without them being a whole separate entry. This would also add some description to the otherwise bland basic techs.
I am taking LGJ's approach to basic techs in that they will simply have a percentage rating. A basic tech at the 0% level is essentially neolithic technology. 100% is the modern level. The apogee of ancient civilizations might be something like 20%. Technology past modern level just goes past 100%. Regular techs can have prerequisites such as Metallurgy 5%. Units, infrastructure, etc. that is built in the game will generally have one, perhaps two, basic techs associated with it. The unit description would contain a level of the basic tech that affects its cost for deficiency as outlined by LGJ above. The usual span for bonuses or penalties to unit cost or capabilities would be something like plus or minus five percent from the basic level required. So suppose I'm building a Legion which has the associated basic tech Metallurgy 10%. If my metallurgy were 15% instead I might get a 50% bonus off the cost of a legion. Similarly, if my metallurgy were 5%, my legion would be almost useless (They are flexible and well-trained, but with weapons that break every time they use them).

My main thrust:

I think the way prerequisites work as discussed in the thread above is pretty good. What I'm primarily trying to address here is how expensive the different percentage levels of the basic techs should be. If we have a good handle on these point costs, then it's also easier to figure out the point costs for regular techs at the same each level of technology. Seeing as I'm a physics nerd, my approach to this is to use scaling arguments.
I'm assuming for playability reasons that we would like to have the technological progress somewhat even throughout the game. Clearly it can't be too fast in ancient times, but there's a lot of early ground-breaking stuff for the player to get then so I'm not too worried. Taking as a premise that we want things to be fairly even throughout history, what can we say? I need one more assumption, which is that technological progress, tech points if you will, scales roughly as population times per capita income. That is, GDP. In the range from subsistence to a developed modern economy per capita income changes by about a factor of 50. Population also grows by more than a factor of 10 going from ancient empires to large modern states. To give a round number let's call it a factor of 20. So GDP should grow by about a factor of 1000 over the game. This large factor makes an exponential or power law most suitable. Before bringing the prerequisites for basic techs in we can produce the desired behavior by having to cost increase by a factor of two every 10 percent. Ten doublings gives us to factor of 1000.

Temporary conclusions (2 will be changed later)
1) tech points earned per turn grow by about a factor of 1000 over the game
2) for every 10% increase in basic tech there is a doubling in the cost

This would work fairly well, except the way we are planning to use prerequisites for basic techs distorts the system. That's because each point in the basic techs early in the game costs a lot because you don't have many of the prerequisites. I reproduce my post above here since it is critical to what goes on later. It is talking about application to a regular tech, but using prerequisites for a basic tech would work similarly.

quote:

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Instead of having hard and soft prerequisites for techs, why not just have a weighting put on all tech prereqs. Then we can tune them to be as hard or soft as we want. The weighting factor would affect the cost to put one point into getting the tech. For purposes of demonstration just assume each prereq has a weight which divides the points put into the tech if you don't have that prereq, and that all the modifiers are multiplied together.

Suppose we have the tech Navigation with the pre-requisites Astronomy (formerly hard), Compass (formerly soft) and Seafaring (formerly soft). In my proposed method it might look like this (don't worry about the specific numbers, this is just for demo):

Navigation (100points)
Astronomy (5)
Compass (2)
Seafaring(3)

So if you have none of the pre-reqs each point of Navigation would cost 5x2x3 = 30points. So all of Navigation would cost the Enormous amount of 3000 idea points. If you have Astronomy and Seafaring it would cost 200. Of course with all three pre-reqs the cost would be the base cost of 100.

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Conclusions
1) tech points earned per turn grow by about a factor of 1000 over the game
2) for every 5% increase in basic tech there is a doubling in the cost
(this may need to change as we determine how many prerequisites each basic tech has, and what it's penalty is)

Example (don't take the specifics seriously, I just put them down quickly):

Basic Tech Engineering
'Standard' cost: 0.01 idea point (this needs to be a small number, you'll see later why)
prerequisites:
the wheel (2x)
simple machines (2x)
mechanisms (2x)
education level something... (not a tech, determined by education of people) (2x)
invention (2x)
steam engine (2x)
Metallurgy 40% (2x) (can't make much progress beyond a certain point without decent metallurgy)
innovation (2x)
research and development (2x)
miniaturization (2x)

Given this as a basis, here's some examples.
Starting with the neolithic Engineering level of 0% the cost to go to 1% is about 10 points (standard cost times about 1000 = 2^10 because you have none of the prerequisites and each one imposes a penalty of a factor of two).

If you are at 19% and have the first 2 prerequisites what is the cost? First, if you had none of the prerequisites it would be the standard cost (0.01) times 1000 (no prerequisites yet) times 16 (a factor of two for each 5% in the basic tech = 2^ 4). This gives a total cost of 160. If you have each of two prerequisite techs this will lower the cost by a factor of two for each which gives 40.

How about obtaining 50% from 49%. First, what if you had no prerequisites? (This is quite a stretch, since if you had no prerequisites you would probably never have gotten this far) the cost would be about 10,000. With the first three prerequisites the cost would be about 1200. With the first five prerequisites (or any five for that matter) it would be about 300. If you had just come into contact with a benevolent advanced civilization who had given you eight of the prerequisites it would only cost you 40!

Getting from 99% to 100% with all 10 prerequisites already achieved would cost about 10,000 idea points. If you were lacking 2 prerequisites the cost would be 40,000

To summarize:
%, Prereqs Obtained, Cost
1%, 0, 10
20%, 0, 160
20%, 2, 40
50%, 0, 10,000 (just about impossible at that point)
50%, 3, 1200
50%, 5, 300
50%, 8, 40
100%, 8, 40,000
100%, 10, 10,000

Of course the standard cost numbers will need to be balanced based upon how hard an idea point is to generate, and the value of that basic technology to the player. Based upon this limited example, I think my assumption of 10 prerequisites is probably too small. However, the basic ideas are still relevant.

Anyway, I think your assumptions above are good. I haven't studied this thread thoroughly, but I was wondering: Why do the prereqs for a given base tech have to apply from the start? Maybe this question is answered somewhere in the thread, but here it is anyway. I can think of several ways to handle this thing differently: a) if each of the 10 prereqs (or whatever the total number is) is dependant on each other, then only the 'topmost' (newest) is used as prereq, this can maybe be linked to a specific base tech percentage; b) each prereq only modifies a specific range (like 10-20%) of the base tech percentage; c) each prereq has a ceiling to how high the base tech can rise.

OK, none of the above ideas are really well thought out, just something conjured on the spot, so don't take them as granted as a solution to a problem that may not even exist.

Anyway, the main reason for this post was to post the question found above.

I like the ideas, but I had an idea for a different way to do the un-penalizing factor. It ends up working roughly the same way, but one or the other may be easier to code, or more importantly easier to explain to the player in documentation.

The idea sums up as this
1. Keep the "percentage" penalizing factor. (ie, you still suffer a penalty for every 5% you advance. To make it scale right with what I'm about to suggest, though, I would make it a x1.4 penalty instead of a x2 penalty.)

2. Rather than apply all the prereqs at once, an adopting a fabulously low "base cost" to compensate, keep a moderate base cost (10, for example) and apply x2 no-prerequisite penalties _at certain levels in tech_. For example, you could advance up to 50% or whatever in engineering without engineering, but after that, the going gets tough.

Using chemistry purely as an example, a tech chart might go

Basic tech: Chemistry
10% Glassworking
20% Weights and Measures
30% Algebra (or Math 30%, if algebra doesn't make the "tech cut")
40% (some education level)
50% The Periodic Table
60% Atomic Theory
70% (Physics 70%)
80% Quantum Theory
90% Research and Development (or Commerce 85%, barring R&D's existence)
100% (Computing 105%)

This ends up working more or less the same way as your orginal proposal, except instead of compensating enormous prequisite penalties with a small base cost, it waives the penalties until a certain point of advancement. The Greeks' had an atomic theory based on Zeno's paradoxes. It didn't help them advance chemistry much; alas, for all their strength in geometry, they knew rather little algebra.

