Separate tech trees and other thing

It would be cool if they had separate tech trees for civil and military technology.

For example, to receive tanks, you must first get motorized vehicles on the civil side first, or to get fighter aircraft you must first study flight. Another one is you must study nuclear power to build ships powered by nuclear-electric engines.

Does anyone else have ideas for this?

doesn't this already exist, really if you look at the tech tree, you usually have a "culture branch" a "military branch" and a "infastructure branch" in each era

What I meant was that they could be researched separately instead of one at a time.

Researching them seperatly is fun I think. You can have sliders to say how much you spend on military research, culture research etc.

Maybe another option: have what you research influence the rest of your civilization: if for example jet engines never got invented, there wouldn't be a need for in-air refueling, but other technologies would become available (nuclear bomber, which has an almost unlimited operational range).

I saw this on the discovery channel yesterday: the nuclear bomber research was halted because of several reasons, one of them being the fact that jet engines were more efficient then normal engines, when they were researched, in flight refueling was an effective way of transfering fuel. If those jet engines were never researched, the nuclear bomber would have, changing the whole history from that point on.

Maybe you can make resources influence it. At some point horses are shown on the map, but if you don't have access to them, no horse-related research can be done. You can specialize in non-horse units, as most civilizations have done. Most civilizations with access to horses began to develop that way in stead of the non-mounted warriors.

So what i am suggesting: if you don't have resource X or already have researched tech Y, you can't research tech Z.

Actually, I dealt with your second point, Pirke, in my thread on resources. In that thread, I said that a strategic resource should have a chance of first appearing in the game prior to the first tech in which it actually of use (in fact, my suggestion was that, if you go looking hard enough, then you should be able to find ANY resource, at ANY point in the game-it should just be a LOT harder and a LOT more expensive!)
Anyway, if you have any of that resource, then you get a bonus to researching any tech for which it is a requirement-and perhaps even a penalty if you DON'T have it!
For example: It is the ancient era, and your pre-iron age civilization is out seeking resources in a nearby hill/mountain and, after several turns, you strike it lucky and find a large source of iron (perhaps a size 8 lode). This lucky strike might give you as much as a +20% (or even +40%) bonus/turn to researching any technology that has iron as it's requirement-like Iron Working, as an obvious example! Of course, finding certain resources, like uranium, in the ancient age should be all but impossible-unless you find yourself with an OBSCENE amount of money to chuck away on prospecting for it! For example, you've just started a game, and you have a vast jungle to your north. Being a very cheeky player who knows that this is where uranium is most likely to appear, you decide to go 'fossicking' for it! Well, being the ancient age, you would get at least a -50% chance of finding it and, given the relative rarity of uranium, this would make it HIGHLY unlikely-if not downright IMPOSSIBLE-that you will find it, and you will probably just end up wasting a LOT of hard earned cash trying to find it! However, if by some miracle you DID find some, then later down the track, when you are trying to discover techs that require uranium, this lode will be very useful to you!
Anyway, for more about how I would like to see resources work in cIV-particularly in regards to research-then please check this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86172

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Military advancements depend completely on the current level of technology. So, you can't really separate the technology tree. Even if you're researching militarily techs, one must get other advancemnets at first.

King Alexander said:

Military advancements depend completely on the current level of technology. So, you can't really separate the technology tree. Even if you're researching militarily techs, one must get other advancemnets at first.

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Yes, I would also prefer not to split it. Rather make sure more civil advantages come with what now seem only military techs. I.e. Iron Working: better plows, and better tools made up for much better production and growth, and later also better units. Motorized Tr. produced the tanks and derivatives, but also made trade and circulation of goods easier and so increased production and commerce. Same for Flight: made war planes, but also extra traffic of goods over large distances. Airports for example could add some (very) limited commerce and production in the game.

Regards,
Jaca

Here is what I think would be a good idea for the tech tree in Civ4.

There is a second slider bar to determine how much research goes to primary advances and secondary advances. Primary advances would be necessary to advance through the ages and would form the basic structure of the regular tech tree in Civ3. Secondary advances would not be necessary to research but would allow new untis, improve existing attributes, reduce production times, reduce pollution, etc. etc. These would kinda be like the ironclads, democracy, free artistry, technologies. Secondary technologies would be cheaper to research, but abundant in numbers. This would allow players either to speed through an era getting the basic units and improvements, or allow them to concentrate on developping current technology to gain an edge.

