Inventions (general aspects)

Robert Surcouf

Civ4Col Modder
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Feb 21, 2011
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In the next release (or in one of our releases) we've considered adding inventions.
Kailric has done a great amount of work with his inventor mod (and modcomp).
In this thread, I'd like to discuss the general concepts, the general goals we would like to achieve.

This is not a technical thread. If you want to discuss the technical aspects, check out this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=476045

I would also avoid discussing specific inventions. (see here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=476046)

So what is are global approach or rather what should it be?
First of all, adding inventions enables us to:
- More units/professions/buildings and some evolution in game. Sometimes nothing happens for five or six turns in vanilla Colonization!
- More diplomatic options. We can trade inventions with outher leaders (or not if they refuse to trade). For now diplomatic options are still too poor...
- Early games would be a little more difficult but things would get easier. Let me explain ! In my early storm and light mod, I changed the food threshold too 300 instead of 200. You actually need to have 300 food to give birth to a new colonist at the beginning of the game. But with some inventions you can lower the threshold. (Those inventions mean you've actually learned how to cultivate corn, potatoes etc...). With late games threshold could be lower than 200.
What is (or was) granted in Vanilla Col or in Religion and Revolution will have to be earned by researching specific inventions...

What do you think?
 
So what is are global approach or rather what should it be?

What "Knowledges" could do

1. Unlocking profession / productionlines -> Please let us not do that.
Spoiler :

Economical Professions / Productionlines:
This would be a nightmare to implement and balance.
Massive amounts of dependencies. (AI, Founding Fathers, ...)

Military Profession:
Lots of effort also. (e.g. Graphics)
Also we simply don't yet have features like "Swords", ... that would maybe make this interesting.
I really think we don't need it, because we can simply give promotions.

Summary:
It is simply not worth the risks and efforts.


2. Unlocking units -> Ok (but very carefully)
3. Unlocking higher levels of Specialbuildings involved with professions -> Ok.
4. Unlocking Specialbuildings not involved with professions -> Ok.
5. Unlocking promotions -> Ok.
6. Unlocking small features -> Ok.
7. Unlocking Improvements (or their higher levels)-> Ok.

8. Giving Free Buildings -> Ok.
9. Giving Free Units -> Ok.
10. Giving Free Promotions -> Ok.
11. Giving Extra Yield to cities -> Ok.
12. Giving Extra Defenses to cities -> Ok.

13. Improving production bonusses -> Ok.
14. Improving strength, movement, ... of units -> Ok.
15. Improving strength, movement, ... of professions (on map) -> Ok.
16. Lowering required yields for buildings -> Ok.
17. Lowering costs and buidling times for Improvements -> Ok.
18. Improving effecitvity of features. (Tax System, Missioning, Immigration, Growth ...) -> Ok.
19. Improving Attitudes (of Natives or Europeans) -> Ok.

Other Features:

1. Just like in Civ4, it should be possible to trade "Knowledges". (There are also a lot of things to consider here.)
2. King should probably automatically get all "Knowlegdes" of his colony.
 
Those all sound like good features and I think most are already in Kailrics mod which is good. I think many of the native Knowledges could give a slight yield boost in tiles with a certain Terrain or Feature (e.g. Arctic Survival +1 food +1 fur on Tundra ; Jungle Lore +1 food +1 timber from Jungle, etc). The original colonists had a hard time getting enough food until they learned about the local environment from natives. But, you should be able to eventually research such things yourself by studying the local environment if you're not friendly with natives or none are nearby.

Native tribes could start with only some of the knowledges that are appropriate to them, for example Tupi would know Jungle Lore but not Arctic Survival. Then you'd have to search around to find the ones you want.

Maybe it's best for the King to start with an initial set of techs and not advance or trade them; so you won't be worried you shouldn't research any Military since you're King will get it from you. I agree you should be able to trade techs which adds a lot to diplomacy, I think Kailric's mod has this plus a research agreement diplo option. Also some techs can prohibit others and some are non-tradable.
 
What "Knowledges" could do... That is the question.
What "Knowledges" could do

1. Unlocking profession / productionlines -> Please let us not do that.
Spoiler :

Economical Professions / Productionlines:
This would be a nightmare to implement and balance.
Massive amounts of dependencies. (AI, Founding Fathers, ...)