What you guys are basically proposing is what I had at first. I'll try to explain the advantages of the way I'm doing it now below. The main goal for doing it the way I did is to make the tech tree more flexible than in Civ and most games in the genre. This is something LGJ is shooting for too, although I obviously can't say at this point whether he agrees with my specific implementation or not.

First Keli's questions:
This is a fairly new concept I'm springing on everyone. We'll see what people think of it. To your specific points... a) no; b) I'll discuss below, and c) that's a cute idea. But even though that is realistic, I'm not sure it is good for gameplay. It might allow stupid, unrealistic, "dodging around" strategies like you can do with the tech tree in Civ. Plus I discuss another problem with it below.

In general, the reason I decided that I wanted to stack all the prerequisites at the beginning of a basic tech is for flexibility. Let's take the case of Agriculture as a basic tech. IMO there are two very distinct strains in agriculture. There is an engineering aspect found in irrigation techniques, drainage, and plow construction. On the other side there are the Breeding aspects in getting improved grains and livestock. Either, or both of these tracks can be pursued fairly early. Obviously, if good agricultural numbers are your focus you'll need to do both. But let's look at this crude example to see why I think you can't easily restrict advance prerequisites to certain windows.

Let's suppose in the initial selection of my Civ I've picked my people to be absolutely brilliant in the engineering area, and they're pretty poor in everything else. So my agriculture can do fairly well, even if I don't meet other civs to trade techs with. I'd only be missing out on the one breeding prerequisite. If I'm isolated, it might take quite awhile before either I achieve the Breeding tech, or run into someone else that has it. But when I do, there will be a renaissance in my agricultural technology because of all the more refined plant and animal species I have to deal with. So, conceivably, I might be as high as Agriculture 30% or higher before the Breeding prerequisite comes along. However, in the normal course of things, Breeding would be a fairly early achievement, at around Agriculture 10% or so. This is why I think restricting prerequisites to a certain range will stifle the player a bit. It may be an even worse factor in some parts of the tech tree that I haven't thought of yet, things like religion...

That's my take on the issue...

Mark

First of all, demo 3 is very limited in scope, so there's only so much technology we could actually use anyway. What I'm proposing here it is a limited test using a few different technologies, and things you can build. Demo three will still be heavy on military stuff, because that is the first thing or working on implementing the new models. For that reason is tech proposal will also be very heavy in military-related techs and units. I have tried to include a lot of the types of interconnection's that we'll occur or in the fall model even in this simple demonstration. What I hope we can get out of it is a general feeling as to whether we are on the right track for the technology model. Does the idea of using two classes of technologies, basic techs, and "normal techs" feel right?

It's going to take some imagination on the part of the playtesters to give us a realistic appraisal. I have intentionally limited this proposal and several ways so that we can IMO do it fairly quickly, using stuff that is already in my "old" version of Clash. That means just using the old economic system even though it's not going to be around very long. I am assuming we're using the method for how the cost of basic techs is determine that I outlined recently. If everyone decide that is no good, then obviously I'll have to change the proposal . With that in mind, here it is:

Aside from the Army-specific stuff this is all from LGJ's most recent tech model (hasn't been released yet). The basic techs I propose we use for demo three are:
Agriculture (agricultural productivity)
Metallurgy
Army (a stand-in for several types of military technology)
Weapons (quality of personal weapons made in the society, I think this one specifically could be added to the tech model, and would like to hear what people think about it)

"Normal" techs used are:
Bronze Working
Iron Production
Breeding (understanding of how to influence evolution to create new plant and animal varieties that produce more or better food, etc.)
Professional Army (tech advance showing your culture knows the difference between "weekend warriors" and trained and hardened professionals)
All of these are very early civilization advances.

Now the prerequisites of each, and their weighting. Before the name is the cost, or cost basis for the tech. Basic techs and "normal techs" (can anyone think of a less lame descriptive name?) Have different scales for their costs. This is partly because the price for a basic tech is the price for a 1% improvement, whereas for a regular tech you get it all in one shot. For the demo, I propose that we start each basic tech at 5%. So, for instance, the Metallurgy prerequisite for Bronze Working is already met.

Cost Tech ___ Prerequisites (importance)
10 Agriculture: Breeding (3x); Iron Production (1.5x) [Iron is because of better tools]
20 Metallurgy: Bronze Working (2x); Iron Production (3x) [can only grow so far without these]
20 Army: Professional Army (3x); Weapons (2x)
10 Weapons: Bronze Working (2x); Iron Production (3x); Metallurgy 8% (2x)
30 Bronze Working: Metallurgy 3% (2x) [already met]
80 Iron Production: Bronze Working (2x); Metallurgy 6% (2x) [my, metallurgy and the metal-working advances are inbred aren't they? Will this be fun or exasperating?]
30 Breeding: No Prerequisites (at least in the demo version)
50 Professional Army: No Prerequisites...

Ok, but what can we Do with this stuff?
Well, for demo 3,you'll be able to build two different kinds of army units (spearmen, and legions) and four different levels of farm. Actually, your people will build the farms, and they'll automatically build the best one your technology is capable of. Legions will be significantly better than spearmen, so that once you get the chance to build legions, it will be a no-brainer that is done automatically for you. As LGJ has outlined, all this stuff you build will have its cost reduced as its associated basic tech becomes better. (I'm not sure this will work for everything we do, but we'll stick with the program for now). So, for instance, legions are (surprise!) Associated with the Army basic tech.

Each item you can build will have both take technology required to build it, and an associated basic tech that modifies its cost. In the case of the examples I've come up with, I'm embarassed to admit, the "enabling" technology and the base technology are the same. This will frequently not be true, it just so happens to be the case here. First, the military units:

Unit______Cost__Power_Enabling Tech/ Basic Tech
Spearmen__125_____4____Army 3% / Army 3%
Legion_____50_____4____Army 6% / Army 8%
(The units having the same power is caused by AI limitations I don't want to fix now. So I just made Legions a better deal at the same power, which isn't realistic At All.)

The legion illustrates the case where you can build them at a penalty before your Army No. is up to the point where they're at their nominal cost. This example is admittedly cheesy.

Now, back to the farms:

first, the old economic model is rather complicated, and I don't want to go into exact descriptions here. It will be replaced shortly anyway. So I will just given a simple sketch of what changing farm productivity through technological progress will do. It won't be correct in detail, but will give the right general idea. The old economic model will automatically upgrade farms to a new technology when it's available. A production of 1 is pretty close to subsistence level. A farm employs one "head" = 1000 people by definition. Even small increases in productivity, which you see below, can have big effects on the Civ because almost everyone is farming. If farm productivity increases by 20%, that means you could have 20% of your people building things instead of feeding themselves. It's a Big effect.

Farm Type__Cost__Produces_Enabling Tech/ Basic Tech
Farm 1_____10____1_______ Agriculture 5% / Agriculture 5% (these will all be the same)
Farm 2_____10____1.2______ Agriculture 10% (so I will only write it once)
Farm 3_____10____1.4______ Agriculture 15%
Farm 4_____10____1.7______ Agriculture 20%

Where idea points come from:

the people generate some idea points on their own. This will be fairly complicated in the real model, but handled simply here. The people in the agriculture sector will contribute some idea points to Breeding and Agriculture for free by themselves. Every time your soldiers fight, they will contribute idea points to your Army basic tech. For right now the other techs get no free idea points.

You can also buy research using money. We'll try to provide a crude interface (based on something I already have) that will give the player a variety of choices. The biggest choice will be money per turn spent across all tech. Once that a set by the player, then they'll be able to set which percent of this total pot goes into each of the eight Tech areas in the demo. If you achieve an advance, for example Breeding, it's percentage will get automatically distributed pro rated to the other remaining techs.

