Is this it. Point 1 = .99^1 = .99
point 2 = .99^2 = .98
.
.
point 50 = .99^50 = .60
.
.
point 200 = .99^200 = .13

Actual points added equals the sum of all results.

This seems very processor intensive, It may be quicker to just say the first 100 points are worth 1 each the next 100 are worth .9 etc.

I'm not sure I like the diminishing returns bit at all but I think there should be a minimum at some point. Maybe we could use a number of levels of intensity for a civ based on SE factors regarding the rate of research within the civ. If 10% of research on one item then as normal. Each point over that is at 66%, each over 50% of total research is at 33%.

Hang on that's confusing let me put it another way.

% of research into an area	value of each point less than threshold
10	100
50	.66
100	.33

It is a fairly quick system to use and if we were to limit the techs to just 10-12 tags then this could be a usefull distribution system. We can even include certain minimums etc based on social and governmental factors. We could actually have two sets of bars, one is just a indicator of use related research,( research gained within a field by the users eg. Farmers generating points towards farming.) The second set is the government spending sliders. We could apply the diminishing returns factor to both or either set.

I think there's something wrong there... in your analysis that the helper techs cannot work as advertised.

Quotes:
---
Without the helper tech, dk would have been 1-0.4, or 0.6. The tech level would have gone from 20 to 22.01. . .

Without helpers, tech growth would have stopped at a tech level of 33.22 because the tech upkeep at that level would be 100 RP’s
---
I don't see how it would work to have helper techs penalize research progress sometimes. Could you explain what you were thinking of?

LGJ: You have k confused with the tech level. k=2 represents twice as much knowledge as k=1 and k=4 represents twice as much knowledge as k=2. It is a linear scale, not a logarithmic one like the tech levels are.

BTW lots of good work!

On the 'helper' techs hindering. Consider:

Economics with helpers Mathematics, Social Sciences.

Current levels
Econ 60%
Math 12%
Social Sciences 60%

In your formula you get a Bonus for the Abyssmal level of Math. In reality your Math should be Preventing you from ever getting far above say 30% in Econ. Essentially as soon as Math is needed to advance economic theory the whole thing should come to a grinding halt .

IMO the helpers' contribution should be its knowledge level Relative to the current tech or some such. In that case Math would impose the huge penalty it should on Econ progress.

That's my view of it anyway.

Richard and LGJ:

One more issue I'm wrestling with. It seems to me that the kind of actions that prevent tech backsliding are essentially different from those that result in actual innovation.

Maintaining tech is mostly an issue of using it, and maintaining education levels (for modern mostly). It really requires only a pale shadow of what you need to innovate.

Adding to tech requires a host of other things, most of which are heavily influenced by the society in question. Among these are: contact with new ideas, availability of capital, limited levels of corruption, an innovative cast to society, and many other things we have talked about before.

It seems to me we may be making our modelling life harder, and getting skewed results by taking care of tech maintenance and innovation with the same flavor of RPs.

Thoughts?

I'd have to disagree with you about the dichotomy between upkeep and gaining tech. All of the things that you mentioned for innovation also play a part in upkeep. And don't forgat that tech gain is not necessarily innovation. A large part of it is a simple improvement on something currently being used. Constant use and improvement is the main thing that makes tech rise IMO.

Consider Medieval Europe. That had little trade or economic activity and were not an educated society, and yet there was a constant and steady improvement in farming, manufacture, and many other skills during this time period. The techs rose simply because they used them a lot.

Application Factor

After running the numbers on this, I have found that the current exponential model should be tweaked a little. The current equation works as follows:

Symbols:

T: This is the tech level of some specific tech. It may have a number after it when multiple techs are used (T1, T2).

h: This determines the effect that a technology has on the application it influences. It may have a number after it when multiple techs are used h1, h2). That number will correspond to a certain technology number.

R: This is the tech level required for an application. It may have a number after it when multiple techs are used (T1, T2). That number will correspond to a certain technology number.

L: This is the longevity of an application, a number between 0 and 10 that determines how long an application should be around before it will have to be replaced.

E: A factor that multiplies the power or effectiveness of an application.

Equations:

RTL = (h1*(T1-R1) + h2*(T2-R2) + ...)/(h1+h2+...)

E = (1+ L/10) ^ (RTL/10) when RTL is positive or zero.

E = (10+RTL)/10 when RTL is negative.

The RTL will be zero if all techs are at the required value, so E will be 1. After that, the application effectiveness rises based on the RTL and L. If L were equal to ten, then the E would rise just as fast as the tech level; the application would never become obsolete.

Let ka be 2^(RTL/10).

This system does not work well for lower L values. One thing that I think should happen is that the effectiveness of an application should initially rise slightly faster then the knowledge level (ka) increases. This simulates the fact that new things have a lot of room for improvement, and will improve quite a bit after they are introduced.

This exponential model does not allow for such improvement. In fact, E will always be lower than ka unless L is ten. This means that the ideal of diminishing returns will not be achieved. In fact, low L values will hardly ever produce any returns; E will always be about 1.