Military Profession:
Lots of effort also. (e.g. Graphics)
Also we simply don't yet have features like "Swords", ... that would maybe make this interesting.
I really think we don't need it, because we can simply give promotions.

Summary:
It is simply not worth the risks and efforts.
That's quite unfortunate. :(
I agree with you, technically we should avoid unlocking professions... :cry:
We can indeed try to avoid the difficulty by unlocking buildings/promotions/giving extra yields to plots or buildings etc... :rolleyes:

However, for military units, I would be highly un-atmospheric to have the same units from 1492 to 1800 !!??? :eek: :confused:
We must have some evolution, and that means having more military units.
About the graphics there are some available... Kailric developed some cannon units (see his Early Renaissance Cannons). And there are some other graphics we can use from Civ4 Bts (especially dds files) and from some other mods.
In my opinion we should try to "cheat" and have some evolution in the unit's graphics without unlocking profsessions. But this means we would have to implement something like civ4. In Civ4, you can change a unit's appearance when it gets a new promotion (e.g. In fall from Heaven II, Dwarf, Elf etc... are promotions and they change the appearance of our units).
At start soldiers would have an arquebus, and later on they would have the musket promotion and would be changed (graphically only) into musket men. And then they would have rifles (or something like that)

2. Unlocking units -> Ok (but very carefully)
3. Unlocking higher levels of Specialbuildings involved with professions -> Ok.
4. Unlocking Specialbuildings not involved with professions -> Ok.
5. Unlocking promotions -> Ok.
6. Unlocking small features -> Ok.
7. Unlocking Improvements (or their higher levels)-> Ok.

8. Giving Free Buildings -> Ok.
9. Giving Free Units -> Ok.
10. Giving Free Promotions -> Ok.
11. Giving Extra Yield to cities -> Ok.
12. Giving Extra Defenses to cities -> Ok.

13. Improving production bonusses -> Ok.
14. Improving strength, movement, ... of units -> Ok.
15. Improving strength, movement, ... of professions (on map) -> Ok.
16. Lowering required yields for buildings -> Ok.
17. Lowering costs and buidling times for Improvements -> Ok.
18. Improving effecitvity of features. (Tax System, Missioning, Immigration, Growth ...) -> Ok.
19. Improving Attitudes (of Natives or Europeans) -> Ok.
I agree. :goodjob:
These features are already in Kailric's modcomp as Orlanth said!

Other Features:

1. Just like in Civ4, it should be possible to trade "Knowledges". (There are also a lot of things to consider here.)
2. King should probably automatically get all "Knowlegdes" of his colony.
1. Yes indeed! :goodjob:
2. Hum. I'm not sure I understand all the implications... :dunno:
Logically (and Dazio and I discussed this on Civfr a lot) if Kings and European nations get involved in this, things might get messy... Historically most of the Inventors/Thinkers were in Europe not in the New World... Could you explain what you want to do? In Kailric's modcomp everything is as if Kings don't take part in inventions...:crazyeye:
 
Those all sound like good features and I think most are already in Kailrics mod which is good.
Yes indeed!

I think many of the native Knowledges could give a slight yield boost in tiles with a certain Terrain or Feature (e.g. Arctic Survival +1 food +1 fur on Tundra ; Jungle Lore +1 food +1 timber from Jungle, etc). The original colonists had a hard time getting enough food until they learned about the local environment from natives. But, you should be able to eventually research such things yourself by studying the local environment if you're not friendly with natives or none are nearby.
You're right. I like the idea. :goodjob: Don't forget to check the specific inventions thread.
But in general, that's the idea. At first the New World is hostile, and things get better.

Native tribes could start with only some of the knowledges that are appropriate to them, for example Tupi would know Jungle Lore but not Arctic Survival. Then you'd have to search around to find the ones you want.
Hum... That would be better if we want to improve gameplay, but that would mean we would have to change that aspect in Kailric's work. I'll have a look...

Maybe it's best for the King to start with an initial set of techs and not advance or trade them; so you won't be worried you shouldn't research any Military since you're King will get it from you.
I don't understand... :( Sorry!

