Alternative Timelines

If by lost world you mean Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle then a successful expedition could spawn a dinosaur egg unit that could be used to build a unique wonder for happiness money and special dinosaur units a la mammoth trainer. As sci-fi goes the source material is not very hard anymore thanks to science moving on with the times the dinosaurs featured were from neither the same place or time and hadn't changed a bit from the fossil records. If you really, really want dinosaurs then then cloning plus some tech to represent gene manipulation for arts and entertainment (genetic artistry?) could net you the buildable "Jurassic Park" wonder since they're not really dinosaurs but rather recreations based on what we know and what is most marketable. That would be a way to stuff various "made" fantastic creatures in there too. Have you considered using build once World Units like the heroes of Fall From Heaven?

The lost world expedition really reminds me of The World of Jules Verne scenario from the Fantastic Worlds civ 2 expansion. I recall correctly you'd kill a T-Rex on a plateau in south america to trigger the event of some scientists bringing back gems and an egg netting you lots of money and one of the techs necessary to research From Earth To the Moon (by lunar cannon) to win the game.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

I still don't think we have reached a limit. I think the change to how the font file is handled needs to be applied to he font_75 file as well.

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Well we are like give or take 1 to 2 left open. However I think we should leave a little bit of a buffer in case we need to add something in the future (such as an alien resource). A dinosaur resource should be low priority since there are many other resources I wish we had before then that just had to be cut out, due to the limit. (ex. clay, papyrus, etc).

Hydromancerx said:

Well we are like give or take 1 to 2 left open. However I think we should leave a little bit of a buffer in case we need to add something in the future (such as an alien resource). A dinosaur resource should be low priority since there are many other resources I wish we had before then that just had to be cut out, due to the limit. (ex. clay, papyrus, etc).

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Rubbish. The font problem is only occurring where the font_75 is being used. There is no problem with adding 20+ more resources if you don't mind the bit under the city being wrong.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

Rubbish. The font problem is only occurring where the font_75 is being used. There is no problem with adding 20+ more resources if you don't mind the bit under the city being wrong.

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Didn't other graphics mess up like the "red dot" and such? Or missing graphics when your city turns or ?

Dancing Hoskuld said:

Rubbish. The font problem is only occurring where the font_75 is being used. There is no problem with adding 20+ more resources if you don't mind the bit under the city being wrong.

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I still have not managed to pin down what exactly was done to resolve the other issue, so I'm not sure how to fix the font_75 problem, but I'll try to get back to that again soonish.

I know that resources can speed up tech but can tech be set to require X resource to be able search, if so it could be a good idea to link some of the to such resources or just make tech very costly with great reductions with the right resources.

For example riding tech could need an animal resource to be learn, how could I learn to ride if I don't have animals to practice? You could still learn it by tech trading but would require something to learn it by yourself.

Else You could just set the tech cost very high with huge reduction for all animal resource that can be used for riding.

By linking tech to resources it would help the process of civ developing differently depending of what is available or not to them you already started with vicinity building and would be a way to get access to alternate timelines.

I don't like the idea of limiting techs, especially military techs.

robomani said:

I know that resources can speed up tech but can tech be set to require X resource to be able search, if so it could be a good idea to link some of the to such resources or just make tech very costly with great reductions with the right resources.

For example riding tech could need an animal resource to be learn, how could I learn to ride if I don't have animals to practice? You could still learn it by tech trading but would require something to learn it by yourself.

Else You could just set the tech cost very high with huge reduction for all animal resource that can be used for riding.

By linking tech to resources it would help the process of civ developing differently depending of what is available or not to them you already started with vicinity building and would be a way to get access to alternate timelines.

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You can link a tech to a building and the building to a resource, but you can't do it directly. Unfortunately, all techs are now required, so this would not work in C2C.

I'm just going to throw this out there... hopefully not interrupting any great discussions or derailing any to say this but:

I've often thought it would be way cool to mod this mod with an option for a whole realm of Fantasy vs Sci-fi tech, building and unit developments.

At some point on the tech tree, you must choose whether to be a Magic or Science based society and once you've made that choice, you can't develop techs from the other branch of the tree until you reach a certain futuristic point where science figures out that magic can be explained or magic figures out that it really was a type of science all along.

