quote: Originally posted by F_Smith on 02-02-2000 12:37 PM 1) Gunpowder was invented long before anyone had any concept of such a thing as 'chemical theory'. Your 'basic techs' actually seem to be 'theories'. And most discoveries thru history were made thru blind trial and error, not on the basis of a good theory that was then well tested. Only when your theories begin to approach reality (as we have begun to do in the last few centuries) are those theories any use. And even then, those theories can actually hold you back because of the inevitable inaccuracies. Who would have theorized that moldy cheese could produce a powerful medicine? It is actually the accidental discoveries that drive the theories -- not the other way around. Also it is just as hard to learn a tech tree as it is to learn something like what we have. I am talking about the big picture. I understand u saying its harder for u, but for me learning which tech leads to which tech is harder. Also just like in civ2 and smac I plan to have a list of the techs and stuff what they are, etc.

quote: Originally posted by F_Smith on 02-02-2000 12:37 PM2) Skilled ironsmiths could be less likely to develop steel technology than green ironsmiths. Skilled ironsmiths would be focused on the purity of their iron, and be very skilled at doing things the same way every time. Newbies with creative skill might would be more likely to 'experiment' with new ways of making iron -- or 'accidentally' mix 'impure' iron that turns out to be stronger. An inexperienced but creative civ might advance in techs faster than an uncreative but experienced civ. So I would not tie 'skill' at a single tech with advancement to new techs. I believe that makes an unrealistic model. It is often the person that throws out all basic assumptions (ya'lls 'tech') that makes the great breakthru. And many people spend their lives trying to prove pieces of theories that turn out to be totally bogus. In the middle ages, their chemistry 'tech' predicted that lead could be transmuted into gold . . .

A master ironsmith is just as likely to create steel also because a lot of it is based on personality, not skill.

quote: Originally posted by F_Smith on 02-02-2000 12:37 PM3) Because key techs will be a major game goal, this system seems much more complicated than a 'tech tree', in practice. I've never had any difficulty in using any tech trees -- civ 2, smac, moo2, warcraft/wc2, aoe/ror/aok, starcraft, etc. They always seem very playable (even smac, where the techs are futuristic), and indeed were the only strength of some of these games (moo2!!!). This system here, however, seems highly complicated during gameplay, at least to me. I suggest someone puts together a simplistic demo and tries it. Because the way it will play, players will *need* to memorize the tech 'trees' for each 'discipline' and all the required advancement %s. Because in gameplay, quickly reaching certain techs will be absolutely necessary for success. So you will have to learn how to achieve those. Simply blindly researching in 'catagories' of techs will not lead you to firearms as fast as someone that has memorized and maximized. And memorizing that I need gunpowder, clockworking technology and skilled ironsmiths for for a wheel-lock musket is far easier than memorizing "metalworking 70%, Toolmaking 65%, Chemistry 50%". At least to me. Because if ya'll do your jobs right (and I know you will), the tech 'tree' is basically intuitive, since it will be based upon reality -- and indeed can teach you a bit about the tech that you can take with you, away from the game. Memorizing actual technical components of a discovery is far less difficult -- and more entertaining/rewarding -- than memorizing some game-specific percentages.

quote: Originally posted by F_Smith on 02-02-2000 12:37 PM4) Finally, atmosphere. Numbers are not interesting. Real things are. Seven Kingdoms had a system reminiscent of this one, in a small way. Each unit gained a seperate ranged/special attack when they reached some % of experience. Warriors could become crossbowmen, when they hit 80% training. That sort of thing. I see this as similar. And it was just not anywhere near as fun as assigning a troop crossbows specifically. Just a personal preference, but I far prefer techs with names and non-numbers based effects.

quote: Originally posted by Mark everson on 02-02-2000 1:16 PM Subareas of physics especially, and several other areas, wereover-represented IMO. Since most of these are interrelated, and having, for example, 10% of the basic techs being physics would piss off a lot of people, I trimmed them back to just Physics.

quote: Originally posted by Mark everson on 02-02-2000 1:16 PM 1. Production Technologies Agriculture Resource Extraction (same as Resource Gathering) Materials Technology (replaces/includes Ceramics, Synthetics, Textiles, and Woodworking) Metallurgy (should this be put together with Materials Technology?) Civil Engineering (Replaces/Includes Masonry & Concrete) Mechanical Engineering (takes up part of the slack for Physics-Mechanisms) Industrial Engineering

Material Tech. Is going overbroad. Since many of those have little in common and would could cause game balance problems. Like for shipbuilding, clothing, infantry armor, ect. On the same subject then, Metallurgy shouldn't be included. By grouping all them together u loose the distinction of having someplace like an island civ being excellent shipbuilders (which is gen. True), but poorer at other stuff, perhaps textiles.

On Civil Engineering, we had them seperated because advancement in those isn't directly linked to civil engineering. It could also affect architecture, art, and several other things. This isn't that important as the former paragraph though.

quote: Originally posted by Mark everson on 02-02-2000 1:16 PM 2. Transportation, Communications, and Commerce Land, Water, and Air & Space Transportation (Three Separate Basic Techs, Combining Air and Space) Communications Economics & Commerce Mapping & Navigation?

