Tech Tree Diagram

New member here, hi fellow civ fans. I started playing civ 1 again after finding/rediscovering it on an abandonware site recently. I played it for many hours when I was a kid and have lots of love for the game. Since picking it back up I have now sunk many more hours into the game. My fuzzy memory is not doing me much good on the tech tree though. Does anyone know where I can find a non-garbled tech tree diagram? I keep finding I have to do some guessing to get where I want with advances because I can't find a good one, even after sifting through many pages of google results. The image on this site (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ1/refcharts/tech.htm) has arrows and boxes all over the place for me in IE, chrome, and firefox. I also tried the Compatibility mode in IE but that wasn't much help. Can anyone point me to something neater? Thanks!

First of all, welcome to CFC!



Isn't there actually a tech-tree in the original manual (or PDF thereof)? I have a vague memory that it is, but even if not, the manual certainly included all the relevant details, since the game used tech-questions as copy-protection (ah, the good old days... ) ...

So if the manual wasn't included with whatever you downloaded, you will almost certainly be able to find it somewhere online -- although (Forum Rules require me to point out that) Civ is still not technically 'abandonware'

And just in case you've forgotten (or never knew), the choice of 'next tech to research' is artificially limited by the game, depending on how many/which techs you've got already, and which column each tech falls into on the science advisor (F6) screen. I can't remember the exact programming details, but the rule is something like, "you can't research two techs from the same column one after the other".

Anyway, the upshot is that sometimes even if you've researched all the prerequisites for a given tech, you still might not be able to choose that 'unlocked' tech as your next target straight away, until you've bought/researched another (unrelated) tech first. So e.g. even though BronzeWorking leads directly to IronWorking (with no other prereqs), you might have to go for Ceremonial Burial (or something) before you can start on Iron Working.

There's an old thread kicking around somewhere in this forum about it.

I think you're right about the original manual. I vaguely remember a foldout page of some kind that had the tree on it. I haven't seen it since the 90s though so no chance I'm going to find that anytime soon. You're also right about the abandonware thing but I've long since lost my original copy of the game. I'll have to see if I can find a place to repurchase it.

Thanks for pointing out the tech limiting thing, I was wondering why that was happening...

I shall continue my search for a coherent tech tree for this wonderful game

edit: and post it here if/when I find it

I just Googled "CivDOS manual PDF download" and got quite lot of hits, one of which was right here on CFC.

Although it's not technically the tree, if you didn't mind taking the half an hour or so needed to do it, you could at least use this page to reverse-engineer a hardcopy sketch version, starting from the most advanced techs (Robotics and Fusion, IIRC) and working backwards. Admittedly, the most basic 1st- and 2nd-tier techs (needing 0 or 1 prerequisite) aren't included here, since they're not part of the copy-protection, but most of them appear in the prereqs, and you could fill in the rest from the Civilopedia.

And if you didn't mind taking a little longer to optimise your layout, you could even print out the page, cut out each tech, and then shuffle them around/ stick them back down on a larger sheet (and draw in the arrows afterwards) -- or just use something like this (NB found using Google string '"flow chart" creator software' -- no product endorsement should be inferred!).

EDIT:

While I was looking for the thread about 'tech hiding' (this is apparently the name of the mechanic) that I mentioned in my previous post, I found this thread started by CFC user hydraulics, containing his self-made Civ1 tech-tree diagram. It could probably do with some layout optimisation, but it's all there...

EDIT 2: Son of EDIT

Re. tech-hiding:

I was nearly there, but not quite. I still haven't found the definitive CivDOS thread, but if I've understood the various other discussions (mainly with respect to CivII) correctly, each tech is assigned to one of 3 sublists (call them 'List0', 'List1', and 'List2' for the sake of argument), based on its alphabetical position within the full list of Civ1 techs -- so AdvancedFlight might be in List0, Alphabet in List1, Astronomy in List2, AtomicTheory in List0, etc...

Each time the game asks you to pick your next research target, one of the 3 sublists will be unavailable -- which one is excluded depends on how many techs you've already learned (e.g. if you've learned 3n+0 techs, where n≥1, List0 techs might be unavailable to research, 3n+1 known techs would exclude List1 techs, and 3n+2 known techs would exclude List2 techs).

Since lightbulb-cost is also incremented based on how many techs you already know, knowing which techs are in which sublist and picking your research path carefully can therefore make a big difference to how fast you progress through the game.

EDIT 3: Return of the Son of EDIT

Or there's this ready-made tech-tree.

tjs282 said:

EDIT 2: Son of EDIT

Re. tech-hiding:

I was nearly there, but not quite. I still haven't found the definitive CivDOS thread,

Click to expand...

I think the thread you're talking about is this one. Specifically, the posts by Urtica dioica (post #5) and Dack (post #9).

Thanks akTed -- that's the one.

I knew I'd seen it before, but my simple search through the CivDOS thread titles for the word 'research' for some reason didn't flag this one.

So, the sublists aren't alphabetised, but semi-randomised. I've struck out the example above

You're most welcome, tjs282. I'd come across that thread just a couple of days ago (I'm on a Civ1 reading binge here, plan on reading 'em all!). I'm learning tons, and it's nice to be able to give back to the community - in however small a way.

Thanks for the info folks

I've saved those two diagrams and now have some reading to do on tech hiding...

That tech tree diagram is helpful. Sometimes you can't remember what tech leads to the technology that you want the most.