While that does sound cool and all, Hydro, the guardian of the alternate timeline project, has made it clear he prefers sticking to relatively hard science when speculating about the path not taken. Plus there's the fact that they haven't even really started on the alternate timeline stuff save for scraps in the stone age about megafauna training and likely won't touch this project again until the galactic age is done. That said, a fantasy counterpart timeline of magitech and technomages and other carp like that sounds like an awesome idea and if you can get a team of interested people who, unlike me, know how to mod civ 4, you could probably start a modmod project around it.

What steampunk said. We have so many projects going on its hard to choose which one to work one. Thus alternative timelines and galactic era stuff has been pushed back for more pressing features. This bad you don't know how to mod steampunk. This I bet would become your own area of expertise in C2C.

I WAS just throwing it out there for consideration. We have a LOT to do now without working on that right away. I don't think we even see the end in sight where such a project would seem like it was time to work on but maybe down the road a long ways, yes.

Yeah the more you try to pin down what needs to be done, more ideas spring up to do.

We'll there's always brainstorming that isn't making up a couple dozen new technologies and the buildings and units to go with it times the number of alternate timelines:

Precisely how might a human player, let alone an AI might even begin to travel down an alternate path?

How, once the path has been chosen, might a player or AI be prevented from doing all the techs in the other path too? Or should, for example, a retro space age civilization be able to research and trade information age technologies?

Can this choice be coded to be attached to a building that allows alternate timeline techs to be researched and, if we decide to go with exclusivity, in some way makes certain techs impossible to research or receive from trading.
-would it be a national wonder, a world wonder with only a few uses, a team project, or am I leading the question?

Erm, I guess it's my idea that it would be building attached, some wonder representative of a breakthrough one way or the other so monumental that it wrenches history down a new path. I honestly have no idea if this is even possible and if the really smart modders say no can do then there goes my ideas down the hole. That said, here are my ideas. I have a million of them.

- I've already suggested that to go from classical period to ancient golden age instead of the dark ages of feudalism and such one should build a particularly fancy center of learning to revitalize interest in the natural philosophies instead of all the introspection and theology that characterized the middle ages (at least in Europe)

-Is da Vinci age really going to be a thing? It seems even more Eurocentric than the whole dark ages vs ancient golden age dichotomy. Maybe it could be a mini age of some sort that building Da Vinci's workshop would give you access to a slew of unique units from a few ordinary renaissance and imperial age techs in the vein of megafauna domestication. I'm thinking building Da Vinci's workshop wonder would give you a building in all your cities with a small science boost and the ability to build special more powerful Da Vinci type units as you get the techs
--speaking of megafauna domestication, instead of how it currently is now I suggest a similar system to the one above where building the megafauna domestication world wonder (of which only, say, five are allowed to be built) gives you megafauna trainer buildings in all your cities that let you build your zebra chariots and zebra knights and giraffe archers and war mammoths when you get the prerequisite technologies. That way you aren't restricted (unrealistically) to building those special units only in the city where you built the specific wonder.

-Steampunk: steam power, 12 mathematics academies built in your cities, and copper (for the gears) will prompt Babbage to build his DIFFERENCE ENGINE to eliminate human error in computing logarithm tables. The rest is (alternate) history.
*From Wikipedia: Mathematical Tables*
"Mechanical special-purpose computers known as difference engines were proposed in the 19th century to tabulate polynomial approximations of logarithmic functions – i.e. to compute large logarithmic tables. This was motivated mainly by errors in logarithmic tables made by the human 'computers' of the time."

-According to Hydro's flow chart you can get to the RETRO SPACE AGE from either the atomic age or the steampunk age.
--I'm thinking that you can get to the retro space age from the atomic age by completing Project Orion national wonder which requires Rocketry and needs to be built in the same place as the Manhattan Project. One more thing. PROJECT ORION SHOULD BE MADE OBSOLETE BY ELECTRONICS. As in once you know electronics, you no longer can build Project Orion. One thing's for sure about the retro space age: everything runs on vacuum tubes. Infinite energy from atomic power and a focus on space (the final frontier) means not much effort is made at miniaturization and efficiency.
--Now from the Steampunk era if we're going the Jules Verne route of presumed functionality I think we can get away with a *chuckle* moon cannon. From Earth To The Moon would be some late Steampunk world wonder requiring some crazy Artillery tech equivalent for the propulsion and submarines tech equivalent as a basis for self contained environmental systems. If we don't want to keep our scifi extra hard and avoid touching Jules Verne and Mad Science (which would in my opinion basically gut the alt history) I suppose it could be a rocket launched from a giant zeppelin.