Having navigation might be okay or cartography, but generally mapmaking hasn't changed much except that we are more mathmatically accurate.

quote: Originally posted by Mark everson on 02-02-2000 1:16 PM 3. Arts and Popular Arts (maybe collapse all these all into one?) Architecture Arts (Includes Music, Gaming?

quote: Originally posted by Mark everson on 02-02-2000 1:16 PM 4. Hard Sciences Physics (Replaces/Includes Atomic Applications, Electromagnetics, Optics, Physics-Mechanics) Chemistry Computers Earth Sciences (Replaces/Includes Geology and Meteorology) Mathematics

quote: Originally posted by Mark everson on 02-02-2000 1:16 PM 5. Soft/Social Sciences Medicine Biology & Ecology (Replaces/Includes Domestication, Ecology) *Education (This is the Theory of Education, and how to effectively educate people, Not how to build schools...) Philosophy & Religion

quote: Originally posted by Mark everson on 02-02-2000 1:16 PM 6. Government, Law, and Management Diplomacy Government *Law *Management? (I think this is pretty big..., should also include management of research technologies like Invention, and Research and Development)

quote: Originally posted by Mark everson on 02-02-2000 1:16 PM 7. Military Technologies Mostly TBD *Short-range Weapons (progression of infantry weapons of all ages) *Medium-range Weapons (bows to mortars) *Long-range Weapons (Catapult to Artillery, Possibly ICBMs)

quote: Originally posted by Mark everson on 02-02-2000 1:16 PM Propose We Kill These: Cybernetics, Robotics

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The % should change over time. I'm not sure whether it should get smaller or larger but 3% away from 10% is vastly differnt than 70%.
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Actually, it is not much of a difference. The tech tree uses something like a logarithmic scale, so 70%/67% is about the same as 10%/7%. The ratios of guaranteed knowledge to minimum knowledge are about the same, and that is what is important for developing things early.

Problems

You are right about the potential problems that would accompany the earlier inventions. As I consider the problems, they grow ever larger. I will elaborate:

Application Percentages

One problem is that our current definition of application percentages has caused us to lose sight of their original purpose. They were first made to track application loss due to loss in tech. Now they are used to determine ability and practicality, or the highest level of knowledge you have obtained about the application. These two definitions will not work together. We need to do one of these things:

1) Eliminate tech loss. If you get something to a certain level, that level does not drop.

This would be unrealistic and open to abuse.

2) Eliminate application improvement. Percentages only represent tech loss.

This also makes no sense.

3) Make application loss be the same as "unresearching" something (Going back in time). Dropping to 10% from 20% would mean that the thing is no longer really practical, but you can still make the impractical 10% version just fine.

This makes little sense; I don't recommend it.

4) Make the tech practical and usable when it is first invented (20% on my earlier scale). Then, any drop below that represents tech loss. You still have the thing at the basic ability, but people are slowly forgetting how to operate and repair it and can't make new ones. Higher application percentages mean the thing improves. If it improves and then drops, the effect is similar to #1, but the thing is always practical until you forget it completely.

This seems better. It is basically what we first proposed. It still has flaws.

5) Use seperate percentages to track ability and tech loss. For example, say you got to 40% application but then started losing tech and are now at 30%. You can use the 40% version but are suffering tech loss for that version. You can also make the 30% inferior thing just fine. In this example, one percentage is at 40% and another is at something else, some percentage.

This would be ridiculously complex for us and the player. I don't like it.

Inventors

This quandary is bad enough. But there is also the problem of some civ's inventing things earlier than others. This problem has the potential to hopelessly complicate things.

There are several possible methods of dealing with the problem, each with faults. I will present all that I can think of. This follows the percentage plan outlined in my post from 12:09 today.

1) Increase the basic techs to the GKL when the tech is discovered. I don't like this at all, because it could let you raise basic techs way too fast.

2) Set the application to be 5% at MCL and 10% at GKL. I don't like this either because it gives no real advantage to invention, except getting the thing early. And what you get is not useful anyway.

3) The GKL is set to be the default 5% application level. If the application is invented early, log the tech percentages and call that the 5% application level. All future tech loss or gain is based on those tech levels. This one seems better for gameplay, but would probably get complicated.

4) #3, but replabe 5% with 10%

5) #3, but replace 5% with 20%

I think the best way to work with inventors and application percentages would be some combination of #5 above and #4 from the previous section. You start with a usable invention. Any previous development of the application is considered to be a part of some basic technology.

The percentage at which you start is logged, and the MCL where tech loss begins is set to be 5% lower than that percentage. So you can drop 5% on thhe technologies without losing application technology. Then you start to drop.

If you raise the application percentage, the effectiveness increases. If the application percentage lowers again, this process is simply reversed until you get to the application level the thing was invented at. Then the true tech loss begins.

In comparison to other civs, you don't really know how good their stuff is because you don't know when they got it. If they invented something 5% early, they might ghave better stuff then you even if your basic tech levels are higher.

And this doesn't even try to account for social considerations or the effect of repeated use on the application level.

Do you understand how all that would work in practice? I don't either. My prediction is that it would be an awful mess. So I suggest the following for Demo 5, and perhaps permanently:

1) All civ's get application techs at the same time. There is no randomness and no inventors, just one GKL.

2) There are no application percentages. Application effectiveness is simply multiplied by some factor of the basic tech level to simulate knowledge gain.

3) Tech loss either does not exist or instantly occurs when basic techs fall below the GKL. If it was not lost, it would simply be modified as per paragraph 2 above.

4) Social Considerations and manufacturing have no effect on specific applications. They simply give you more or less RP's.

I know that I am being harsh and that the following proposal is not as realistic as we would like. But we have seen that the real world is often way too complex for a game. If someone else can figure out a way to realistically work in inventors and application percentages without causing ridiculous complexity, I will be impressed. I know I can't do it.

On my proposed military techs... (not meant to replace the ones you had btw, just in addition)
A lot of the plans, investigation, trial-and-error that happens in basic techs happens within the area of weapons themselves. Now whether we should have ancient infantry weapons separate from modern infantry weapons is a reasonable question. My point is, if they do the same thing for the player why not simplify. I think you could just have a change in helper techs at the 30% boundary or whatever that separates helper techs for swords from helper techs for guns. Actually bows would start as Medium-range then be replaced by arquebuses etc, until guns became the common infantry weapon, and mortars or something else were the real Mid-range weapon.