I, or Anton/rentgen will probably try to write a very crude tech AI to govern what the AIs do. The most likely thing we'll do is just give each AI Civ of fixed ratio at the beginning and let them play the whole game with that ratio between the 8 techs.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 11-01-1999 09:47 PM
cost basis for the tech. Basic techs and "normal techs" (can anyone think of a less lame descriptive name?)

Tech Advancements?

Where idea points come from:

You can also buy research using money.

Careful on this one...it should be used with a dimishing returns graph and to the point where any additional money spent is useless since some techs can't be done overnight no matter how much $ u throw at it.

I, or Anton/rentgen will probably try to write a very crude tech AI to govern what the AIs do. The most likely thing we'll do is just give each AI Civ of fixed ratio at the beginning and let them play the whole game with that ratio between the 8 techs.

I'd still like to try the later versions once i learn java more.

Mark

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited November 02, 1999).]

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Anyway now to my stuff.

I am trying to make technology r&d flexible and do not like the tree method which to me seems to promote to much inflexiblity... although it might seem good for the demo, i think the final product would be much better without it. This is because there may be more than 1 way of approaching something as well as the many 'soft rq' and the basic technology 'soft rq' policy...also Mark, and anyone else, i haven't heard anything about what should be good percentage decreases/increases per % point since i favor a stricter one since many techs will require low # on basic techs and thus u could know nothing about it and still research it.

"Tech Advancements"... better than what I came up with

>>You can also buy research using money.

>Careful on this one...it should be used with a dimishing returns graph and to
>thepoint where any additional money spent is useless since some techs can't
>be done overnight no matter how much $ u throw at it.

Agree completely; this is just for the demo. There should be intertia so that slow but steady funding beats thrashing back and forth every time. There are some suggestions on how to do this in the Civ3 List Tech Thread, but I think its pretty straightforward.

>I'd still like to try the later versions once i learn java more.

Don't think that's a problem. What parts would you like to do? I'm sure we can work something out.

Rentgen: Is there a stopping point on tech you'd be comfortable with?

>inflexibility of demo tech tree.
I didn't put any either/or stuff in... I know we plan to have that in the real model. Is that what you mean?

Cost advantage/hit per % diff in a Basic Tech...
I think we can try your earlier suggestion of 10% advantage per point in basic tech on the plus side (up to 50%); and double that on the downside. IMO its easily tuneable or made nonlinear, so lets just wait and see how your first suggestion works.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 11-02-1999 08:45 PM
Rentgen: Is there a stopping point on tech you'd be comfortable with?

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--- not sure i understand your question correctly... Do you mean am i willing not to code the tech part ?
If LGJ has his own model and actually wants to implement it, why not? I can just quickly do what was proposed by you earlier for the upcoming demo...

-- Anton

Yes, As in set up a good class structure as we are discussing and implement what needs to be done for demo 3 and perhaps somewhat beyond, and then switch to something else.

However, Only if its OK with you... We're doing everything by mutual consent.

LGJ:

There's still a Huge amount of work involved in defining the model. When do you think you'd be up to speed enough in java to take it over? Alternatively, would you like to work on the the GUI for Tech and leave the 'guts' to Rentgen? Because once the model is speced out and the main classes are done, there's just not that much else to do other than AI and GUI.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 11-03-1999 06:27 AM
Rentgen:

Yes, As in set up a good class structure as we are discussing and implement what needs to be done for demo 3 and perhaps somewhat beyond, and then switch to something else.

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I wrote such a post and due to a silly feature of the cgi program that handles this it got lost!!
Anyways, i was saying that i absolutely don't mind. And then i started a long philosophycal talk about design issues i have in mind. Here it is in a shorter form.

Fisrt of all, this is kind of raw material.. and i didn't plan to post it for a while but issues started to rise. This is a short description of what i'd like to do with a tech package now and it's possible application in other parts.
The idea is simple: use interfaces. I'll try to define interfaces for the tech package that are to be used outside of it by the rest of the code. Then i'll provide a simple implementation of these intefaces for the demo based on what's been discussed. The advantage of this approach is huge: when you, or LGJ or me or anyone else wants comes up with a different model he just needs to implement the interfaces the way he likes -- and voila! No changes in the rest of the code are needed at all. Not to mention ease of support and future development.
That's why i was telling Mark it would be good to have a thouroghly thought out design model and only then proceed with coding. However, he convinced me this was impossible -- due to the impatient nature of human beings
If this works (and i really hope so) i hope we can redesign in the same fashion the rest of the existing code, which will make it more flexible and as such easier to maintain, add features etc.
Just some quick ideas...

-- Anton.

My sympathies, I Hate it when my hard-written posts get eaten. I have taken to writing long ones in a word processor, and then pasting them to protect myself.

Thanks for not minding us playing coder volleyball with you

OK, sounds like a plan. The GUI is probably going to be tough to get right on this because there's so many things happening in tech. Any thoughts on a layout for it? You might want to look over some of the old interface threads to see the general directions we're heading.

Also I will be adding some techs for arts and stuff...these are going to be few since i'm mainly going to rely on basic techs for these because I can't think of any civ where anyone had direct control over what was developed in the arts. They may have had influence and promoted certain things, but no gov. body ever discovered them so this section should be off limits to direct control to the player, but he can promote/demote certain things.

Finnaly a while ago Mark said two things i've been mulling over, both having to do with basic techs.
1> the addition of a basic tech called education. I've can't figure out what u mean by that. Is it the current level of education u can teach ur citizens? Overall education level? how good the school sys is eff (i which case are's be below 50% hehe) the highest education ur people can achieve? And what would it work for...after all each of the base techs is in essince education, but of a specific area.

What you need to show, what the user needs to be able to manipulate. Then if possible give the user two or more ways to do everything.

Let's say I was remaking the civ1 tech selection screen. Well I would start off with depicting the tech tree as the background but I would make it vertical, so chariots was near the bottom and all the other techs were at the top. Each tech would be a button, pressing it would research the tech. Techs that you know would be depressed buttons (indicating that you can't press them) those that you can currently reseach would be sort of bright (indicating that you should press one) and those that you can't learn would still be buttons but not so inviting.

Below each button would be the picture or each unit, structure and government that you could get. If your mouse was over a button for half a second a little popup would popup and it would have a brief description. Clicking on the popup would take you to the full help entry.

Clicking on an actual button would begin tech research. If it was a tech that you couldn't learn it would bring up a little menu that would ask you which of the prereqs you wanted to learn. Each button would also have a keyboard button associated with it, though I'm not sure how since there are too many techs

I'll try to get you something on the effects of technology in the economic and military areas fairly soon. The big thing about the economic model with respect to technology is that improvements in basic techs are going to produce both changes in the number of sites available for economic activity, and possibly the cost to improve the sites when the technology is available. The cost of the various infrastructure types will also be keyed off of basic technologies, and some specific ones.

1 > The basic tech of education would have to do with how much you know about good ways to educate people. If you have a lousy concept of how to educate your people, no matter how much money you pour into education, they won't be very proficient at the tasks that require higher levels of education. The things I envision being in the education basic tech (although not handled explicitly) are your people's knowledge of things like libraries and schools, the University, universal public education, and things like that. Having a high basic education tech number will indicate that your civ has the tools to do a good job of educating the people If you put the appropriate resources into it. So I expect that the education basic tech level will generally be related to the actual education level of the people, but it's not the same. This general understanding of how to educate people goes above and beyond the specific knowledge in each technical area that you speak of IMO.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 11-10-1999 06:14 PM
1 > The basic tech of education would have to do with how much you know about good ways to educate people. If you have a lousy concept of how to educate your people, no matter how much money you pour into education, they won't be very proficient at the tasks that require higher levels of education. The things I envision being in the education basic tech (although not handled explicitly) are your people's knowledge of things like libraries and schools, the University, universal public education, and things like that. Having a high basic education tech number will indicate that your civ has the tools to do a good job of educating the people If you put the appropriate resources into it. So I expect that the education basic tech level will generally be related to the actual education level of the people, but it's not the same. This general understanding of how to educate people goes above and beyond the specific knowledge in each technical area that you speak of IMO.

