C2C - Transhuman Era

[JosEPh_II]

A Big Plus 1 on the Health report!

JosEPh

 

[Hydromancerx]

Anyone tackled this and MrAzure's ideas?

 

[Faustmouse]

Not that I know. But check the Space Modmod from Pepper2000. This should greatly enhance the late game. (Currently I'm in the middle of the Modern era, so right before his new content begins. You can find a savegame in his thread.)

 

[pepper2000]

Yes, I made my own take on the TH era, but in my space colonization modmod, every TH and Galactic tech except Frost Beams has content (and something at Frost Beams is planned for V4 too). For the earthbound, I put a heavy emphasis on futuristic civil engineering projects.

There are a lot of great ideas here, and I might take some of them on. But I am also hesitant to put too much more around the Modern/TH border, since there is already so much.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Current # of Tech in TH Era 190.

Compared to:
Preh Era 100
Ancient 90
Classical 60
Medieval 44
Ren 58
Industrial 91
Modern 92
Galactic 54
Future 1

TH Era is glutted and as such will never match up well with any Gamespeed in relation to # of Turns for that Era, Gamespeed iResearch rate and other imodifiers for Gamespeed and/or Era.

Fully half the Techs need eliminated or combined. Mr. Azure clearly went Nuts here with the foundation he laid down. And it looks as if other modders afterwards just piled on more.

JosEPh

 

[LumenAngel]

Or maybe "transhuman era" is too large? Just like prehistoric + ancient can be "Paleolithic + Neolotic + Stone Age" for nearly 60 each just like classical ; Tranhuman era can be "Transhuman era + post-biologic era", with 90 each, just like Industrial and modern eras

 

[JosEPh_II]

Nvrmnd

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Or maybe "transhuman era" is too large? Just like prehistoric + ancient can be "Paleolithic + Neolotic + Stone Age" for nearly 60 each just like classical ; Tranhuman era can be "Transhuman era + post-biologic era", with 90 each, just like Industrial and modern eras

Strongly agree. Most of the transhuman techs do have a clear purpose. Thing is that the designer of the era wanted to split it up but the rest of the team didn't want to then.

 

[Arakhor]

The Palaeolithic and the Neolithic are the Stone Age (the Old and New Stone Age, respectively).

Since you seem to be running on 90 techs at the outside for an entire era, you need to (a) prune Transhuman and split it into two eras, (b) keep all the techs and split it into three eras or (c) take a very dull knife to it and keep it as one greatly reduced era.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Strongly agree. Most of the transhuman techs do have a clear purpose. Thing is that the designer of the era wanted to split it up but the rest of the team didn't want to then.

Well if that's the way it is then I'm not gonna mess with it. And it's not like it's going to get used much for awhile anyway. It's been 5 years of testing since I last made it to even the beginning of Modern era in this mod from a Preh Era start. So no big whoop! Let sleeping dogs lie as they say.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

The Palaeolithic and the Neolithic are the Stone Age (the Old and New Stone Age, respectively).

Since you seem to be running on 90 techs at the outside for an entire era, you need to (a) prune Transhuman and split it into two eras, (b) keep all the techs and split it into three eras or (c) take a very dull knife to it and keep it as one greatly reduced era.

I would prefer b if we NEED to do anything with it. The main thing is that it generally doesn't matter as much as Modern and before. Here's why: When you are working out eras on the gamespeed charting you're trying to time it so that the average amount of turns it takes to cross the era at the given gamespeed will generally span spot on the period where the amount of time per turn stays constant and each era or roughly around the time the player enters a new era should be right around the time that the amount of time per turn changes. This is what is to indicate to the player whether they are ahead of the curve or behind it and what helps to get history to line up somewhat to the tech tree.

However, once past Modern, if we want to make the transhuman era encapsulate a very long period of development, where say each turn is roughly a year up from each turn being roughly a season during modern (I'm thinking snail here), that would be quite appropriate. Then Galactic is where we enter a stage of futuristic development that is truly beyond what we can even guess will be like being as there are far too many limitations and discoveries still awaiting us that will change our expectations of the future to come. Therefore it becomes much more open to imagination where what we would consider magic today becomes the science of tomorrow.

Transhuman is generally defined as the stage we can make fair predictions. You might be surprised by what the content of the transhuman amounts to now but I have to say that the more time moves forward since Azure's work there was projected, the more likely many of his predictions seem to be possible imo, particularly with some of the tweaks I included myself, most of which have not yet been fully realized as to the reasoning for their inclusion but will eventually. Much of the work has been done to include those elements but they've become lower priority than many other mod issues. Like crashes, speed improvements, and AI work. Truth be told the xml charting and xml implementation for further development is the easy part of modding by a factor of about x1000.