It is not a fully developed concept, but I thought I would throw it out again and see what everyone thinks. I thing the most attractive thing is that if there is a category for Infantry Weapons a militaristic player could leave it selected for favorable treatment for the entire game and just ride the transition automatically. Need to hear from the Mil folks on whether this can be made to work also.

LGJ:

Hey, I left Computers alone, give me a break!

Physics Simplification...
If you were to handle everything at the level of distinction you place between Electromagnetics and Atomic Applications there would be about 500 Basic Techs! Communications alone would be broken up into at Least 15 different large innovation areas. The Law itself or Philosophy or Biology would each deserve 3-5 areas. Its a GAME, there have to be compromises made. I know those things are different, but they will tend to proceed in rough syncronization anyway once you get to the modern world since the instrumentation that all those subdivisions rely on is largely common (except for colliders).
We can put it up for a vote if you like... I the physicist vote strongly for a single basic tech called Physics.

No, my proposal isn't for the demo only.

The thing that should help in your objection to putting all the Materials Techs together [inaccuracy] is partly corrected by the system itself in two ways.
1. People on an island will tend to be excellent shipbuilders because Water Transportation is very important to them. When the application cog, or some similar ship, comes along you don't need to know separate woodworking and textiles numbers for them because these things go Together with shipbuilding. So what if occasionally the islanders can make a slightly better ceramic bowl than is realistic. Materials tech in combination with other basic techs gets the Important things right IMO
2. If the island people never made any bowls their application tech would not get the 'tech use' bonus and will of necessity lag behind skill of those who actually did so.
Again, I know all this is not Rigorously correct but so long as it gets most of the Big things right IMO we have to go for the simplificaton. If these simplifications end up giving Really Bizarre results I'll gladly agree with you that they should be put back in. But I can assure you that a majority of our fan email will not express regret for the lack of explicit handling of woodworking.

Arts...
Yep you're probably right.
But the effects of the various art forms had better be clear to the player or its going to get ignored anyway.

Education...
The concepts of a University, Graduate Education, Universal Public Education, Greek Academies...

Government...
Separation of Powers, Limits to governmental power (rights), Separation of Church and State, Instilling nationalistic zeal, etc.
Law...
Commercial Law (Very Important for making Companies and corporations work), International Law

Overall I like Mark's tree. It is simple yet does as good a job as the more complex one. However, I think it simplifies too much in a couple things:

Physics: Classical physics and quantum/electromagnetic physics are IMO two very different things. One deals with forces in the macroscopic world while the other deals with particles and fields at absolutely tiny scales. I agree that Atomics isn't really needed, but that division in physics leads to entirely different applications. Electromagnetic applications like Radio have almost no relation to things like ballistics.

I agree that Electronics is redundant with Eectromagnetics, but they should be seperated from classical physics.

Also, I don't think classical physics is the same thing as mechanical engineering. Physics class and shop class are two very different things. Mechanical Engineering is the applied part of building things, while physics is more theoretical.

I also consider Biology and Ecology to be two very different things. Biology is the study of the structure of a single lifeform, while Ecology is the study of how all of the lif eon the planet is interrelated. Ecology actually has more in common with Geology than Biology.

A few more things:
Industrial Engineering is not just factories. It is anything that improves your production capacity. It is the same thing as Management, at least as I created it.

Resource Extraction is not the same thing as Resource Gathering. Gathering also includes hunting, and fishing. "Extraction" makes me think of mining only.

As for the military techs, I don't like the idea of giving a string of applications the status of a core technology. There is simply no reason to do this. It is the same kind of thing as Robotics and Cybernetics.

2) There are no application percentages. Application effectiveness is simply multiplied by some factor of the basic tech level to simulate knowledge gain.
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That's what I think should be the way of it all along. I think having %s for application techs is getting too complex.

3) Tech loss either does not exist or instantly occurs when basic techs fall below the GKL. If it was not lost, it would simply be modified as per paragraph 2 above.
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I know this may sound like i'm just contradicting what I said, but I'm not. We should have tech loss as it is so much a part of history taking it out would equal phalanxs can destroy tanks. With that said here's how it works.
An Application tech requires 15% of Basic Tech A and 40% of Basic Tech B. Lets say BT A drops to 14%, but BT B is at 50+%. They could still use and maintain there items that ned that application Tech, but not produce any more. A window would pop up letting the player know of the situation. If BT B was at 49% they could still use the items and do a little matainance (enough to say keep a ship from sinking on its own). We'd give the player a 2% magin of error, if any BT drops below this, they lose the tech. They can still use items, but can no longer maintain them. Their use is also very limited. FE a ship could very well sink on its own and its movement rate would be very slow.

4) Social Considerations and manufacturing have no effect on specific applications. They simply give you more or less RP's.
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For the most part this is okay. And for demo5 its okay. This runs into problems with social advances and fine arts.

Mark
After thinking it over, if Rich agrees I don't mind using just a "Physics" Basic Tech.

The thing that should help in your objection to putting all the Materials Techs together [inaccuracy] is partly corrected by the system itself in two ways.
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Okay I understand now. It looks like it could work.

Arts...
Yep you're probably right.
But the effects of the various art forms had better be clear to the player or its going to get ignored anyway.
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Don't worry they will be, esp in the Character Model. Anyway I haven't been working much on this as I have several priorities to which types of techs should be implimented first.

Richard, again....
I agree that Electronics is redundant with Eectromagnetics, but they should be seperated from classical physics.

