Brainstorming Thread - One-Trick-Pony Techs

45°38'N-13°47'E;13269749 said:

I mostly agree with Vokarya, and I don't think we need extra science from modern onwards. Actually I was thinking of reducing it.

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Which is actually something I've been asking for since early-AND
Not sure why I suggested it heh.


Well I guess it's settled. Unless someone can come up with something pretty quick, I guess Neural Networks is taking its leave in a revision or two. Not that's a bad thing mind you, it just sounded cool as a tech so...

45°38'N-13°47'E;13269749 said:

I mostly agree with Vokarya, and I don't think we need extra science from modern onwards. Actually I was thinking of reducing it.

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I think we'd be better off just turning up the research cost modifiers from the Renaissance onward. On the settings I play on (Standard size/Marathon speed/Noble difficulty), I think the jump from Classical to Medieval is really good and maybe we should try to emulate that. After the Renaissance, the tech pace gets faster and faster because I usually get the steamroller going by that point and crush all the AI civs.

Vokarya said:

I think we'd be better off just turning up the research cost modifiers from the Renaissance onward.

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That sounds perfectly sensible to me.

I just want to say that the list of one-trick-pony techs has been cut in half at this point. I have a file named "Project 49", which was the original list of one-trick techs. The count is down to 24 now.

The tech tree arrows look vastly better! I'm glad I could help with the arrow overrides.

Afforess said:

The tech tree arrows look vastly better! I'm glad I could help with the arrow overrides.

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It worked most of the time. There are a couple of techs that have to "hang" with no incoming arrows in order to keep it clean (I think these are limited to the Transhuman Era). The arrow overrides are great for the techs with genuine multiple OR requirements. I liked putting in the OR requirements, because I feel that in some cases it's appropriate to have more than one way of getting to a tech, but they sometimes did result in really bizarre arrows across the map. Paper was probably the nastiest (the OR requirement is Civil Service or Theology or Alchemy).

I went through and updated my trick list. After quite a bit of work, we've managed to get the one-trick-pony list down to 20 techs. There are also 14 1.5-trick techs and 6 that I think of as "problem" techs. We'll get to those later.

Here's the list of remaining one-trick techs in the Industrial Era and earlier, and what I think we can do about them.

• Storytelling: Storyteller Circle building
  What I'd really like to do here is introduce a very trimmed-down version of the hunting-capturing mechanic: when a player kills an animal unit, the result is either a small one-time bonus of food and hammers, or a Captured Animal unit. This unit can be used for various purposes, one of them being a Myth that provides +1 science/turn until it goes obsolete, probably at Theology. Myths would require Storytelling tech to build.
• Humanism: Free Church civic
  I like this tech. I don't know what to do with it. I think there should be either another civic or a Wonder here.
• Thermodynamics: Cement Mill building
  This is a fundamental technology that I don't want to get rid of. Is there a building we could transplant here? I looked through the early Industrial Era and there isn't a lot here.
• Relativity: Einstein's Laboratory wonder
• Quantum Physics: Reveals the Uranium resource
  These two techs are linked pretty closely. I'd love to keep both of them, but I don't think we can find a second trick for Relativity that ISN'T Einstein-related. Also, Relativity leads only into Quantum Physics and QP leads only into Fission. I wonder if we could collapse both of these techs into a single tech (possibly Atomic Physics?).
• Submarine Warfare: Submarine unit
  I'd like to come up with an effect for the Enigma, the German military cipher of WWII. It was used in a lot of places, but the point is to specifically highlight its impact on the Battle of the Atlantic, thus tying it to Submarine Warfare. I don't have a good ability for this yet.

I love that idea for Storytelling. Some of the Myths in C2C are a great idea.

Lord Kelvin, possibly the greatest Victorian physicist, was intimately involved with thermodynamics and with experiments into electricity. Perhaps you could hook something into electricity around here or maybe something power-related. (He was the one who spoke about the two black clouds on the horizon of physics, incidentally.)

What does Modern Physics represent if it doesn't cover thermodynamics, relativity, quantum physics or fission/fusion? The Thirty Years that Shook Physics should definitely be well covered, I agree. Maybe something to do with Planck or Bohr would be good here, maybe even a Great Scientist for the first civ to discover this tech.

Presumably Enigma would grant you espionage bonuses or unlock a themed promotion for spies or submarines.

Thermodynamics is really early in the Industrial Era. It's one of the techs that is right off Steam Power.

One thing we can't do is add any more free Great Persons. There are three Great Persons of each type scattered throughout the tech tree; one is tied to a Medieval or Renaissance technology, one is tied to an Industrial or Modern technology, and one is tied to a Transhuman technology. The exceptions are the first Great Artist is at Music, which I'm treating as a very early Medieval technology (the other two are at Romanticism and Androids); there are four Great Diplomats on the tree (Democracy, Political Philosophy, Imperialism, and Thought Scanning); and there is a Great General at Warfare but none in the Transhuman Era.