Um. What I'm trying to say is: focus on where it starts and where it ends, and leave off filling in the middle until later.

Well I have said before that I think these alternate timeline tech should be unlocked if you have a combo of wonders related to that themed era. Such as ...

? + ? = Ancient "Punk"

Archimedes' Workshop + Plato's Academy = Classical "Punk"

? + ? = Medieval "Punk"

Leonardo's Workshop + Copernicus Observatory = "Cogpunk"

Isaac Newton's College + Benjamin Franklin's Workshop (NEW) = "Clockpunk"

Edison's Workshop + Tesla Laboratory (NEW) = "Steampunk"

Einstein's Laboratory + Walt Disney's Studio (NEW) = "Diesel Punk"

Silicon Valley + Stephen Hawking's University (NEW) = "Cyberpunk"

You get the idea. These are not set in stone, just loose brainstorming. More ideas would be helpful.

steampunk1880 said:

How, once the path has been chosen, might a player or AI be prevented from doing all the techs in the other path too? Or should, for example, a retro space age civilization be able to research and trade information age technologies?

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You can make specific technologies untradable. So the start of starting tech of a "punk" branch can be marked "can't trade". It can require a building. We can always make it so that building can't be built if you have started down a branch that would preclude the "punk" branch. So it is possible but needs some definition and more thought.

steampunk1880 said:

--speaking of megafauna domestication, instead of how it currently is now I suggest a similar system to the one above where building the megafauna domestication world wonder (of which only, say, five are allowed to be built) gives you megafauna trainer buildings in all your cities that let you build your zebra chariots and zebra knights and giraffe archers and war mammoths when you get the prerequisite technologies. That way you aren't restricted (unrealistically) to building those special units only in the city where you built the specific wonder

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It is possible to have a wonder which can only be built once for a nation but can be built x times in total. Someone was asking just this question on the general forum recently and gave the solution. Allowing all your cities to build the units would also be easy. (Not that I think it is necessarily a good idea) Give us a bit more detail on your thoughts. Lets start with the Zebra since that is one that doesn't fit the model at the moment.

Zebra herd

Zebra Tradition (wonder max 4 only one can be built by a nation/team)

Zebra Trainer

Zebra downside
. (mild) takes longer to build horse units - "they are untrainable", "I don't look as good on a horse as a zebra", "they smell funny"....
. (extreme) no horse units until cavalry

Is this the sort of thing you are thinking?

For mini alternate timelines, such as megafauna and da vinci that don't technically require a whole slew of new technologies I was thinking it would be best represented by a wonder, moderately difficult to build, that can be constructed X amount of times. Limit one per team.

For Da Vinci, or better yet a nonspecific clockpunk age, the wonder would be Great Inventor's Workshop, available with invention plus seven mathematics academies, plus seven engineering schools plus 4 alchemist, can be built 5 times, limit one per team. This would give a free building called Tradition of Great Inventions in all of your cities which acts as a marker unlocking a slew of different units and buildings by being a prerequisite for them. Such things could be:
-clockwork Armored Cart: tracked unit, strength 25, movement 2, starts with blitz causes collateral damage up to 15%. -25% strength vs gunpowder units, -50% to attack cities. requires clockworks and gunpowder, requires copper and sulfur. Upgrades to early tank. Basically an anti-cavalry cavalry and can kill arquebusiers and sometimes musketmen but is murdered by riflemen and grenadiers. And the city attacking penalty not only prevents you from steamrolling your neighbors with your uberweapon but makes sense considering how narrow the streets were back then.
-Scout Glider: flying unit with no ability to attack, only recon. Same range as early fighter. Can see invisible units. Available at physics requiring sails. Upgrades to early fighter.
-clockwork workshop, available at clockwork, provides production % bonus in addition to or replacing town clock.

