Éa, a fantasy mod for Civ5 -- teaser thread

Archer units look far superior to the infantry units. Strength 9/12 is waaaay better than strength 12, particularly when the latter requires a strategic resource and the former doesn't.

I really recommend that you make strategic resources uncommon-to-rare and make the units that require them into elites.

A way to make the recon line more interesting might be to make them actual skirmishers, with a 1-tile low strength ranged attack. That might work better than invisibility, which the AI doesn't tend to handle well.

You might also consider having the elephants have the chariot penalty, where entering rough terrain ends their turn. That might help balance them.

You could also consider a spearman/militia/cannon fodder line. I would worry a bit about having recon units as the only resourceless unit line.

I also think that the way Civ5 handles strategic resources might not be well suited to this kind of FFH-style approach.
In Civ4, a single copy of a resource was enough to support an unlimited number of units, so with a single resource you could gain great profit from pursuing a particular tech line.

In Civ5, the strategic resources enable a very different kind of system, they enable a combined arms approach, where you can only have a few of a particular type, limited by that resource. This works well in a narrow-long tech tree rather than a short-broad tech tree.

Another approach would be to have a core set of expensive "tactics" techs, which governed the main set of military advancement (warrior code/tactics/warfare/conquest or something similar) and provided a weak generic unit, and then have the various military techs be cheaper but require a sufficient level of advancement down the tactics line. This might mean that it would still be worth getting archery techs even if you had only a handful of yew resources available, it would still be worth getting the archery techs, because their marginal cost is modest.

The only other ways I can see things working is either by having so many strategic resources that resource availability isn't really binding (this is how vanilla tends to work for most resources) or by concentrating resources in particular regions so that region X has lots of horses but not much else and region Y has lots of Yew but not much else. But this forces a strong geographic determinism, and doesn't leave the player with much choice of strategy, since they're forced to research whatever resource they have locally.

I think Pazyryk's idea is to have 2 types of strategic resources - some very common (Copper, Iron, Yew, Horse), some rare and enabling elite units (Elephant, Mithril).

A way to make the recon line more interesting might be to make them actual skirmishers, with a 1-tile low strength ranged attack.

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Good idea, I have similar plans for my mod...

If copper, iron, yew and horse are very common, such that you can nearly always have enough to field as many of those units as you want, then what is the point of having them as strategic resources? Why not remove the resources completely? Strategic resources have meaning only if they constrain what you can build.

But if they constrain what you build, then there's the risk that it isn't worth following specialist tech lines in order to only be able to build a few of that unit.
I worry there is a risk of too much of a Civ4 mindset, where the FFH-style unit tech design was fine because a single iron resource was enough to make a melee tech-line worth pursuing, and a single horse was enough to make a cavalry tech line worth pursuing.

I guess you could make the resources fairly rare, but have each copy enable ~6 units or so. That way even a single yew resource makes it worth researching bow techs.

I agree that strategic resources are not limiting in base Civ5. One problem in base is that there are really only two in the early game (horses and iron) and its pretty darned depressing to invest in iron working only to discover that there isn't any. The way I'm doing this is that the "early" strategic resources (i.e., everything but Mithril and Blasting Powder) are visible either immediately (horses, elephants) or with a first tier tech (mining shows copper and iron; hunting shows yew). Most likely I will keep the base distribution but severely cut the number of instances for these. Timber is kind of different but you will know early on if this will be a problem or not (forests suck in most ways but are still needed for timber).

I don't mind some "geographical determinism" here. If you are intent on a certain kind of military (e.g., elephant warfare) then you are going to have to restart a few times. If you play the deck you're dealt, then you will have to adjust. If you have a lot of a particular military resource ("a lot" meaning 4 or 5) then you might be motivated to go deep down a particular military branch, forgoing combined arms. 4 or 5 heavy infantry (backed up by lights) is a force to contend with. Conversely, you might only have a couple each of many different kinds of military resource, which might push you toward a more combined arms approach (forgoing elites). Either way should be viable.