I agree you should be able to trade techs which adds a lot to diplomacy, I think Kailric's mod has this plus a research agreement diplo option. Also some techs can prohibit others and some are non-tradable.
You're right indeed!
 
Maybe it's best for the King to start with an initial set of techs and not advance or trade them; so you won't be worried you shouldn't research any Military since you're King will get it from you.
Oh! I think I understand what you mean, now... You didn't answer my message ...
What would inventions do to the King?
It could be interesting to have some evolution in Europe, but how?
What do you have in mind? Could you explain Orlanth ?
 
I just mean that techs don't matter very much for Kings, although they would still benefit from those techs that give a military bonus etc. So it's probably easiest to let Kings start with a moderate set of techs at the beginning, and not be able to research or trade for more. Then if you research lots of military techs, you can get a little advantage in the war against them. (In Kailric's mod, starting inventions for each Civ can be set in XML; so this could also be used to give a unique set of starting Native techs to each Native civ.)

BTW, do you have any suggestions or additions for the proposed draft of a tech tree on SVN? :king:
 
I just mean that techs don't matter very much for Kings, although they would still benefit from those techs that give a military bonus etc. So it's probably easiest to let Kings start with a moderate set of techs at the beginning, and not be able to research or trade for more. Then if you research lots of military techs, you can get a little advantage in the war against them. (In Kailric's mod, starting inventions for each Civ can be set in XML; so this could also be used to give a unique set of starting Native techs to each Native civ.)
Oh yes! You're right! :goodjob:

BTW, do you have any suggestions or additions for the proposed draft of a tech tree on SVN? :king:
Great! I like your ideas! :king:
That's exactly what I had in mind. So no I don't have any suggestions for now ;)
Of course I guess Native assimilation and Native Warfare would be incompatible. Am I right ;)?
 
Here's a few ideas that were discussed on the French forums. Noodles suggested a few improvements:

He suggested that Buildings could or should give some experience to units. He meant free experience. But I guess we could also discuss "buying" some experience (or promotions) in a specific building (see power up mod for BtS).

He also suggested that inventions would unlock "Indian specialists", we could train specialists that were not in the city (e.g. a fisherman even though there isn't any fishermen in the colony).

Finally he wanted to see some evolution in the improvements. A farm could "evolve", and would produce more food. (He really liked Civ 4 system where improvements evolved). (Orlanth your ideas are quite similar here)

What do you think? I really like his first and last idea. We should/could get promotions in other ways than fighting. BUT we would have to make sure AI would be able to do it as well. Maybe giving free experience is better then...
His last idea is interesting to. A farm could give +1 or +2 food in early game and maybe +3/+4 later on (its just an example).

Unlocking Indian specialists and/or training specialists is a great idea. At that time I was modding Vanilla C4C...
And I did change education system (thanks to TAC team actually !).

Of course these changes won't necessarily fit Religion and Revolution, but I really wanted to post Noodle's ideas here since we had interesting discussions! :goodjob:
 
Thanks for your ideas Robert. You're right that a tech choice like Native Assimilation would exclude Native Subjugation.. things like this would allow you to choose different play strategies either of subjugating the natives, or assimilating them better as citizens and specialists.

If I'm not wrong, I think we had already planned to have upgradable advanced Improvements. This should already work using <upgradetime> and <ImprovementUpgrade/> in improvementinfos.xml , by # of turns a tile is worked like Cottages in Civ4. If an Invention unlocks an Improvement, then I hope we could unlock advance improvements using this, such as a Large Farm after building a basic Farm, discovering knowledge like Crop Rotation, and working it for enough seasons. :goodjob:

Can you say more about what your ideas are about experience and promotions? I think it's already possible for Buildings to add experience to certain units using buildinginfos xml tags:
<iExperience> ,<UnitCombatFreeExperiences/> , <DomainFreeExperiences/>
I've thought that it could be interesting to have some Promotions that could be useful for civilian units, such as Devout or Patriotic adding +1 cross/turn or +1 liberty/turn to the colony that colonist is in. I don't think it should be a major feature, but it could be nice to have one of your citizens awarded a special Promotion like this by a rare Event.
 
