late game tech tree

I have re-arranged the tree in response to the recent discussions.

Tech Tree Image V2

1. Way of Liet is back.
2. Still keeping Reverend Mothers on Water of Life, but the intent is make Water of Life the same tier/cost as Academies. We can stall Water of Life with an AND requirement if needs be, and Academies is a full tech already.
3. Since, renamed The Golden Path to Prescience, requires Mind Training and Water of Life.
4. The branch following Prescience (The Golden Path) goes Weirding Way > Arrakis Transformation > Galactic Religion. The old position of Weirding Way required Research Labs which I found really unthematic. If it still needs to be later then Arrakis Transformation and Weirding Way could swap places perhaps.
5. Divine Mandate no longer requires Feudalism.

If you're obsevant you'll see that I've changed the Landsraad religion to CHOAM, and altered the Mahdi and Technocracy logos - Mahdi back to blue background, Techno to green. I also intend to tweak the Shai-Hulud logo to make the background a bit brighter.

The main reason why this overhaul could take a little while is the need to make/find art for the new techs, promos, buildings and units.

A thought; instead of being "fuels", these could be weapons.

I like Rocketry for Liquid Fuel. Perhaps Guided Artillery for Solid Fuel?

We could remove the desert tile yield bonus from "weather scanner building" and just make that a trade booster, and then make "Spotter control" a tile yield booster for desert tiles (+1h1c). The idea being that trade/transport/spice harvesting over desert is much safer/more profitable if you have worm spotters nearby.

Here's a proposal:

Rename current Water Souk at Solaris Economy to Merchant Quarter.
New Water Souk at Water Economy gives +1 trade route, +25% trade route yield.
Spotter Control at Sandworms gives +1h1c for desert tiles.
Drop Weather Scanner.

I still like some of the ideas around Guerilla Tactics, but we can park those for now. There is room for a tech after Fanaticism or Jihad where that could go.

a Sister unit (early espionage unit)

I think the name Acolyte could be better. Do we have a design in mind for this unit?

I'm going to move onto entering the promotions next....

Edit: Core Mine improvement is at No Fields right now. Should we move it to perhaps Advanced Materials?
 
Awesome, great to see.

Thoughts:
1. I dunno about the ordering of the ecology techs.
What is the first thing given by the water economy tech? I don't recognize that icon.
I think that adapted agriculture, with plantation and insect farm yield increases, should be midgame rather than early game. Similar tech tier/cost to Harsh Conditioning/Great Houses, at least. Its a bit odd for plantation boosts to come on the tech right after plantations.

The Mushtamel/Qanat can come fairly early.

I think Way of liet should be similar tech tier/cost to Spice Economy.

I think that Water Discipline civic and Deep wells (currently look like they're on planetary ecology) should be midgame tech, similar overall cost to Desert Industry.

So perhaps:
Desert Plantation -> water economy (which gives +1 water from windtraps (moved from Arrakis habitation) and Qanat and New Water Souk.
Water economy -> way of Liet.
Way of liet -> adapted agriculture (plantation and insect farm boosts)
Adapated agriculture -> planetary ecology
while having the second windtrap boost at Arrakis Transformation. (So there's somthing nice there for Arrakis Paradise users, and so its sufficiently late-game).

Though I understand wanting the logic of Way of Liet to follow planetary ecology.

But then water economy gives too much and adapted agriculture too little. Swapping the first windtrap bonus would have it come too late, moving the qanat would be a bit too late, and moving the new Water Souk would be a bit illogical.
Maybe illogic is the least of our sins?

2. It feels like the tiers are a bit "shaken up". They look good on the graphic, but Academies is supposed be be well into the midgame (it founds Qizarate, which is supposed to be a fairly late-game religion, and provides universities, a powerful tech booster) and frigate transportation should be late midgame (spaceports for airlift is super powerful).

We can still do this with tech costs to some extent, but it means that units on a vertical line are not at all the same effective "tier".