There will also be non-military considerations in going deep or wide in the tech tree. This is not really an issue in base Civ5 because it is inevitable that you will finish the entire tech tree anyway. However, this won't happen in Éa. If you are hellbent on Mûmakil, you are going to be focused almost exclusively on the hunting and animal husbandry branches, which means you are going to be a dirty unwashed savage. Forget Philosophy, Chemistry and Architecture. You will never ever get these in a 1000 years (turns). But heck, you've got an army of elephants and giant elephants. Who needs that stuff?

Ahriman said:

Archer units look far superior to the infantry units. Strength 9/12 is waaaay better than strength 12, particularly when the latter requires a strategic resource and the former doesn't.

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Horsemen (ranged and not) are pretty tough too because I've given all of them move after attack. I wonder if I should just bump up all the melee line 2 points (they already have +30% city attack). The recon line is intentionally wimpy, even the advanced ones. They will shine in later phases.

Knowledge Advancement

Two reasons that Civ5 feels so linear to me are that 1) the tech tree is very narrow and 2) you have to complete it (or nearly so) for any victory. Almost everything in Civ5 is valued by how it pushes you down the tree, so (for example) gold's primary value is to be converted to research through RAs. I've put a great deal of effort into changing this. Éa's tech tree is wide but shallow and allows (or really forces) civs to be very different depending on where in the Tech Tree they focus. Not only is where you tech variable between civs, but also how much you tech or whether you bother with active research at all. Tech progress has been demoted to being just one of the means to victory, rather than the only means to victory. In fact, it should be possible to win four of the five planned victory conditions while illiterate (I'm not saying that it will be easy). I've added several mechanisms that generally increase specialization and/or decrease the relative necessity of active research (relative to base Civ5) allowing other viable gameplay approaches.

Active Research is the research you generate through population, buildings, specialists, and so forth (and a few resources) that is directed toward a particular technology. In other words, normal Civ5 research.

Knowledge Maintenance is a research percent deduction you pay each turn (from your active per turn research) to maintain known techs. It is initially 10% per known tech (regardless of tech cost) but can be reduced to 5% per known tech with certain techs and polices, or by a small flat amount per academy built by a sage (currently 3.3%). The first two techs are not counted. Knowledge Maintenance can reduce your total active research to zero, but will never make it negative or cause you to loose a tech. Unless you really pump out a lot of sages, you will be limited to somewhere between 10 - 20 techs altogether (out of 55 total).

Knowledge Diffusion contributes research points to any available tech known by other civs with which you have contact and are not at war. Knowledge diffusion can only "fill" a tech's research requirement to 95% of its total cost. You will always need at lease some active research to "finish" a tech, though you don't need much if you are willing to depend on other's civ's active research. Knowledge diffusion provides n research points per available tech per contacted civ that knows it (not at war), where n = 50 (+100% with mutual open borders; +20% per trade route with that civ) / total number of civs in game. Yes, this can get you to 95% for many of those low tier techs without any effort on your part.

Advancement by Conquest works like knowledge diffusion in that it can only provide up to 95% of a tech's total cost (you must have some active research to finish it). Upon city conquest, you gain 20 research points for each population point conquered toward each available tech known by your opponent.

The Tech Tree It has a vertical scroll bar. If you have a wide screen, the 5 tech tiers can all be seen at once. For smaller screens, I'm building left/right arrows that will toggle everything left or right by one tech (sadly, we can't have vertical and horizontal scroll bars for the same screen in Civ5). There are about 55 techs for phase 1. These aren't all filled in, of course, but all techs have at least 2 or 3 things that they will do. I have about 30 more techs planned for Éa's magic system (the tree has been on paper for more than a year now). The three pinnacle ones take the tree out to the right one more tier. That's pretty far down the road though...
Notes:

1. Heldeofol can never research Divine Liturgy.
2. Man can initially research Deep Mining, but the tech becomes permanently blocked if any other civilization of Man researches it first (these become the Úr) or once a civilization of Man takes another name. (In other words, exactly zero or one civilization of Man will know this in any game. All Heldeofol already have it as a starting tech.)