Ok well university's, schools and ect are all now improvements rather than techs. Only public edu is still a tech. Also if it is going to be close to the actual edu level of the population is there really a need for it?

2 > Go For It - we'll see how it turns out. About synthetics, I wonder though. Is that really such an important thing that we need a basic tech dedicated to it? Perhaps we should call what used to be Metallurgy, Materials instead. Then synthetics would just be one aspect of an advanced materials science. There might be two Tech Advances, Plastics, and advanced synthetics or something like that. I agree completely that there's no real way to get around having a space transportation basic tech if the game is ever going to go much past the current day.

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Well, I think an Education basic tech is fairly important. How about we try it, and see how it works? If it turns out to be redundant, then we'll bag it.

All:

I have taken the liberty of copying a tech post over from a new post to keep all the tech stuff together. Please check out Richard Bruns' post below.

quote:

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Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 11-13-1999 08:03 PM
Greetings and Salutations.
I have been following the Clash of Civilizations project for some time and I am very impressed with everyone's work on this game. I never felt the need to post anything or offer ideas until recently. It seems to me that, while the core technology model for Clash is very good, there is a slight problem in two things. One is the way that specific applications are generated. The other is the player interface.
I have already run these ideas by Mark Everson and he gave good criticism and helped me fix some communication difficulties. Here is my proposal; it should be at least 95% compatible with what you already have while helping to improve a few things.

Before I give my model ideas, I think some historical background and justification is in order. Also, a definition of my terms would help communication.
As I see it, there are five types of technological progress. These are Things, Processes, Knowledge, Theory, and Ideas. This is not a radical new idea; it is just a 'big picture' view of what you are already modeling.
Things are concrete nouns. They are what governments in the past have manipulated directly. They are concrete items like irrigation ditches, catapults, or Stealth Bombers. They are the end result of technology. My proposal deals mainly with Things.
Processes are ways of building specific Things. Processes are verbs. They include ditch digging and shipbuilding.
Knowledge is abstract nouns. It is a general thing that your people know how to do. Some examples of Knowledge are Iron Working, Navigation, and Architecture.
Theory is the pure sciences, like Physics or Biology. In ancient times there is little need for it, as Knowledge and Processes come mostly from experience. But in modern times, a good grasp of Theory is needed for almost anything.
Ideas are philosophical and social, well, ideas. They are more related to the culture model. My model discusses how specific Ideas are created.
The current Clash model deals mainly with Theory, Knowledge, and Processes, and does a good job of it. However, the connection between these and Things is what I see as a minor problem. The model assumes that Things come instantly whan the correct Process is discovered. While this may be a justifyable simplifying assumption, I think I can make the model more historically accurate while adding a new and hopefully good dimension to the game.
Now for the history. In my ideal historically accurate game, the player has no direct control over Theory, Knowlege, and Processes in ancient times. They grow naturally using the current Clash model. However, Mark pointed out that most players want to influence these things. I will discuss gameplay aspects of my proposal after it is finished. I promise I will get to the proposal eventually, but all the intro is needed for good communication.

Governments have only recently taken a hands on approach to science. In the past, they were more concerned with immediate things like policing (and taxing) the people, defending from invaders, and maybe building public works. Most of the time they ignored science entirely. They did not have the foresight to see that hiring a bunch of silly scholars could somehow improve things. We know that basic science leads to good technology because we have thousands of years of historical hindsight. They did not. Thus they invested almost no effort in science. This leads to gameplay problems, which I will discuss later.
Education was almost entirely a private sector activity. Someone got curious about the world, and started studying things. Then that person might teach other curious people in a private academy. They rarely were trying to reach a goal. They never said, "If I play with these fun chemicals long enough, I will be able to make Greek Fire and our navy will be more powerful." They wanted pure Theory, while the government wanted to make Things. People didn't see the connection between the two until the Renaissance in Europe, and to a lesser extent in China and some Arab countries after about 1000 AD. Thus the government ususlly ignored or even supressed scientists.
On the rare occasions that the government did deal with scientists, it was to give them an immediate goal. I will use an example from ancient Greece. During one of their many wars, the leader of some city (I think it was Syracuse) gathered up a bunch of scientists and told them to biuld military devices. That was it. He never said, "I want 60% of you to invent a ballista and 40% of you to work on basic math so we will know how to aim the thing."
It turned out that the scientists did build the ballista, as well as an improved catapult. But that was essentially a random invention based on their education under private philosophers. If they had been curious about chemistry instead of physics and math, they might have invented a simple hand grenade or other pyrotechnic device.
Once the goods were delivered, the leader paid the scientists and they went home. He never offered to build a university so they could stay, just as he never paid for their initial education. He didn't have the foresight to encourage them to study for a few years so they could build something better. In some cases (not this one) leaders actually had the scientists killed so they could not tell anyone else how to do something.
What does this mean for gameplay? There are several concerns with using a tech model that is accurate to the ancient world. The main one is that players will, unlike ancient governments, know to invest heavily in science. This means that players of Clash would advance in tech much faster than people historically did. One of the project goals, which I approve of, is to have the game be mostly accurate to the real world at any given time. While random events may change tech leval by a few hundred years, it will not do to have armored divisions in 1000 BC. To prevent this, there are two options. The common option is to allow players to control research while making it much more expensive than it historically was. This model is unhistorical, while potentially causing gameplay problems.
As you all have already discussed, early technology Things were usually simple and easily copied. For example, the wheel is something that is very hard to keep to yourself. Someone sees it and they know how to make it.
If this is modeled accurately while asking the player to put loads of effort into research, they will be mad and probably will learn not to research at all, and just mooch off everyone else. Technology would never advance if this happened under a standard research seytem and the AI was also smart enought to figure out that research was useless.
And if this technology sharing is not modeled, you have ridiculus situations such as having to spend two hundred years of game time researching the wheel even after barbarians in chariots have attacked you several times.
Historically, it is not realistic to make research so hard. Almost all ancient Things, and several modern ones, were made by a few people working without official support for short perods of time.
Thus the only realistic option is to allow simple techs to spread rapidly, make research require little effort, and prevent people from advancing too fast. This would seem like incompatible goals, but I think my model allows all of these.
Once again, this solution is very similar to what you already have. This is my intention. This proposal is meant as an alternate interface for your excellent models.

The Proposal (finally)
The player's ability to alter technology progress changes as history progresses. There is a different type of involvement for each time period. The time periods change due to game events, and are as follows:

Inventors Only
The player cannot order research, as the government does not know anything about scientific development. Things and Ideas are randomly generated by people in the civ. Processes, Knowledge, and Theory are modeled, but the player does not see or influence them.
Thie random generation is affected by several factors. These factors are calculated by province, so having lots of underdeveloped provinces will not hurt tech generation in cultural centers. The factors are:

Standard of living: If people are starving, they will not be inventive.

Freedom and free time allowed the people: This makes a trade-off between controlling your civ well and advancing. Repressive regimes stifle creativity while usually being more efficient.

Number of people doing a certain job: A province with lots of farmers will generate farming advances, and provinces with lots of production and craftsmen people will have a higher chance of making new things like iron. Social and philosophical ideas can be generated by anyone.

Infrastrucure and trade: Roads, cities, and contact with other people all increase the chances of people exploring new ideas.

Current province Tech Level (Knowledge, Processes, and Theory): Inventors with more to build on are more successful and produce higher technology Things. Physical technology and social ideas have independent tech levels. Tech levels for Ideas are modeled on the culture model.