The dynamics of my old linear system worked very well for the period shortly after the tech was discovered. E rose more rapidly than ka at first, but soon got into diminishing returns. At ten tech levels above the invention of the application, E was equal to ka. At twenty tech levels above invention, E was 3 while ka was 4. At that point the application was considered obsolete, and a new thing would be invented to replace it. For tech levels below invention, the old system acted the same way as the current one does. The problem with that system was that it was not very flexible and did not consider longevity.

To get a better description of this system, look at the first post in the Technology System 5.1 thread.

I have found that the strengths of the two systems can be combined by literally adding them together. So:

E = (10+RTL)/10 + L/10 ^ (RTL/10) when RTL is positive or zero.

E = (10+RTL)/10 when RTL is negative.

My old system is a special case (L=0) of this new equation.

For values close to the invention point (R1, R2, . . .) the linear term predominates, producing the short term rise in E and then the diminishing returns. But in the long run, the exponential term and the L value have more effect. If L=10 there are no significant diminishing returns and E will always be slightly higher than ka.

To see how L affects this system, we can look at how it affects two points. The break-even point is defined as the RTL when E=ka. At that point, the application has the same value that it would have if it were rising at the same rate as the knowledge level. Before this point, the application effectiveness is greater ka to represent the rapid increase of the effectiveness of something after it is introduced.

The next point is the obsolescence point. At that RTL value, the E value is three-fourths of the ka value. This is about the time that a new application should appear to replace the old one. Note that this thing does not stop working at this point. In fact, it works better than it ever did before. But the rate of its increase is not a lot lower than the rate of tech increase. The thing has been improved about as much as it can, and a new application will be better than it is.

This chart shows how L affects the break-even point and the obsolescence point. B and O are in terms of the RTL.

L; B; O
10; never; never
9; 44.6; 70.46
8; 35.05; 49.76
7; 29.53; 41.14
6; 25.56; 35.76
5; 22.24; 31.86
4; 19.63; 28.77
3; 17.15; 26.19
2; 14.80; 23.59
1; 12.46; 21.90
0; 10; 20

As you can see, this allows for a wide range of application lifetimes while keeping good diminishing returns dynamics.

Technology Tags:

So far, each technology has the following numbers attached to it:

Ts, the tech level it starts at.
m, the effectiveness of RP’s in advancing the technology.
c, the percentage of the knowledge (k) that can be lost in one turn. This determines the difficulty of tech upkeep.
T1 and v1, T2 and v2, . . ., the vital technologies that affect this technology, and the numbers that determine how much they affect it.
T1 and h1, T2 and h2, . . ., the helper technologies that affect this technology, and the numbers that determine how much they affect it.

These numbers are all that are needed to determine the mathematics that drive the tech advancement, but they are not enough to describe the technology from a player interface or AI perspective. To describe the technology’s primary effects and usefulness, tags will have to be added to the technology.

These tags will correspond to the things that need to be done in the civilization. I can think of the following tags:

Cash Flow
Control
Exploration / Movement
Food
Happiness
Health
Infrastructure
Military
Production
Pure Science
Standard of Living

Obviously this list will have to be altered, but those work for a start.

Each technology will be labeled with all of the tags with a number attached to each tag. That number tells how important that tech is to that activities related to that tag. Zero would mean useless and 10 would mean that the tech is extremely useful.

Let this number be called Z. Z stands for, “I’ve already used up all the good letters so I’m picking something more or less at random.”

A player who really doesn’t want to mess with the tech tree can simply order cash put into one of those tags. The research will be divided among the technologies based on Z values, with higher numbered tech getting more of the RP’s.

I don’t know how exactly how multiplayer games will work, but if there is a time limit and you have to deal with some other crisis, then this would be a big help.

These tags would also make the AI smarter and easier to program. Normally, the AI would just make everything grow about the same rate. But if there is a problem, then the computer can invest in technologies based on the Z values for the tag that the computer needs to improve. So if the computer is having chronic problems with rebellious provinces, it invests in Happiness and Control technologies.

Tags have another purpose. Aside from determining where RP’s should go, they also define where they came from. Certain activities will generate tagged RP’s that are automatically spent based on the Z value attached to that tag. For example, an agricultural province would generate RP’s that are tagged for Food. Those RP’s are assigned to technologies with the Food tag.

A preliminary idea for distribution or RP’s would be to give each tech a percentage of the total RP spent as follows:

For every tech, raise 2 to the power of Z/2 and then subtract one. Call this the Y value.

Add up all of these values to find the X value.

Each tech gets a percentage of the total RP’s spent equal to Y / X.

When splitting RP's among tagged techs, some preference should be given to techs that are lagging behind. Not only will these techs be easier to gain and keep up, but they are also the techs that are probably holding things back.

