Brainstorming Thread - One-Trick-Pony Techs

I refer to some techs as "1.5-trick techs" because they combine a major trick (building, unit, improvement, civ-wide bonus) with a minor trick (promotion, luxury resource, any major trick that also requires a tech from a later era). These techs are very solid conceptually, with many of them coming from regular BTS, so I'm not about to cut any of them. I just wish we could do something else with them.

Here are the techs that currently meet the 1.5 standard.
  • Agriculture: Farm improvement (major), Cotton resource (minor as a luxury)
  • Archery: Archer unit (major), Cover promotions (minor)
  • Horseback Riding: Horseman unit (major), Royal Tournament wonder (minor, because the Tournament requires Heraldry, which is Medieval Era)
  • Sanitation: Sewer System building (major), Apothecaries Guild corporation (minor, because it requires Guilds from the Medieval Era)
  • Anatomy: Doctor's Office building (major), Medic II promotion (minor)
  • Chemistry: Laboratory building (major), +1 hammer from Workshops (minor)
  • Micromechanics: NLOS Cannon unit (major), Automatic Repairs MK I promotion (minor)
  • Plastic Electronics: Hypermarket building (major), +1 commerce from Silk Farm (minor)
  • Personal Robots: +1 :) in all cities (major), +1 hammer from Cottage, Hamlet, Village, Town (minor)
  • Smart Drugs: Research Hospital national wonder (major), +2 gold from Pharmacy (minor)
  • DNA Computing: Plague Bringer unit (major), +1 commerce from Submerged Town (minor)
  • Organic Cities: +2 :health: in all cities (major), +1 food from Cottage, Hamlet, Village, Town (minor)

The things I have been considering are:
"Hard-wired" free units. There are four cases where being the first to research a particular Ancient Era tech gets you a free something. Archery gives you an Archer, Trade gives you a Trader, Sailing gives you a Galley, and Naturopathy gives you a Healer's Hut. These are turned off if No Events is turned on. I was thinking of moving these from the Events realm to the <FirstFreeUnitClass> XML tag (which is how Great People from techs are generated). Naturally, this wouldn't work for the Healer's Hut, and I don't know how well it would work for the Galley, but I think it would work for the other two. This would help Archery.

Moving the Bath House from Canals to Sanitation. Canals is pretty strong content-wise without the Bath House; it would still have the Aqueduct, the Irrigation Canals, Pont du Gard, and have Farms spreading Irrigation.

For Organic Cities, I am thinking about either a final super-Settler (probably giving you size 6 cities with even more buildings than a Pioneer) or a sort of "building farm" that would be a further upgrade of the Industrial Park and offer +50% or more building production. I have no idea what to call it.

I still like the idea of Mercenaries as a military civic available at Horseback Riding. The reason for using HBR is that you don't necessarily need money (the Currency tech) to pay mercenaries as long as you give them something of value, and some of the earliest mercenaries came from barbarian tribes outside of "civilized" areas who had mastered Horseback Riding. This would combine high upkeep (not seen in military civics until Volunteer Army) with +2 XP for military units and reduced war weariness.

Those are just a few ideas that I've been thinking of to help some of these understaffed techs.
 
The Industrial Park upgrade could be called Robo-Mining Plant, Robotic Factory, Nano-Dissamblers or even Microlite Construction Facilty (in homage to Master of Orion II).
 
The Industrial Park upgrade could be called Robo-Mining Plant, Robotic Factory, Nano-Dissamblers or even Microlite Construction Facilty (in homage to Master of Orion II).

Yaay for Master of Civilization :goodjob:


1.5 Trick Techs
For me all your ideas make sense, Vokarya.
I could even imagine more units with <FirstFreeUnitClass> XML tag. Like bombard, musket man, airship, airplane, helicopter, tank. Not for every unit, but at least one "prototype" for every unit category (like musket man from gunpowder units and bombard from gunpowder siege weapons).
 
Yaay for Master of Civilization :goodjob:

I could even imagine more units with <FirstFreeUnitClass> XML tag. Like bombard, musket man, airship, airplane, helicopter, tank. Not for every unit, but at least one "prototype" for every unit category (like musket man from gunpowder units and bombard from gunpowder siege weapons).

Maybe, but I don't want to go too far with this. Gunpowder is very solid without any additional tricks (5 total).
 
Maybe, but I don't want to go too far with this. Gunpowder is very solid without any additional tricks (5 total).

Yeah, I know you don't want to use it every where. I just think it's an easy way to increase any 1.5 or 2 tricks tech by 0.5.
But you know that much better than I do :lol::crazyeye:
 
The Industrial Park upgrade could be called Robo-Mining Plant, Robotic Factory, Nano-Dissamblers or even Microlite Construction Facilty (in homage to Master of Orion II).