I've been thinking about planning a balanced techtree; IMO it's worth the effort to first think about how strong each of the features in Kailrics techsystem could be in game strategy, then assign a few benefits to each tech in a balanced way so that their benefits are proportional to their costs. Here is a general ranking I estimated for some of the features available from Kailrics mod (I didnt yet include further suggestions from the comments above, but others could be added too). Let me know if you agree with the ranking or not or have any other ideas/suggestions?

Minor benefits:
+1 yield from a Bonus
Unlock a Promotion
+10% to worker build speed
+10% to Improvement upgrade rate
+10% Missionary effectiveness

Moderate benefits:
+1 yield from a Feature
+1 yield from an Improvement
+2 yields from a Bonus
+1 yield from a Buildingclass
Natives give gifts more often
+10% for one yield in capital city
+1 attitude from Natives
Gain 1 free unit
1 free promotion for a Unitclass

Major benefits:
+1 yield from a Terrain
+2 yields from a Feature
+1 yield per City
End War with Natives
10% cheaper population growth
+10% combat vs Natives
Unlock a building, unit or upgraded Improvement (e.g. Large Farm)
 
Here are some possible ideas of appropriate names for techs from the period, inspired from Empire Total War, Imperialism, and a few of my own ideas :king:

Industry
Land Enclosures
Improved Animal Husbandry
Crop Rotation
Seed Planting Drill
Moldboard Plow
Advanced Irrigation
Land Drainage
Selective Breeding
Threshing Machine
Steel Tempering
Coke Blast Furnace
Measuring Tools
Machine Tools
Puddling Furnace
Interchageble Parts
Spinning Jenny
Spinning Mule
Flying Shuttle
Water Mills
Basic Steam Pump
Punch-card Loom
Power Loom
Circular Saw
Roller Cotton Gin

Military
Bayonets
Carbines
Infantry Formations
Military Syllabus
Drill School
Cadenced Marching
Cavalry Formations
Fire by Rank
Military Academy
Organised Procurement
Light Infantry Doctrines
Shortened Carbines
Platoon Firing
Army Staff College
Machined Rifling

Naval
Naval Shore Facilities
Flintlock Cannon
Timber Seasoning
Sextants
Telescopes
Naval Architecture
Grape Shot
Dead Reckoning
Copper-bottom Hulls
Naval Medicine
Citrus and Sauerkraut
Carronades
Rifled Cannons
Top Gallants
Food Preservation

Social
Public Education
Empiricism
Secular Humanism
Deism
Universities
Nationalism
Puritan Ethics
Counterreformation
Evangelism
Diplomacy
Moneylending
Merchant Banking
Joint Stock Companies
Classical Economics

Any comments or other suggestions? :cool:
 
Any comments or other suggestions? :cool:

Nice list. :thumbsup:
(Could you add a description what they are supposed to do ?)

Maybe somebody can think of a few appropriate ones for "Native Knowledge". :think:
 
Here are some possible ideas of appropriate names for techs from the period, inspired from Empire Total War, Imperialism, and a few of my own ideas :king:

Hi Orlanth, very comprehensive list. However I have a few concerns about the historical accuracy and timeline on some of the features.

Industry
Land Enclosures
Improved Animal Husbandry
Crop Rotation
Seed Planting Drill -Not used widely in Europe until the beginning of the C19th & later
in US
Moldboard Plow
Advanced Irrigation -?
Land Drainage - Practiced on a small scale but too expensive to make it worthwhile
Selective Breeding
Threshing Machine - Not invented until 1784
Steel Tempering
Coke Blast Furnace - Not widely used in US until after Revolution
Measuring Tools - Not widely used in US until 1780's
Machine Tools - Not widely used in US until 1780's
Puddling Furnace - Not used in US until late 1700's
Interchageble Parts - Available by mid 1700's but increadibly expensive.
Spinning Jenny - Not used in US until 1780's
Spinning Mule - Not used in US until 1780's
Flying Shuttle
Water Mills
Basic Steam Pump - Not used in US until early C19th
Punch-card Loom - Not used in US until early C19th
Power Loom - Invented 1785
Circular Saw - Invented 1780's not used in US until late 1780's
Roller Cotton Gin - Not widely used in US until the early C19th