LOL on the 'Z' comment

I think the tag stuff looks good! I think we might possibly need a sub-tag system under it, especially for the AI. But what you have will definitely be sufficient for demo 5. I'm sure one of the other model leaders will speak up if something big has been missed.

I hate to be a wet blanket, but there is a big problem with your effectiveness equation:
E = (10+RTL)/10 + L/10 ^ (RTL/10) when RTL is positive or zero.
The trouble is for nonzero L when RTL equal 0, you get E = 2 instead of 1 as it should be! I'm not too worried about this, because I think we can come up with a decent formula using a polynomial fit or something if worse comes to worse.

Any thoughts on the "relative helper tech influence idea"? I had one that I think I'll pass on and see what you think about it. I'll go back to the example that I used in my immediately preceding post. So we have Economics which depends on Math and Social Sciences. My idea is to just to use a simple formula similar to the old effectiveness formula (your earliest one) to get the Current Difficulty of researching a technology. The Current Difficulty formula will oscillate to both sides of zero, and is on the same basic scale (percent in technology level) as the RTL formula.

This is Not well thought out. It is more in the way of a thought starter. I may not have covered all the bases, but I think this is enough to get the general idea across.

So we would have something like the helper tech modifier to research progress is...
H = (10+ CD)/10
there would be a minimum value of H of something like 0.05 to stop this expression from going negative.

Symbols:
T: This is the tech level of some specific tech. It may have a number after it when multiple techs are used (T1, T2).
h: This determines the effect that a technology has on the application it influences. It may have a number after it when multiple techs are used (h1, h2). That number will correspond to a certain technology number.
O: This is the tech level offset applied to a particular helper tech. It may have a number after it when multiple techs are used (O1, O2). When the offset is positive it means that the particular helper tech involved doesn't require as high a level of achievement as the technology that is currently being researched.
CD: the Current Difficulty level for a technology.

We will probably need some modifications if we go with this since I haven't thought out in detail all the changes necessary to implement it.

CD = (h1*(T1 +O1-T) + (h2*(T2 +O2-T) +...)/(h1+h2+...) where T is the level of the technology being researched, in this case Economics

So let's make up some values and see what effect this formula has. So in contributing to economics we have:
Math: O1 = + 10; h1 = 2
Social Sciences: O2 = +0; h2 = 5
so in words... social sciences is generally a more important helper technology (strength = 5 vs. 2) for economics. Because of the + 10 in the offset Math can be a positive contributor to social science even if it is behind the current level of social science. It will be a positive contributor until it falls ten points below the relevant Economics level. If it gets even worse than that will start seriously hurting your ability to research Economics. So let's see what the CD looks like for my previous example where math should holdback economics progress.

Current levels
Econ 60%
Math 12%
Social Sciences 60%

If you plug in all the numbers you get CD = - 10 using the parameters above. This level would cause a severe retarding effect on progress in economics. The nominal value of H is zero, and it would default to whatever the minimum value we pick is. So in this case we get the desired result that when mathematics is sufficiently bad, economics can only get so far. You would probably never even get to the illustrated case, because extreme diminishing returns on research invested into Economics would show up around Economics 50% unless the Social Sciences were so good that they compensated for the math being lousy.

If Math were 50%, then CD = 0, the helper technologies neither help nor hinder in the research of Economics (H = 1).

There was no E=2 problem on paper and in my calculator, but as I transferred the equation to the computer I mistyped it. In the old system, E was 1+(RTL/10). This was often typed as (10+RTL)/10. I had fixed the equation so that the 1 was replaced by the exponential term. All of the numbers and analyses you saw were based on the equation:

E= RTL/10 + (10+L)/10 ^ (RTL/10) when RTL is positive or zero

When I typed up the equation, I somehow moved the "10+" from the L term to the RTL term.

Sorry for the confusion. I should have proofread that better.

Helper techs:

The CD, like the RTL, is a good idea. I don't understand the name and would prefer something like Relative Helper Level (RHL), but that is a minor issue.

However, I do see a problem in the way that the CD is turned into H. Tech levels are on a logarithmic scale and so is the CD, but the equation H = (10+ CD)/10 changes H in a linear fashion based on CD.

I would prefer something like the following equation:

H = 2^(RHL/W)

W would probably be ten, but there might be a need to increase or decrease it.

With this equation, the helper tech effect H changes at a rate similar to the change in the knowledge level of the civ. Also, there would be no need for an artificial cutoff. H would never be zero; it would simply get smaller and smaller as RHL decreased.

On the E = 2 problem that isn't... That's good to know. Looks good, at least good enough to take a first shot at it in demo 5 using that formula.

Don't worry about the name CD... it was just a placeholder. The idea was what I really wanted to get across. I really like your formula for H. However I think that the coefficient W needs to be something like 3 or even less. My justification is that a deficiency of ten points should result in a huge penalty toward achievement in the area, and a penalty of 1/2 just doesn't cut it. If we used a coefficient W = 3 then a deficiency of ten points of tech would reduce the research rate by about a factor of ten which I think is about right.