Also, I don't think classical physics is the same thing as mechanical engineering. Physics class and shop class are two very different things. Mechanical Engineering is the applied part of building things, while physics is more theoretical.
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Well if we have mech. eng. seperate from physics (classical) Then we have to have in all fairness, electronics seperate from electromagnetics. Electronics has about as much in common as electromagnetics does. Again its the application of the electrical side of electromagnetics. There isn't much on the solely magnetic side to warrent a seperate basic tech for practical use of magnetics.

I also consider Biology and Ecology to be two very different things. Biology is the study of the structure of a single lifeform, while Ecology is the study of how all of the lif eon the planet is interrelated. Ecology actually has more in common with Geology than Biology.
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I agree with everything cept the last sentance. They both affect it equally, or very close to equally.

Okay, I'm done bugging you from work. Now I'll bug you from home! But don't worry, I'm about to get caught up in another work project (I've just finished setting up a server-class machine here at the house as an Oracle test bed), and have to vanish for a few weeks. Speaking of which, I'm running the JavaWebServer on this machine with a cable modem, so if ya'll are going to need to test any servlet or multiplayer code on the internet you can feel free to use this machine. I've got about 20 gig free.

First, I think we can all agree that no one game has produced a 'definitive' tech tree yet. Altho it will happen, some day . . . and maybe I'll be involved!

I think your comment can be a good illustration of what I don't prefer about this system. When you say the player could 'research Infantry Weapons', how does the player (as leader of a civ) control that? Before about 150 years ago, there was very little organized, state funded R&D on any large scale. About the best you could hope for before then was a govt-sponsored prize for a specific tech (like the ship-board clock). And for modern times, the choice (in my opinion) of R&D spending should be of which specific projects to fund, because that's how it really is . . . not which general areas of research to look into. You could, of course, set a 'manager' to chose for you in either system, but the actual underlying choices should be, in my opinion, on a project by project basis. Because I think that's how it works.

But have no fear, if ya'll have settled on this system I will drop the point. It's a fine system. I'm just rambling for the sake of speaking. I promise to make this my last long-winded opus on the subject.

Richard:

Altho I agree it needed more hashing and organization, that original document of pages and pages of techs is exactly the kind of thing I consider 'fun'. But I'm sure that's just me, I'm probably different. I think it was a mess because it was an unfinished 'masterpiece'.

I wasn't thinking that the player would have control over the detail of tech development ya'll are after, which is why a massive tech 'tree' was not unwieldy. I was after more of a 'ruler of the country' approach, where at best you can spend money to fund specific projects. I thought that the type of civ you had, where you lived, the available resources you acquired and worked, those things would influence your tech 'tree' progress, without any actual 'godlike' control on the part of the player.

Forgive me for carrying on for so long about this. I think it's just a personal preference.

Because mostly I was thinking of tech advances thru history based on the 'Connections' history of tech series, by James Burke. Individuals thruout time for economic reasons (or, in some cases, military-economic reasons) working without govt support to their own ends (often working against the current "common wisdom") who end up invariably putting together two old ideas and coming up with a new one.

But this is, indeed, a workable, playable system, one which I will do my best to master and play.

Man, we just can't shut up can we I think we're making progress, but it's like progress making sausage, really messy in the middle part...

A few miscellaneous things.

I really like the generic weapons basic tech idea, because it makes things much simpler for the player. So I'm going to keep pushing it for a bit. If I get outvoted in the end, well that's life... But consider that's period if you don't have a set of weapons basic techs, then your weapons are going to be scattered all over the place among different basic techs. I'm with F. Smith on that one, that would be madness. So if you don't like my idea, that's fine, but come up with something that the player can deal with for targeting research toward particular types of military hardware easily.

On Resource Extraction, Richard I agree completely, it's a lousy name! But I think we need to come up with a better one then Resource Gathering, which sounds extremely primitive.

Richard:

It's not completely clear to me why you want to start everything at 20% effectiveness. That seems abysmally low to me. Such applications would be completely useless unless the new technology were at least 10 times as good as the one is replacing. I think in general, applications should start at more like a 50% effectiveness. However, these are just scaling effects, and I'm sure we can get them right. I think the best way to make an early-invented tech valuable is to just arbitrarily given an application bonus (the same way you get a bonus if you build a lot of the thing) so if the inventor came across it extremely early, and the effectiveness would be at 23%, we would just figure out the right application bonus to bring it up to the equivalent of 50% effective. I was on the other side of this argument a while ago, and I apologize. I now think the way above is the best way to do it. Personally I would say that we should never tell the player about a new technology unless it is cost-effective. If it's not, and we decide it has to work that way, then just don't tell them about it.

I didn't really understand all the problems you are having in your post of 17:14 today. But it seemed that it might be tied into the extremely low levels that you are considering starting applications at. I'm obviously missing something, because I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about.

I like your basic set of suggestions for Demo 5. Hey, the social stuff isn't even implemented yet, how the heck could we put it into the Demo 5 tech model? Things have gotten a little complicated here because really we are talking about generic tech model issues, and also Demo 5 somewhat in the same thread. Realistically, I would call this the general tech thread, and we have barely even gotten to Demo 5 issues. But there's no way to rename the thread, so we're stuck with it.

F. Smith:

We can certainly put in a historical accuracy slider, that says whether you want to have a realistic historical level of control over technology, or be able to do the usual for a civ-type game. That's in my game plan anyway. However, I think it in general player's Want to have such control. Taking it away from them completely would only result in a lot of them not being interested in playing Clash. Like in several other places in the design, playability, and what players in general want, will have to take precedence over realism.

LGJ:

Let's see, where did I leave off? Oh yeah, Government and Law...
I can think of anything else to say about Law, but I get the feeling I should have something to say... I use get this feeling that if we had some more civic-oriented types rather than techies, our technology scheme would look completely different. So I'm trying to plug some of the obvious holes.