A few examples I had in mind:
- After getting advanced flight, a secondary tech could be ship-borne helicopters, that would give destroyers a greater LOS and combat abilities versus subs.
- After getting combustion with subs, a sceondary tech could be the acoustic torpedo that gives subs a +1 attack
- After getting combustion, a secondary tech could be subpens, a city improvement that decreases(eliminates) the chances of subs in harbour to be hit by bombardment.
- After replacable parts, a secondary tech could be machine guns, which could allow the creation of a new unit (similar to the Pacific Campaign in Conquests) and also give regular infantry (who would have a machine gun in a platoon/section) a bonus to defence possibly.

Also, this could allow players to choose different units that they would want at their disposal. For example, instead of getting a standard destroyer after researching combustion, players, could choose from 2 or 3 types of destroyers with differing cost and abilities. This works too for motorized transportation which would lead to different types of tanks. And we can't forget flight, which would allow different types of fighters from spitfires and hurricanes, to mustangs, and zeros (each with unique characteristics). Weaker units could be chosen that are cheaper to make or they could go for the better ones if they desired. There might be an issue on assigning certain units to certain civs though and balancing them out. It would be wierd for the US to have zeros or Germany to get spitfires.

I think this gives a more realistic insight into how players could develop their civilization into something very unique each time they play and expand the replay value making it interesting each time they play.

Well, that's my two cents,
Batho

The tech tree is about science and then tailoring the science to particular ends (tech). It's fine as is. If you want a uniquely Civil, or uniquely Military tech, usually it's a limited, cheap, optional tech, like Ironclads, or Democracy.

Being able to research multiple techs at the same time is a cool idea, as long as they're two (two instead of one) that you can already research independently of each other.

Eventually they'd just have to make that another tech---'Multi-Tasking'

It would be cool if they had separate tech trees for civil and military technology.

For example, to receive tanks, you must first get motorized vehicles on the civil side first, or to get fighter aircraft you must first study flight. Another one is you must study nuclear power to build ships powered by nuclear-electric engines.

Does anyone else have ideas for this?
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Oh well, why are you reading this, this is a useless signature. Go away, do something useful, like reading the text below this post...

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What I meant was that they could be researched separately instead of one at a time.
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Oh well, why are you reading this, this is a useless signature. Go away, do something useful, like reading the text below this post..

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.

I love the idea of seperating the tech trees because it allows one nation to be a military powerhouse (with nuclear weapons and everything) while still being socially "backwards".

This can already be done by having seperate branches on the tech tree that don't overlap at all. That way if someone wants military, they can research up the military branch. If they want infrastructure, they go up that one. Simple as that. You can do it in Civ 3 now if you're so inclined.

So we could set min research on multiple techs and get a bunch of them when the time arrives? Sound too cheesy for me.

The next step, to me, would be making social progress radically different from technical progress. Once you discover guns, nukes and electricity, you can't really forget them. But you can discover democracy and choose not to embrace it, to even roll things back to a time when people respected their Emperor. Technical progress would be like a ladder, whereas social progress would be more like a labrynth.

dh_epic said:

But you can discover democracy and choose not to embrace it, to even roll things back to a time when people respected their Emperor.

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A very interesting idea. Social progress would then no longer proceed in techs, would it? I suppose that is very possible.

Well there would be two seperate facets of social technology... understanding the notion, and pursuing it. You probably couldn't invent Fascism without knowledge of Communism.

Think of it like the circle of politics. In the center is Democracy. To the left is Scandinavian Social Democracy, then Chinese Socialism, then outright Stalinism. Vice versa for the right, ranging from Democracy to Fascism.

You push in either direction based on the social techs you have available and the needs / flavor of your empire. As you discover new social techs, you can push further, or fine tune in ways that you couldn't do before -- but only if you choose to pursue them.

Maybe even have the social progress tree multi-dimensional, with other dimensions for how much economic freedom you dole out, and how much you protect civil rights. (Not just the mere "political freedom" question.)

Maybe that's the civics that Soren is talking about.

Yeah, I've been a huge fan of that idea of Civics -- the circle of politics, push your civilization in one of many directions model.

Although if Civics were a SMAC style "Social Engineering" I'd be 80% as pleased.

If they left government the way it was now, I'd be disappointed. (They chose to add religion and health?!) -30% as pleased