With this modification I think the research rate model will work well in the original way we conceived it, without the square root stuff for non-vital helper techs. I will wait a little bit and let you try and analyze it first, and see if you come up with any glitches in this way to use it. In parallel I'll try and return to the use of the economic model technologies as the first test of the system as soon as I can. That way I can see if there's any problems with the new approach from the "actually using it" end.

Don't forget that H affects RP's before the tech loss term is considered. This means that if H is 0.5 then you have cut research in half before subtracting the considerable tech loss factor. This would almost always be the difference between gaining and losing technology levels.

Also, a small W value will give you insane RP gains for a relatively small advance in helper technologies. If W was three and the RHL was nine, then the number of RP's that you got would be multiplied by eight, even though the helper techs were less than twice as good as the tech being affected!

When you consider O values, the problem gets worse. If the O value of the helper techs was six and the techs were the same level, then RP's would be quadrupled if W were three!

I would actually recommend a W value between 15 and 20. This would greatly reduce these drastic and destabilizing effects.

As the system currently works, about 80% of your RP's go to the upkeep of the technology, with the excess going to improve the tech. Anything that decreases RP effect by some percentage will be devastating. Similarly, anything that increases the effect of RP's by some percentage would have a very high effect on tech growth. A doubling of RP effect would multiply tech growth by five, and a halving of RP effect would cause a lot of tech loss.

I think that we should fix the system so that H can never cause RP generation to fall below the level needed to maintain the technology. I don't think that it is reasonable to lose technology because the helper techs are too low. Once you discover some technology, increasing that tech to a level above the helper tech should not make the technology fall.

Perhaps H could only have an effect on RP's in excess of the number required to maintain the tech level. This would prevent the problems with large tech fluctuations due to changing RHL, and allow someone to make emergency investments without severe penalties.

So the formula would be:

Let Re be ((m*RP)-ck)

dk=Re*H if Re is positive or zero
dk=Re if Re is zero

A possible problem with that is that a high RHL would not make tech upkeep easier. You could assume that that education and use will not be affected much ny helpers. I think this is reasonable, especially because I don't believe that a low RHL should make tech upkeep harder.

Serious tech loss should probably only come into play a few times during the whole game. The times it would really happen would be during catastrophic civ-wide events like the fall of the Roman Empire. By having a very large fraction of total RPs going to upkeep you're going to lock what happens in the tech model into a very narrow range, that I think is undesirable. I think something more like 20% or 30% of RPs required for maintenance is more appropriate. That way if a huge disaster strikes and nobody builds aqueducts anymore, you can understand people forgetting how to do it. But in general is should not be difficult at all to maintain a level. Of course if you accept this suggestion, you'll need to change the parameters so that it takes significantly more to make progress in a tech area, balancing out the job that the tech maintenance used to have. But unless you can see any big flaws in what I'm saying, that seems like a better way to go.

Anyway, this approach would mean that helper levels could have somewhat more effect without really screwing up the system

At one time or another, a civ will be faced with one of these problems, so the RP generation, and tech model in general should account for such things.

I guess what I'm leading to is that tech loss on 80% is way to high, even Mark's may be to high (20-30%) to historically account for such things as plague, war, and other disasters. Unless, I somewhere missed the point of even having such things, in which case I don't know what I'm doing working on them!

By the way, losing RP's would not have caused your tech to wither away completely. Losing half of your RP's would have resulted in the tech stabilizing at about eight levels below what it was before.

One thing that still bothers me with the current setup (tech growth being driven by a difference between total RPs and those required for maint) is the huge difference we historically had in mind between societies at different ends of the "innovative" scale. Perhaps the modifiers to RP generation for innovative societies should be applied on only the surplus after maintenance is paid. This has the right feel to me, in than non-innovative cultures don't backslide all that frequently, they just don't make as much progress. We could make maint RPs be paid before mods for helper techs also as you suggested above, merging my suggestion and your previous point.

Also, we had discussed two societal factors, I and E. I means innovation or influence, and is the effect of societal factors on tech growth. It would affect m. E referrs to education or the difficulty of maintaining technology, and would affect c.

We are ignoring these for Demo 5, but I had planned on asking Garth to put a place for them so we can work on those equations when the social model has been finished.

Sounds reasonable. I will leave you in peace so you can actually write the framework in sufficient detail to give to Garth. Changing specific equations and constants should be very little work anyway if there are glitches we need to iron out.

Your formula is Tn+1=10/ln(2)*ln((2^((Tn-Ts)/10))+(m*RP-(c*(2^((Tn-Ts)/10))))+Ts
Btw, why are you using a natural logarithm instead of a base 2 one?

Among these, both RP and c are affected by the actual duration of the Civil Turn, but if you adjust them proportionately, the final outcome for a given time period will be different. If we refer T to a given time period (the smallest), we do not have to change RP and c, but the final outcome will still be different. T(to+n*dt)/T(to) is a factor converging to some limit (not e=2,71 this time, since the formula is more complex) as the number of turns involved (n) tends to infinity. The modification of T during a single turn will have to be adjusted according to this factor.