Knowledge Maintenance is an interesting concept, but I see a problem with it: given that it's a percentage of your total tech spending, after you reach 100% Maintenance, all the beakers you produce are totally useless, and you can't even finish the techs you have at 95%. So investing in science buildings doesn't make much sense, as the research will stop someday anyway... I think it would be better to make the Knowledge Maintenance a flat cost associated with each tech (it can be different for different techs) - it's more logical and will encourage the player to invest in science (I think I can use this concept in my mod too). But, on the other hand, it won't let you control the maximum number of techs a civ can research, and will make conquerors very good at technology (due to higher population and Advancement by Conquest), so perhaps the Active Research should depend on things like buildings, wonders and SPs more than on population.

I agree that strategic resources are not limiting in base Civ5

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So it sounds like you agree that strategic resources should be rarer than in vanilla. If so, great.

I don't mind some "geographical determinism" here. If you are intent on a certain kind of military (e.g., elephant warfare) then you are going to have to restart a few times. If you play the deck you're dealt, then you will have to adjust.

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I agree, this sounds fine.

If you have a lot of a particular military resource ("a lot" meaning 4 or 5) then you might be motivated to go deep down a particular military branch, forgoing combined arms. 4 or 5 heavy infantry (backed up by lights) is a force to contend with. Conversely, you might only have a couple each of many different kinds of military resource, which might push you toward a more combined arms approach (forgoing elites).

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I guess what I worry about a little though is that every tech line here seems to be elites. There isn't any techline of basic, resourceless guys (assuming that the recon guys are designed to eventually have specialized abilities).
The resourcless things are the first unit in each tech path, but those would likely be fairly outclassed by the later ones.
Maybe you could consider adding some simple militia-type units to some of the agriculture or economy techs?
I dunno, maybe I'm wrong, we won't know for sure without playing it.

There will also be non-military considerations in going deep or wide in the tech tree.

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Tech selection is going to be tough to get the AI to do well, to pick out one or two military paths that match their resources while also getting sufficient economy techs.
Maybe it won't matter though, maybe you can just use flavor settings to encourage civs to really pursue particular thematic tech approaches and then crank up the difficulty level or other bonuses in order to compensate.

The knowledge maintenance mechanic.... I dunno. That feels weird, being punished for having invested more in research? Is that a good idea?
Especially combined with tech diffusion. You are really punishing builder/researchers here.
I really worry that you're going to have a game where tech and economy aren't very valuable, and that your best option is just warfare.

I like Pawel's idea of making the maintenance a fixed beakers per turn for particular techs, so investing more in things that increase your overall research is still always valuable. I don't really like the idea of controlling maximum number of techs you can have with a brute force method; I think the number of techs you can have should be limited by your capacity to accumulate beakers.
At minimum, you should make it a penalty per population point, so that buildings that increase your beaker income per pop point (like libraries) are still valuable.

I'm also not sure that a tech-though-conquest method is needed. Conquest gives you more population, which gives you more research, I think that would be sufficient.

I've experimented around with it a bit. If you are content with a good selection of 1st and 2nd tier techs, and maybe one 3rd tier tech in your area of focus (e.g., War Horses, Ship Building, etc.), then no, you don't need a single library. But that is my objective. Horse nomads don't need to write. However, if you want to reach those high cost 4th and 5th tier techs (and future 6th tier magic techs), then you will need to develop your research infrastructure very intensely. Techs down the Writing branch (Writing, Philosophy, Logic, Metaphysics, Transcendental Thought) each reduce Knowledge Maintenance by 1% per tech (as well as opening up research buildings). Getting that 1% is trivial at game start, but has a big impact later if you want a lot of techs (twice as many as a primitive society). And you do need some serious resource points to get those higher tier techs.