??Reward level: This starts out at zero and changes as you react to inventors. If you praise inventors, reward them handsomely, and hire them to implement their idea, then the level will increase and many others will work on ideas. If you suppress and ignore ideas, this will go down and people will not work on new ideas. If this level is very high, you might attract inventors from neighboring civs. (This could lead to gameplay problems, as Mark pointed out. Players might overinvest. But I think this needs to be modeled. The entire model needs input of course, but this area especially does.)
Whan someone invents something, the player will get a message like: "A craftsman in has made something new called XYZ. What shall we do about this?" The player has several options, as follows:

Things

"Do nothing about it." The invention and inventor are ignored. Some inventions should actually be worthless enough to deserve this option.
(If this is chosen, the inventor might go to a civ with a high reward level and give them the idea.)
"Reward the inventor." The person is praised and a small cash reward is given. This option can be chosen in addition to the following.
"Archive the invention." The invention is not pursued, but it stays as an option for future use.
"Hire the inventor." The inventors get the most benefit out of this one, and it will encourage more inventions. The Thing can only be made in the province of origin and only that province gets access to higher tech levels offered by the Thing.
"Spread the word." The invention becomes available to your entire country. The inventor might be unhappy about the idea being stolen. This option is still available later if Archive or Hire are chosen.

Social Ideas

"Suppress the idea." This is for dangerous ideas that could cause problems for the government. There should be a signifigant chance of this happening so this option gets serious thought. Doing this will greatly reduce the chances of people announcing social ideas, but the idea will no longer be a problem.
"Disapprove of the idea." A milder way to stop the idea. This is not as effective but will not scare philosophers away as much.
"Ignore the idea." The government does nothing, and the idea might spread a little, but only in its home province.
"Approve of the idea." The govermnent agrees with the idea but does not actively spread it.
"Embrace the idea." The philospher spreads the idea to your entire civ with your support.
(There are always exceptions. Some Ideas might spread everywhere even if you try to suppress them. Perhaps each idea can have a factor that determines how popular it is. Positive means it will spread well, zero has the effect listed above, and negative will be rejected even if you support it. Ideas with a high positive factor will have a life of their own and will be a force to reckon with, having a big impact on society. I think I will start a new thread on this sometime, as it could be very cool if it is done well. It is not essential for the game, however.)

The next time period is Colleges and Inventors. It starts when some private citizen founds a college or academy somewhere. It has everything the previous time period had, but now you have a group of smart people in one place. This college appears as a submenu in the province menu, and you can interact with it as follows:
"Suppress college" If you are troubled by the college inciting the masses, you can shut it down. Again, there should be some situations where this is needed.
"Ignore college" This is also what happens if you never select the college menu. The college continues educating people and generating inventions at its own pace.
"Support college" Paying the college money raises the effectiveness of education and invention production. More money produces more results, but there is a point of diminishing returns based on all of the invention factors listed earlier. (Care must be taken to prevent people from raising technology too quickly. I had an idea for doing this, but Mark gave it the death it deserved. Input would be helpful.)
"Give a goal" Here you give general research goals to the college like, "Make our farms work better." This is only possible if you pay the scientists. This results in a slower pace of invention as the scientists are not doing exactly what they wnat to, but you achieve the needed result instead of random ones. (This is similar to the current research system, but my contention is that it not be available until this point in the game.)
After technology raises past a certain point, every scientist starts to develop a specialty but your government does not know enough to classify the scientists. People work best at their specialty. If you have many colleges with different goals, they will gravitate toward the college with the goal that suits them. In the next period, however, your government knows the specialties.

In these periods of early technology, almost all techs spread easily. But then techs start to grow more complex and cannot be copied easily. This and the specialization and advance of science are the cues for the current model of things, the Government Involvement time period. In this period, all of the other options are still available but your government knows enought about science to use it intellegently.
In this model, you will pay for schools and research labs and give them more specific goals. However, the end product is still slighly random. For example, you can tell engineers to make a military aircraft (planes being introduced by a random private inventor). They might make a fighter or a bomber or just a scout.
A difference between this and previous models is that the random inventors will not always come with completed things. There is a random chance of them having an idea, but that idea might be so complex that it would need support to complete.
The only time you give a specific goal is if you want improve an existing thing or copy something that another civ has invented. Other civs will of course do the same. The copies are initially not as good, but further research might make them better than the original.
This last time period is almost exactly like the current system with random inventors. My argument is that early governmrnts should not have access to this kind of control.

My system has a very large list of technologies and inventions, but a civ would never have to have all of them. Indeed, most of the Things would simply appear once you have the basic technologies required. For example, airplanes need certain things to be built, but you cannot tell someone to work on a flying maching. The government is not that creative. A private inventor will have the idea once your society has the needed technologies.

I think that covers the general technology ideas. It might be a bit presumptuous of me to suggect the change, but my extensive study of history and technology made me think it was needed.
In addition to the realism aspect, there is a gameplay aspect. I think it is important for players to know that inventions are beyond their control and they can only give a suitable environment for their growth. If there is a tech tree of some sort that they have control over, then some players, if not most, will feel the need to micromanage and climb the tree perfectly. Given the size of everyone's proposed tech trees this would be a nightmare. I think it will give players more freedom if they do not feel the need to control this perfectly. Under the existing model, there is a some potential for this. My model makes it clear that players are not guiding the tree; they are only fertilizing the soil.)

Ask questions, offer critiques, poke holes, make your own proposals, ect. I will deal with the Idea aspect in more detail later, so please direct your responses to the Things aspect.

PS Here is a short bio to give you some idea of who I am.

Age: 17

Hobbies: The study of History and Technology and how they are connected, chess, computer strategy games, reading, hiking.

Research Papers: American logistics and economics in World War Two and their effect on the Outcome of the war; Roman and Parthian military strategies and conflicts

Favorite Computer Games: Civ 2 (despite its flaws); X-Com: UFO Defense; Warlords 3: Darklords Rising; Sim-City; and Seven Cities of Gold (An ancient new world exploration game)

Thank you for your consideration and thought.

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I was planning on putting these as more of items/improvements rather than actual technologies.

>Processes are ways of building specific Things. Processes are verbs. They include ditch digging and shipbuilding.

I think this is basically handled with basic technologies as those refine the skills for the related fields.

>Knowledge is abstract nouns. It is a general thing that your people know how to do. Some examples of Knowledge are Iron Working, Navigation, and Architecture.

Ok...hmmm maybe. Could u go into more detail, if u want i'll send u might current tech model to see what i have so far.

>Theory is the pure sciences, like Physics or Biology. In ancient times there is little need for it, as Knowledge and Processes come mostly from experience. But in modern times, a good grasp of Theory is needed for almost anything.

same as the latter.

>Ideas are philosophical and social, well, ideas. They are more related to the culture model. My model discusses how specific Ideas are created.

Got them but same as former 2.

Also what about the Fine Arts and other similar areas? I know these have to do with cultural area but i don't think they really handle very well with anything u have.

>The current Clash model deals mainly with Theory, Knowledge, and Processes, and does a good job of it. However, the connection

I think it also has much in the way of ideas.

>between these and Things is what I see as a minor problem. The model assumes that Things come instantly whan the correct Process is discovered. While this may be a justifyable simplifying assumption, I think I can make the model more historically accurate while adding a new and hopefully good dimension to the game.

I know it is simplifying but i don't remember reading how u propose to make the invention of things develope after the initial discovery of the required techs. All i know is it had somewhat to do with inventors, but the way u list the could be possibly 1000s or 10,000s of things. Atleast that's what i got.

>Now for the history. In my ideal historically accurate game, the player has no direct control over Theory, Knowlege, and Processes in ancient times. They grow

I also think idea should be added. And yes i agree with u there, although not ness the approach.

>Governments have only recently taken a hands on approach to science. In the past, they

Define recently? Within the last 20 years last century? Last 500 years?