I could go on, spending several hours to flesh out the whole clockpunk mini-age but I feel that other people should contribute ideas too and you wanted to know about megafauna.

There are two ways to go about this. There are more of course but I'm only talking about two here. But first:
Is the mammoth resource ever placed on the map by the map generator or do you have to get absurdly lucky by first having the mammoth animal unit even show up and then having the even more unlikely event of it becoming a resource upon defeat?

The two ways:
A. The way it is now and the way you are suggesting with the zebra trainer is to keep the different megafauna as separate wonders. If that's what you guys prefer than what you have for the zebra trainer is perfect as is and can easily be translated to all the other megafauna units. The only problem is like you said, you can build all of these special units everywhere.
B. I call the hierarchical method. At Megafauna Domestication tech comes a wonder called (tada) Megafauna Domestication, can be built five times limit one per team. It requires two of any (zebra herd, mammoth herd, rhino herd, giraffe herd, bear cage, deer herd, bison herd) in the city. Gives building called "(Achievement) Domesticated Megafauna 10pts" or something less silly in all your cities. The building acts as a tag by being prerequisite to building zebra, mammoth, rhino, giraffe, bear, bison or deer trainer. The ability to build each of these depends on your surroundings.
-Deer Trainer requires Domesticated Megafauna building, deer and forest in vicinity.
-Bear Trainer requires Domesticated Megafauna building, fish and forest in vicinity
-Zebra Trainer requires Domesticated Megafauna building, horse and savannah in vicinity
-Mammoth Trainer requires Domesticated Megafauna building, tundra in vicinity (right now it's too hard to get mammoth resource in my opinion or that would be the second requirement
-Giraffe Trainer requires Domesticated Megafauna building, deer and savannah in vicinity
-Rhino Trainer requires Domesticated Megafauna building, elephant and savannah in vicinity
-Bison Trainer requires Domesticated Megafauna building, bison and plains in vicinity.
This method preserves regional uniqueness but allows special units to be built everywhere that it makes sense to do so, instead of being limited to the city where the wonder is built. It also makes it possible for more than one civ to know the joy of shooting people from atop a giraffe.

Either way I think it is equally important each of the alternate riding animals continues to be upgraded alongside horses all the way up to cavalry where they're all replaced by helicopters. The way it is now, zebra knights are the best you can get. At each level they should be comparable to their horsey counterpart but with distinctions:
-Deer: minus two strength, plus one first strike, bonus forest strength and movement
example line: deer spearman, deer archer, deer knight, deer cuirassier, deer cavalry
-Zebra: minus one strength, plus one movement, bonus plains strength and movement
example line: zebra chariot zebra archer, zebra knight, zebra curiasser, zebra cavalry
-Bear: plus one strength, collateral damage up to 15%, bonus forest strength and movement
example line: bear rider, bear archer, bear knight... you get the picture
-Rhino: plus two strength, minus one movement, collateral damage up to 15%, bonus plains and savannah movement.
-Mammoth: plu....

Distinguishing between them has already been taken care of hasn't it... *sigh*

mammoth spearman, mammoth archer, siege mammoth, mammoth bombard

giraffe rider, giraffe archer, armored giraffe, giraffe curiassier, giraffe gunman. give them all sentry 1

bison rider, bison archer, armored bison, bison curiassier, bison cavalry.

I could go on, spending several hours to flesh out the whole clockpunk mini-age but I feel that other people should contribute ideas too and you wanted to know about megafauna.

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This is why he have this topic. Specifics on the unit stats, building stats etc are great. Its much easier to make stuff if we have a clear plan on how to do things. This seems to be your area of expertise, so continue brainstorming!

Also possible models to use would be great. At the moment we appear to be limited to what graphics are available.

B. I call the hierarchical method. At Megafauna Domestication tech comes a wonder called (tada) Megafauna Domestication, can be built five times limit one per team. It requires two of any (zebra herd, mammoth herd, rhino herd, giraffe herd, bear cage, deer herd, bison herd) in the city. Gives building called "(Achievement) Domesticated Megafauna 10pts" or something less silly in all your cities. The building acts as a tag by being prerequisite to building zebra, mammoth, rhino, giraffe, bear, bison or deer trainer. The ability to build each of these depends on your surroundings.