The idea is that neither of these approaches is "better" than the other. You may, perhaps, be able to overrun the world with your illiterate horsemen. But you may find that high-tech civ with it's few elite units is a nut too tough to crack. Either approach demands some careful planning and you are faced with some difficult trade-offs. You could, for example, pick up a few "food/resource" techs, then run up the horse warfare and metal branches to tier 3 so you can have some good armored horse units. But then you're done, as far as the tech tree goes. There is no issue about selling libraries because you didn't build any in the first place (and why should you?). What you should be doing instead is leveraging your excellent military to achieve victory. On the other hand, if you are a research-focused civ, what you will find is that you never quite reach that 100% (if you are careful). It does gets slow, true, but that next tech is going to be a juicy one so worth the effort. Now it is possible that you can focus on knowledge for a while, then abandon it (kill off your sages and sell libraries). Fine, you won't be the first civ to do that sort of thing. The Greeks once knew that the Earth was round, then gave up that knowledge for quite a while. This may be a viable strategy. However, it doesn't provide any real advantage (from a military perspective) over a more focused military tech rush from game start.

I understand the hesitation that folks will have about this system. You are used to a constant tech progression and I am taking that away. The only thing I can promise is that there are a lot of other thing to do in Éa besides going up the tech tree. Things you can do with gold or culture that you have not seen in Civ5 or other mods. But that's for later...

Techs down the Writing branch (Writing, Philosophy, Logic, Metaphysics, Transcendental Thought) each reduce Knowledge Maintenance by 1% per tech

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Net, or gross? If it's gross, then you have to have 10 techs already (and basically no research income) in order for this to even be worth it.

Overall, I think the idea of knowledge maintenance is weird, and I think a more effective system is likely to be the standard approach of making higher end techs have a higher beaker cost. I think players will react poorly to the idea of being punished for giving up a powerful military now in order to invest in research. It messes up the whole dynamic, where you have to balance military building that gives a payoff now in terms of keeping you safe or conquering the enemy versus less military but investment in tech or buildings.
Why would you give up benefits now in exchange for benefits in the future if you are harshly penalized for doing so?

But we'll have to see how it plays. Looking forward to it.

Things you can do with gold or culture that you have not seen in Civ5 or other mods.

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Things that the AI understands?

Ahriman said:

Maybe you could consider adding some simple militia-type units to some of the agriculture or economy techs?

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You're reading my documentation apparently. I have a "militia" unit that can be drafted from cities for one pop point. It can then rejoin but only at its city of origin. Requires Agriculture. Not implemented yet... not sure if it will make initial release. There will be some others like this as needed.

Ahriman said:

Tech selection is going to be tough to get the AI to do well, to pick out one or two military paths that match their resources while also getting sufficient economy techs.

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AI tech and policy choices are 100% Lua controlled. I've had the basic mechanism in place for the last several months. The AI picks a "plan" early on and sticks with it, for the most part (unless the situation changes dramatically). There are >30 of these so it won't be completely predictable to the human player. That and chance are going to make the AIs look very different. The plans are picked so that the AI can develop its surrounding resources quickly, have some military capacity, and so that they will differ from each other (there is even a "plan similarity matrix" and some weight given for AI players to differ from each other).

To be honest, I think the flavor system really sucks. I don't blame the devs because I don't know an alternative system that would work flexibly with modding and future game changes. However, I don't have that constraint. I can tailor my AI to deal specifically with Éa. (Yes, that makes each change/addition more work, but it is worth it.)

Ahriman said:

The knowledge maintenance mechanic.... I dunno. That feels weird, being punished for having invested more in research? Is that a good idea?
Especially combined with tech diffusion. You are really punishing builder/researchers here.

I really worry that you're going to have a game where tech and economy aren't very valuable, and that your best option is just warfare.