>were more concerned with immediate things like policing (and taxing) the people, defending from invaders, and maybe building public works. Most of the time they ignored

Um during golden ages in acient times this was not nessasarily the case such as india, china, greece (for ideas mainly).

>science entirely. They did not have the foresight to see that hiring a bunch of silly scholars could somehow improve things.

Again i beg to differ...Some places did. Greece for example considered scholars quite high. India revered them as near-gods (not the inventors maybe)

>make Things. People didn't see the connection between the two until the Renaissance in Europe, and to a lesser extent in China and some Arab countries after about 1000 AD. Thus the government ususlly ignored or even supressed scientists.

China did see the differance about as much as europe did, at that point, however they often disreguarded things if they didn't find them useful. (ie they were the first one to invent the car, but becuase no one wrote it down it is pretty much forgotten).

>example from ancient Greece. During one of their many wars, the leader of some city (I think it was Syracuse) gathered up a bunch of scientists and told them to biuld . . . It turned out that the scientists did build the ballista, as well as an improved catapult. But that was essentially a random invention based on their education under private philosophers. If they had been curious about chemistry instead of physics and math, they might have invented a simple hand grenade or other pyrotechnic device.

So how do u determine what they create then?

>The Proposal (finally)
>The player's ability to alter technology progress changes as history progresses. There is a different type of involvement for each time period. The time periods change due to game events, and are as follows:

>Inventors Only
>The player cannot order research, as the government does not know anything about scientific development. Things and Ideas are randomly generated by people in the civ. Processes, Knowledge, and Theory are modeled, but the player does not see or influence them.
>Thie random generation is affected by several factors. These factors are calculated by province, so having lots of underdeveloped provinces will not hurt tech generation in cultural centers. The factors are:

I like it, and yet i don't. I like the idea of not being in direct control and having it based on your culture, but i still think u should be able to influence the culture atleast through money and doctrines. Also there were some enlightened rulers who did fund technology and so i think if u want some money could be spent on research in general.

>Standard of living: If people are starving, they will not be inventive.

Duh! Unless its maybe a way to not starve anymore (desperate people will try new and desperate ideas)

>Freedom and free time allowed the people: This makes a trade-off between controlling your civ well and advancing. Repressive regimes stifle creativity while usually being more efficient.

Yes and no. Like in the example about the war machine. You can order people to do reasearch, the effiency might go down, depending on there pay, or potential pay. But on there own, prob not.

?Number of people doing a certain job: A province with lots of farmers will generate farming advances, and provinces with lots of production and craftsmen people will have a higher chance of making new things like iron. Social and philosophical ideas can be generated by anyone.

I tend to disaggree with this. Most commoners, as i will call them, didn't have time to think of new social and philosophical ideas back then since their day to day life took too much time. Occasionly one might, but it was the exception rather than the norm. You'd need priests or philosophers for that.

>Infrastrucure and trade: Roads, cities, and contact with other people all increase the chances of people exploring new ideas.

Right on and the diffustion of current techs.

>Current province Tech Level (Knowledge, Processes, and Theory): Inventors with more to build on are more successful and produce higher technology Things. Physical technology and social ideas have independent tech levels. Tech levels for Ideas are modeled on the culture model.

Really i'm not using tech levels. Once u see my tech tree u should see why.

>??Reward level: This starts out at zero and changes as you react to inventors. If you praise inventors, reward them handsomely, and hire them to implement their idea, then the level will increase and many others will work on ideas. If you suppress and ignore ideas, this will go down and people will not work on new ideas. If this level is very high, you might attract inventors from neighboring civs. (This could lead to

I think pay/gifts/benifits and governmental type should basically solve the need for this.

>Whan someone invents something, the player will get a message like: "A craftsman in has made something new called XYZ. What shall we do about this?" The player has several options, as follows:

And tells the ruler....

>Things

>"Do nothing about it." The invention and inventor are ignored. Some inventions should actually be worthless enough to deserve this option.
>(If this is chosen, the inventor might go to a civ with a high reward level and give them the idea.)

What would be the point of this? What benifit would the player/AI gain?

>"Reward the inventor." The person is praised and a small cash reward is given. This option can be chosen in addition to the following.

Should also set a way such as money amount, title, land, another gift, marrige to daughter, etc.

>"Archive the invention." The invention is not pursued, but it stays as an option for future use.
>"Hire the inventor." The inventors get the most benefit out of this one, and it will encourage more inventions. The Thing can only be made in the province of origin and only that province gets access to higher tech levels offered by the Thing.

I don't know if this is such as good idea since this may make the tech model much more complicated. First u have to know what type of inventor he/she is, age and life expentancy, general like/dislike for the ruler or government, how much better tech progression will be with a hired inventor as well as his salary (it could over time get worse and should since he prob has a secure job in most cases, ie the rule of first impressions, so long as he contributes and if we're still doing it the "dynasty" factor.

>"Spread the word." The invention becomes available to your entire country. The inventor might be unhappy about the idea

depends, he also may want it to be widely spread and so may be more happy.

>Social Ideas

>"Suppress the idea." This is for dangerous ideas that could cause problems for the government. There should be a signifigant chance of this happening so this option gets serious thought. Doing this will greatly reduce the chances of people announcing social ideas, but the idea will no longer be a problem.

Again this should have some advantage otherwise the player/AI will never take it.

>"Disapprove of the idea." A milder way to stop the idea. This is not as effective but will not scare philosophers away as much.

Again must have an advantage

>"Ignore the idea." The government does nothing, and the idea might spread a little, but only in its home province.

>"Approve of the idea." The govermnent agrees with the idea but does not actively spread it.

>"Embrace the idea." The philospher spreads the idea to your entire civ with your support.

Also maybe one above it to attempt to spread it actively with other civs (mainly friendly/neutral since opposing ones will prob not like it, unless its an enlightened one for lower class and the lower class of the opposing civ is not well treated).

>(There are always exceptions. Some Ideas might spread everywhere even if you try to suppress them. Perhaps each idea can have a factor that determines how popular it is. Positive means it will spread well, zero has the effect listed above, and negative will be rejected even if you support it. Ideas with a high positive factor will have a life of their own and will be a force to reckon with, having a big impact on society. I think I will start a new thread on this sometime, as it could be very cool if it is done well. It is not essential for the game, however.)

I think it could be possible, depending on how its implimented...give me more info.

>The next time period is Colleges and Inventors. It starts when some private citizen founds a college or academy somewhere.

Ok, are u talking about a physical structure here? Since u don't really need one, just a group of people willing to learn and a few to teach this could happen almost immediatly in an open government.

>"Suppress college" If you are troubled by the college inciting the masses, you can shut it down. Again, there should be some situations where this is needed.

And should have negative effects, in fact it may do the opposite u intended....

>"Ignore college" This is also what happens if you never select the college menu. The college continues educating people and generating inventions at its own pace.

>"Support college" Paying the college money raises the effectiveness of education and invention production. More money produces more results, but there is a point of diminishing returns based on all of the invention factors listed earlier. (Care must be taken to prevent people from raising technology too quickly. I had an idea for doing this, but Mark gave it the death it deserved. Input would be helpful.)

Wholy agree with that and eventually there should be a cap also since u could invest 100,000,000,000,000,000 theoretically. Also though since u are a government u can dictate how this money is to be spent in general.

>"Give a goal" Here you give general research goals to the college like, "Make our farms work better." This is only possible if you pay the scientists. This results in a slower pace of invention as the scientists are not doing exactly what they wnat to, but you achieve the needed result instead of random ones. (This is similar to the current research system, but my contention is that it not be available until this point in the game.)

Well i don't think its nessasarily need to pay, but they would certainly be more inclined if they were payed. BTW where was the transition to scientists?

>After technology raises past a certain point, every scientist starts to develop a specialty but your government does not know enough to classify the scientists. People work best at their specialty. If you have many colleges with different goals, they will gravitate toward the college with the goal that suits them. In the next period, however, your government knows the specialties.

