Near Future Tech

[Zechnophobe]

I was reading the Mech thread, and it occurred to me that there should be units near the end of the game that are robotic, remotely controlled units, whose death doesn't contribute to war weariness. Waging a war where no troops die sounds like the kind that people would be a lot more happy with.

[12agnar0k]

Meh, no war is "happy" unless your a bunch of religious lunatics shouting "kill the infidels" or "kill the barbarins" or "kill the heratics" that kind of "inverted war weariness" doesn't really exist in the modern world, or shouldnt atleast. No one should be happy about having metal men killing people from other states,

Now thats said, BRING ON THE ROBOTS, LETS LET THOSE MOTHER %&*£"!!£^£%&*% BURN! HJAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAAAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH.

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

What if the enemies were zombies?

[SammyKhalifa]

I'd like to see a better transition between the Moon landing and going to Alpha Centauri. Pretty abrupt. Near-future type wonders could be an orbiting space station, moon or Mars colonies.

[Hadron]

IMHO, here are some appropriate near future techs:


Sustainable Fusion Power

The Origins of Life - I find this one particularly interesting. The Theory of Evolution has had a significant impact on the basic way we see ourselves. How would an understanding of the origins of life itself change the way we see the future?

Artificial Evolution - We are getting closer and closer to altering our natural limitations. Artificial life, bionic implants, genetic engineering and possibly even enhanced longevity.

Planetary Engineering. A fairly new topic to be seriously discussed by scientists, but its interesting to speculate what we might actually achieve by 2100. Might such technology be weaponised?

Chemical robots. Think cells that can be remote controlled. Early days yet, but together with nanotechnology, this could change the way industry works.

Quantum Computing. Just in time for CiviLization v150!

Mental Disorders. Ok, this one's a long shot, but psychological, pharmacological and biological advances have lessened the impacts of everything from sleep deprivation to depression, vastly improved the way we live. Could the next step be cures for most mental illnesses or problems like low self esteem?

[dulsin]

Virtual Intelligence

Robotics

Computer neural interfacing

Nano Technology -- Bean Stalk wonder

Fusion Power

Post Natal gene modification

Weather control

Under-sea colonization

Orbital Solar Power collectors

Space based industrial centers

[12agnar0k]

I dont think we should ever colonise under the sea, "under the sea" good song though.
Mainly because well if something goes wrong, we all drown.
Also their is a lot of pressure so its just not that pratical to build cities at the bottom of the ocean
A floating city is a much easier task, water world anyone.

[DalekDavros]

Sending out multi-million (billion?) dollar killer robots is still going to have an enormous financial cost, disrupt trade routes, and leave the homeland vulnerable to counter-attack, so even those people who don't care about killing the "enemy" troops are still going to be unhappy about the war.

[Abremms]

drones should cause no war-wearyness back home, but increased unhappyness in the enemy. to balance that, they should cost more to build and maintain. i think that would acurately reflect reality.

I also think the Internet Wonder should greatly reduce war wearyness. it seems to have worked for USA...

[Schuesseled]

Originally Posted by DalekDavros

Sending out multi-million (billion?) dollar killer robots is still going to have an enormous financial cost, disrupt trade routes, and leave the homeland vulnerable to counter-attack, so even those people who don't care about killing the "enemy" troops are still going to be unhappy about the war.

they build and send out multi-million dollar tanks and aircraft to get chewed up, whats another couple of bill.

[bestrfcplayer]

If you want futureistic units and techs, just play the Next War mod for BtS.

[Le Sage]

In my opinion, they should be really careful when designing these near-future technologies, because they might as well be atmosphere-ruiners. This is supposed to be about World History, and I don't really want it to end in some Terminator future with giant robots and stuff like that.

I really want it to end in 2010, with some realistic future advances added for good measure (mechs are not realistic, by the way). I can live with the Space Voyage to Alpha Centauri. And who knows, maybe the mechs will become a Civilization classic as well.