I used the natural logarithm because it was easier to work with. The current system works just fine according to all of my tests, but there might be a possibility of this fouling something up. Unless there is some programming reason not to, we should probably switch to base two logatithms.

I would like to put in a bid for you to reconsider things like techs that start at level 10% in 1750. That seems to me to be an Extremely Confusing way to go about it. (LGJ and I have had this argument before) The applications already provide a way for making things change in effectiveness faster or slower than the overall tech percentage. My take on it is that it is a good unifying concept to have all the technologies of player is likely to have at a given time at something like the same level + or -10%. Also, if we keep them all on the same scale the player can have a meaningful Overall technology level (although obviously some things will be higher or lower).

I understand why you want to do it the other way. It's clearly better if you want to keep a rigorous scale on the knowledge doubling. But the "knowledge amount" is frankly a completely arbitrary scale anyway. I just think that the way that I have put it above will be much simpler for the player to keep track of. I think that having a simple rule of thumb that allows the player to gauge which are there more advanced technologies, and which are laggards, is of much more value than knowing that computers start at 10 percent with 1950s technology.

In your opinion, is the next major thing for discussion of the specification on how RPs are actually generated?

These equations are the same for all levels of technologies. The only real difference between Level 1, 2, and 3 technologies is the way the interface treats them.

Constants and Variables for Tech Growth:

MV and GV: These determine the overall rate of tech change based on knowledge increase. MV means Multiplier Variable and GV means Growth Variable. The overall knowledge is multiplied by MV for every GV rise in tech level. MV used to be set at 2 and GV used to be set at 10.

Tn: The tech level on the turn before the calculations.

Tn+1: The tech level after the calculations.

m: This constant determines the effect that RP’s have on the growth and maintenance of a certain technology. It will probably be set to about 0.01, but can be changed for each tech.

c: This constant determines the amount of upkeep that a certain technology requires. It will usually be around 0.02, but can be different for different techs.

Ts: This is the level that a technology is at when it is first discovered.

E: This variable influences the difficulty of maintaining a technology. It will be influenced by the social and government model, among other things. It will not be functional for Demo 5, but we should prepare a place for it. For now, it will be equal to one.

H: This variable is the total influence of all helper technologies. It is determined by the following constants, variables, and equations:

HT1 through HTx are the technology levels of the tech’s helper technologies. These would logically have to be the technology levels at the previous turn. A level of technology that was just calculated would not be able to impact something that is theoretically happening simultaneously. For this reason, Tn for every tech should be stored until all of the tech level calculations are finished.

h1 through hx are constants that determine the influence of each helper technology. O1 through Ox are the tech level offsets applied to each helper technology. They give a bonus or penalty to the helper tech levels so that research is easier or harder.

W determines the overall influence of the helper techs. After all of the playtesting is done, we might fix this at a single value, but for now we should keep the ability to alter it so we can test different values. It is defined as something times the gain variable GV, so if we change GV all of the helper equations will still be accurate.

RHL = (h1*(HT1n +O1-Tn)+...+hx*(HTxn+Ox-Tn))

H = MV^(RHL/W)

I: This variable influences the difficulty of raising technology levels. Like E, It will be influenced by the social and government model, among other things. Also like E, it will not be functional for Demo 5, but we should prepare for its inclusion and set it equal to one for now.

DR: This determines what diminishing returns, if any, will be applied to excess RP generation. Like W, it is here for testing purposes and might be fixed in the final model.

The steps from RP to tech change are as follows. V will describe some quantity based on RP’s that is carried over from one step to the next.

1) V1 = RP*m - E*c*(MV^((Tn-Ts)/GV))

2) If V1 < 0, then V2 = V1.
Otherwise:

V2 = H*I*V1^DR

3) Tn+1 = GV/ln(MV)*ln((MV^((Tn-Ts)/GV))+(V2))+Ts

After this process is completed for every technology, the effects of the technology change must be calculated. Some technologies like Sanitation have direct effects on other models based on their level. These effects will probably not be in Demo 5, but we will have to prepare for that functionality in the tech model.

To ensure flexibility, each technology will have to have "Alter Variable" commands that can be defined in the tech editor. All of the variables in other models are defined independently of the technologies. Each individual technology would have the ability to affect those variables in some way. For example, the disease model might define some variable named CLEAN. The number of new people infected by a disease is divided by his variable. The Sanitation technology would then have an Alter Variable command like, "CLEAN=CLEAN*(.04T)" As the tech level increased, CLEAN would increase and disease spread would slow.

Another effect of technology increase is to allow access to a new technology. If the requirements for some technology are met, then that technology is set to its starting tech level and the player is notified of its invention. On the next turn, the tech level of that technology is recalculated.

The main effect of technology, and the one that will be included in Demo 5, will be applications and application factors. The application factors will be calculated for each application as follows:

E is the application effectiveness factor. If the application is a unit, it changes the unit's power. If the application is an improvement, it changes the effect that the thing has.