3. Since, renamed The Golden Path to Prescience, requires Mind Training and Water of Life.
A decent solution; prescience required for the Golden Path. I like it. But its a very empty tech atm, especially for any non-qizarate follower.
Shall we move the Prescience chamber wonder there at least? And maybe something else?

4. The branch following Prescience (The Golden Path) goes Weirding Way > Arrakis Transformation > Galactic Religion. The old position of Weirding Way required Research Labs which I found really unthematic. If it still needs to be later then Arrakis Transformation and Weirding Way could swap places perhaps.
Interesting. I agree that Weirding way following research labs no longer makes sense (it used to grant a lasgun soldier unit). Weirding Way following prescience is feasible.

But Arrakis transformation following weirding way doesn't make much sense to me. (Or vice versa). One is muscle control/combat reflexes, the other is ecological.

Also, IMO Weirding way with its super-promotions (and the final QH?) should be later-game/more expensive than arrakis transformation.

Maybe Arrakis Transformation could require Refining Techniques? And then you could move it up to under mechanization?
[AT is a Refined version of the Way of Liet, and probably needs superior technology to implement, so.... not entirely crazy.]

And then have Galactic Religion follow Weirding Way.

The main reason why this overhaul could take a little while is the need to make/find art for the new techs, promos, buildings and units.

I would say, placeholders are fine, it would be more useful to get the tech tree changes in and playtest a little. We already have some placeholders; the Atreides Ducal Guard units for eg are still just their basic versions.

Also, once we have a more finalized tech tree, I can go through and look at Flavor values again.

Perhaps Guided Artillery for Solid Fuel?
Sounds good.
Perhaps also we should swap the names on the Assault Cannon unit and the final artillery unit; rocket artillery?
Or: make the current strength 8 unit "rocket artillery" at Rocketry tech, then "Missile launcher" at Guided Artillery tech, then "Assault Cannon" at "Military-Industrial Complex" tech?

Missiles seem like they should be superior to rockets.

Rename current Water Souk at Solaris Economy to Merchant Quarter.
New Water Souk at Water Economy gives +1 trade route, +25% trade route yield.
Spotter Control at Sandworms gives +1h1c for desert tiles.
Drop Weather Scanner.
I like it.
However, lets make the sandworms tech a bit later, maybe move it up to Benevolence. I'd also consider making it an AND requirement for Artificial spice (hard to get artificial spice working if you don't understand how sandworms work).

Speaking of which, what happened to the Desert Rites tech, which allowed the Naib's Chosen Fremen unit?

Also, consider moving the Shai Hulad religion cathedral to the sandworms tech?

I think the name Acolyte could be better. Do we have a design in mind for this unit?
Sounds good. I think the intention is, the Reverend Mother has the really powerful spy missions, like the global uprising one and the city stealing one, and starts with a promotion chain that reduce the cost of spy missions and reduces the chance of being caught. The RM should *not* have some of the weak spy missions, to encourage the AI to actually use some of the stronger ones with this unit.

The Acolyte should be just a basic infiltrator replacement that has the "force friend" ability (I forget what we changed it to).

Should we move it to perhaps Advanced Materials?
Sounds good.
 
It feels like the tiers are a bit "shaken up".

Thus far, we really haven't capitalized on the great work David has done in this post.

I have run his program over my most recent revision of the Tech Tree and attached the outputted CSV. The most useful columns are MinTechs and CumCost - fairly self-explanatory but MinTechs is the minimum number of techs required to get each tech and CumCost is the culmulative cost.

You can see at the moment that the cost for the new techs is 400 each right now, because I created them via copy/paste in the XML.

Ultimately, I think it is the CumCost that is going determine whether a tech is early mid-game, late mid-game, late game or whatever. So we should try to tune this to get the desired result. The X position in the tree is largely irrelevant I think and we can manually set the Era for each tech in the XML (this has an impact on when units are available in the Homeworld screen remember.) Having said that, I guess as far as possible the X position should be a rough indicator of the CumCost of a tech so that the player gets a feeling for what stage in the game he/she will reach that point.