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Well remember there are also Hunter Building. For instance a "Zebra Hunter's Camp" requires Horses + Ivory in the city vicinity. The "Zebra Hunter's Camp" should be a requirement for the "Zebra Trainer" along with the "Herd - Zebra".

For Clockpunk

Building: Automaton Clock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton_clock
requires clockwork
desc: An automaton clock or automata clock is a type of striking clock featuring automatons. Clocks like these were built from the Middle Ages through to Victorian times in Europe. Our tradition of inventive genius makes them far more common in our country than in others. The automatons usually perform on the hour, half-hour or quarter-hour, usually to strike bells.
Stats: 5% maintenance, 20% hammers, 1 happy, 3 culture, allows one citizen to become engineer.
Upgrades from town clock.

Building: Orchestrion Theater
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ggmain/doublespreads/ggcoll03_018_019.html
Requires: realism
desc: An orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll and less commonly book music. The sound is usually produced by pipes, though they will be voiced differently to those found in a pipe organ, as well as percussion instruments. Many orchestrions contain a piano as well. In our age of clockwork, orchestrion theaters comprise enormous wall sized machines, usually complete with mechanical dolls moving in time to the music, and seats from which citizens can appreciate the works of our music roll composers.
Stats: 1 happy, 3 culture, 1 happy per 20% culture rate, .5 happy per 20% science rate, can turn 1 citizen into artist, one citizen into scientist, one citizen into engineer, one happy with dye.
Upgrades from opera house

Building: Step Reckoner Manufactory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepped_Reckoner
Requires: scientific method, copper
Desc: Step Reckoners are portable cranked mechanical calculators that can add, subtract, multiply and divide. They're a real step up from the abacus when it comes to calculating arithmetic. Other less inventive countries claim that the fiddly bits are impossible to make reliably but we managed just fine.
Stats: plus 3 gold; provides Good (Mechanical Calculator) in all cities trade route yadda yadda

Building: Good (Mechanical Calculator)
Stats: +1%hammers, +3% science;

For Steampunk

Difference Engine (Wonder limit 5, one per team)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine
Reuires: steam power, 12 mathematics academies, copper
Desc: They say the inventor Charles Babbage loved mathematics more than people and got the idea to build a mechanical computer after looking through a book of human generated mathematical tables rife with error and thought a machine could do better. Whatever the reason, a decade after he finished his difference engine, he constructed his breakthrough programmable Analytical Engine, an event thought by historians to be the ultimate origin of our age of steam.
Stats: STARTS CIVILIZATION DOWN STEAMPUNK PATH, +50% science in city, Constructed 100% faster with Good (Mechanical Calculator)

Edit: @ hydro: forgot about those. You could use zebra hunter's camp and herd zebra as an either or requirement for zebra trainer but don't want it to depend on buildings made exclusively by animals like deer and bears.

In ancient greece and egypt, cog work machinery and steam technology were used in temples.
http://wn.com/Category:Ancient_Greek_inventors
Some where there was a great History channel show that explored the possibilities of ancient world technology. I will have to find a link to it.

Antikythera mechanism -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
is an ancient mechanical computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera wreck. Its significance and complexity were not understood until decades later. Its time of construction is now estimated between 150 and 100 BC.
could spark a technology being discovered early?

Heron's Aeolipile -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heron's_engine
A steam engine invented in (c. 10–70 AD)
Imagine if it could have inspired technology quicker?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria

Leonardo DaVinici's machines could have inspired technology earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_DaVinci

Engineering and inventions
A design for a flying machine, (c. 1488) Institut de France, Paris
During his lifetime Leonardo was valued as an engineer. In a letter to Ludovico il Moro he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled to Venice in 1499 he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno River, a project on which Niccolò Machiavelli also worked. Leonardo's journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a steam cannon.

In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (220 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Constantinople. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. On May 17, 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the Golden Horn.

For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his c. 1505 Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as plans for several flying machines, including a light hang glider and a machine resembling a helicopter. The British television station Channel Four commissioned a documentary Leonardo's Dream Machines, for broadcast in 2003. Leonardo's machines were built and tested according to his original designs.Some of those designs proved a success, whilst others fared less well when practically tested.
What if??