On Management, good management techniques are vital to corporations and governments both. It looks like Richard kind of assumed this was part of Industrial Engineering. I think I would prefer to use the more general Management. I don't think of this is having a lot of specific applications tied into it, but as being an enabler for a lot of things. It would also be as good a place as any to put the research-specific ideas of Invention, Innovation, and Research and Development. I'm sure there are more things that have to do with organizing people effectively, but I'll have to rely on others for now.

We add a few "Application Techs." These are not part of the tree and are completely independent of other techs. They might even use a different RP pool. These Application Techs deal with the way that the basic techs are used. For example, consider Military Applications. This tech is required to build military items. If you don't research it, you don't get military applications even if you have the proper percentage of the basic tech. All applications get a new prerequisite, such as:
Crossbow: Mechanical Engineering *25%, Military Applications 30%
Musket: Chemistry *30%, Metalworking *30%, Military Applications 40%
If you don't go for miltary applications, you can research more civilian applications and improve your economy, like the Chinese did. They never got guns because they didn't focus on military applications like the Europeans did.
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My idea would allow the player themselves to set the cultural standards. If they don't care about economic or civilian applications and need a way to fend off a horde of barbarians, then they can put a lot into Military Applications. This way they get what they need.

I think it wouldn't be too complex to give everything a tech prerequisite and an applications prerequisite. That way the thing comes when there is both technological ability and need, as defined by player priorities.
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My idea was to have that level of [cultural] usefulness be represented by a value; the level of your Application techs. These techs determine your ability to use what you found by being a prerequisite for things. Your ability to research application techs would be influenced by the wishes of your people, so if they didn't want war it would be harder to research Military Applications.
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What do you think? Perhaps we can fix things so that the basic tech requirements will be obtained come before the application tech requirements. That way the player's decisions about applications techs determine the applications they get at a certain time in the game. If we do this, the player can have more control over application techs and less control over basic techs.

Comments?

Application Percentages: I suggest we ditch them. Loss and improvement can both be handled without them.

Inventors: Mark's idea of simply giving a bonus for invention would work, but how would you be able to analyze the relative strength of units or the relative ability of civs? Comparing basic techs woult not give an accurate comparison in this case. YOu would have to chack every application individually. I would suggest that inventing something simply allows you to get it earlier. From then on, its effectiveness is determined by basic techs only, with no seperate percentage for applications.

Mark: The fuss in my post was a listing of the problems associated with application percentages as we were defining them. Read it again and consider how complex and confusing it would be to the player who is not familiar with our discussion. The system is amazingly complex and gives little benefit to anything. I was hoping that I could sign the death warrant of application percentages.

Future Techs: I was considering Far Future (anything after 2050) to be something like a modpack that your game data goes into instantly. I actually suggested a while ago that it have a different tech chart. So it wouldn't bother me if we let LGJ do whatever he wants there.

Individual Techs

I suppose we could have the two techs:
Mechanical Engineering and Classical Physics
Electromagnetic Theory and Applications

Your Military Applications tech does pretty much exactly the same thing as my Weapons basic techs did. Why exactly is that you want to define a whole new technology type? If it serves the same function as a basic technology, why do we need something different? About the only difference I can perceive, is that military applications should also get bonuses for what is learned when they are actually used in battle. But that's quite analogous to the bonuses we were giving applications when you make things.

Application percentages...
I agree with you that this might be confusing for gameplay. That's a quite legitimate reason to try and get rid of it. But I think by far the biggest confusion for the player will be in the changing effectiveness of things. To my mind, if we are going to go ahead and change the effectiveness, then we might as well do the application percentages. If the changing effectiveness is to confusing to the player, we also could have it "lock in" at just a few values. So at 50% its arquebus, at 100% its a flintlock, etc. Although the game late keep track of the level continuously, the effectiveness would only change when you get to the next "level".

On your criticism of not being able to exactly compare civilizations capabilities, I think that's a good thing! The surgical precision with which one can gauge the power of forces in most of these games is ridiculous. Until you have fought them, you should have no particularly good idea how effective they are going to be. War is a risky thing, and it should be in Clash also IMO.

I think the equations are complicated, but just telling the player that you get credit in terms of effectiveness the more of a particular item you build is pure simplicity. If an inventor does it early, you have gotten a good deal. What more exactly does the player need to know?

So does that mean at military 45% / chemistry 40% gunpowder weapons become available. Then at 46% musket, then at 47% muzzle rifles, etc. If so then I can see the military techs filling in very rapidly with applications.
Could we not use a three tiered system. With the basic techs, then more general techs and finally the applications. In fact the general techs could lead on to other general techs.
Let me give an example.
At military 45% / chemistry 40% (?) we get the possibility of developing the general tech of Gunpowder. Gunpowder is a prerequisite for the following general techs. Once gunpowder is learnt then we have a further set of general techs - Rockets, Firearms, Explosives and Artillery. Once we research these we get access to the most basic application in that tech area. We then have a chance of developing further applications (with a modifier based on the general techs level)

So we would have areas of general research in the basic techs. We would also have the ability to direct some additional effort into the general techs we know in an attempt to speed up follow on techs and applications.

It would work as a selection of application tech trees linked to a general tech that is discovered because of the basic techs. A example from agriculture follows.
Basic tech - Agriculture
General techs - Cropping, Herding.
Under Cropping- is ploughing, irrigation, horticulture(orchards) and crop theory.
Under the ploughing general tech we will have the actual applications - simple plough, animal drawn plough, seed drill, metal plough, mouldboard plough, and other important land and cropworking applications arranged as a tree.