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Yes. I know. You have to realize that I'm really seriously intentionally trying to beat the tech tree into submission. It's a fantasy setting after all, and not all or even most civs should be scholarly. There will be some useful/interesting/fun things high up in the tech tree (though in truth, a lot of that has to wait until magic enters the game). However, only a minority of civs will really be focused here. Others will be more focused on gold or culture or warfare or other things.

Ahriman said:

I like Pawel's idea of making the maintenance a fixed beakers per turn for particular techs, so investing more in things that increase your overall research is still always valuable. I don't really like the idea of controlling maximum number of techs you can have with a brute force method; I think the number of techs you can have should be limited by your capacity to accumulate beakers.
At minimum, you should make it a penalty per population point, so that buildings that increase your beaker income per pop point (like libraries) are still valuable.

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I've tried variations on this. The problem is that BIG always wins the tech race. I'm not opposed to big mattering -- it certainly helps in my system. However, in my system, a small researched-focused civ can get nearly as many techs (ultimately) as a big research-focused civ, though it might take them a little longer.

Ahriman said:

I'm also not sure that a tech-though-conquest method is needed. Conquest gives you more population, which gives you more research, I think that would be sufficient.

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It might be, true. The other thing I'm trying to do here is incorporate a little assimilation. Conquering societies take on aspects of the conquered.

Ahriman said:

Net, or gross? If it's gross, then you have to have 10 techs already (and basically no research income) in order for this to even be worth it.

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Per tech. You can reduce it from 10% per tech known down to 5% per tech known. Yes, it's value goes up with techs known. Writing allows libraries too (not to mention opening up more 2nd tier techs than any other), so it is valuable for other reasons. The others down the Writing branch are really tough choices for the player. They are unambiguously worthless to the savage, but you will need them if you want to be a tech-advanced civ (the timing is difficult; it is definitely an invest-now-for-future-payoff situation).

Ahriman said:

I think players will react poorly to the idea of being punished for giving up a powerful military now in order to invest in research. It messes up the whole dynamic, where you have to balance military building that gives a payoff now in terms of keeping you safe or conquering the enemy versus less military but investment in tech or buildings.

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The civ that hangs in there and supports its sages is going to have its own unique advantages (more later than early, true, but some early ones too). Your choices should matter. A lot.

Ahriman said:

Things that the AI understands?

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Yes, about 25% of my mod codding is AI, and that number is likely to go up. I will never put anything in the mod that the AI can't do (not knowingly, anyway). Of course, getting the AI to do these things well will be an ongoing and never-ending effort.

AI tech and policy choices are 100% Lua controlled. I've had the basic mechanism in place for the last several months. The AI picks a "plan" early on and sticks with it, for the most part (unless the situation changes dramatically). There are >30 of these so it won't be completely predictable to the human player. That and chance are going to make the AIs look very different. The plans are picked so that the AI can develop its surrounding resources quickly, have some military capacity, and so that they will differ from each other (there is even a "plan similarity matrix" and some weight given for AI players to differ from each other).

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Sounds very cool. It's great to hear that you've clearly thought hard about these issues.

You have to realize that I'm really seriously intentionally trying to beat the tech tree into submission

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I dunno. It's just that this is so central to the engine and the very idea of the Civilization game.
Sure, not every civ is scholarly, but that's why many techs don't necessarily mean anything along the lines of academic knowledge, they might be about something militaristic, or religious, or magical, or harmony-with-nature, or commercial, or whatever.
Every civ advances in *something* and expands its option set of what choices it has available, and a tech tree and tech research mechanic is a simple and transparent way for organizing this and presenting options.
Growth is central to civ and it is a big part of the fun of playing the game and why we're still playing Civ 20 years after the original game. 4X are all about expansion.
Building stuff and getting more powerful is fun. Arbitrary-feeling blocks that halt your ability to build/expand/grow risk feeling very not-fun.

Every fantasy game I've ever played has still had some central notion of advancement, and hasn't penalized you for being more advanced. It takes longer for me to figure out agricultural advancements because I already know how to smith good metals? Really? This is very risky.