You can see that our costs and progression is pretty messy. For example, what is now called Guided Artillery is at X position 10 with CumCost 12180 while Desert Industry at the same X position has CumCost 3400.

I suggest after another revision to get the ordering right, we need to really take a close look at these costs and their impact on the progress of the game. Obviously, sort out our AND requirements will have a big bearing too.

I dunno about the ordering of the ecology techs.

I'll reorganise that branch based on your suggestions. Water Economy has the Fai Water Tribute Wonder at the moment which is the icon you didn't recognise.

A decent solution; prescience required for the Golden Path. I like it. But its a very empty tech atm, especially for any non-qizarate follower.
Shall we move the Prescience chamber wonder there at least? And maybe something else?

Prescience chamber can go there, not sure what else we have right now. I guess we should reorganise the Kwizatz stages once we are done tinkering but that is only of interest to the BG player.

Perhaps also we should swap the names on the Assault Cannon unit and the final artillery unit; rocket artillery?
Or: make the current strength 8 unit "rocket artillery" at Rocketry tech, then "Missile launcher" at Guided Artillery tech, then "Assault Cannon" at "Military-Industrial Complex" tech?

Missiles seem like they should be superior to rockets.

OK.


But Arrakis transformation following weirding way doesn't make much sense to me. (Or vice versa). One is muscle control/combat reflexes, the other is ecological.

Me neither, I was struggling to find a home for it.

Moving Weirding Way to being the last thing before Galactic Religion seems OK, but Arrakis Trans is still a bit of an issue. I'll have a think.

I would say, placeholders are fine, it would be more useful to get the tech tree changes in and playtest a little. We already have some placeholders; the Atreides Ducal Guard units for eg are still just their basic versions.

I agree with placeholders for the 3D stuff. I think we do need some kind of different icons for the techs and the promos in particular. I'll just do very quick and crude ones.

Also, once we have a more finalized tech tree, I can go through and look at Flavor values again.

Yes, I think that'll be necessary - there are other settings like Power and Asset values that might want reviewing too.

However, lets make the sandworms tech a bit later, maybe move it up to Benevolence. I'd also consider making it an AND requirement for Artificial spice (hard to get artificial spice working if you don't understand how sandworms work).

Also, consider moving the Shai Hulad religion cathedral to the sandworms tech?

OK, will bear in mind for next version. I thought the same about the Shai-Hulud Cathedral.

Speaking of which, what happened to the Desert Rites tech, which allowed the Naib's Chosen Fremen unit?

I took it out for some reason, but it can go back in now beneath Mind Training and after Water of Life.
 
Another thought - I think Military Elite might be to early. Perhaps Vendettas as a requirement instead of Holtzmann Generators. There is room in the tree for that if we move Mechanization down 1 place.

Also, it is my intention to have Sandworms require Education as well as Dune Topography which should slow it a bit.
 
I suggest after another revision to get the ordering right, we need to really take a close look at these costs and their impact on the progress of the game. Obviously, sort out our AND requirements will have a big bearing too.

Agreed.
However, cumulative cost alone is not quite sufficient; suppose I have a single tech A with no requirements that costs 8,000, and another tech B with a cumulative cost of 10,000 over 5 techs.
The tech B is more "expensive" in cumulative total, but not really, because you are getting 4 techs worth of stuff along the way.
But some mix of cumulative cost and number of techs/cumulative benefits will definitely be helpful in tuning tech costs, and David's program will help with this.

there are other settings like Power and Asset values that might want reviewing too
Ok. I don't understand how these work, but I can find out.

I took it out for some reason, but it can go back in now beneath Mind Training and after Water of Life.
I forget what it does, other than allow Naib's Chosen. If that's all it does we should cut it, and move the Naib's chosen to a different tech (a single URU unit is insufficient for a tech).

I think Military Elite might be to early
It has been too early in past, that's part of why I added Desert Rites as an AND.

I guess Holtzmann generators was an attempt at modeling elite troops having superior shields. How about Personal shields AND Holtzmann generators AND vendettas?
I don't mind forcnig you to collect most of the tier2 techs before moving to tier3.