This means that a civ that ignores a general tech area will not learn enough to start developing applications. Therefore we get the Masai who largely ignore anything to do with cropping but herd fairly well. We also get the Egyptians who crop well but stop herding research soon after basic domestication.

This is a workable means of handling the way related applications seem to come into existence in a tree like way. While other entire tree areas can be ignored.

Once a general tech is researched the player could even be given the ongoing research options for that tech. (The options of ignore, maintain and forge ahead come to mind.) Depending on which option is selected a portion of the overall research budget could go into that specific area. (by research budget I mean the generated RP's)

Obvious general tech trees include
Gunpowder - firearms, artillery, explosives and rockets.
Boats - Sailing, Rowing, Small hull. small hull would then lead onto various applications and larger hulls.

The actual level of the basic techs would be used as a modifier in researching further general techs and applications.

As a follow up to marks list I see The military breakdown as being weapons, tactics and defences. As opposed to short, medium and long range.

Your Military Applications tech does pretty much exactly the same thing as my Weapons basic techs did. Why exactly is that you want to define a whole new technology type? If it serves the same function as a basic technology, why do we need something different?
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I really like the generic weapons basic tech idea, because it makes things much simpler for the player.
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I thing the most attractive thing is that if there is a category for Infantry Weapons a militaristic player could leave it selected for favorable treatment for the entire game and just ride the transition automatically.
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The Application thing is an old idea and I'm not really committed to it, but it makes more sense than having a basic tech. You make it sound like someone could put everything into weapons techs and get loads of weapons automatically. They could research weapons to the exclusion of all else and conquer the planet. Everyone else would have to do the same thing or be crushed. That would result in the rest of the technology tree becoming entirely useless as military is the only thing that people can research and still live.

In my idea, everyone still has to research all the basic technologies before they get anything. The Applications technologies will be additional prerequisites for things. They are designed to measure social acceptance and need as well as pure knowledge.

"You make it sound like someone could put everything into weapons
techs and get loads of weapons automatically. They could research
weapons to the exclusion of all else and conquer the planet. "

I hope you know me well enough by now to not think I would suggest such a silly thing. Applications like bows and rifles would still have other basic techs that they depend on. The proposed Weapons basic techs would also have other helper techs. Metallurgy, Materials Techs, and Mechanical Engineering all come to mind as obvious possibilities for requisites for both individual applications and as helpers for a Weapons basic tech. A Weapons Basic Tech (or Applications Tech per your def.) would also be a helper tech for other technical areas that have been historically accelerated by weapons developments of various sorts.

I am saying that if we do it right the Weapons basic tech will be like Agriculture. If you want to favor agricultural development, as I read your system, its is easy to put resources into it and its helper techs and get most of what you want, at least short-term. Similarly in the weapons area you could put your money on it and we would (at player option) have a simple algorithm that would spread out those dedicated RPs into the helper techs, and even possibly Their helper techs. It just means that if you want to emphasize weapons above all else then you can. Of course really you probably need Tactics, Logistics, and other military stuff (and social setup too) or all your shiny weapons won't do you a damn bit of good. To do a Really good job, one would have to understand the detailed interactions between the basic techs. My idea here is for a player that wants a short-term good solution. For instance if the barbarians show up, Tactics and Logistics are already good, and you just want to get a better tech set of weapons available Soon.

Example of how to handle a Basic tech the player selects:
(not meant to be taken really seriously, just for demo, I would not suggest a single Weapons tech)

This is also just generic ancient weapons, when gunpowder weapons come along you would move into a different set of helper techs.

Weapons Basic Tech symbolizes the work and experimentation by weaponsmiths etc.
Weapons has helper techs:
Metallurgy (2x), Materials Techs(1x), and Mechanical Engineering(1/2x)
[2x is a more important helper... ]

Applications:
Longsword: Weapons 20%; Metallurgy 25%

Crossbow: Weapons 25%; Mechanical Engineering 20%, Metallurgy 25%

So suppose I am a player that is at:
Weapons 18%
Metallurgy 20%
Materials 25%
and Mechanical Engineering(23%)

I, the player put heavy emphasis on weapons, expected to be X RPs over each of the forseeable turns.

The algorithm for distributing this pot (TBD! this is just a crude shot at it) might be to put from X:
40% into Weapons itself
40% distributed among its helper techs
(distribution method TBD but since Metallurgy is 2x and behind it would get most)
20% to techs so as to achieve applications within "reach" that are within Weapons track
(say with an inventor window no more than a TBD amt away.)

I have to get back to work, but that's the general idea.

Your plan/algorithm for speeding up weapons research is good. It is so good that there is no need for a Weapons basic technology. The algorthm would simply research the required basic techs and the applications would appear. No research into some "Weapons" tech is required.

Your system would actually make the player spend more RP's to get a weapon tcehnology. While I would give the weapon application with the basic tech, you force the player to pour scarce RP's into an additional technology. They would then be getting weapons more slowly than they would under the system I proposed.

I imagined that there would be some advisor that told players what to research to get a specific applciation. So if you don't feel like looking in the manual and working the tree yourself, you could give the advisor a goal and it would use an algorithm to spend RP's so as to get that application as soon as possible.

LGJ:

The same objections to Robotics still apply. It is not really a basic field of knowledge. Would you say that it deserves the same kind of treatment as Biology? It is basically a string of applications. All of the basic theories regarding robotics will be a part of the Computers and Mechanical Engineering technologies. Of course, this can be resolved if we alter the tree structure as Krenske proposed . . .

Krenske:

Your idea is intriguing. I like it. Different levels of technology would allow for a more structured tree with clear tech differentiations. It could also be great for compromises.

All:

As I see it, Krenske proposes four levels to the tech tree:

Level 1 is the most basic theoretical field of study. It would be things like Physics or Biology.