The building I have in mind isn't a factory so much as a farm or even a womb. Keep in mind the tech is Organic Cities. It's a facility designed to grow new buildings.
 
How about Gestation Plant then?
 
Personal Robots seems like a very weak tech, one that might be better removed than improved.
 
Personal Robots seems like a very weak tech, one that might be better removed than improved.

True. I don't think we would miss it if it was cut out. It has nothing unique to offer; only +1 happiness in all cities and +1 hammer from all improvements in the Cottage line. We don't even need to keep the bonuses.
 
So, why not shift the hammer bonuses to Organic Cities as well? It would make sense for the concept of naturally-growing communities.
 
So, why not shift the hammer bonuses to Organic Cities as well? It would make sense for the concept of naturally-growing communities.

Organic Cities is already giving +food to all cottage-class improvements. I don't think it needs to give hammers as well.
 
If we cannot come up with anything good for the "building farm", I have an alternative:

City enteron
Upgrade for sewer system, bit healthier and and no maintenance since it needs no workers, cleans itself.
What do you think? Good idea or only weird? :)
 
If we cannot come up with anything good for the "building farm", I have an alternative:

City enteron
Upgrade for sewer system, bit healthier and and no maintenance since it needs no workers, cleans itself.
What do you think? Good idea or only weird? :)

When would it be unlocked?

And on another note: How would I have to modify the code to make use of the good ol' whip again? I don't care if the AI is bad at it, I'm a lousy player anyways. :p

Hi people, used to be a long-time lurker, finally signed up to the party!
 
If we cannot come up with anything good for the "building farm", I have an alternative:

City enteron
Upgrade for sewer system, bit healthier and and no maintenance since it needs no workers, cleans itself.
What do you think? Good idea or only weird? :)

Weird name--I'd probably find something a little more descriptive, as I don't know how many people would get the enter- root right off the bat-- but I actually like it. I would probably make it a dovetail for both the Sewer System and the Water Treatment Plant, because at that point, an organic system like that could easily consume anything and produce clean water.
 
Besides the 1.0-trick techs and 1.5-trick techs, there are also several techs that I'm looking at because I feel they are "shaky" in terms of content. By a strict reading, they have 2 or more tricks, but there are enough conditions attached to some of the tricks that I still think we need to either add more content or get rid of the tech. The main ones I am looking at are:
  • Slavery: The tricks Slavery has are a civic and its associated civic building. I'm still not completely sure how to count civic buildings as they are dependent on their civic and mutually exclusive with every other civic building in the same category. I do want to keep Slavery as a tech, and what I want to introduce if we add captured animals is the Menagerie building, which can be built by a captured predator animal and provides +1 happiness and +1 culture.

  • Elephant Riding: Elephant Riding is what I think of as a virtual one-trick-pony because while it has one major trick (the Elephant Rider) and two minor tricks (the War Elephant and the Elephant Bombardier, both of which come at later eras), the later tricks come at the expense of the earlier. You don't get two different things for getting this tech, you really get one thing that gets better over time. If Elephant Riding had a better exit point (it currently leads only to Armored Cavalry), this would probably be a real 1TP. I don't think we can support any additional elephant-specific units or buildings. I'd love to give this tech the axe completely.

  • Aristocracy: This one clocks in at technically three tricks, but two of them are civics in the same category and the third is a civic building. I think we need to better differentiate Nobility and Patrician and give Nobility a civic building. This is not a tech I want to lose, but it needs a little help.

  • Armor Crafting: This has two Melee units (Heavy Pikeman and Heavy Swordsman) and nothing else, although the two units are fairly different. What I would really like, but is probably not going to happen, is to move Armourer to Armor Crafting (and give something else to Smithing), then have Armourer upgrade to a Gunsmith and Gunsmith upgrades to Arsenal.

  • Cavalry Tactics: This has two mounted units and nothing else, although I did try to pick two units that were as far apart as possible with the heavy-attack Cuirassier and the mobile-defense Dragoon. It was pointed out that upgrading from Barracks to Garrison causes you to lose some XP for mounted units. I am wondering if we could support something like a Drill Yard that would require Cavalry Tactics, Garrison, and Knight's Stable and give +2 XP to Mounted units (to make up for Barracks). This is a tech that I do NOT want to remove because I think we need a tech between Matchlock and Flintlock and I don't know what else could fit.