I think there should be some way of getting a general pool of them, such as more of the theorists as opposed to the more practical ones (ie inventor-like ones) and maybe researchers.

>In these periods of early technology, almost all techs spread easily. But then techs start to grow more complex and cannot be copied easily. This and the specialization and advance of science are the cues for the current model of things, the Government Involvement time period. In this period, all of the other options are still available but your government knows enought about science to use it intellegently.

>Specialization can occur earlier as u mentioned above in ur making of the catapult. They chose to specialise in mechanics rather than chemistry because they were more interested in the former.

>In this model, you will pay for schools and research labs and give them more specific goals. However, the end product is still slighly random. For example, you can tell engineers to make a military aircraft (planes being introduced by a random private inventor). They might make a fighter or a bomber or just a scout.

Unless u told them to build a bomber, fighter or scout airplane (u may have a reason).

>The only time you give a specific goal is if you want improve an existing thing or copy something that another civ has invented.

Hmmm that's kinda hard since the only way to improve is through the basic technologies really.

>This last time period is almost exactly like the current system with random inventors. My argument is that early governmrnts should not have access to this kind of control.

What about the future? We will be doing somewhat in that area.

>My system has a very large list of technologies and inventions, but a civ would

Can u give me a copy of ur list?

>I think that covers the general technology ideas. It might be a bit presumptuous of me to suggect the change, but my extensive study of history and technology made me think it was needed.

Change is almost always an option, its just how much.

>In addition to the realism aspect, there is a gameplay aspect. I think it is important for players to know that inventions are beyond their control and they can only give a suitable environment for their growth. If there is a tech tree of some sort that they have control over, then some players, if not most, will feel the need to micromanage and climb the tree perfectly.

Although I think it's more historically realistic, I think your proposal has several problems, especially in the playability and Fun area.

1. By isolating the achievement of a technology from the immediate benefit of allowing the player to build or do a new Thing you would, IMO, take most of the Fun out of achieving a technological breakthrough. Realism is a laudable goal, but if it takes the fun out for most of our target audience then it does more harm than good.

2. The player would have to churn through numerous instances of things being invented, even if they're not interested in technology. Of course, you can put an adviser in charge of automating the process. However, then you're basically at the point where we are now, where the player would say I'm Prepared to spend money on any Agricultural improvement, vs. now they say I am spending money to accelerate agricultural innovation. In practicality I think there is no difference between the two. I personally would be one of the people who would put an adviser in charge, even though I am extremely interested in technology.

3. Designing a good AI to handle the tech model as it exists now is already going to be Frighteningly difficult. Your modification would make the job Much harder IMO. The reason is that at least now once a technology is achieved We Know some improvement has been made in the capability of the civ, and can attempt to deduce the value of that improvement. In the case of your model, all we get out of a tech is a Possibility of a doing something somewhere down the road. That's a lot harder to evaluate.

What I consider we are modeling in the current tech model is not the instance of invention. It is the invention plus sufficient social acceptance to make the advancements actually used in society. Leonardo designed a helicopter, but neither sufficient capital, nor interest by people in the society, nor adequate materials technology were available at the time. IMO an individual invention is Absolutely Useless at a civ-game level of abstraction. Unless the society has a need for the invention it will never be usable in a practical way, at least by that culture. Anyway, we talk about what is involved in this in the first tech thread.

Also, your proposed system does not help with the major realism defect in the current one, which is that players know the general importance of technology, and which advances are critical. However, I don't think there is anyway around this problem since in a civ-type game people Expect to have this knowledge and be able to exploit it. So IMO we just have to live with that.

You mentioned, in terms of game balance, that if the system includes technology diffusion, and "buying" the techs is expensive, then many players will just mooch off others. IMO, Mooching It is a valid strategy, especially in the ancient world. Obviously, if it turns out that putting nothing into any sort of technology is the best strategy, we would need to re-balanced things a bit so that the two approaches are roughly equal.

Incidentally, I think the mutual choice to push technology or not in given regions of the world by the civs within them could be a very interesting dynamic within the game. Clearly, if only one society in an area is putting effort into innovation, and innovation takes awhile to pay off, that single civ will be at a disadvantage since the others will have proportionately larger armies. If everyone in a region of the world decides to be a "moocher"... well, I'd call that technological stagnation. It would be a level playing field in that part of the world, until someone shows up with much better technology and shows them the error of their ways .

For play balance alone, I think the player has to be able to influence technology all the way through the game. I think we can certainly go in the direction of history by making that influence much less cost-effective in the ancient period. But has LGJ points out rulers Did try, and sometimes succeeded at, influencing technological and social progress even in the ancient era.

BTW i though of a way to allow the player to choose what techs they can create so they feel they have some control while still limiting it somewhat.

First off, the way they develope basic techs will be limited to the cultural way of the civ. A civ that values agriculture most of all and is relatively peaceful will not allow too much to be put into military. This can be increased with characters.

Second, in the begginning we limit the techs a person can choose from, somewhat like civ2, only its not random but based on culture, location and current situations. dunno exactly how this will work but i don't want it to be purely random.

Well, I think we have many things going for us besides realism, but I'll resist getting on that soap box right now .

Connecting the technology to the culture of the civ is indeed important. I don't remember what exactly is written down in the older tech model, but it has always been in the plan to have such a strong connection between technology and culture and government. Rather than arbitrarily allowing some things and not allowing others, though, the system I had in mind would make techs that don't fit with the culture increasingly more difficult for the culture to obtain without any specific prohibitions. There is significant discussion of this in the older "research system" thread. Basically culture ties into tech in two important ways. First, the innovative people in your society will focus mostly on areas that are important to the cast of your culture. So more "idea points" are generated in the areas that your culture finds most important, and far fewer in areas it does not consider important. Second, a culture that's vitally interested in, say, agriculture will act on an agricultural innovation much sooner than it would in other areas. In model terms the idea point cost of an agricultural innovation is less in this society. Similarly, who holds power in the government, and how corrupt that government is, will also have big effects on technological progress.

I like the thought of limiting techs the player can obtain by culture. I'm not sure whether these should be outright prohibitions, or just things that are very much harder than normal. However, I'm not sure how to make the basic idea work. The problem is that given diffusion of technology, and the ability to trade technologies, such prohibitions will be easily gotten around by the player. We had some discussion of this before, IIRC, and thought that the increased point cost for techs that the culture isn't interested in might help in this regard. If your culture were very resistant to a particular innovation, it would take a very long time for the idea to diffuse. In terms of trading techs (I'm making this one up as I go along) there might be a chance that the traded tech would not be accepted by the culture. The player would, of course, have to have some warning of which techs were likely to "bounce" or we'd have a lot of infuriated players.

In your bit on fine arts you talk about the only way a player can influence them would be in money... The position I've been pushing in the tech area for quite some time (although we never had agreement on it) is that the factors you list for fine arts would apply for all techs. I Really don't like the nonsense in civ about your people focusing exclusively on one particular technological area for a time period, and then turning on a dime and switching over to something completely different (The Monty Python tech paradigm ). The obvious way to fix this IMO is to have the people doing their own innovation automatically in many areas, and only allowing the player to augment that in a way they see fit. In other words, spending money and recruiting characters are the Only direct influence the player has on tech. The player Would Not pick a single tech, or even a set of them, for the people to exclusively work on.

Of course in addition to the direct influences the player has, there are other indirect influences, like what the player initially picks for the culture, and how the culture evolves thereafter. Also, who (primarily military classes, or primarily upper classes, etc.) is in control of the government is another indirect factor. So, guided by the culture, diffusion from other civs, economic circumstances, etc. (some of the factors Richard talked about) the civ automatically makes some progress in all areas. Although the progress will be vanishingly small in many. In Addition, to speed up progress in certain areas, the player can spend money, or hire inventor characters that are good in that area.

