Technologies

Using a normal button is fine...also, where are the Civilopedia entries located? Or do you want me to just compile the tech tree, and then arrange the grid?
 
I think setting up the basic tree would be best, first, then we can deal with text later.

For reference, please store them in World_2008_Techs_CIV4GameText.xml along with the tags for strategy and name.

The examples themselves are in any text file with the word "Pedia" in them.
 
Edit: Well, looks like I missed the first page discussion.

Anyways, the main point of this mod is to simulate the next few decades of time, up till 2050-ish, no? SO why do we have techs like Simulated Gravity and such? This is a historical mod, not a science fiction[ /I]. I think we should focus on stuff that is reasonable to expect:

Quantum Mechanics
Nanotechnology
Robotics
Advanced Weaponry
Advanced Cityscapes (new buildings, etc)
New Philosophy
Medicine/Biology/Ecology

These all tie into each other quite nicely. New Philosophies and discussion of public health affect the way cities are designed; new weapons need new robotics and nanotechnology; Quantum Mechanics would require even greater leaps.

Plus, we'll have to establish modern tech categories, like:
Internet/Modern Computing
Communications
Space Exploration (Japan, Iran, Europe, Russia, US, China, India, Brazil....all key players)
Current Warfare
etc

For example, the African Union can't be expected to be thrown into modern technology when it's armies are barely equipped, it's communication links are nil, Internet penetration is low, etc. Thus, we have to establish modern techs to provide a realistic base.
 
Yeah, those were just broad categories.

I'm envisioning an FFH2-like tech tree: several lines of tech.

For example, choosing the Quantum Computing/Nanotechnology lines would give you bonuses on research and espionage (allowing you to steal military techs), but might leave you open to attack from more advanced militaries.

Computing Techs:
Optical Lattices
Qubit Generation
Quantum Gate Enhancement
Qubit Translation
Universal Gate Set
Quantum Theory
Quantum Experimentation
Transistor Patterning
Silicon Imprinting
Integrated Circuitry
Optical Computation
Photon Manipulation
Optical Transistor
Plasmon Generation

There are three distinct branches here: Optical Computation (usage of photons rather than electrons to computer), Quantum Computing (usage of 'qubits', or a bit that can be 1, 0, 1 and 0, or a superposition of both), and Modern/Electrical Computing (usage of transistors and bits).
 
:bump:

Well, I started a basic tech tree with the above techs in to test my skills. I should have the file posted soon.

Copy it into your Custom Assets folder with the modified Civilizations file (I'm changing it to have only 2 Civs).

Edit: well, that didnt boil over so well. For some reason there's an error parsing the file. I won't be able to play-test it unless I do one of tswo things:

1) enter each and every file referencing Civ4TechInfos, or
2) Go through the root Civ4TechInfos file, copy it, then go through the copy shifting each tech's x-value to increase by 10, then insert the code for the new technologies.

I'm feeling lazy at the moment, and I really don't want to.
 
Looking more at the game than hoping to predict the future:

Workers and tile improvements: gaining the ability to work in mountains, and to work the oceans. Mountains could have mines, but better would be a 'chalet' - a cottage that grows as normal, and also gives:health: Oceans and coastal tiles should also have cottages (Hong Kong already has a floating town, and I believe other cities do as well) or farms (as plankton farming has been suggested RW).Roads and rail lines are also theoretically practical at the moment, so should be available as future techs.
The ability to work currently useless tiles, eg tundra and desert.

To keep emancipation worthwhile, Towns should be able to grow larger: perhaps called exurbs or 'feeder cities'. In addition to increasing gold, they should also increase :yuck: and/or :mad:
Alternately, a variant on slavery/nationalism that lets you 'whip' towns.

Settlers: should eventually be able to found cities on ocean tiles.

Space: a wonder called the "powersat" - puts a solar power plant in every city you own. The option to nudge asteroids to strike at enemy nations - these would effectively be supernukes; and a random asteroid strike as a disaster so that no one is sure whether it was a deliberate attack. A wonder to blast away asteroids, both aimed and random.
A Space Corporation that gives access to metal resources (mined in the asteroid belt).

Pollution: artillery upgrade that lets the unit fire pollution at a tile. The ability for military units to Pillage pollution. A National wonder that gives a free specialist for every tile that is polluted (consider the way India has villages who live in garbage dumps, recycling everything).

Religion: Go through the options *again* - so Free religion becomes default, but can also have Organised Religion, or Theocracy, or Pacifism. Or Theocracy as default, but also Organised Religion or Pacifism.

Politically: 'semi-autonomous regions' - can build an extra Palace in city with significant foreign pop, benefits cities with that foreign element.

New Corporation: "Ecotourism" - uses up Whale (gives :culture: and :science:) and Elephant, (gives :gold: and :) )can only spread in nations with Environmentalism Civic.

The ability to trade :yuck: - allowing you to dump your rubbish in the 3rd world.

UN resolutions: "Hunting preserves" animals can appear with cultural boundaries (providing easy xp), "Autonomy Vote" currently rioting city becomes a new state, "Open Source" all nations must share currently known techs; "Disband" United Nations Expires.
 
I really like your ideas for towns, same with building improvements in mountains and some on deserts, like Israel has turning desert into farms.

I dont think Autonomy vote is a good idea, AFAIK the UN prefers to keep countries together when at all possible.
 
The tech tree is done, civs are basically set, for V1.0 at least. I think what we need to focus on now are buildings and units. Standard ones at first and then unique ones.
 