[12agnar0k]

Civlisation is a fictional game, where you change the course of history, perhaps rome will be wiped out at 3500 BC and never become a global empire, its all about changing history, not simply looking at history. I.e you can be a better civ than those of the actual past, and conquer the whole worls or put a man on the moon by the middle ages. If you put a man on the moon by the middle ages then ofcourse you will have technology by the year 2000 that we couldnt even dream of.

If anything Civilisation should have a huge amount of "not discovered" technologies as if civilisation was different, perhaps the things we discover and the timing and order that we discover them will be different. I.e we could have no understanding of dramatics but could have spaceships, different civilisations will develop differently. Its not all about history, but also the things that history hasn't come up with, these things which are currently future technologies such as fusion may very well have already been discovered had civilisation played out differently, and this is what we are here to do.

[Le Sage]

Playing a game in the creators' own sci-fi universe is not an attractive idea in my opinion; that might be a good mod, though, and I am well-acquainted with sci-fi and fictional mods and they are the best. I sometimes play the entire civ 4 game with Next War turned on, so I get access to all those sci-fi units (including mechs) - I'm ashamed to say - as well when history is nearing its end. But really, it's not what I consider a very good end to history. I think the end of history should contain the things we know right now, and going into other areas just opens some kind of unattractive Pandora's Box.

I think there are such an infinite number of variations on modern day military units and technologies that entering the area of the mechs and fictional sci-fi is not needed at all for the vanilla game. I do hope that mech belongs in a sort of mod addition to the game though and that vanilla doesn't have it in.

But as said, I can live with the Voyage to Alpha Centauri, and I guess I'll have to live with mechs too. I won't have to see them too much anyways though. I'll be most concerned with the Middle Ages myself.

[SGRaaize]

No, leave that to mods, please

[12agnar0k]

Yeah more than likely you will win by the time mechs come around so, only a problem for you if you go for space race

[Abremms]

i never understood why people would be totaly ok with sending a rocket ship to Alpha Centauri, something that isn't likely to happen in the next 50 or even 100 years barring some incredible breakthrough. Yet at the same time, not be ok with near-future tech which is currently in development and will be here within 10-20 years.

im not necessarily talking about Mechs, while i think we'll have the tech for them inside 10 years, im not convinced they will ever be used in military applications. there are a host of other techs that are right around the corner, I for one would like to see some kind of logical bridge between sending men to the moon and colonizing a whole other solar system.

[12agnar0k]

It would be nice if the late stage of the game suddenly changed from colonising planet earth to zooming out a lot and playing as planet earth conquering the stars against other advanced civilisations.

[Le Sage]

Some of my favourite mods in Civ4 concerned that scenario; Earth colonizing space. The Star Trek mod for example (yum!), but that theme doesn't have a place in vanilla, I think.

[Bestbank Tiger]

Originally Posted by Hadron

IMHO, here are some appropriate near future techs:


Sustainable Fusion Power

The Origins of Life - I find this one particularly interesting. The Theory of Evolution has had a significant impact on the basic way we see ourselves. How would an understanding of the origins of life itself change the way we see the future?

Artificial Evolution - We are getting closer and closer to altering our natural limitations. Artificial life, bionic implants, genetic engineering and possibly even enhanced longevity.

Planetary Engineering. A fairly new topic to be seriously discussed by scientists, but its interesting to speculate what we might actually achieve by 2100. Might such technology be weaponised?

Chemical robots. Think cells that can be remote controlled. Early days yet, but together with nanotechnology, this could change the way industry works.

Quantum Computing. Just in time for CiviLization v150!

Mental Disorders. Ok, this one's a long shot, but psychological, pharmacological and biological advances have lessened the impacts of everything from sleep deprivation to depression, vastly improved the way we live. Could the next step be cures for most mental illnesses or problems like low self esteem?

Some excellent ideas here.

I'm mostly a II guy myself. I wonder if I could work some of these into the rules.txt file? The hardest thing would be having a moon or Mars colony as an intermediate step to Alpha Centauri. It almost seems like you would have to be able to edit the exe file to pull that off--the program automatically unlocks spaceship parts after Apollo 11.