T1 through Tx are the levels of the technologies that are requirements for the application. R1 through Rx are the tech level requirements for the application. h1 through hx are constants that determine the influence of each required technology on the growth of the application.

L is a constant defined for each application that determines the expected lifetime of the application. G determines the short term growth of the application. F determines how fast the application factor falls with a decline of tech level. G and F have to be defined in terms of GV so a change in GV won't foul things up.

RTL = (h1*(T1-R1)+...+hx*(Tx-Rx))/(h1+...hx)

E=RTL*G+(1+.1*(MV-1)*L)^(RTL/GV) when RTL is positive or zero.
E=(GV+RTL)*F when RTL is negative.

Applications should also eventually have an Alter Variable command. The effect that the application has on some other thing is determined by the application level. For example, a sewer system would have an Alter Variable equation like, "CLEAN=CLEAN*(.2E)" There should also be a tag that tells how much of the civ is affected by this application. In this case, only a small area is influenced. But that is still pretty far in the future.

I would like the tech tree utility to do the following things. If anything here is not feasible, let me know.

1. Set values for MV and GV, and set default values for m, c, W, and DR. It would be good if W was defined in terms of the default GV (GV times something)

2. For every technology, input:
a. Technology name and text description.
b. The level of the technology.
c. Technology requirements and Ts.
d. Values for m, c, and DR. It would be a big help if these were defined in terms of the defaults (default c times some value). This way, we can change the default values and not have to redo individual values; they would keep the same ratio.
e. Helper technologies with O and h for each helper tech, as well as a W value defined in terms of the default value.

It would be nice if parts a through e were in different sections. Also, space should be left for the the Alter Variable section and sections dealing with E and I.

3. For every application, input:
a. Application name and text description.
b. The L, G, and F values of the application. G and F are defined as something times the inverse of the GV value. The default is 1/GV, and we should be able to multiply this by something to change the rate of application change.
c. Technology requirements with an h value for each requirement.

Later, the application editor should have much more functionality, but that is all we need for now.

With this editor, we should be able to define a technology like:

a. Farm Machinery and Equipment
b. Level 3
c. Requires: Agriculture 10% Ts: 10
d. c=default*.7 m=default DR=default
e. Helpers: W=default
Agriculture h=3 O=0
Mechanical Engineering h=2 O=2
f. (later) E=default
g. (later) I=default
h. (later) Alter Variable commands (more food, etc.)

The applications would be defined like:

a. Bombard Cannon
b. L=3 G=default F=default
c. Chemistry--Level 40--h=2
Metallurgy--Level 50--h=3
Physics-Mechanics--Level 30--h=1

Only one thought -- unless this project is radically different from most, this will only resemble the final, coded tech system. If the code only duplicated the functionality of the algorithms here, it would almost certainly be poor, slow code and neither customizable nor upgrade-able. Object-oriented systems do not work in algorithms, they are much more refined systems of objects and interactions, and forcing them to only do subroutines of algorithms robs the code of most of it's power and flexibility.

Just be aware that there are quite a few major architecture issues central to the model that ya'll have not addressed yet.

I'm Certain I've missed some important stuff here. I'm also doing this according to what I think is the most recent agreed approach to level for technologies , and am assuming for our recent agreement that those that are not available at the start run on the same scale as the rest of them. So here there is no Explosives 0%. Explosives would start with the effective use of Gunpowder and might be something like the 20% level. The advantage of doing it this way is that the scales are still the same for all technologies.

Just to make this posting more or less self-contained, I am quoting what the relevant variable names are for the technologies. I have trimmed some parts of the quote and added other parts to make it more understandable...

quote: For level 3 techs and above... HT1 through HTx are the technology levels of the tech’s helper technologies. h1 through hx are constants that determine the influence of each helper technology. O1 through Ox are the tech level offsets applied to each helper technology. They give a bonus or penalty to the helper tech levels so that research is easier or harder. (Added) RHL is a factor similar to the tech level that determines how the level of the helper technologies influence gains in the technology currently being considered. Tn is the technology level for the tech of interest. RHL = (h1*(HT1n +O1-Tn) + . . . + hx*(HTxn +Ox-Tn)) For level 4 applications... RTL = (h1*(T1 - R1) + . . . + hx*(Tx - Rx))/(h1+ . . .hx) E= RTL*G + (1+.1*(MV-1)*L) ^ (RTL/GV) when RTL is positive or zero.

Numbers after a technology indicate offset percentages (Ox above) in the case of level 3 technologies, and required levels Rx for level 4 technologies, and how important the helper technology is to the target technology or application (hx above). So for instance a listing of requisites for a level for a technology of Civil Engineering 5% 3 means that the offset level is +5% (or the required level is 5%), and the strength is three. If there is no entry with a% then the offset level or required level is 0%. For applications I'll also list the longevity L and short-term growth G (although so far I haven't used G). If there is a technology that I want to use as a prerequisite, but that I don't see anywhere, I will precede it with an "?".