Military
Bayonets
Carbines - Invented 1793
Infantry Formations
Military Syllabus - First Military Academy in US created 1802
Drill School -First Military Academy in US created 1802
Cadenced Marching -First Military Academy in US created 1802
Cavalry Formations
Fire by Rank
Military Academy - First Military Academy in US created 1802
Organised Procurement -
Light Infantry Doctrines
Shortened Carbines - Invented late 1700's
Platoon Firing
Army Staff College - First Military Academy in US created 1802
Machined Rifling - Rifled guns not widely used in US until the Civil War 1861-65

Naval
Naval Shore Facilities - US did not have a navy until Revolution
Flintlock Cannon
Timber Seasoning
Sextants
Telescopes
Naval Architecture
Grape Shot
Dead Reckoning
Copper-bottom Hulls - Not used until 1750's in Britain, 1800's in US
Naval Medicine
Citrus and Sauerkraut
Carronades - Not created until 1770's
Rifled Cannons - Not common until 1850's
Top Gallants
Food Preservation - Canned food not availble until mid C19th. Salt, dried, smoked all
available before.

Social
Public Education
Empiricism
Secular Humanism
Deism
Universities
Nationalism
Puritan Ethics
Counterreformation
Evangelism
Diplomacy
Moneylending
Merchant Banking -Not really implemented before C19th
Joint Stock Companies - A C17th practice though only open to a select few
Classical Economics


Many of these inventions if they did exist during the colonial period would have been far too costly to purchase/implement, and most were not widely adopted until after the period the game covers has ended.

I think it is really important from an historical perpective not to lose sight of how simple colonial life was. The colonies served to produce the raw materials for empires, and to provide a market for finished goods. They were never encouraged to produce finished good themselves, and the mother countires were incredibly reluctant to furnish colonies with technologies or machinery that would allow the colonies to make their own. By the Revolution, American industry was little more than sporadic cottage industires. They did not have the technology or the organization for anything beyond this.

I fear that with creating a huge techtree, the game will become more like a standard Civilization game, with a focus on invention and progressive development, rather than the spirit of discovery & exploration, and being a collection of homespun, illequiped, poorly trained and illprepared colonists fighting for Independence. That's for me, what made Colonization so different and so much more fun than Civilization and its spin off mods. Don't get me wrong I'm not in favor of no inventions, I think some would enhance the game, like learning how to grow certain native crops over time, but I think we need to be careful as to what inventions we have and how many, so as to keep with the general colonization feel of the game.

Sorry if I sound a little negative, I certainly appreciate the effort that this list took, but I'm not a fan of making the game too technical or inventions based. Forgive me if I have misread the intention of this thread, and please correct me if I am wrong. But I'm going to need some convincing not to veto a large techtree like this.:(
 
While I may not be a modder for Civ4 Col and revolution, I have done a fair bit of modding in my day. .dll editting is far beyond my scope...

HOWEVER:

I have suggestions for the invention system that I thought up at work this afternoon.

You are absolutely correct that inventions should be HARD and RARE and DIFFICULT to get.
Instead of systems like Knowledge ( civ4 basic research ), founding fathers ( unique to entire nation ), or payment or somehow doing yields regarding it... I think we already have a system that we can consider editting.

The mission system.

Before you go "what", think for a moment. Inventors typically waste their lives away considering and developing a single idea, hidden deep away and away from general society. Otherwise a general waste if you get what I am talking about. So instead of actually joining a city, we could use ( any ) colonist and use a new command called "Create invention" that completely destroys the colonist and gives invention "points" to a single city only. These points would go towards creating inventions in the city. HOwever, instead of doing the whole "we have created a mission, we will now convert natives to you", the invention points do not do anything whatsoever unless it passes a certain threshhold ( Look at King Taxes ).
Considering the cost of getting colonists to begin with and the difficulties regarding growth and payment to the King's Land to get them ( except for the english who generall benefit from using religion and turns ), I believe this is a fairly good idea. You can even do the %chance of success pain of regular missions to make it even harder to gain inventions.

