ITT we design a brand new tech tree.

Okay guys, a new step has been added to the top of the list:

List all terrain types, features, resources, and improvements; as well as movement costs, combat modifiers, and yields and yield modifiers. Keep in mind the following advice as you pitch your suggestions: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

No other steps are open. This step must be finished before anything else can get done. I also removed everything not pertaining to this step from the top post to avoid distraction (don't worry, it's all saved on my computer and I'll put it back once we're ready for it.)

I suggest to make resource detection techs a whole era before the resource utilization techs (IE a lot less expensive).

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I agree that resource reveals need to be 1-2 techs before they're used, but an entire era seems too much, and likely to be realistically illogical.

Basically the whole game is set up poorly so changing the tech tree without changing everything else is not a sound proposition.

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I tend to agree; you can't change techs without changing units, you can't have techs change yields without reconsidering tile yields, you can't change techs without considering buildings, which means you need to think about specialist slots, and so forth.

I'd start by resetting all land and resource values to be the same as in civ4 (including changing un-irrigated farms to produce 0 more food or cancel the ability to build them until certain techs), then changing all city growth formulas and unit/building costs to balance with this (you'll have to slow down city growth because there will be a lot more food from irrigated farms and resources)

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I would disagree with this. There's nothing particularly magical about the Civ4 values, and there are some good reasons for some of the Civ5 changes.
In particular, the Civ4 AI can't chain irrigation nearly as effectively as a human player can. A human player can build a big line of irrigation across a wide area so that a city can have farms even if its not near fresh water, but an AI can't do that.
Besides which, realism: most agriculture is rainfed and always has been, its unrealistic to pretend that cities can't exist without irrigated agriculture.

I agree that its worth considering changing tile yields (at the moment, hammers are too valuable relative to other yields), but this needs to be done very, very carefully, as this drives a huge amount of the game.
But it really bugs me that for example farms can go up by yields of 2 (to 4 on a grassland) but mines only go up by 1.
I think the end goal should be to try to make 1 food ~= 1 hammer ~= 1 gold in terms of yields.

One possibility is to rename Dynamite to Explosives and have it give a passive mine boost, while splitting Artillery unit off to a separate tech (ballistics, gunnery, breach-loading, indirect fire?).

Just remember you can't remove any techs, as they'll screw up future DLC.

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Mods aren't going to be designed to work easily with DLC. If more DLC arrives, then you have to update the mod.
There's no reason why some techs couldn't be removed or have their name changed or their effect change.
A mod that changes the tech tree significantly shouldn't be expected to be easily compatible with things designed for vanilla.

Alphabet is WRITING & CodeofLaws is pretty much a toss coin between PHILOSOPHY and CIVIL-SERVICE... effects, functionality, justice, corruption control ala-Civ-xx, preqs aside

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I agree that I don't see a huge gameplay advantage from splitting alphabet from writing, and code-of-laws might fit better in Civ5 as a social policy than a tech.

Alright, i'll patch up some sort of a chart_table thingy to include everything neatly to represent how i feel about a few tiny key changes. May take a few days though.

In general...
1) Mountains & Hills should yield more while some sort of new Terraforming capacity should be introduced to recycle_reset Workers effectiveness beyond Medieval or straight with Fertilizer.
2) Natural Wonders do add some fascinating variety. Similar principles should be attempted for Bonus & Luxury Resources.
3) Without Stone, Copper, Wood, Salt, Sulfur and Silicon i'm a bit in a loss situation... but i feel STRATEGIC resources could gain hugely more importance in how much Units depend on any worldwide quantities available. Ex; Silly Destroyers without need for Oil -duh.
4) Improvements "upscaling" (as hinted by Ahriman above!) might also be a consideration worth exploring. No doubt, Mining first.
5) I'd even go as far as to suggest a "Decimals driven" system for everything from Yields to Resources output/input. Expanding them linearly instead of integral processing. The whole math estimates of such 1.1--9 range would be highly complex though.

Soooo, later.

Zyxpsilon said:

I'd even go as far as to suggest a "Decimals driven" system for everything from Yields to Resources output/input. Expanding them linearly instead of integral processing. The whole math estimates of such 1.1--9 range would be highly complex though.

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As long as you make sure some power of 1/2 is a factor in every decimal value (e.g. 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, or even 0.0625), there won't ever be a problem with rounding issues.

And remember that any values that are put up already are entirely subject to change, based on general consensus.

Well, i knew it -- there ARE numerous other mods which already made huge attempts at modding the Yields for good (or weird!) reasons.
So, i'd highly recommend some thorough analysis of Alpaca's PlayWithMe first & foremost before trying to adapt items for ITT.

I still have some "specific" ideas of my own and yet, the more i consult the above the more i feel these tweaks are actually fair enough within *HIS* concept.
Yours may differ eventually - given.

Resource yields of the PlayWithMe mod (unimproved, improved):

Iron 2H 4H
Coal 2H 4H
Horse 1H2G 2H4G
Oil 1H2G 2H4G
Aluminum 1H1G 2H1G1S
Uranium 1H 2H2S

Wheat 2F 4F (plus CS, etc.)
Cow 1F1H 3F1H
Sheep 1F1G 2F2G1H
Deer 2F 4F
Banana 2F1G 4F1G
Fish 2F 3F1G

Whale 1F1G 1F2G2H
Pearls 1F2G 1F5G
Gold 2G 3G1C (6G1C with mint)
Silver 2G 5G (8G with mint)
Gems 3G 6G
Silk 3G 6G
Fur 2G 5G
Cotton 2G 5G
Marble 1G1H 2G1H1C
Incense 2G 2G2C
Dyes 2G 4G1C
Ivory 1G1H 4G1H
Spices 1F1G 1F4G
Sugar 1F1G 1F3G
Wine 1F1G 2F2G

Unless anyone objects in the next 24 hours, these will be used.

I think the right approach is to have yields increase over time with techs, rather than to necessarily be massively superior even in the early game.

Here we go...

I got quite busy with a whole "analysis" of the Yields/Terrains/Features/Resources(LBS) and ended up with a complete overhaul of some key-items.

On the included spreadsheets (ODS/OpenOffice & MS_XLS), you'll have all changes clearly listed and explained.

1) In the FPGSCH columns, yields which are in RED values represent what could be altered.
2) The Combat Modifiers & Move Costs columns were left empty since i feel they need not be modified.
3) The new "Terra-Forming" concept (through some new Worker Actions and/or Automatic) is also extensively developped with all new yieldings, Techs required and what they can be referenced with.

Don't be fooled by the strange numbers or by what they might indicate individually; this was extensively evaluated for gameplay impacts and i concluded "Industrial & Modern" Eras are *HUGELY* pivotal to the Terraforming twist. Even the Units dependencies to resources might need to be re-designed according to the supplemental "features"... i would have preferred integrating Stone, Wood, Salt, Sulfur & Silicon to better balance everything with these values (while taken into some specific context, btw) but, well - it's an entirely different issue.

Consult & use as you wish; If only the template might become handy!

Two weeks without anything... are abandoning this project, Ramesses?

Yes.

(5 chars)

There's a pretty comprehensive tree for the Caveman 2 Cosmos mod for Civ4. Not sure if the guy making it would mind or not, but it seems like it'll be a good reference point. It covers a lot of technologies prior the the 'ancient' era start of civs, and techs beyond Civ's usual endline

Zyxpsilon said:

Two weeks without anything... are abandoning this project, Ramesses?

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That's what happens to most wiki-designed projects. There's a reason there's a "lead designer" in most cases.