Level 2 techs are subcategories of Level 1 studies and are starting to get more practical. Examples of Level 2 techs would be Mechanics, Electromagnetics, Anatomy, and Ecology.

Level 3 techs are combinations of practical applications. They would be things like Robotics, Cybernetics, Computers, Optics and Shipbuilding.

Level 4 things are applications. They may or may not have percentages attached to them.

My original tech tree included Level 1 and 2 techs, with a few Level 3 things thrown in. LGJ and I spent quite a while debating which Level 2 and 3 techs were important enough to be put in the tree. None of us considered the possibility of stratifying the tree; we considered all techs to be equal.

Then Mark saw our list and decided to rip out everything he saw as junk. He rightly saw that we were giving equal consideration to many different levels of study. He was thinking that only Level 1 techs were important enough to be included. His tech tree was very appealing, as it was simple enough to understand very quickly. Yet it was perhaps too simple in some places, with ballistics and magnets in only one tech.

Krenske's stratification idea would allow us to deal with any of these problems. Mark's list, with a few changes, would be good as the Level 1 tech list. The things he cut out of the tree would be assigned places among Level 2 techs. Application oriented fields of study like Robotics would be level 3 techs.

Usually, this would be a simple hierarchical structure, with a Level 1 tech containing Level 2 techs, which contain Level 3 techs. But some applications cross many fields of study. They would rely on Level 2 techs in different level 1 groups.

Also, some applications would have to rely on different Level 2 techs as time progressed. For Example, Shipbuilding would rely on Woodworking at the beginning, but later it would rely on Metallurgy and in the future it would rely on Synthetics. All of these Level 2 techs would be under the Materials Technology Level 1 tech.

All techs would still have Helper and Vital techs. Vital techs are the ones above them, and helper techs are in different categories. So Metallurgy has Materials Technology as a Vital Tech and Chemistry as a Helper Tech.

In this system, applications would depend on on Level 3 techs. The level of the Level 3 tech(s) would determine the effectiveness of the application.

I think this stratified tech system has a lot of promise. It could resolve many debates. For example, we could turn Mark's Weapon techs into Level 3 techs. I would have no problem with them in that context. We should also be able to easily differentiate the different branches of Physics as Level 2 techs.

Also, this would help the application percentage problem. The Level 3 tech could serve as the application percentage for the individual items or units. The Level 3 techs are so directly related to practical matters that it is easy and realistic to assume that your Ship Building technology determines how good your ships are.

I propose you just take one level-1 tech to start and just sketch out its branches. Otherwise you may go thru a lot of effort just to find there's some innate flaw in the idea.

So, just to make sure I've got it... I take it that Every direct practical profession is in level 3, and level 4 is just single applications themselves? So long as there is a single level at which the player can point and say 'gimme more of That' I think the players will like it and the AI will be able to handle it. Please try really hard to have something more like 50 techs at level 3 rather than 200!

I have had a good think about the military techs and I agree with you that they are not truly basic research techs, they are really general or intermediate techs. (Currently they are more like, sets of like applications that may not be related at all.)

By the way could we use some standardised terms. Basic techs is fine for level 1, General techs for level 2, Specific techs for level 3, and applications for level 4 seems appropriate.

Do you realise the 4 levels allows sub branches of broad scientific areas to be placed in the second level. (Gets rid of a lot of the physics debate.) They also will only become available when the basic tech level reaches a certain point. EG. Physics works as a basic tech when it reaches 15% we get to study mechanics, when we hit 30% we get to study electro magnetics, at 45% we can move on to atomic research, at 60% we may move on to cosmological research etc. Mechanics would not require an additional prereq but the others probably will need some in other physics general tech areas and potentially in completely seperate tech areas. The basic tech is still there slowly ticking along but the research points could flow down to the general techs and then to the specific techs.

Interface wise we could control this with several drill down screens starting with the basic techs and allocation sliders. We could then drill down to a specific basic tech showing the break up of the Rp's down to the general tech level and so forth. If someone really wanted to micromanage there techs then they could but they could stuff up by sidelining a tech that may later be important. (A button to reset the RP flow to evenly spread would be good.) It may even be possible to withhold a few points for use specifically on applications. (The old throw money at it and it may come quicker approach) Certain SE choices would limit how much control a player can have over research flow.

Just a general observation. The tech model in civ 2 was a tree, There is nothing that bad with a properly designed tree. Its just that Civ and civ2's trees were badly built.
We can use a tree of applications but it would be closely tied to a specific tech. The tree itself would be small. Personally Id prefer no trees just a modifier influenced random application system that mostly gives the historic trees but it may allow for some oddities. (eg semi auto / revolver muskets etc.)

Dang simul-posts! This refers to two posts above.

Everything you say sounds fine to me except the interface... I picture the interface as being run at the Specific tech (3) level. The player IMO, generally doesn't really give a damn about Physics or Economics, they want the stuff that will allow them to get applications. In fact I really hated the new idea from both a player, and AI perspective, until it occurred to me that the management should really be done at the Specific Tech level. After that, it seemed just fine! I do like the educational aspect of knowing what the foundations are for a specific application. But making the player drill down endlessly through menus to exert some fine control on the technology process seems like a losing idea to me.

The picture I have is that the player can be presented with many Specific Techs at the same time coded in "traffic light" fashion. The green ones are ones that could give you immediate benefit in terms of applications. When you put resources into one of these the research points would (Player option) go up levels to push along the higher techs that are needed, and also trickle-down into specific applications that are attainable. This is basically a pretty straight adaptation of the idea I presented in my post around 1300 today. When the specific tech is coded yellow, you are close to being able to use some applications in, but not quite there yet. In this case research points that you put into it would go mainly up levels to further the basic technologies that this Specific Tech relies upon. When it gets practical to actually get applications out of it, it would turn green. Finally, the red ones (which might or might not be shown) would be very far from practicality. If you decided to put resources into these the resources would be directed completely "upwards" to build the foundations that will eventually result in this Specific Tech coming to fruition.