Further, splitting the colonist types into groups and when they add "invention points" into the pool, certain inventions can be pursued ( Think Great Person system of base Civ 4 ).
Criminals and slaves could go towards creating better equipment or land enclosures and perhaps ways to prevent colonists from freeing overtime. Gunsmiths / Cannonsmiths / Blacksmiths towards improving tool use, cannon power, bayonetts and general military uses. Yield experts such as planters and farmers could go towards improving the land type of inventions. There's a lot to consider here.

And ofcourse you could set up the University / Great University to try cranking out specialist inventors by teaching free colonists. Perhaps only done if there's an invention already in city and ONLY in spreadin gthat one particular inventions. But in any case, I wanted to get these ideas out here incase you believe any of them could prove useful.


Key points:
Inventions are city only, not nation. If its razed, invention is gone, but can be remade elsewhere. Could potentially give to natives that you have missions with to get more converted natives perhaps.
Inventions cost money, time, population, effort and chance making them a more late game goal.
Inventions -can be spread- by using specialist inventors from a city with an invention / using a university/great university.
Invention trees and categories based on what kind of colonist you use be it expert, free, indentured or otherwise. Maybe an indentured servant could be used as an invention spreader type that is slightly more effective than the base colonist. Afterall they are indentured to a particular trade and only do a single trade most of their lives normally and generally don't have other freedoms.

I am certain this sounds complex as it requires several different systems. HOwever, I state that the system encompasses already done mechanics in the system.
 
Thanks for the response Colonialfan, I actually appreciate the historical input and would be fine with a smaller set of techs if they work well with gameplay - maybe you could propose a list of interesting and historically appropriate techs for these categories; take a look at the Excel techtree template in the transfer folder and fill in some suggestions for a techtree outline.

However, I also strongly feel we need to keep in mind the mod is about letting players explore an enjoyable and interesting range of alternate histories that could possibly had happened, and exploring how slightly different historical circumstances could have interacted in interesting ways in a wide variety of possible colonies, rather than recapitulating in every game the precise sequence of events that did happen in our world inside only the US itself. The ability to explore potential alternate histories is what is so rewarding about an interactive game rather than passively watching a documentary.

Also, even though I'm also a US citizen, I strongly feel the mod needs to not be totally US-centric, and not focused sprecifically around the year 1776 in our world and our own nation as the only possible time of reaching independence. The large majority of playable nations are non-US, and obviously developed with a wide range of histories and time frames, reaching independence at times far from 1776. As such it would be a major mistake for us to automatically exclude everything that wasn't widely present inside the 13 Colonies before the historical year 1776, when such a cutoff is totally unrelated to everything else present in the game.

Because this is foremost a game of strategic planning and development (or Aufbaustrategiespiel ;)), there also needs to be significant emphasis on creating balanced strategic gameplay that is enjoyable to players works well in the context of the existing game. For instance, although colonies did not have a navy or standing army until after Revolution, in the game of Colonization the player does actively develop a navy and army over many years in preparation for Revolution, devoting resources to this and making many strategic tradeoffs between economic and military development, and it would not work well to not allow them to make progress toward this. Because for the majority of the game the player is administering non-independent colonies, to a significant extent the simulation is about the resources and administration efforts of the mother country itself.

Re the comments by Shoobs, we have already planned to reuse the already developed system from Kailric's existing modcomp, it would just create too much work and possibility of error to redevelop a whole different system with colonists being destroyed to create local inventions in single cities, so it's better to stick with the already existing system that's known to work.
 
Hi Orlanth,

Thanks for you response. I would be happy to take a look at the tech tree and put forward some suggestions for the group to look at. As I said in my previous post, I've no objections to inventions per se, I just would not like to see them mushroom within the game. But I also appreciate that other players within the community like this aspect and enjoy exploring games that are not quite so historically accurate.

Perhaps a good middle ground would be to have a limited amount of inventions/technologies that already existed, say between 1500 and 1800, that can be unlocked with all the necessary prerequisites, but be very costly to produce, therefore reflecting some historical consistency. For example the process of rifling, was invented in 1520 (though historically not widely used until the 19th century), could be available throughout most of the game, but rifled muskets might cost 10 times more than regular muskets and take three times as long to produce. Just an idea.