But hey, it might work well, so go ahead and try it. Experimentation is cool. I'd just say, keep an open mind (as I'll try to!); a lot of your vision for a shallow-but-wide tech tree can still work just fine even without the kind of explicit tech maintenance mechanics you're talking about here.
Why? Because of opportunity costs. Just because in theory if I had enough beakers I could research everything doesn't mean that I actually would do so. Imagine that the tier1 techs all cost X, that the tier2 techs cost 1.5X and the tier3 techs cost 2X. Imagine that much of technological research is fixed per player (eg from the palace) and then you get modest incremental increases from population, specialists, and buildings. Then you still have lots of interesting strategic tradeoffs and you don't have a strong snow-balling effect, but these are governed by opportunity costs rather than explicit penalties. There, there you always want to try to get more techs, the rate of tech advance is similar across players (so no runaway lead), but you can't get everything, and being good at one thing means being worse at others.
I think it feels much more fun that for me to research lots of elephant techs means I have to give up 4-6 other techs from opportunity cost than to have me literally be penalized for knowing the elephant techs. I think it is much more fun when you are always better off from having a tech than from not having it, but where choosing to invest my resources in a particular direction means I can't invest them in a different direction.

The problem is that BIG always wins the tech race. I'm not opposed to big mattering -- it certainly helps in my system. However, in my system, a small researched-focused civ can get nearly as many techs (ultimately) as a big research-focused civ, though it might take them a little longer.

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See above. Have the palace (or some external factor, to avoid problems with multiplier buildings) give most of your research, and have population give only a modest benefit.
Imagine for example:
Each civ gets a flat +50 beakers per turn.
Each population point gives 1 beaker per population. A library gives an extra +0.25 beakers per population point. A university gives an extra +25% beakers in that city.
A tier1 tech costs 1000 beakers. A tier2 tech costs 1500 beakers. A tier3 tech costs 2000 beakers.

Then, more pop is always better, as long as you can keep them happy. More buildings are always better, as long as you can afford their construction cost in hammers/gold and their maintenance costs. Every civ advances at roughly the same rate; if you get really big or invest heavily in tech, then you can get slightly faster, but only slightly. You can research advanced techs, but getting tiers 2 and 3 in a particular path means getting fewer overall techs. There are no explicit penalties, only opportunity costs. Non-scholarly factions focus on military type techs, rather than academic or commercial techs. Various technological advancements, like gunpowder, siegecraft, etc are tied into some academic techs.
So you can still have illiterate hordes of horsemen that have a big wide sprawling empire and threaten to burn down the cities of the educated elite in their advanced metropolises.

Obviously the numbers could be tweaked, as required.

The other thing I'm trying to do here is incorporate a little assimilation. Conquering societies take on aspects of the conquered.

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Maybe do this through culture, rather than technology? So, you gain culture points from capturing a city with higher culture : population than you, with more gain the larger is the difference.
You don't need to lose culture for capturing a city with lower culture : pop than you; your culture : pop already declines because your pop goes up.

This might let you get something along the lines of Mongols-invading-China-but-becoming-Chinese.

Per tech. You can reduce it from 10% per tech known down to 5% per tech known

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Let me explain what I mean. Suppose my gross research income is 100 beakers. I have 5 existing techs, so I am only getting 50 net beakers per turn towards research because of Knowledge Maintenance at -10% per tech.
Now, I research a 6th tech, which is writing. Writing reduces the penalty per tech from 10% town to 9%. But now I have 6 techs, and the penalty from 6 techs is 6*9 = 54. So I am now only getting 46 beakers per turn. Researching writing has slowed my tech advancement.

That seems problematic. Even if you're going with a knowledge maintenance system, IMO you should devise it so that researching knowledge techs doesn't reduce your rate of tech advancement; it slows down your acquisition of other techs in the short run because of the time you spent researching a knowledge tech rather than researching other stuff.
That is: use an opportunity cost, rather than an explicit penalty.
The simplest way to do this would just be to have knowledge techs not add to Knowledge Maintenance.