Much of the discussion by Richard of my previous proposal centered around making a lot of things into level 3. In my first shot at this proposal I did just that. But then when I thought about going from the tech level numbers to actual effectiveness as I use it in the economic model, everything changed. I Could use the tech levels of level 3 techs in an arbitrary formula to get the effectiveness of farms. This seems counterproductive to me given that we have already gone to all the effort to determine the way to handle effectiveness for level 4 applications. Also, this would then make the economic stuff have a bunch of special cases that didn't follow the general formulas that, for instance, were used for effectiveness in the military area. For that reason I have put together a proposal using primarily level 4 applications. In doing this one can simply get an effectiveness of the farm sector by adding up the effectiveness of all relevant farm applications. This seems Much simpler to me. I have left a version of the old way of doing it after my preferred way. What do you think?

"Level 4 method" (preferred)
Food Area [all are tagged Economy, Sub-Tag Food]
level 2 Agriculture (Biology 4 Earth Sciences 2)
Level 4 Irrigation (Agriculture 3, Civil Engineering 2, Management 2, Mechanical Engineering 2) L = 2; G = 0.1 (the default)
Level 4 Crop Plants (Agriculture 3, Breeding/Genetics 5) L = 3
Level 4 Farm Tools [Plows and Early Agricultural Machines] (Agriculture 2, Mechanical Engineering -3% 2, Draft Animals 5, Metallurgy 3% 3) L = 4
Level 4 Farm Machinery [starts around 40%] (Agriculture 35% 3, Engines 40% 4, Mechanical Engineering 45% 3, Metallurgy 40% 2) L = 13
Level 4 Crop Rotation (Agriculture 5, Ecology 3) L = 3

Within this approach, the effectiveness of the overall farm sector is simply a weighted sum of the effectiveness of all the farming technologies. For instance in arid and hot climates Irrigation will be extremely important, whereas in some other climates it will be unimportant. Farm Tools are essential for progress in early agriculture, but are not nearly as important in modern farm productivity. For heavy soils, Farm Tools would need to exceed some threshold value (indicating heavy plows) for those soils to be farmed effectively. Farm Machinery is what allows true modern agriculture to really take off in terms of productivity (note the high longevity). The boost to overall farming effectiveness in the modern age will also be due to the introduction of some other innovations that I have sketched out below. Note that Farm Tools and Farm Machinery have different prerequisites, and IMO cannot be combined into a single technology without ridiculous results (for instance having modern agriculture being strongly dependent on draft animals!).

Other Level 4 Applications will be Fertilizers & Pesticides, perhaps "modern farming" (computerization, better weather forecasting, etc.) and Specialization (Cash Crops...)
Also need a level 3 technology of Drainage somewhere, maybe under Civil Engineering

"Level 3 method" (which I do not prefer)
Food Area [all are tagged Economy, Sub-Tag Food]
level 2 Agriculture (Biology, Earth Sciences)
Level 3 Irrigation (Agriculture 3, Civil Engineering 2, Management 5% 2, Mechanical Engineering 3% 2)
Level 3 Crop Plants (Agriculture 3, Breeding/Genetics 5)
Level 3 Farm Tools [Plows and Early Agricultural Machines] (Agriculture 2, Mechanical Engineering 3% 2, Draft Animals 5, Metallurgy - 3% 3)
Level 3 Farm Machinery [starts at 40%] (Agriculture 3, Engines 4, Mechanical Engineering 3, Metallurgy 2)
Level 3 Crop Rotation (Agriculture 5, Ecology 3)

Using the latter method I would basically have to duplicate what I do in the "level 4" method in terms of generating something like a longevity to give farm productivity the right scaling with technology.

The original definitions were that Level 3 techs represented knowledge or skill, while Level 4 applications represented a physical thing. A Level 3 thing has instant, global effects, while a Level 4 thing is constructed as per the economic model. A Level 3 thing is something you do, while a Level 4 thing is something you make.

I like these definitions. I think that they should be the rule of thumb. Also, remember that there is no way to give arbitrary bonuses to Level 4 applications. To keep things manageable, these should only depend on technology level.

Based on these definitions, I suggest the following split:

Level 3 Crop Plants (Agriculture 3, Breeding/Genetics 5)
Level 3 Crop Rotation (Agriculture 5, Ecology 3)

These are basically constant over the civ, so they should be Level 3. Exploration would generate free RP's for the Crop Plants tech, which is something you couldn't do if it were an application.