Also, it is my intention to have Sandworms require Education as well as Dune Topography which should slow it a bit.
Hmm. Still too early for cathedrals and large desert tile yield bonuses I thnik. Education is a very early game tech, which gets beelined fast by the the human player and the AI, for its powerful wonder and hugely valuable building.
But we can obviously adjust with tech cost.
 
Agreed.
However, cumulative cost alone is not quite sufficient; suppose I have a single tech A with no requirements that costs 8,000, and another tech B with a cumulative cost of 10,000 over 5 techs.
The tech B is more "expensive" in cumulative total, but not really, because you are getting 4 techs worth of stuff along the way.
But some mix of cumulative cost and number of techs/cumulative benefits will definitely be helpful in tuning tech costs, and David's program will help with this.

Good point. Modelling benefits could get complicated. Perhaps there is some rough formula we could make where we just assume the benefit of each tech is equal, give that some value and then multiply be the number of techs accumulated.

I forget what it does, other than allow Naib's Chosen. If that's all it does we should cut it, and move the Naib's chosen to a different tech (a single URU unit is insufficient for a tech).

I think in 1.7.1 it also has the Fai Water Tribute. I have moved that to Water Economy, but that is probably early for a wonder like that. I going to reorganise the ecology branch anyway so I'll bear this in mind. It doesn't feel like there is a strong need for Desert Rites to come back.
 
Perhaps there is some rough formula we could make where we just assume the benefit of each tech is equal, give that some value and then multiply be the number of techs accumulated.
This sounds good, as a rule of thumb.

I don't think we need get too formal in this though; in particular deciding the "appropriate" tech level for a particualar tech has a lot of error room in it.

The most important thing is that the marginal cost of pursuing a given tech at any point in time be appropriate to its power (including the extra techs it opens up).

It doesn't feel like there is a strong need for Desert Rites to come back.
Agreed.

I think Military Elite might be to early
In addnig requirements for military elite, we should also be careful that we don't make the other tier3 units (lasguns, tier3 air, mongoose, medium scoprion, etc.) be too easy or too hard to get.
 
Change dragonfly bomber to strength 16.
Change Cielago strealth bomber to strength 16.

Is this a typo or do want them to have the same strength?
 
Was intended.
I don't feel strongly about it, but the intention was that the stealth bomber isn't a superior bomber, its just massively evasive, and hard to intercept.
 
OK, I just wanted to check.

Change automated factory, computerized research facility to require Technocracy tech.

Do you mean the Technocracy religion?

Also, your new Imperial Palace wonder has exactly the same name as the Imperial religion shrine. Suggest we call the new one The Great Keep?
 
Right, I'm not going to be able to do any more on this until next week so I'll post what I've done so far as a patch so that you can have a look around and get a feel for how things are looking overall.

The patch requires Dune Wars 1.7, 1.7.1 and 1.7.1.1 to be installed first.

The following remains outstanding from post 42:
Spoiler :
BUILDINGS

Convention breached! World wonder. Requires House Atomics tech. 1200 hammers.
Allows all players to build Atomics units. These are ICBMs. Provides -100% foreign trade routes in all cities. When built, creates 3 Atomics units in the capital city by event).

Monitor Projects, Once all projects completed, Event triggers that creates Monitor Warship in capital.

Hunter-seeker device. Requires Miniaturization. +8 espionage points.
Poison snooper. Requires Suk school. Proves +4 espionage points, +25% espionage defense.
Commodities exchange. Requires Advanced Electronics tech. Requires CHOAM religion. Gives +0.5 gold per spice resource.
Interplanetary Jihad (building), Requires Galactic Religion tech, Requires Mahdi religion, Mahdi state religion, +25% military production.
Palmeries. Building. +2 water, +1 happy, requires Shai-Hulad state religion, requies Shai-Hulad religion, requires Arrakis Transformation tech.