Yes, about 25% of my mod codding is AI, and that number is likely to go up. I will never put anything in the mod that the AI can't do (not knowingly, anyway). Of course, getting the AI to do these things well will be an ongoing and never-ending effort.

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Fantastic. I withdraw my comments on this issue, it sounds like you have this well in hand.
I brought it up only because the single biggest problem I have seen in civ modding is that people bring up "cool" mechanics that the AI can't understand, and then the mod doesn't work well because the AI is just confused.

It's all a work in progress, of course. Individual mechanisms will be altered or scrapped as needed. The vision (regarding tech advancement) is this:

It is a fantasy setting and most fantasy civs are not research focused. I want my pirate civ to be focused on pirating. That includes a lot of different things (plundering, stealing ships, hoarding gold) but nowhere in any fantasy story has it included building libraries and universities. Same for my unwashed horse nomads. Now, I'm not telling you that you can't have scholarly pirates, or scholarly unwashed horse nomads. If that is your thing, knock yourself out. But I'm going to present an alternative that is viable -- not necessarily more viable -- but viable nevertheless. And to do so I have to break something that is (as you say) "central" to Civ since 1991 (at which time, I'll point out, I was playing using a DOS emulator on an Amiga 500; soon replaced by a Macintosh IIci when Mac Civilization was released).

A note on endgame might be useful here. Most folks associate wrapping up the tech tree with "finishing" a game. It's true in every Civ version and most mods including FFH. There are different victory conditions but they all directly or indirectly require near-completion of the tech tree. And in fact, you can't even stop the progress even if you wanted (let's say you want to play the hoards or the religious, anti-science fanatics). One feeling you get is that you are being rushed along when you have just gotten to know and love the civ that you have created. You can slow this with game setting or modding but the progression is always there. In Éa, progress is not inevitable. The "rule" is stagnation. The player will have to be very clever (and let's hope one or two AI civs will be too) to leverage some sort of advantage to victory. That advantage might be technological, monetary, military, cultural, or something else, but none of these come automatically or give you victory by themselves. You have to do something to actually win. (One of these "somethings" is Domination, the others will remain secret for now but they are not the standard "Cultural Victory", "Science Victory", etc.)

It is a fantasy setting and most fantasy civs are not research focused. I want my pirate civ to be focused on pirating. That includes a lot of different things (plundering, stealing ships, hoarding gold) but nowhere in any fantasy story has it included building libraries and universities. Same for my unwashed horse nomads.

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I'm just saying; the tech tree mechanism doesn't represent just scholarly research with libraries and universities. You can still have pirates who focus on pirating and illiterate horsemen with awesome cavalry without destroying the tech tree mechanism, because pirates get naval techs and horsemen get cavalry techs. Techs are just a way of giving the player more stuff through some kind of learning by doing. eg if you practice piracy long enough, you'll get better at it, and you can represent that by granting a new tech which gives access to higher strength ships or some new ability.

In Éa, progress is not inevitable. The "rule" is stagnation.

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This is very different from basically every other single player strategy game, particularly 4X games.
I think there are very high risks that a game where stagnation is the norm will not be fun to play, particularly if players feel like they are being punished for success.

It's cool that you're trying to experiment though, the ambition is great. I hope it works! I look forward to hearing about your alternative victory conditions.

Anyway, I will leave you alone for a while, and let you get back to actual modding.

Ahriman said:

, because pirates get naval techs

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Why do pirates need techs? They're just going to steal ships anyway. (Oh wait! that's phase 6...)

I've tried variations on this. The problem is that BIG always wins the tech race. I'm not opposed to big mattering -- it certainly helps in my system. However, in my system, a small researched-focused civ can get nearly as many techs (ultimately) as a big research-focused civ, though it might take them a little longer.