Level 4 Drainage
Level 4 Farm Tools [Plows and Early Agricultural Machines] (Agriculture 2, Mechanical Engineering -3% 2, Draft Animals 5, Metallurgy 3% 3) L = 4
Level 4 Farm Machinery (Agriculture 35% 3, Engines 40% 4, Mechanical Engineering 45% 3, Metallurgy 40% 2) L = 13
Level 4 Fertilizers and Pesticides
Level 4 Irrigation (Agriculture 3, Civil Engineering 2, Management 2, Mechanical Engineering 2) L = 2

These could vary by province; they are things that must be built and maintained. Of course, the player wouldn't direct the building of farm tools themselves, but I think that the level of province infrastructure and its production capacity should have a local effect on these things. A farm's overall effectiveness would depend on all of these techs, but in the case of the Level 4 equipment, the farm's effectiveness can be penalized if the province has bad infrastructure.

In my opinion, you shouldn't get the full benefit of Farm Machinery 90% on a farm in a province lacks the infrastructure to supply gasoline to the tractors.

Irrigation and Drainage are both such large and important projects that they should probably be supervised by the player. The two main functions of governments in ancient Mesopotamia were defense and the upkeep of the irrigation systems.

I think that a seperate tech for "Modern Farming" would be pointless. For things like weather forecasting, it would be better to simply put those effects directly into the tech effects list.

How were you planning on doing cash crops in the player interface? I wouldn't want a sudden food shortage because my people decided to grow nothing but tobacco, but it would also be tedious to micromanage this kind of thing.

I think we should keep the Year 2000 Level 100 rule. It gives a simple, clear yardstick for tech performance. By the way, a tech is lost of its knowledge level ever goes below the starting level, so if something starts at Level 40 it will never be at Level 30.

As for techs rising too fast, I agree with LGJ on that one. I want to keep a strict 10 levels equals double knowledge scale. If you start Electronics out at 70% to make it the same level as everything else, the tech growth scale and the equations will be all messed up and the scale will make a lot less sense. I would like to start things out at some starting tech level that is based on how many times our knowledge in that tech has doubled.

The compromise proposed at the top of Richard's comments looks reasonable to me. My brain is fuzzy at the moment, so I need to reflect on it a bit, but it seems basically sound. The proposed compromise will make the economic model effectiveness a little harder to present, but it does preserve the integrity of the tech system, which is certainly worthwhile.

On the 2000/100 rule... I agree with Richard we should stick with it.

quote: As for techs rising too fast, I agree with LGJ on that one. I want to keep a strict 10 levels equals double knowledge scale. If you start Electronics out at 70% to make it the same level as everything else, the tech growth scale and the equations will be all messed up and the scale will make a lot less sense. I would like to start things out at some starting tech level that is based on how many times our knowledge in that tech has doubled.

Starting Electronics out at 70% in no way that I can see violates keeping a strict 10 levels equals double knowledge scale. Because it's a logarithmic scale you can start it anywhere you want! The difference is only an offset that does not violate the scaling law. The only reason I can see that starting Electronics at 70% will mess up the equations and their results is because of Ts in the tech level change formula. If that's the only problem I would vote to make that term go away. Can you please explain to me what the fundamental difficulty is??? To my mind, a scale where Electronics is at 20% when everything else is at 70% Makes No Sense Whatsoever. I think players will be forever scratching their heads wondering how we had this system where almost everything runs on a 0 [~5000BC] through 100 [now] scale and yet there are these odd little technologies that stick out like sore thumbs. The players don't care one bit about your equations, they will want something that is thematically whole and easy to understand! Of course we could do it, it clearly won't fatally wound the system, but it just makes a lot less sense to me. It also will require a lot of memorization by the players that Electronics 20% is approximately equivalent to Mechanical Engineering 80% and such.

The tech poll is interesting, and it certainly supports the future stuff you've been pushing!

On your main point...
Huh? The future tech levels ARE arbitrary. They are someone's guess against anyone elses. So you start Subspace travel at 250. What exactly is the problem with that? Please give an example as to what the issue is, because I read your words, but don't understand the issue you are trying to present.

LGJ & Richard:

Also if we don't use that last overlly complex approach and instead assign exact numbers say 80% or whatever then those who develope it earlier will still have advantages over those who develope it later if the time periods are too far apart. either that or because of there inablity to keep up costs for RP production they will be much worse off later because someone developed that technology for them too early. If they all start at 0 then everyone will have the same chance at success and if they get ahead too early will slide back down while if they are behind will be able to catch up much more quickly. Plus they know they can't go below 0 so if they loose it, then they know that they will haveto start out at 0 again
besides yours might have a problem is that tech starts at 30 and it goes down to say 5 because of lack of RP in a scenerio where they developed it too early, well its then easier for them too go down to 0 and loose the tech and then rediscover it at 30 then it is to make up the extra 25%. If you force them once they discover it and loose it to start at scratch (0) the second time your still favoring those who took there time to develope it in a more hirstorical manner (some people might not like that idea).

I agree with the merit of the view expressed in your first paragraph. I guess its a matter of the way our individual brains work which approach, yours or mine, would be preferred.

On the latter part of your argument, as far as I understand the system its not really relevant. The math of knowledge change should work the same no matter which choice we make. However I will leave it to Richard, since he has thought about it a lot more, to figure out whether those points of yours are really relevant to the system.

Rodrigo: