Tech Tree Revisions

1600-1700 is the second part of the Renaissance Era. This is levels 4-5. The last century is levels 6-8.

The timeline for this era:

This plays out as follows: Renaissance-4 contains some pivotal technologies.
What I did:

• Corporation is a difficult technology to pin down. I decided to move it to one of the earliest examples of a joint-stock company with the English East India Company, and picked prerequisites that matched it.
• Flintlock changed because I don't think Chemistry is necessary to a flintlock (it would be if we had a separate tech for caplock guns, but that's not nearly broad enough for a technology), especially with Chemistry headed to the other side of Scientific Method. However, I wanted some distance between Matchlock and Flintlock, and settled on requiring Metallurgy and Cavalry Tactics. Another possible prerequisite option would be Matchlock AND Metallurgy AND (Cavalry Tactics OR Naval Cannon). In this case, you can get to Naval Cannon without Matchlock, so I would specifically require it.
• Mercantilism simply lost Banking, as it was redundant.
• Scientific Method mostly loses prerequisites; I wanted Chemistry, Economics, and Physics all on the far side of this tech. Clockworks felt right to add, and Divine Right keeps Scientific Method on its proper side of the 1600's dividing line. There weren't really any other appropriate options.
• Social Contract is another tech that's switching places; in this case, it's exchanging places with Liberalism. Humanism moved so far back that it was redundant; Divine Right beefed up the prerequisites a little more.

Renaissance-5 contains the key science techs of Chemistry and Physics, as well as a few other techs, and it's one of the few levels with two techs that can be turned off (Stock Brokering requires the Advanced Economy option, and Weather Forecasting requires the Meteorology option)


Changes to this level:

• Chemistry adds Scientific Method. It is the scientific method that differentiates chemistry from alchemy.
• Explosives gives Mountaineering a tech to lead to. This was the best fit available.
• Liberalism changed places with Social Contract. It also gained Scientific Method because I want to stay away from techs with just one prerequisite. I feel that techs with just one prerequisite could be folded into said prerequisite.
• Physics gets Scientific Method as the best option I can find. Like Chemistry, I want this tech on the far side of Scientific Method, but unlike Chemistry, there aren't any good non-redundant additional prerequisites.
• Stock Brokering replaces a redundant Jurisprudence with Mercantilism.
• Weather Forecasting starts to really take off after the scientific method introduces experimentation. The barometer was just one option of several events that I could have used to date this technology.

So that's part two. Part three will cover the last nine techs of the Renaissance.

Is it possible to have a hunting camp give the city its near a +1 xp bonus for archery units? I would love to see effects like that where tiles gives different bonuses.

Combat Wombat said:

Is it possible to have a hunting camp give the city its near a +1 xp bonus for archery units? I would love to see effects like that where tiles gives different bonuses.

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It doesn't look like we can do that from the XML code. There are only so many effects possible with the XML without writing whole new tags. Theoretically, it's possible with Python callbacks, but I would prefer to stay away from those because they can't be evaluated appropriately by the AI and some of them get wiped out with modifier recalculations on updating versions.

The Renaissance Era wraps up with 9 techs in the 1700-1800 span. There is some overlap with the beginning of the Industrial Era here. Steam Power is being used in Britain well before 1800 (Watt's condenser dates to 1765), but the technologies of the Napoleonic Wars run past the end of the century. More than any other tech/era combination, I feel that Steam Power is the beginning of the Industrial Era, so I'm willing to accept the overlap.

Timeline for this span:

Here's how this will play out in-game. Renaissance-6 is 4 technologies.
What I did:

• Biology needed some more space, so I put Chemistry between it and Scientific Method.
• Constitution needed a completely new set of prerequisites because it was moved from the mid-Medieval era to the late Renaissance. I couldn't find anything else to fit other than Liberalism.
• Economics is mostly changing places with Corporation. I also needed to tie in Mercantilism. Stock Brokering can be turned off by deselecting the Advanced Economy option, so I put in both of Stock Brokering's prerequisite techs despite it looking like a redundancy.
• Rifling actually comes before Replaceable Parts, so I broke that link. I replaced it with Explosives, which requires Metallurgy by way of Flintlock, and then Physics' new placement keeps Rifling in the last part of the Renaissance Era.

Renaissance-7 has only two techs. Nationalism is the gateway to the Renaissance-8 techs. Replaceable Parts is the path to Steam Power and the Industrial Era.

• Nationalism wanted to be even farther along the tech tree than it currently is. To do this, I made Social Contract the mandatory technology, then put Constitution in Social Contract's place and Rifling in Flintlock's place. That way, you need at least one Renaissance-6 technology to get to Nationalism, making it Renaissance-7.
• Replaceable Parts lost Nationalism, as I wasn't really sure why it was there. It also no longer needs Printing Press (Printing Press leads to Scientific Method, then Liberalism, then Economics). I pushed Economics forward quite a bit from where it originally was, so I think that makes up for losing Nationalism. It also prevents Nationalism from being alone at its level.

Renaissance-8 has three technologies that all require Nationalism.

• Military Tradition drops Music because it's redundant.
• Representative Democracy doesn't need Social Contract because Social Contract is now mandatory for Nationalism. The original BTS tech tree has Constitution first, then Democracy, so I went with that order. Constitution needed to lead somewhere, and this looked like the best place.

I will post the map and the cost scheme in the next post. Let me know if there are any more tweaks you think should be made.

Here is the new map for the Renaissance Era. No level has more than 7 techs, so no splitting levels among columns is necessary. I do want to keep each level to its own column, so there are some sparse columns at the end before the Industrial Era begins.

The cost scheme for the Renaissance looks like this. It starts off increasing by 200/column, then goes up to 250/column at the halfway point. Smoothing out these costs (especially Biology, with its current cost of 4680) is a major reason why I started this project in the first place.

The target for this era was 79,351. This scheme adds up to 75,850 - a 4% decrease, which I don't think will be significant. We can test it and find out.

So that's it for the Renaissance. I'll start the Industrial Era next, which is going to be pretty long. At 10 levels deep and 5 new technologies that I want to add, that's probably going to take another 10 or more posts to cover all of it.

Vokarya said:

That's not a bad addition to Mounted Archery. There are several other techs that could use some additional content -- Neural Networks and Hydroponics have no content at all, and others like Modern Health Care and Legalized Gambling have only one thing to offer for researching them. Once I get through my current ideas, we can start beefing up the low-content techs. We should be trying to strike a balance between "good stuff now" and "better stuff later" throughout the tree.

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I agree, and I can add that Combat Wombat idea for MA is a good one.

Everything looks good to me Vokarya. The only doubt I have is about Constitution, mainly because the quote comes from the Magna Charta and Constitution in BTS was intended in a different way than you think. But I understand your point, it's just a difference between a kind of early-constitution vs. modern-constitution, so it' something that I can approve anyway. I think our best option will probably be to simply change the quote because it just doesn't sound right to hear/read that quote when you get our new Constitution tech.

45°38'N-13°47'E;12272202 said:

Everything looks good to me Vokarya. The only doubt I have is about Constitution, mainly because the quote comes from the Magna Charta and Constitution in BTS was intended in a different way that you think. But I understand your point, it's just a difference between a kind of early-constitution vs. modern-constitution, so it' something that I can approve anyway. I think our best option will probably be to simply change the quote because it just doesn't sound right to hear/read that quote when you get our new Constitution tech.

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Constitution in original BTS actually is a Renaissance tech (requires Nationalism, which is early Renaissance in BTS). I'm putting it back where it originally was, and I don't quite know why AND (or maybe even RoM) moved it to the Medieval era. Quotes can come from different time periods than the original tech, but I would not have a problem swapping out the current quote for the first sentence of the US Constitution.

Now for the Industrial Era. This is where the tree starts to get complex. Here is the timeline I am working with, although I am moving things forward and back to accommodate prerequisites.
There are going to be some more drastic changes from the current AND tree. Machine Tools will be moved very far back. Railroad and Screw Propeller will now both come before Steel. Photography will now be Industrial Era (as will Realism).

Industrial-1 has the key founding tech of Steam Power, plus Military Science and Photography as I couldn't figure out any other prerequisites that would work. The prerequisites are mostly unchanged, but are pruned back a little.

• Military Science doesn't need Scientific Method. You have to pick up Scientific Method before Nationalism, because you need either Liberalism (for the Constitution or Economics route) or Physics (for the Rifling route), both of which require Scientific Method.
• Photography gets Replaceable Parts as kind of a proxy for general inventing in the late Renaissance/early Industrial. I needed something to put Photography into the Industrial Era, and Replaceable Parts is very close to the beginning. Optics and Printing Press aren't needed as they are part of the chain that leads to Scientific Method and then Chemistry, and I dropped Physics because it didn't seem as important as Chemistry. I think two prerequisites are enough, and I want to differentiate the prerequisites of Photography and Steam Power. You will need Physics to get any further into the Industrial Era, because Steam Power is the gateway to the rest of the Industrial.
• Steam Power itself lost Scientific Method now that it is necessary for Physics. I also don't think Chemistry is as important to Steam Power, so I left that out. That way, Photography and Steam Power don't have the same prerequisite set; if I can avoid that, I will. A lot of the time, I can't.

Industrial-2 has 5 techs, all of which require Steam Power. I know I said I don't like having the same prerequisite set for multiple techs, but here I want to emphasize how much Steam Power changes the world.

• Journalism is a new technology to give Representative Democracy something to lead to earlier in the tech tree. It gets the Press Agency and possibly a second new Publishing House building. Photography keeps the Agent.
• Machine Tools historically date to the early 1800's. I think the current Machine Tools overlaps too much with Manufacturing, so it moves back here. There will still be content for it (see below).
• Railroad and Screw Propeller both moved backwards because they predate the Bessemer converter, which is what establishes the Steel technology (as mass-produced steel, compared to earlier small-scale steel production). Steel is still important as it will lead to Electricity, Motorized Transportation, and Semi-Automatic Weapons.
• Thermodynamics should require Steam Power as it was working with the efficiency of steam engines that led to the creation of thermodynamics. The rest of the original techs all overlap with Steam Power. I added Weather Forecasting to link the Meteorology techs into the rest of the tree instead of just having them lead to each other.

Some changes to existing content:

• Railroad improvement switches from requiring Steel to requiring Iron. We can only have one OR requirement on resource requirements for improvements, and I'd rather have a choice of fuels (Coal OR Oil OR Oil Products) over a choice of metals.
• International Port moves from Machine Tools to Logistics.
• Cannery moves from Nationalism to Machine Tools, and loses the power requirement. Requiring power puts a hidden Electricity prerequisite on whatever has the power requirement, which isn't fair.

Industrial-3 is another small column with only 3 techs.

• Assembly Line gets moved up to just past Machine Tools, making the other prerequisites redundant.
• Organic Chemistry gets shifted backwards to the early Industrial Era, where it originally developed. Tying it to Thermodynamics is a bit of a stretch, but I'm not sure of better prerequisites to use.
• Telegraph has a problem in that by far, Electricity is the hardest technology of the Industrial Era to pin down. I chose to put Telegraph before Electricity and tie Electricity to the publication of Maxwell's equations in 1873 and Edison's first large-scale electrical network in 1882. I will create a new Telegraph Office that provides some of the benefits of the current Telephone Network and shift the Telephone Network over to Electricity so that it becomes available once you have power.

I know these are bigger changes than anything I have proposed so far. Let me know if anything doesn't make sense and I will try to explain further.

I haven't introduced any new technologies since Alchemy and Rudder during the Medieval Era. Here is the next new tech: Journalism.

Era: Industrial
Prerequisites:: Photography + Representative Democracy + Steam Power
Leads to: Marxism, Telegraph
Allows: Press Agency (building), Publishing House (building)

While newspapers have been produced throughout history, the Journalism tech represents newspapers becoming a really major force that appeal to the mass public. Steam Power represents the rotary steam-driven press and Representative Democracy represents the ideas of freedom of the press.

Journalism will take the Press Agency from Photography and then I was also thinking about a second building, the Publishing House. This represents book and magazine publishers, which don't publish as quickly as the newspapers (no espionage bonus) but disseminate ideas better (a small science bonus)

• Cost: equal to Press Agency
• +10%
• +10%
• +1 from Dye

Let me know if you think this will work.

Was there centralized journalism before photography? It would seem to be the proper prereq for building a press agency.

Combat Wombat said:

Was there centralized journalism before photography? It would seem to be the proper prereq for building a press agency.

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Journalism is a very broad concept that's hard to pin to a specific date. I'm using the rise of cheap, popular newspapers in the early 1800's as what the Journalism tech is all about. True photojournalism probably comes along a little later, but techs need to be broad for gameplay purposes.

An idea would be to break it up into 2 types of Journalism.