Nullentrophy sphere. Requires advanced materials tech. Requires Tleilaxu Zensufism state religion. Next unit created in the city gains the immortality promotion (a la FFH)?

Change automated factory, computerized research facility to require Technocracy tech.

UNITS

Create No-Ship. Requires No-field tech. 3 Moves. Strength 12. Thopter class. Invisible.
Create Death Hand unit. Harkonnen UU. 16 strength version of Stone burner, but does only 70% colleratal damage. Requires Vendettas tech.
Add "Howitzer" unit. Harkonnen UU, replaces missile launcher. Same as missile launcher but 10 strength instead of 8.
Add "Monitor Warship" unit. Cannot be built, comes into play (in capital) only when all 5 Monitor projects have been built. Strength 50, thopter class, 1 first strike, 6 moves, blitz. Huge unit icon, some kind of warship.

Cymek: Still not sure on stats for this, we need to be careful to not make it overlap too much with the Ixian Mech units
(Ix favors Technocracy, so will likely have access to Cymeks).

Fish speakers.
I think a city defender melee unit makes sense; these guys are a kindof Praetorian Guard, and Quizarate should have some big cities to defend.
So... strength 16 melee unit, 2 moves (make them flexible rapid response defenders), +50% city defense, immune to first strikes. National limit 10.


Other stuff discussed in subsequent posts may or may not have been done yet.

I've done pretty decent icons for the techs and dodgy hand-drawn ones for the promos.
 
Started testing briefly, got a repeatible CTD in ~18 turns in, no obvious cause?
See attached.
*edit*
nvm, the 4th time I tested it, not CTD. Crashed 3 times, then went away?!??

Some initial thoughts:
Overall, looks very nice, icons are good.

I note that the weather scanner is still there and the spotter control change isn't included. Also note that there is no Merchant quarter/water souk change; is that intended as final? It affects how we make the the early ecology tree work.

I would move the +1 water for windtraps from arrakis habitation to adaptive agriculture, I think that is a good way of slowing the early game expansion a little.

I don't like the plantation bonus coming at adaptive agriculture immediately after the plantation is enabled; how about we move it to Way of liet (so there is something for non-terraformers at that tech).

We could move the polar water shipper to water economy (seems a natural fit).

I would move the drill Deep Well from Planetary Ecology to... I don't know, something later? But I can't see an obvious candidate.

I can't see it working very well unless we swap Way of Liet and Planetary Ecology, so we can make Planetary Ecology expensive without delaying Way of liet too much, and then leave the deep well at planetary ecology.
I understand the logic of wanting to understand the ecology before starting terraforming, but it doesn't work so well gameplay wise.

Or maybe it does, we just make planetary ecology expensive, and push way of liet into the midgame.


Naib's Chosen at Weirding Way doesn't work. Weirding Way is a very-late game tech, whereas the Naib's Chosen is a Shield Trooper UU. I guess we could just put the NC at Personal Shields... but the fremen anti-shieldness is a big part of why we didn't do that in the first place. It would feel very wrong. I can't think of a good place with the current techs.

Military elite's location is confusing now; it is at the same vertical level as vendettas, despite being a whole unit tier ahead in power. Maybe we can move it one column right by shifting mechanisation and lasguns down to make some space.

Lasgun weaponry should have Vendettas as an AND. Heavy trooper -> lasgun trooper.


I can make some of these changes (and re-merge the improvement/terrain changes I was tinkering with) if you agree with them, but I can't to tech tree switching.
 

Attachments

  • Test.CivBeyondSwordSave
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Started testing briefly, got a repeatible CTD in ~18 turns in, no obvious cause?
See attached.
*edit*
nvm, the 4th time I tested it, not CTD. Crashed 3 times, then went away?!?

Is there a Python error in the logs? It's mostly likely because I missed something while renaming XML tags or removing things. There may be a XML tag reference in the Python that no longer exists, something like that.

I note that the weather scanner is still there and the spotter control change isn't included....

I haven't got to reviewing the ecology branch yet, or doing those buildings change we agreed. I was trying to get the stuff from post 42 all entered first, and take into account the subsequent posts after that.