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I have another idea - the Knowledge Maintenance can depend on number of cities and/or population (a fixed amount of beakers per tech per city or population point). This will reduce the effect of big civs being better at tech, while still making it worthwhile to invest in research, if you wish so. I don't mean that all civs should invest in research and I understand that different approaches than a research-focused civ are possible too, but if you decide to focus on research, you shouldn't be heavily punished for doing so, and I believe making the maintenance a percentage of your total research is such a punishment. (edit: I just noticed that Ahriman had the same idea)

Also there is another problem with this system: with a small number of techs that you can typically research, soon you will run out of things to build in cities, which makes conquest the best option, as opposed to builder-style gameplay.

In Éa, progress is not inevitable. The "rule" is stagnation.

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I really like this idea. I'm not a big fan of the "4X" concept, I prefer a more "stagnant" game. But it seems I have different ideas than you how to achieve this, like my version of the happiness system that limits too fast expansion. Regarding the tech tree, I think I'll use your idea of Knowledge Maintenance, but the cost will depend on the number of cities, so conquerors having lots of small undeveloped cities won't have more techs than small, but well-developed and research-focused civs. But generally I like the idea of getting to the point where you can't research anything more because you spend all your beakers to maintain the existing techs. And then you have to actively invest in research to get more techs, but of course you have other options as well, based on culture, gold, conquest and so on.

Let me just deal with the "punishment" argument in three ways:

1. Absolute points don't matter, it's relative effects that matter. If you work through the math, you will see that a research-focused civ does better -- unambiguously better -- in tech progress than a non-research focused civ. BIG has an advantage here too in that it puts out more total points so reaches techs faster. But ultimately, only a strong research focus (whether big or small) gives you the staying power to reach those higher level techs. Now, assuming I give proper reward for this (not too much but not too little) then the rest is just accounting.
   
   
2. Realism. I know folks say that it's all an abstraction and we should never resort to "realism" arguments. I disagree. I do want some sort of justification (or "hook") to some real world (or imaginary world) phenomena when thinking about a game mechanism. OK. Here it is. Pre-literate civilizations really do (in practice) have limitations on the amount of information they can hold and transmit through the generations. Writing and then more academic traditions certainly increase this amount but there are still limits. Just because something is on paper doesn't mean it is "known" a practical sense by society. That's just historical observation. It's also a historical fact that progress has not been a constant and steady thing. It may seem that way to us but it is not true. Now research points and knowledge maintenance are just abstraction. You can say one is "unrealistic" or "punishment" or whathaveyou. The only valid critique here is: does it successfully emulate reality or the part of reality that you need in the game. By "reality" I mean either a specific part of the real world that applies (e.g., Ancient - Medieval period) or one's own internally consistent fantasy world (which is not random but has its own rules).
   
   
3. Need. This is going to be different in different games/mods. Base Civ5 needs to propel you on to the space age. My need here is different. I need to make civs different (this may fit my fantasy "reality" more than real world "reality", but so be it). That imposes a contraint on me that is different than base Civ5, so the base system has to be changed in a non-trivial way. Now there is some leeway in this and numbers will certainly be adjusted with testing. But my current feeling (based on living with this tech tree for a long time now) is that a "primitive" society should peak with about 10 techs. That's enough for, say, an elephant based civ to get Beast Breading and put out some Mumakil. Likewise, a more "civilized" civ needs to approach 20 or so techs so that they can have Architecture, Engineering, Medicine and so forth. This is just the way I envision these civs. I don't want the latter (with much higher total research point production) to have what the former has, which is why the maintenance is per tech rather than based on tech cost. I don't want the former picking up "civilized" techs simply because the game goes on for a long time.

PawelS said:

Also there is another problem with this system: with a small number of techs that you can typically research, soon you will run out of things to build in cities, which makes conquest the best option, as opposed to builder-style gameplay.

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That's a very valid concern. It has to be addressed by some combination of: 1) more possible buildings to build; 2) higher cost of buildings and units; 3) other things to do with production than build buildings/units (and not just boring conversion processes). These are all in the works.