1) Broad sheet Journalism, made up of text mainly, with some sketches.
+5%
+1 from Hemp (to make paper), +1 Dye to print

2) Photographic Journalism (Photography), which would come Mid industrial, around WW2, with the improvement of Photographic equipment.
+10%
+1 :Culture: +10%, +20% or 30% for Fascist or Communist.(Propaganda)
+1
Maybe a -ve for dissemination of ideas?

IPEX-731BA5DD06 said:

An idea would be to break it up into 2 types of Journalism.

1) Broad sheet Journalism, made up of text mainly, with some sketches.
+5%
+1 from Hemp (to make paper), +1 Dye to print

2) Photographic Journalism (Photography), which would come Mid industrial, around WW2, with the improvement of Photographic equipment.
+10%
+1 :Culture: +10%, +20% or 30% for Fascist or Communist.(Propaganda)
+1
Maybe a -ve for dissemination of ideas?

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I don't want to go down the route of creating overly-specific techs and sub-techs. I think we need to keep technologies as general as we can. I will say that a Propaganda tech is coming later in the Industrial Era.

The first part of the Industrial Era primarily revolved around Steam Power. The second part of the Industrial Era revolves around the two techs of Steel and Electricity.

A few techs I would like to rename:

• Modern Sanitation becomes Public Health. I hate using the word Modern to describe anything (tech, building, or unit), especially if we aren't in the Modern Era. I also think that the technology is a little bit broader than just sanitation, including the new science of epidemiology.
• Motorized Transportation becomes Automobile. I know there are other kinds of transportation included (such as motorcycles), but I just think the construction is clunky.
• Semi-Automatic Weapons becomes Repeating Weapons. I think they were referred to as repeating weapons before automatics came along.

A timeline for this part. With one exception, this covers just about everything up to 1900.

Industrial-4 has a mix of techs, mostly revolving around techs coming off Assembly Line.

• Agricultural Engineering lost Medicine because I wanted to move Medicine upwards. I replaced Steam Power with Assembly Line to put Agricultural Engineering in a proper place tree-wise.
• Marxism had prerequisites that made no sense. What does Biology have to do with Marxism? I made Assembly Line (to represent growing industrialization) the primary prerequisite, added Journalism to represent the growing spread of news (Marx had worked as a journalist) and kept Stock Brokering to make sure it led to something. Then I pruned the redundancies out.
• Meteorology switches from Scientific Method to Telegraph, as it was the quick transmission of weather information by telegraph that led to meteorology becoming a large-scale science.
• Public Health is on the near side of Medicine with these changes. So I dropped it from the prerequisites.
• Refining lost Corporation as it was redundant. I added Organic Chemistry as it represents later developments in chemistry.
• Steel really needed some distance between it and Steam Power (Steam Power is 1775, Steel is 1855). So I moved Steel to Assembly Line and then added Thermodynamics to represent advances in efficiency to get steel right.

Industrial-5 is another mix, with two of the most potent technologies requiring Steel.

• Combustion had Assembly Line swapped for Machine Tools just to keep Machine Tools from leading to only one tech.
• Electricity is the biggest change. Again, I wanted distance between Electricity and the beginning of the Industrial Era, so I put it after Steel to represent the development of large-scale usage of electrical power.
• Labor Union had Assembly Line pruned since I rearranged it so that Assembly Line is required for Marxism.
• Medicine now requires Public Health instead of the other way around. I think Public Health leads to the germ theory of disease, which is an important part of the Medicine tech.
• Realism arose as a reaction to the revolutions of 1848, which were Marxist-inspired. So Marxism is required for Realism, which leads to a couple other prerequisites being redundant.
• Repeating Weapons had a very odd doubled Rifling prerequisite. I'm not sure why it was there - maybe just to give you a speed bonus for getting Steel first? Having this weird arrangement would allow you to research Repeating Weapons with just Military Science and Rifling, but if you had Steel, it would speed up the tech.

Finally, Industrial-6 revolves pretty heavily around Electricity.

• Artillery had its technologies pruned due to redundancy.
• Automobile needed Steel to represent developments in metalwork, even if the vehicles had wooden bodies. I don't think the large-scale use of electrical power in the Electricity tech is needed for Automobile, and Steel makes Assembly Line redundant.
• Civil Engineering gets Electricity as I think this tech really covers large-scale urban planning, including power networks.
• Motion Pictures comes along at the same time as Radio, so I moved it back to Electricity. Photography is redundant due to the chain from Photography to Journalism to Telegraph to Electricity.
• Psychology deserved to be after Medicine.
• Radio stayed where it was while Electricity and Telegraph switched places.
• Refrigeration would be better with Medicine, which made Biology redundant. Electricity also requires Thermodynamics by way of Steel, so another redundancy gets pruned.