Having said all this, I feel the need for one further comment. Any civ that tried to "go it alone" in tech, in the way that's possible in civ, would have exceptionally slow progress. This is another ramification of the tie-in between culture and tech. In the Clash world I envision, (and you seem to be oriented in the same direction) the cultures with affinity for particular areas will tend to be the ones that make the discoveries in those areas. Those technologies will then diffuse to other cultures. A single civ in a vacuum might achieve some of the things it is most attuned to fairly quickly, but after that would tend to stagnate technologically. It's progress would, at a guess, be 10 to 100 times slower than that of a dynamic group of civilizations, each with its own cultural proclivities.

If every major cultural tech is given a place on the basic tech tree, it will be very hard to meet all of these goals. While the problem can be partially solved by Boolean prerequisites and such, I think my proposal will keep thing simpler and make the game less confusing.

The key to the proposal is to make the tech tree contain no culture specific advances. The advances on the tree are generalized ideas, and the specific cultural ideas are simply a difference in the name and graphics. For example, consider the idea of Spiritual War. Many cultures had this and it took many forms, such as Chivalry, Way of the Blade, Tales of Valhalla, and Jihad.

While there were many differences between these, they all had similar effects and can all be modeled by the same technology of

"Spiritual War -- New military unit with X% more power is now available."

This generalized technology has a tag attached that, based on your civ's dominant culture, changes the name of the advance as well as the name and picture of the new unit.

If the advance is acquired from a different civ, your civ chooses the tag that suits it best. This makes sense, as people often change the ideas of others to suit their own culture. This would solve the problem of gaining a tech that is not suitable for your people.

This proposal combines tech tree simplicity with the modeling of many different cultures. Another advantage is that of customization. By rewriting the tags, a player could easily make a custom civilization without messing with the tech tree.

quote:

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Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 11-16-1999 07:12 PM
>1. Model many diverse cultures.
>2. Keep the tech a civ discovers appropriate to its culture.
>3. Make a tech tree that will not remind players of a massive knot.

Maybe 4. Not to make a tech tree that reminds players there being led down a path

>graphics. For example, consider the idea of Spiritual War. Many cultures had this and it took many forms, such as Chivalry, Way of the Blade, Tales of Valhalla, and Jihad.

>While there were many differences between these, they all had similar effects and can all be modeled by the same technology of

>"Spiritual War -- New military unit with X% more power is now available."

I think that's pretty good idea for that specific one, however some things can't be done that way. FE Chi is only really an eastern type idea, and although it did surface for a breef moment in greece, it was snuffed out by all the other philosophers before it got a hold and most people don't even know about it today.

What I'm trying to say is that although some things can be simplified for cross-cultural purposes, others can't.

>This generalized technology has a tag attached that, based on your civ's dominant culture, changes the name of the advance as well as the name and picture of the new unit.

This is a good idea, but being that there are so many variables in culture i don't know if this is possible. Plus, although we are trying to make it close to simulating history pretty good, we're not nessarily using the same cultures as history has had.

>If the advance is acquired from a different civ, your civ chooses the tag that suits it best. This makes sense, as people often change the ideas of others to suit their own culture. This would solve the problem of gaining a tech that is not suitable for your people.

Not nessasarily. If your society is very strcitly arocratic and heirarchial and democracy was introduced it prob would bounce.

This proposal combines tech tree simplicity with the modeling of many different cultures. Another advantage is that of customization. By rewriting the tags, a player could easily make a custom civilization without messing with the tech tree.

This is true, however whatever culture u pick will still impact how u advance alomg the tree.

>Another possibility is having the general techs be modified by things other than culture. For example, a simple bow, a sling, an atl-atl, and an advanced spear like the pilum all have about the same power and range. These could all be modeled by

This is a good idea, but may be hard to code. I don't know though for sure since i don't code, but just reading it gives me that idea.

>the general tech 'Missile Weapons 2.' The

Prob its just me but i never liked the titles "advanced" or numbers after techs. Why? Well advanced is saying that's its very hard to achieve that level of tech. And advanced is a very relative term. What is advanced to us may seem like child's play to someone else. FE we call our metallurgy adanced compared to yesterday (era periods i'm talking about) and what about tomorrow? Also the Katana, the stongest sword ever made, we cannot make today and it uses advanced technology since if we could with our new metals it would be even stronger.

I don't like the numbers because it doesn't really give good desciptions. Wow i've just dicovered missiles 2! Well what's the big deal? What's so great about missiles 2 that sets it apart from missiles? If they're just more advanced we don't even need them now cuz of the basic technologies and if there's something new like radar guidance, well then call them Guided missiles or something more desciptive. Its not too hard and u'd be surprised at the effect it has.

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Plus, although we are trying to make it close to simulating history pretty good, we're not nessarily using the same cultures as history has had.
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So what cultures are we using?
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Ok let me rephrase this. We are not ness mimicking the cultures that were put in place on our history, but parts of them that can be put in many differnt ways, which may mimick a certain culture, or may be totally original.

I would be cautious about this. If this is done the players would choose culture based only on what they want to do. I have a vision of everyone wanting to choose vikings or mongols so they can stomp the neighboring civs early, take their tech, and build up.
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This has pretty much been decided and i think its a good idea overall. There will be other modifiers that just culture when dealing with tech advancement, but even considering ur point of view, the mongols and vikings had certain limitations and there will be great benifits to players who choose other paths. This will have to be playtested to make sure. Also during early periods, you'll have to worry about finding the cultures and also about being overun by barbarians (not as bad as civ2, FE only up to a certain time period and prob can also try to absorb them into ur culture). anyway i digress.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I see a contradiction. You say that you do not want to use cultures that are strictly historical, but at the same time the player's culture permanently alters the way that the player advances technology. You have locked the player into a certain growth pattern based on the culture.

My idea was to assign general cultural groupings like Arab or Northern European. The technology tree does not change at all but the technology looks different. This should make play balancing a lot easier. Also, the player is not being led down a certain tech path based on culture.

It will take a few weeks to fill in the details. I plan on including a lot of stuff. I don't expect you to use it all, some winnowing will be required.

Here are some examples.

Pesticides: Farm output increases by some percentage. The player is partially or fully immune to a Locust Swarm natural disaster, depending on province infrastructure. Pollution increases and there is now a chance for an Algae Bloom natural disaster.

My idea was to assign general cultural groupings like Arab or Northern European.
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No there's no contradiction. I said i don't want to have a "northern euopean" culture and an "arabic" culture per say, but maybe "Oriental culture with some european religious infrastucture that has a technology base of pre-colonial africa"

As far as the second part goes, well that is part of the idea. I know i want some techs to be relatively easy for any culture to learn, but others i think certain types of cultures just should have a hard time coping with learning, but not have it impossible. That is so that u have to make a choice when u start as to what type of culture u want because that will ultimatly shape your entire society. And any culture will have weak spots, but i digress.
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The technology tree does not change at all but the technology looks different. This should make play balancing a lot easier. Also, the player is not being led down a certain tech path based on culture.
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That is a good idea, but i still think some techs need to be culturally attuned. Its simply the percentage we should try for.
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It will take a few weeks to fill in the details. I plan on including a lot of stuff. I don't expect you to use it all, some winnowing will be required.
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ok just send me the copy when ur done. Give me some leadway so i have a good idea when it might come. I don't want to suddenly check my mail and there it is with no warning. Anyway what is "winnowing?"
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Pesticides: Farm output increases by some percentage. The player is partially or fully immune to a Locust Swarm natural disaster, depending on province infrastructure. Pollution increases and there is now a chance for an Algae Bloom natural disaster.

Radio: Ship navigation improves. Naval groups fight at increased effectiveness. Culture becomes more homogenized across any section of your civ that is served by a power grid. (The dominant cultural agent in the most advanced province is considered to be in charge of programming.) Also, it becomes easier for your government to spread propaganda.
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I see ur adding desc. That was going to me next task for unofical release 4.0 prob.