Naib's Chosen at Weirding Way doesn't work. Weirding Way is a very-late game tech, whereas the Naib's Chosen is a Shield Trooper UU. I guess we could just put the NC at Personal Shields... but the fremen anti-shieldness is a big part of why we didn't do that in the first place. It would feel very wrong. I can't think of a good place with the current techs.

This wasn't intended as final - it is sitting there for now since I removed Desert Rites. Razzia Raider which is the precursor to Naib's Chosen is still at Desert Industry so I guess it needs to come some time after that.

Military elite's location is confusing now; it is at the same vertical level as vendettas, despite being a whole unit tier ahead in power. Maybe we can move it one column right by shifting mechanisation and lasguns down to make some space.

Agreed. Military Elite should be further right. The slot where Mechanization is currently might work if we move that down.

Lasgun weaponry should have Vendettas as an AND. Heavy trooper -> lasgun trooper.

OK.

I can make some of these changes (and re-merge the improvement/terrain changes I was tinkering with) if you agree with them, but I can't to tech tree switching.

If you want to do some work on this that is great. As I say, I won't be able to do more until Monday at the earliest.

Switching around the Tech Tree isn't really that hard. There are only really two sections of CIV4TechInfos.xml you need to concern yourself with to rearrage the tree.

These determine the vertical and horizontal position respectively. Y ranges from 1-14.
Code:
<iGridX>1</iGridX> 
<iGridY>5</iGridY>

Prereqs are defined in the following two list tags:
Code:
<OrPreReqs>
	<PrereqTech>TECH_DESERT_ENGINEERING</PrereqTech>
</OrPreReqs>
<AndPreReqs>
	<PrereqTech>TECH_DESERT_ROVERS</PrereqTech>
</AndPreReqs>

You can have multiple rows of PrereqTech tags in either OrPreReqs or AndPreReqs. The arrows in the tree follow the OrPreReqs.

One thing to be aware of is that the tag names can be different from the visible name of the Tech in game. For example, Prescience is still TECH_THE_GOLDEN_PATH and Rocketry is still TECH_LIQUID_FUEL. I'll fix these tag names for Techs as well as Units and Buildings by doing a global find and replace once we have finalized things some more.
 
Regarding the Sandworms tech, how about we move it below Benevolence and make Planetary Ecology an AND requirement? That would slow it and Water of Life some more and make sense theme-wise.
 
Is there a Python error in the logs? It's mostly likely because I missed something while renaming XML tags or removing things. There may be a XML tag reference in the Python that no longer exists, something like that.

Ok, I am trying to do some testing with autoplays, but I keep getting CTD errors in the first few dozen turns (after having installed your tech tree changes update), and I am not getting any python log in Beyondtheswrd/logs/pythonerr
I have GenerateCrashDumps = 1 and LoggingEnabled = 1 and HidePythonExceptions = 0 in Civilization4.ini

turning:
HAPDebugger to =1 made BTS unable to load, so I changed it back.

I can't see any other python logging option to turn on.

There's a bunch of stuff in PythonDbg, but that looked from scanning like something to do with the BUG mod. I can post it if that would help.
 
Civcheck seems to only give me art issues?
(Attached)

Perhaps someone else could install Deliverator's tech changes patch and see if they can replicate?
 

Attachments

  • civcheck.txt
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At the bottom of your civcheck.txt file are two real issues:
Code:
UndefinedSymbol: UNIT_HEAVY_CARRYALL
   Used: dune units/civ4unitclassinfos.xml at line 430
UndefinedSymbol: UNIT_STONEBURNER_MISSILE
   Used: dune units/civ4unitclassinfos.xml at line 493
You can avoid the long list of art issues by uinsg unpak on the pak file, so that all of the art filenames are visible.
 
It seems unlikely that either of these units are causing a crash on ~turn 15.

I'm sorry, but I don't think I understand the game construction well enough to figure out what is causing this crash (or how to fix it), and I keep getting one each time I run a test.
 
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