Tech Tree Discussion

The later "techs" are not new technologies but applications of one you already have.

Plus the way they are means you have to study some for critters you don't have!

That's with the bizarre exception of Falconry, which you don't need to research until the Classical Era.

Arakhor said:

... Falconry, which you don't need to research until the Classical Era.

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Quite rightly so. However I disagree with the idea that pressing the last tech in the tree on turn one will select every tech.

Well, all of them, except Mountaineering and religion/alt-history techs, all of which should be modular.

Isn't that the vanilla assumption anyway (clicking on Future Tech selects all of them)?

Arakhor said:

Isn't that the vanilla assumption anyway (clicking on Future Tech selects all of them)?

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C2C is the only place I have seen it.

Oh, fair enough then.

I've done a bit more research, and I think we need to take a second look at the sequencing and timescale for the 'prehistoric' and early 'ancient' techs.

Broadly speaking, there were three broad-scale shifts in early human history (at least of the timescale covered by this mod):
30,000 BC (Upper Paleolithic) -- domestication of dogs, bow and arrow, earliest Venus figurines
8,000 BC (Neolithic) -- domestication of cattle, agriculture, earliest sedentary communities
3,000 BC (Bronze Age)-- domestication of horse, Pyramids and Stonehenge, earliest alphabets

The biggest thing that pops out to me is the fact that the 'Megalithic Constructions' tech should not predate 'Sedentary Communities' -- it should be roughly concurrent with 'Writing' or 'Bronze Working'. This makes sense given how much labor would be required to quarry and move such massive stone structures into place.

In general, it appears the existing tech tree is split along the 8000 BC line, with the invention of agriculture and sedentary living. That's fine, but we should be more careful in determining which techs fall on which side of the line. There also appears to be a semi-informal split within the ancient era with the discovery of 'Writing'. I like this, but would prefer the split be more formalized -- instead of two eras before 'Classical Living', I really think there should be three, based on the division given above. This would recognize some of the seismic shifts in human culture that took place with the advent of bronze working, alphabets, horses, etc.

The biggest thing that pops out to me is the fact that the 'Megalithic Constructions' tech should not predate 'Sedentary Communities' -- it should be roughly concurrent with 'Writing' or 'Bronze Working'. This makes sense given how much labor would be required to quarry and move such massive stone structures into place.

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Therein lies the root of the inability of the established tale of human origins to account for the evidence at hand.

I've long been considering an earlier year start but we'll probably see that when the Nomadic Start project takes flight.

Yeah, there are some things to tweak but we could get lost in it.

However, one of the projects I've been involved with here during our forum down time was to re-chart out the tech research costs based on a measured mechanism of progression that should help us to get a smoother overall game experience. I'll soon be updating the tech infos with these adjustments and posting the chart. ANY MOVES on the X line of the tech tree should automatically mean an adjustment to that tech's cost to the cost according to the chart. We had a bit of a mess where research costs were concerned on early techs.

50,000 BC is roughly the time of behavioural modernity, when humans both looked like us and could be reliably expected to think in the same way as us. I certainly wouldn't go any further back than that.

Thunderbrd said:

However, one of the projects I've been involved with here during our forum down time was to re-chart out the tech research costs based on a measured mechanism of progression that should help us to get a smoother overall game experience. I'll soon be updating the tech infos with these adjustments and posting the chart. ANY MOVES on the X line of the tech tree should automatically mean an adjustment to that tech's cost to the cost according to the chart. We had a bit of a mess where research costs were concerned on early techs.

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I had to move a number of tech in the X direction to get Arakhor's changes to work for me. I would need to move almost all the other tech 2 spaces to the right to keep the X coord consistant with what was there, I did not. I just moved the cluster that needed it so that the tree was not going back upon itself as it currently is. This means that that cluster does not match the rest of the tree in cost by X position.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

I had to move a number of tech in the X direction to get Arakhor's changes to work for me. I would need to move almost all the other tech 2 spaces to the right to keep the X coord consistant with what was there, I did not. I just moved the cluster that needed it so that the tree was not going back upon itself as it currently is. This means that that cluster does not match the rest of the tree in cost by X position.

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1) I don't think it matters at all what the justification for a tech being on a particular X grid column is. IMO, any adjustment to the column needs to adjust the cost of the tech regardless. Otherwise it gets discombobulated quickly.

2) Since you've made significant adjustments, you'll want to quarantine your tech infos file and compare to what's about to go onto the SVN so you can merge our updates carefully.

Thunderbrd said:

1) I don't think it matters at all what the justification for a tech being on a particular X grid column is. IMO, any adjustment to the column needs to adjust the cost of the tech regardless. Otherwise it gets discombobulated quickly.

2) Since you've made significant adjustments, you'll want to quarantine your tech infos file and compare to what's about to go onto the SVN so you can merge our updates carefully.

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1) I have always disagreed that the cost of a tech should be slavishly based on its X position.

2) Too late I have already updated the SVN.

edit Not all techs are in the core Tech Infos file. The alt-timeline and optional religions must have the tech infos for their tech in the same folder as the rest of the XML for that option. I tried some other ways but always ended up causing an infinite loop style problem with the XML load.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

1) I have always disagreed that the cost of a tech should be slavishly based on its X position.