Alternatively, and I'm not very technically savvy, so bear with me if this is a ridiculous suggestion that cannot be programmable, but what about not releasing inventions before the century/half cnetury they were invented in? So for example copper bottom hulls were first used in the 1750's, so before 1700 they are not an technology that is available. Or some inventions only being available after events in Europe such as the Agrarian Revolution, Industrial Revolution etc. - Again just throwing an idea out there.

I certainly agree with you that the mod needs to be as non US centric as possible. I realize my post sounded very US centric with the examples I gave. That's my fault, I was using the US as my main reference firstly, because I am more familair with their history than the history of other American countries and secondly, that out of all the colonial possessions in the America's particularly from the 18th century onwards, they were the richest and most technologically advanced. So I used them as the yardstick. I you make a excellent point it is important to try and incorporate the historical development, experience and timelines of as many non US American nations as possible. I couldn't agree more. Afterall the game is about colonizing the whole New World, not just the 13 colonies along Atlantic seaboard.:)
 
Ok, I'd agree with having knowledge difficult to get and requiring a relatively long time to develop. Ideally you would not be able to get access to the entire knowledge tree in any one game, but would have to strategically choose what to focus on based on what makes the most sense given your situation and available resources, making the game more interesting by being slightly different with every playthrough. A fixed year for each one would be problematic given the gamespeeds available, it could be interesting to have techs require or trigger an Era, though I'm not sure whether that's easy to do. Given that later techs can require previous ones and can also require your economy to have developed sufficiently advanced goods production before progressing, this can be used to balance it so it's not possible to achieve Tier 2 or 3 knowledge too early, and that some of them are a difficult or costly achievement. The AI should also be made fairly reluctant to trade an advanced knowledge, or have a very long time interval between accepting tech trades, to keep players from gaining too rapidly from this (which IMO can sometimes occur too often in Civ4).
 
Here are some possible ideas of appropriate names for techs from the period, inspired from Empire Total War, Imperialism, and a few of my own ideas :king:
Great. There are some I don't understand. Maybe my English isn't good enough :(
The one's I do understand seem quite interesting to me! :goodjob:

Moldboard Plow
Threshing Machine
Coke Blast Furnace
Measuring Tools
Machine Tools
Puddling Furnace
Punch-card Loom
What are these? I don't understand... Sorry? :(

Military
Spoiler :
Bayonets
Carbines
Infantry Formations
Military Syllabus
Drill School
Cadenced Marching
Cavalry Formations
Fire by Rank
Military Academy
Organised Procurement
Light Infantry Doctrines
Shortened Carbines
Platoon Firing
Army Staff College
Machined Rifling


Naval
Spoiler :
Naval Shore Facilities
Flintlock Cannon
Timber Seasoning
Sextants
Telescopes
Naval Architecture
Grape Shot
Dead Reckoning
Copper-bottom Hulls
Naval Medicine
Citrus and Sauerkraut
Carronades
Rifled Cannons
Top Gallants
Food Preservation
These I know :lol:
Social
Public Education
Empiricism
Secular Humanism
Deism
Universities
Nationalism
Puritan Ethics
Counterreformation
Evangelism
Diplomacy
Moneylending
Merchant Banking
Joint Stock Companies
Classical Economics
Great. You forgot Reformation. ;) Or would Evangelism be the same to you?
 
Maybe somebody can think of a few appropriate ones for "Native Knowledge". :think:
You can check Orlanth's list in the transfer folder ;)

Sorry if I sound a little negative, I certainly appreciate the effort that this list took, but I'm not a fan of making the game too technical or inventions based. Forgive me if I have misread the intention of this thread, and please correct me if I am wrong. But I'm going to need some convincing not to veto a large techtree like this.:(
Oh! Don't be sorry. I understand. You'd rather have a few interesting inventions, with historical correctness than many inventions. I understand.
You should really check Orlanth's list (in the transfer folder). The native inventions are more original, and they're not Civilization-like. I'm sure you're like them. Maybe we should start discussing these ones first;)
 
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