Culture Techs & More!

It has been proposed before that some techs get researched using instead of . However one could just flip the sliders from to when researching and not make a difference at all which you were using.

So I got to thinking, techs can be unlocked by buildings. And buildings can be produced by a city. That is in a way having research a tech instead of . Especially if the cost of the tech was set to something insanely cheap like 1 .

So that is one option to make some techs only researchable through . But we want not . So lets say we set a tech to 1 and its enable by a building, but the building only cost 1 . A nearly instant tech right?

And we can give buildings restrictions to where they only unlock from specific factors. This is leading to a requirement for a building. We don't have this yet, but this would seem doable that a cities could be a requirement for a building. And in turn unlock a tech!

But then I thought well whats stopping us from giving all sorts of limitations such as a civic that unlocks a building for a tech or a resource that unlocks a building for a tech?

Heck we could even link it to the number of buildings you have, such as you need to build x number of labs before you can unlock a tech-building.

The possibilities seem endless. The question is, should we do it? It would be a lot of work and probably would break a lot of things.

What do you all think?

EDIT: At the very least perhaps we should have different buildings to be required for different tech types. For example ...

Quantum Physics = Req Physics Lab

Realism = Req Art Gallery

Mounted Archery = Req Fetcher + Stables

Ancient Medicine = Req Healer's Hut

You get the idea. Where there is at least one building produced before you can research the tech.

EDIT2: We could even in theory ink them to "Goods" since they are buildings too. Such as ...

Paper = Req Good (Scroll)

Steel = Req Good (Iron)

I have been saying something like this for awhile.

Some of the limits we have on buildings and units now can be simplified if there is a building requirement on the tech.

You will need to bring "back dead" end techs. I personally feel that "Camel Riding", "Elephant Riding" and "Horse Riding" should all be dead end techs with "Mounted Archery" requiring "Archery" and a stable or similar building.

Btw Steel = Req Good (Iron) will break Iron Works which lets you get steel if you are missing coal or iron.

@Dancing Hoskuld

Yeah such a s system would inherently give dead end techs.

As for Steel, it was just an idea off the top of my head. Each tech changed tech would have to be planned out and evaluated if it will break stuff if the requirement is applied.

I suspect such a project would take a VERY long time. On the upside you could say link Native Culture or Local culture buildings to tech too. Thus a iv with native culture Asian would have some different techs than say a European one.

What is probably easiest is having some buildings give a free tech that he would otherwise not be able to research because it has unobtainable prereqs and then you can have other techs need that tech as a prereq if you like.

AIAndy said:

What is probably easiest is having some buildings give a free tech that he would otherwise not be able to research because it has unobtainable prereqs and then you can have other techs need that tech as a prereq if you like.

Click to expand...

I did not realize that buildings/wonders could give specific free techs. That would be very useful for the all the alternate timeline techs.

Hydromancerx said:

I did not realize that buildings/wonders could give specific free techs. That would be very useful for the all the alternate timeline techs.

Click to expand...

I don't think they can right now, but that should not really be that difficult to add.

Two points of caution (neither stoppers):

1. Would probably have to restrict any such techs to being either leaf nodes of the tech tree, or roots of small optional branches, or else the entire civ's progress would become in-principle blockable on something we'd have to make damn sure it was possible for every civ to get regardless of geographic resource distribution
2. Some non-trivial AI work is needed if this is not going to hamstring the AI

Would it be possible to trade techs that fall into this category? Just thinking that if its cost is very low, the AI will need to have some other factor weighing its value.

Overall I think it's a good idea. And whether it's real buildings or "buildings" (like the goods system) or projects, I think there can be a lot of options. And it intertwines research with other types of production to mix things up a bit.

EldrinFal said:

Would it be possible to trade techs that fall into this category? Just thinking that if its cost is very low, the AI will need to have some other factor weighing its value.

Overall I think it's a good idea. And whether it's real buildings or "buildings" (like the goods system) or projects, I think there can be a lot of options. And it intertwines research with other types of production to mix things up a bit.

Click to expand...

There is an AIWeight that you can use but maybe the extra tech line should simply be untradable.

As pointed out in another thread there are mods with multiple separate "tech" trees. They have "tabs" on the tech tree screen to switch between them. Mana something is the name of the mod.

I have added a FreeSpecialTech tag to buildings that gives the named tech to anyone building that building.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

As pointed out in another thread there are mods with multiple separate "tech" trees. They have "tabs" on the tech tree screen to switch between them. Mana something is the name of the mod.

Click to expand...

This I did not know. Well that's great news!

The mod is Master of Mana ( http://www.masterofmana.com/ ) For a preview look at the second picture in the screenshots.

A note of caution... barbarians will end up getting techs it doesn't have buildings for eventually and so with proper Civs. So you'd have to make it so a tech goes inactive if none of the buildings exist in a Civ. Of course then a random hurricane takes out that building and your tech tree goes in BSOD mode.

The other way would be to make certain buildings make to only a specific tech(s)... of course having certain buildings makes 'dead end' dead self upgrading (tech that gain XP?) it would be intresting. When the Tech is obtained it obsoletes the :sceince: bonus to that particular tech, but grant to the next in that subtree. Things like Horse herd adding certain horse techs and stuff like that... symbolic of private research and the long term skill increases in the tech.

Don't have the these specific tech enhancing things... someone has to specificly research it. Have 3 or 4 elephant herds in cities and ivory in your borders... elephant riding comes faster.

Necratoid said:

A note of caution... barbarians will end up getting techs it doesn't have buildings for eventually and so with proper Civs. So you'd have to make it so a tech goes inactive if none of the buildings exist in a Civ. Of course then a random hurricane takes out that building and your tech tree goes in BSOD mode.

The other way would be to make certain buildings make to only a specific tech(s)... of course having certain buildings makes 'dead end' dead self upgrading (tech that gain XP?) it would be intresting. When the Tech is obtained it obsoletes the :sceince: bonus to that particular tech, but grant to the next in that subtree. Things like Horse herd adding certain horse techs and stuff like that... symbolic of private research and the long term skill increases in the tech.

Don't have the these specific tech enhancing things... someone has to specificly research it. Have 3 or 4 elephant herds in cities and ivory in your borders... elephant riding comes faster.

Click to expand...

I don't think it is a problem if barbarians end up getting the special techs.
And currently you don't lose the tech if you lose the building (there is no code to remove techs in a proper way).

Solved below

strategyonly said:

Got this Culture (Iroquois) PINK? Latest SVN.

Click to expand...

Because when you changed the civ buttons and then changed them back it broke my embassy buildings buttons since they used those.

Its location in the FPK was ...

<Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/Civilizations/Iroquois.dds</Button>

Did any other buttons break when you changed them back?

EDIT: In the civ art define says its ...

<Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/Civilizations/Iroquois.dds</Button>

No I have no idea why its broken.

Hydromancerx said:

Because when you changed the civ buttons and then changed them back it broke my embassy buildings buttons since they used those.

Its location in the FPK was ...

<Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/Civilizations/Iroquois.dds</Button>

Did any other buttons break when you changed them back?

EDIT: In the civ art define says its ...

<Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/Civilizations/Iroquois.dds</Button>

No I have no idea why its broken.

Click to expand...

Nevermind, i found out the problem.

It is showing up for me.

EDIT: What was the problem?

When i got rid of the circle btns i accidentally deleted it, i will have to check if i did more

EDIT: See i do alot of stuff, you'll not see for a few months, or even more, so i am doing all kinds of "little" things, behind the scenes, so to speak. Sorry if some of my stuff i do, like mentioned above gets "accidentally" done, my bad.