So that's part 2. Parts 3 and 4 will cover the early 20th-century technologies, mostly centering around the Industrialism tech.

I noticed we didn't have a lot of political technologies during the Industrial Era, and I thought Imperialism would make a good tech to have. I feel like there should be at least one building or civic here, but I am not sure what would be good.

Here's the tech:
Era: Industrial
Requires: Repeating Weapons + (Railroad OR Screw Propeller)
Leads to: Communism, Fascism
Allows: Crystal Palace (Wonder), Reichstag (Wonder)

Repeating Weapons represents advances in firepower allowing a small group of soldiers to defeat much larger groups of poorly-armed natives. The Railroad or Screw Propeller requirement represents transportation advances needed to control areas far distant from the homeland.

The two Wonders both reward you with Golden Ages, but under different circumstances.

Crystal Palace starts an immediate Golden Age, as well as giving you +2 per specialist. I think that's the best benefit for it, but I will listen to any other suggestions.

Reichstag is a conversion of Platyping's wonder. It starts a Golden Age whenever you get a new Vassal. It's also one of the rare Spy wonders, giving you a small benefit even if you don't play with Vassal States on. (Personally, I play with it on, but never accept vassals. I don't mind if AI's vassalize to each other.)

Sounds very good to me, looking forward to the next parts!

Vokarya said:

[*]Semi-Automatic Weapons becomes Repeating Weapons. I think they were referred to as repeating weapons before automatics came along.
[/LIST]

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yaaaa thank god I was gonna suggest this if you hadn't Repeating is the correct term for this tech

Combat Wombat said:

yaaaa thank god I was gonna suggest this if you hadn't Repeating is the correct term for this tech

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I watch names very carefully. There's still a few tech names that I think could stand to be pruned a little, but I don't have good replacements.

The third part of the Industrial Era mostly centers around Industrialism. Industrialism really runs this part of the show.

The only pre-1900 tech from this section is also the only one that I want to make a name change to: Compulsory Education becomes Public Schooling. The reason for this is that the education being offered isn't just compulsory, but also free, secular, and open to all. I think Compulsory Education just catches one of these four, but Public Schooling gets them all.

Here's the timeline for this section:

Industrial-7 wraps pretty heavily around Automobile.

• Fascism gets the old and dusty, late-Renaissance Nationalism exchanged for the new and shiny Imperialism. I prefer to have tech requirements be closer together, otherwise the earlier tech isn't very much of a requirement.
• Flight's requirement of Screw Propeller was redundant, and then I moved it up from Combustion to Automobile to keep it on the proper side of the 1900's divide.
• Industrialism was really kicked off by the Automobile, so I made that a requirement, then removed both Combustion (required for Automobile) and Electricity (required for Civil Engineering)
• Mass Transit wanted to be earlier than Communism, so I snipped that requirement and kept the rest.
• I really don't understand how Public Schooling got the requirements it did, so I cut them down to just Psychology. If someone else has a rationale for these requirements, I'll listen.
• Theory of Relativity got a slight move so that it was after Radio. Radio and Relativity were just way too early in the tech tree.

Industrial-8 passes mostly through Industrialism.
Some snipping of redundant prerequisites here, and putting some space between pairs of techs that were too close for my taste.

• Armored Vehicles no longer needs Automobile since Automobile is required for Industrialism.
• Automatic Weapons needed to be farther away from Repeating Weapons, so I replaced Repeating Weapons with Artillery (its successor) and Combustion with Industrialism.
• Communism also needed some distance from Labor Union, as I would prefer to tie Communism to the 1917 revolutions and the establishment of a Communist government. So I gave Communism its new requirements. It has Imperialism because Communism is a reaction; techs can be reactionary as well as evolutionary.
• Submarine Warfare had Automatic Weapons exchanged for Artillery. I want subs to come closer to automatic weapons, and I don't feel that the Automatic Weapons tech is essential. I think the big weapons of Artillery make more sense. Military Science is then redundant, so it gets removed. Radio adds to communicate submarines with shore bases.

I'll talk about the two new techs next, and then there will be one more post to cover the end of the Industrial, up to the end of World War II. There will be some techs moved from the Modern Era to the Industrial.