The tech tree is done, civs are basically set, for V1.0 at least. I think what we need to focus on now are buildings and units. Standard ones at first and then unique ones.

Where can I see a copy of the tech tree? That is sort of necessary for considering what types of units can be researched.
 
I finally have it; not bad. Maybe have some of the genetics-related techs give extra food from farms, but good otherwise.

Now, I still want to reinsert techs related to civics for some countries with backwards government to need to research. There was a sugestion instead that certain Civics should take a long time to implement, but a number of problems exist with this suggestion. One, sometimes massive change can be brought about instantly and nonviolently, as it was in the 1992 fall of the Soviet Regime, or Spain's quick transfer to democracy after Franco's death. So making a long revolution isn't exactly accurate.

Also, in the case of countries like China, adding Democracy techs would be more appropriate, because there, the problem is just that the government wants to be progressive, but places an emphasis on infrastructure rather than political modernization, so a tech could be more appropriate as something they normally just don't want to research.

I also have some ideas for tech quotes.
 
I finally have it; not bad. Maybe have some of the genetics-related techs give extra food from farms, but good otherwise.

After we get the buildings and units done, we'll have to go back to the tech tree to balance it out. The bonuses are very rough right now.


Now, I still want to reinsert techs related to civics for some countries with backwards government to need to research. There was a sugestion instead that certain Civics should take a long time to implement, but a number of problems exist with this suggestion. One, sometimes massive change can be brought about instantly and nonviolently, as it was in the 1992 fall of the Soviet Regime, or Spain's quick transfer to democracy after Franco's death. So making a long revolution isn't exactly accurate.

Also, in the case of countries like China, adding Democracy techs would be more appropriate, because there, the problem is just that the government wants to be progressive, but places an emphasis on infrastructure rather than political modernization, so a tech could be more appropriate as something they normally just don't want to research.

I tend to disagree about civis techs. We're trying to make this mod play out like the real world right? I don't see how, if a country like China was going to move towards what you're describing as democracy, that would affect their scientific research?

I thought a lot about that while working on the tech tree. I had a whole other line of research laid out for all countries, that could lead to new civics.

Religious Tolerance>

Marriage Rights>

Racial Equality
Gender Equality>

Religious equality>

New Philosophy?
New Financial System?


Anyway, I kept coming back to the problem that, generally social advancement does not stop with scientific research. So I think, at least for our version 1.0, we should keep the civis to ones that are currently in use, and all civs should have the ability to switch after a revolution.

I agree with niknaks that revolutions should be harder... not a perfect solution but I think it's our best option.


I also have some ideas for tech quotes.

Awesome. :)
 
I tend to disagree about civis techs. We're trying to make this mod play out like the real world right? I don't see how, if a country like China was going to move towards what you're describing as democracy, that would affect their scientific research?

It's less that democracy makes scientific research harder, so much as that we're using research in order to aproximate the real world development of government policy. So if you substitute government policy in real life for research in the game, you can notice the difference between countries in Eastern Europe, who would be moving towards democratiztion even if they're still poor (choosing to research democracy) and China, whose leaders would rather develop their economy than civil liberties (choosing to research economic technologies instead). Lengthening revolutions is not a good idea with simulatiing world events as they'd actually occur, whereas researching technologies is very doable. Especially since a lot of the civics I coded correspond to specific countries, but many are much more advanced than others.
 
The idea behind the first part of the tech tree is; you can either race to be the first to invent the electric car (first person to discover and build a plant will get a resource), or you can upgrade your military (in the case of the US, race towards missile defense while enemies try to research nukes). Less developed nations will obviously start without the older techs that developed countries start with.

If China decided to increase their civil liberties I don't see how it would slow down their military or scientific development, so I don't think there should be an option for that to happen in the game.

I don't think eastern Europe "moving towards democratization" would slow down or speed up these things either.

Since we're not inventing ideologies for this mod, all civics in the game exist on earth, and are known to everyone. Every country has the knowledge to change their government, it is only a matter of implementing the changes. This can be best represented by revolutions, some easy some difficult. Not perfect, but the best we have.
 
Some of the civics I coded simply cannot work without technologies of some sort, especially the utopian ones. Democracy arguably isn't one of them, but many of the economic and labor civics require some degree of technological progress. (Why do you think I was the one pushing for the tech tree to be completed?) The situation in the core game is that you do research to implement Civics based upon the advantages they can give you in the long run. From one standpoint that would seem weird in a mod that takes place in the modern world, but I remade the civic system to essentially fit the modern world situation, so unlocking new ones once again works.

I remain skeptical of you guys reworking revolution to be more difficult, until I see exactly what your plans are, and even then, I refuse to make every civic free.
 
That's fine man, do what you want with the civics, but can't you just tack new civics to techs that are already in the list?

Tomorrow I'll post my list of what techs each civ should start with.
 
Under most cases, yes, I can just tack Civics on. However, with government civics, there are few relevent techs. The problem I have at the moment is that some nations clearly start without techs that more modern nations have in terms of weapons, so I think it makes sense to do the same with government. There are many government Civs that depend upon a certain sort of population, but I'll need to look at the techs again before I reach my final decision.
 
I tend to disagree about civis techs. We're trying to make this mod play out like the real world right? I don't see how, if a country like China was going to move towards what you're describing as democracy, that would affect their scientific research?

The classic example is Lysenkoism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism) but sooner or later happens in any dictatorship - because scientists are more concerned with staying alive rather than learning the truth, they don't rock the boat or announce anything that contradicts accepted wisdom. Since scientific breakthroughs come from the experiments that don't go as expected, their research stalls.
 
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