  • Journalism: The two buildings here (Press Agency and Publishing House) are just a little too similar. I think I made a mistake including this tech; what I wanted was to give a second prerequisite to Telegraph besides Railroad, but I think Machine Tools will work just as well. The Industrial Era has also more techs than any other era, even Transhuman, and I think cutting the Industrial Era down a little bit would be good. I'd probably move the Press Agency to Telegraph and the Publishing House to Photography.

  • Sonar: Sonar has a problem in that it has no major tricks to call its own. It actually has four minor tricks: +1 food from Fishing Boats, +1 commerce from Fishing Boats, the Sonar promotion, and it's required for the Modern Era Missile Destroyer. My feeling here is that Submarine Warfare, Sonar, and Radar are trying to split two techs into three, but I'm not sure which two are the best to keep.

  • Vertical Flight: This is Elephant Riding take two. The only tricks it has are the Helicopter and the Gunship, which upgrades from the Helicopter. There really aren't any other helicopter-type units we could put in (as we've already decided not to go with medic units including Medevac Copter), and I wouldn't want a helicopter-specific building. I think we would be much better off cutting this tech completely, moving Helicopter to Aerodynamics and Gunship to just Modern Warfare.

Other techs that might fall in this category, but I think are fine as they stand, are Caste System (two civics in different categories), Machine Tools (two very different buildings), Amphibious Warfare (two units, but one is land and one is naval), Microprocessor (like Machine Tools, two radically different buildings), Unmanned Air Vehicles (one land unit and one air unit), and Space Colonies (two different buildings).
 
  • Elephant Riding: Elephant Riding is what I think of as a virtual one-trick-pony because while it has one major trick (the Elephant Rider) and two minor tricks (the War Elephant and the Elephant Bombardier, both of which come at later eras), the later tricks come at the expense of the earlier. You don't get two different things for getting this tech, you really get one thing that gets better over time. If Elephant Riding had a better exit point (it currently leads only to Armored Cavalry), this would probably be a real 1TP. I don't think we can support any additional elephant-specific units or buildings. I'd love to give this tech the axe completely.

That sounds fine to me. It always seemed strange to me that elephants got their own entire technology.

  • Aristocracy: This one clocks in at technically three tricks, but two of them are civics in the same category and the third is a civic building. I think we need to better differentiate Nobility and Patrician and give Nobility a civic building. This is not a tech I want to lose, but it needs a little help.

First to research receives 1 free great statesman? I don't think any existing techs give one out.
  • Journalism: The two buildings here (Press Agency and Publishing House) are just a little too similar. I think I made a mistake including this tech; what I wanted was to give a second prerequisite to Telegraph besides Railroad, but I think Machine Tools will work just as well. The Industrial Era has also more techs than any other era, even Transhuman, and I think cutting the Industrial Era down a little bit would be good. I'd probably move the Press Agency to Telegraph and the Publishing House to Photography.

Agree.
  • Sonar: Sonar has a problem in that it has no major tricks to call its own. It actually has four minor tricks: +1 food from Fishing Boats, +1 commerce from Fishing Boats, the Sonar promotion, and it's required for the Modern Era Missile Destroyer. My feeling here is that Submarine Warfare, Sonar, and Radar are trying to split two techs into three, but I'm not sure which two are the best to keep.

I think it would be best to remove the Sonar technology and move the Sonar promotion and Missile Destroyer requirement to submarine warfare. Drop the +1 food/commerce entirely.
  • Vertical Flight: This is Elephant Riding take two. The only tricks it has are the Helicopter and the Gunship, which upgrades from the Helicopter. There really aren't any other helicopter-type units we could put in (as we've already decided not to go with medic units including Medevac Copter), and I wouldn't want a helicopter-specific building. I think we would be much better off cutting this tech completely, moving Helicopter to Aerodynamics and Gunship to just Modern Warfare.

Agree.
 
First to research receives 1 free great statesman? I don't think any existing techs give one out.

There are four free Great Diplomats already on the tree. Democracy, Political Philosophy, Imperialism, and Thought Scanning give out Diplomats. They are pretty well spaced out (late Classical, early Renaissance, mid-Industrial, early Transhuman).

We could probably still use some more GD points, though. I'm thinking of converting Edinburgh Castle and Statue of Liberty over to Great Diplomat (they're both currently Merchants).

If we get rid of Elephant Riding, should we move the Elephant Rider to Animal Husbandry or Horseback Riding? I'm thinking HBR and increase Elephant Rider to 6 Strength. Right now, it's equal to Chariot. Even at 6, Spearmen would still be a good counter as they are 6 by themselves, before terrain and fortification bonuses.
 
I agree with HBR.
 
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