2) Too late I have already updated the SVN.

edit Not all techs are in the core Tech Infos file. The alt-timeline and optional religions must have the tech infos for their tech in the same folder as the rest of the XML for that option. I tried some other ways but always ended up causing an infinite loop style problem with the XML load.

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1) For now it needs to so as to enforce balanced progression. Once the tree stops changing then we can adjust based on other reasons like individual tech value.

2) Yeah... I noticed. I have no problem adding the hours of re-auditing I just did yesterday. It was going to be an issue for one of us either way I suppose.

3) I figured I'd need to adjust those as well yes.

Will be a few more hrs before I can commit then.

Sorry.

It was actually probably easier for me to do it since I was fully familiar with what would need to be done to merge our changes properly. No worries mate!

Publicola said:

I've done a bit more research, and I think we need to take a second look at the sequencing and timescale for the 'prehistoric' and early 'ancient' techs.

Broadly speaking, there were three broad-scale shifts in early human history (at least of the timescale covered by this mod):
30,000 BC (Upper Paleolithic) -- domestication of dogs, bow and arrow, earliest Venus figurines
8,000 BC (Neolithic) -- domestication of cattle, agriculture, earliest sedentary communities
3,000 BC (Bronze Age)-- domestication of horse, Pyramids and Stonehenge, earliest alphabets

...

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Adding eras is not straight forward. To start with each era has its own art styles.

The biggest thing that pops out to me is the fact that the 'Megalithic Constructions' tech should not predate 'Sedentary Communities' -- it should be roughly concurrent with 'Writing' or 'Bronze Working'. This makes sense given how much labor would be required to quarry and move such massive stone structures into place.

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There are a number of large megalithic structures that predate sedentary communities. Current theory is that they were built at an anual meeting point of nomadic tribes.

One problem with Civ IV is that you can't get tech until you have cities. In the Nomadic Start prototype AIAndy introduced "lore" which translated into tech.

I have not gotten anywhere much with the Nomadic stuff. I am finding and fixing some minor Python bugs as I get familiar with the code.

Andeanism needs to be moved to (28,19), as you've overlaid it with Yoruba.

Canaanism is still listed as requiring Polytheism, which is four columns to the right. What's more, they both require Stargazing, so Canaanism should either lose Polytheism (for being a later tech) or Stargazing (as it's already required by Polytheism).

By pushing Ceremony forward to column 25, you've spoilt my careful arranging of Ngaiism so that it didn't overset the line leading to Scriptures. I'm not sure why you pushed that entire section forward two columns, but it doesn't seem to have created any other issues.

In Ceremony's current location, however, I would recommend setting its OR prereq to Board Games, rather than Ancestor Worship, as that provides a more aesthetic arrow. Board Games could also have its OR prereq set to Standardisation.

Also, if you move Education from (49,11) to (49,8), Acoustics from (50,5) to (50,11), Printing Press from (51,9) to (51,5) and Humanism from (51,11) to (51,9), you'll get a much nicer-looking transition between the Renaissance and Industrial Eras.

One last thing - Sculpture should probably require Metal Casting as its OR prereq, simply because there were several notable metal sculptures and the Romans were particularly good at it, so good in fact that it wasn't until the advent of modern metal processes that we were able to reproduce their works (such as horses with one or more legs raised). Having Sculpture requiring Masonry only seems short-sighted, to say the least.

Arakhor said:

Andeanism needs to be moved to (28,19), as you've overlaid it with Yoruba.

Canaanism is still listed as requiring Polytheism, which is four columns to the right. What's more, they both require Stargazing, so Canaanism should either lose Polytheism (for being a later tech) or Stargazing (as it's already required by Polytheism).

By pushing Ceremony forward to column 25, you've spoilt my careful arranging of Ngaiism so that it didn't overset the line leading to Scriptures. I'm not sure why you pushed that entire section forward two columns, but it doesn't seem to have created any other issues.

In Ceremony's current location, however, I would recommend setting its OR prereq to Board Games, rather than Ancestor Worship, as that provides a more aesthetic arrow. Board Games could also have its OR prereq set to Standardisation.

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Ceremony had to be after Board Games as it was a requirement but was placed after. This pushed the rest of the group 2 to the right.

There may have been some merge problems between what I did and what TB did. I was sure I removed Polythseim from Canaanism!

We can have it aesthetically pleasing or more historically correct

Arakhor said:

Also, if you move Education from (49,11) to (49,8), Acoustics from (50,5) to (50,11), Printing Press from (51,9) to (51,5) and Humanism from (51,11) to (51,9), you'll get a much nicer-looking transition between the Renaissance and Industrial Eras.

One last thing - Sculpture should probably require Metal Casting as its OR prereq, simply because there were several notable metal sculptures and the Romans were particularly good at it, so good in fact that it wasn't until the advent of modern metal processes that we were able to reproduce their works (such as horses with one or more legs raised). Having Sculpture requiring Masonry only seems short-sighted, to say the least.

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Stone, wood and pottery sculpture happen long before metal working!

I only imported my tech cost adjustments into what DH did otherwise. Furthermore I did not do a load and audit to ensure it was all solid after that. Was just careful to only import and update RESEARCH costs alone assuming DH had correctly reviewed everything else.