Anyway that's my two cents worth.

Yeah they are annoying.

As to the interface your proposal is based on allocating for lots of small areas and that it then flows up. Or in otherwords the RP flows from small to large. Mine went the opposite large to small. Either would not be difficult to implement for AI.

In mine we would just use a template of expenditure modified by the civs current situation. (A civ at war will skew towards military techs, A civ that has run out of land and has no neighbours will skew towards maritime spending.)

In yours the AI would do a similar thing using skewing factors based on the current situation.

> That might be more like 100 or so, since a lot of the modern ones won't come into play until much later in the game. Also, by the time you get to the modern world, many Specific techs will have completely disappeared (for instance the whole woodworking branch should be gone).

I didn't think of that. Your right. A number of the specific tech areas would just vanish or not be visible at any one time. For example theoretical cosmology wouldn't even appear until quite recently. And many of the early specific techs will be fully researched. They could be displayed based on their primary base tech because I think that you will still wish to limit the number displayed at any one time. Actually you would have 4 different statuses of the techs. Ones that are fully researched, application techs, researchable techs and incomprehensible techs. Spending would be limited to the middle 2 and as you say the application tech expenditure would split between going back up the levels and on applications, while withresearchable tech it all moves back up the levels. The techs should be given a visibility rating to signify how far ahead you can see them coming (to put it in driving terms).

We may need to allow for funding the general areas directly rather than all coming through the specific techs.

> Basically, there might be some heated discussion, but we could just enforce that each core game model gets at most 10 Specific techs (perhaps giving military 20) and winnow it down that way. But before going to all that effort, I'd say we need to see if the model feels good!

Alright, so for hard science we would have (example only I'm sure I've missed some) physics, chemistry, biology, geology etc, as the general areas. The specific areas would be limited. Physics would have 5-6 specific branches.

Rich and Kereske
That sounds okay but we would have to add a fifth layer.

Level 5 are items/improvements/structures (IIS). The differance from IIS and application tech is that the latter are things like genetic engineering, automotive technology, crop rotation. IIS are things like regrowable body parts, genetic weapons, cars, trucks, vans, tanks, plow, etc.

Application techs are more of ideas for the most part while IIS are more physical uses of those applications.

We do not need a fifth layer. Applications are items, improvements, and structures. The things like genetic engineering, automotive technology, and crop rotation would be Level 3 technologies. Robotics and Cybernetics would also be good for lLevel 3 technologies, while applications would be things like Robotic Tanks.

Interface:

There ahould be different options to this. The default model would, in early time periods, have your people develop Level 1 and Level 2 technologies avdance automatically based on social and economic conditions. Level 3 techs are the ones that can be supported by your government, as the player spends RP's to advance practical knowledge.

As you get closer to the modern era, your government gains the ability to influence the upper layers of tech growth. In the modern era, you can and must support reaearch for all levels of technology.

Another option for interface would be to allow the player to influence all levels of the tech tree throughout history. Some players would want that.

On the other extreme, there should be the option to make tech growth completely independent of player control. This historically accurate model would force the player to take and use tech progress as it comes bu means beyond the player's control. This would be an interesting possibility.

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Krenske:
Of course if we use just the following as the base techs.
1. Production Technologies
2. Transportation, Communications, and Commerce
3. Arts and Popular Arts
4. Hard Sciences
5. Soft/Social Sciences
6. Government, Law, and Management
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I don't like this at all. These are not really technologies. Also, if this was Level 1 then we would have to compress too many types of techs into Level 2 and the structure of the system would be confused and weakened. The Level 1 techs should be academic fields of study like Physics.
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Do you realise the 4 levels allows sub branches of broad scientific areas to be placed in the second level. (Gets rid of a lot of the physics debate.)
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Yes, I realise this. I specifically mentioned it in my post.
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EG. Physics works as a basic tech when it reaches 15% we get to study mechanics, when we hit 30% we get to study electro magnetics, at 45% we can move on to atomic research, at 60% we may move on to cosmological research etc.
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I was planning something like that. But Mechanics would cone a lot earlier, possibly even 1%. It was the very first thing about Physics to be studied.

Naming:

I would prefer the following mane system:
Level 1: Basic Technologies
Level 2: General Technologies (actually this doesn't sound exactly right, does anyone heve another idea?)
Level 3: Applied Technologies
Level 4: Applications

I will continue to use the Level description until this is settled.

Example:

The previous level technology is always a vital tech. Percentages are not the required level; they are the level that makes acquisition easier and more likely. Other vital techs are listed, as well as helper techs, which have no percentage.

Level 1 Tech: Physics

Level 2 Techs:

Mechanics: Physics 1%

Magnetism: Physics 20%

Optics: Physics 30%, Geometry

Electromagnetic Theory: Physics 50%

Atomic Physics: Physics 70%

I don't yet have a list of all of teh Level 3 technologies, but they would be things like Atomic Fission, Computers, Electronics, or Fiber Optics. Note that most of these are multidisciplinary; they are also a part of other Level 1 hierarchies. So there will not be a huge number of unique techs in every Level 1 technology. I think it is reasonable to have a somewhat large number of Level 3 technologies because they will be well organised and easy to deal with.

Website:
I noticed that the Clash web page still has the old technology model. We should probably let people know that we are working on somethng new.

Tree Revision: I will start working on the multilayered tree for a new post. Unless something else comes up that needs to be included, it should be done by next weekend.