Considering that Great Spies are easily the least useful type of great person, having a few more will hurt nothing, IMO.

What about tying something related to balloons in Thermodynamics?

I don't think we should have Captured Animals as units in AND, I feel they're more appropriate in C2C.

The food and/or hammer bonus from killed animals sounds more reasonable, and I guess it would be another use of the same code that Lascaux Caves use?

Noyyau said:

I don't think we should have Captured Animals as units in AND, I feel they're more appropriate in C2C.

The food and/or hammer bonus from killed animals sounds more reasonable, and I guess it would be another use of the same code that Lascaux Caves use?

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The Capturing Animals mechanic is a mechanic that I really like, although it will have only about 3 uses per animal. I didn't really care for the number of missions that animals had and would prefer a much narrower range that makes your choices meaningful. I also like this because it gives you something interesting to do during the Ancient Era and then goes away as the animals disappear and the world gets settled.

Tolni said:

What about tying something related to balloons in Thermodynamics?

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The only purpose it would have would be a fairly strange recon unit (not by class, just by purpose). Airships don't come along until a lot later (currently Flight).

So there are 6 one-trick techs up to the Modern Era. There are another 7 one-tricks in the Modern Era alone. First off, here is the current list:

• Modern Physics: Research Laboratory building
• 3D Modeling: Design Studio building
• Hydroponics: Hydroponic Farm building
• Microprocessor: Solar Plant building
• Fuel Cells: Stealth Submarine unit
• Superconductors: Supercollider national wonder
• Magnetic Levitation: Maglev improvement

I think the best approach here is to actually just cut out many of these techs to save the rest.

Modern Physics, as I understand, is a general term for any physics that incorporates relativity and quantum mechanics. Other than that, it's pretty vague. I think we can cut this and transfer the Research Lab to Computers. Computers is a 1.5-trick tech and I'm looking for something to give Computers to represent its boost to science.

3D Modeling is a tech I really think is too narrow to make for a good technology. Like Magnetic Levitation, it feels more like an application of technology than a tech all to itself. In this case, moving the Design Studio up to Microprocessor would help salvage that tech without having to add anything new.

Hydroponics is worth saving in my opinion. The two things I am considering are either a Hydroponic Farm improvement that would be an upgrade of the regular Farm or the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore as a World Wonder. I have no idea what it would do, but I'm considering it.

Microprocessor can be fixed easily by moving Design Studio here and cutting 3D Modeling. Otherwise, we would need something that was computer-related but can't be either flat computer manufacturing (because I don't want to introduce any more manufactured resources) or networked computers (because that's the Computer Networks tech's job). I'm drawing a blank on what else could fit; maybe a computer corporation?

Fuel Cells seems so limited to me that I don't know what else we can do. The only thing I can think of is moving a vehicle unit here, but I don't see that fuel cells have made enough of an impact on the military that it would result in a new unit, and we also aren't concentrating so much on space that this would lead to any benefits there. I'm not sure right now where to put the Stealth Sub, or even if we need to keep it.

Superconductors and Magnetic Levitation get salvaged by axing two techs and constructing a new one. We consolidate Magnetic Levitation and Superstring Theory into Particle Physics, then swap the Maglev improvement and the Great Scientist over to Superconductors, and give Supercollider to Particle Physics. That way, Superconductors gets Maglev and Great Sci, and Particle Physics gets Supercollider and Theory of Everything. That puts both techs above the viability threshold. I like these not-exclusively-practical techs, but they're sometimes hard to make content for without stretching.

I'm in favor.

What about introducing +x bonuses at Computers/Microprocessors for Industrial/Modern era science buildings?

Afforess said:

I'm in favor.

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I'm ok too with all proposed changes except Stealth Submarine axing. In theory I agree it's not a perfect unit but I feel it fills the gap up to fusion sub and we need it for this reason

Vokarya said:

Fuel Cells seems so limited to me that I don't know what else we can do. The only thing I can think of is moving a vehicle unit here, but I don't see that fuel cells have made enough of an impact on the military that it would result in a new unit, and we also aren't concentrating so much on space that this would lead to any benefits there. I'm not sure right now where to put the Stealth Sub, or even if we need to keep it.

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AFAIK, fuel cells are also being used in spaceships and space stations but i have no idea how we can display this in the gameplay.

Vokarya said:

The Capturing Animals mechanic is a mechanic that I really like, although it will have only about 3 uses per animal. I didn't really care for the number of missions that animals had and would prefer a much narrower range that makes your choices meaningful. I also like this because it gives you something interesting to do during the Ancient Era and then goes away as the animals disappear and the world gets settled.

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This sounds great!
This is one thing in C2C that I always liked and missed from RAND.
Will it be mandatory or optional? I personally don't mind either, but maybe you could have a poll. Just a humble suggestion.