 

[pepper2000]

This may be heresy, but if we are talking about evening out the number of techs in the eras, we could also combine the Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Eras into two.

I've managed to put every future technology to use now. Some of them were a challenge. I have no idea what was intended at Supercharged Crystallography and Hypermagentics, for instance. But the tree is very nicely structured in that almost everything I added (until the Galactic Era) seemed to have a natural home. Another virtue of long future eras is that they give plenty of time to develop space colonies.

 

[Faustmouse]

I also think the TH era has too much content. Many techs can and should be combined or converted into a building.

 

[tmv]

Since Classical and Medieval is the time when the battlefield was ruled by iron weapons, both eras combined could be called Iron Age. Seperating those two eras was mostly done, I think, when it was still believed that there was a massive downfall of civilization, which seems to have been a bit overrated. And even that downfall didn't really happen outside of Europe.

Regarding the micro-techs: I know that some people like them, but with the exponential increase of beakers that is a problem. Just how immersive is the image that an entire civilization makes a research effort of many years (roughly on par with the Manhattan Project) to develop Expressionism? While techs earlier in the tree (like Steam Engine or Electricity) had much less beakers, which is the game saying they are easier to develop?

There are different ways this could be handled, but I think the number of beakers really should take the difficulty involved with the development into regard. I can see 3 different ways of doing this:

1. Take out the micro-techs and make all techs "big ones" (like one tech for modern art)
2. Split up the big techs so that all techs are minor (this could prove to be a problem with performance and with imagination)
3. Take the micro-techs out of the exponential progression and reduce the number of beakers to a point where these techs could be researched in less than one turn.

Here is another idea (rather long-term, I am not sure if I have already said it somewhere): Would it be possible to define buildings that are absolutely necessary to contribute to a research effort? Like: This city cannot partake in the research of Modern Physics, there is no University (or Physics Lab)? That could (again long-term) replace many cases of beakers providing buildings, perhaps to a point where the exponential curve could be replaced with a lower curve, eliminating one souce of overflow. Plus, I think there is a limit how much our current civilization could accelerate the development of prehistoric or ancient techs, if they were lost to us (if there were no more carpenters, how quickly could we redevelop the tech, even with computers?).

Last point (sorry for the long post, and again long-term): Would it be possible to give techs "education maintenance"? To keep knowledge does not require research but education (it is arguably the point of education) and could give this property a flavor of its own. The main problem I can see with this is that education is a local property, but perhaps an average (education per citizen) could be considered.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

It is not simple to add another era. It is quite a lot of work actually. That is the main reason we have not done it.

As to the cost of techs - we always intended to go back and make the "minor" techs cost less than the "major" ones but first you need to settle on a scale. I like a 3 tier approach; no brainers, normal, and very difficult. It requires someone going through and deciding on the costs individually but it can't be done until we have everything in or at least everything in an era. We still have some big stuff to add into the prehistoric era (eg Nomadic Start) as well as the Classic (eg diplomacy with barbarians) and the Renaissance on (eg black ops). I think we have most of the techs we need for these but I could be wrong.

 

[Arakhor]

If the game has nine eras and 900 techs, clearly an even split would be to have roughly 100 per era. It certainly doesn't make sense to have nearly one-third of your techs stashed into the last two eras, especially if the mod has performance issues such that almost no one will ever reach that far in game.

 

[JosEPh_II]

If the game has nine eras and 900 techs, clearly an even split would be to have roughly 100 per era. It certainly doesn't make sense to have nearly one-third of your techs stashed into the last two eras, especially if the mod has performance issues such that almost no one will ever reach that far in game.

Actually it has 10 eras with Future and it's 1 Tech. Although for some reason whomever worked on the Eras last did not include a 10th (Future) era for Normal or Epic.

I can group the turns per Era using the # of Tech per in the Gamespeeds and it's not hard to do. The Juggling part is When do you want Preh Era to end? 20,000BC like Eternity or ~ 6000BC for Epic? When does Ancient end? Again there is a spread. And the longer the GS the more the spread is. So Eternity players that complain they are entering Med era at 1000BC are actually following Eternities layout of timeframes/Eras in relations to turns are pretty much spot on.

Those players and Modders that want distinct Timeframes have to come to grips with the fact that our GS lengths are well beyond what Firaxis had in mind for Civ IV and subsequent expansion like BtS.

Currently in testing Eternity and Eon I've actually added 100 turns to Preh era while removing 100 turns from Classical, Med, and strongly considering the same for Ren. Just to come closer to the "Given timeframes" that historical players expect.

So the question I have is When (what range of time) should each GS come out of Preh Era? The current 20,000BC to 6,000BC?

Ancient? 20,000BC to when:10,000BC 6000BC? 4000BC? 3000BC? etc.
Classical? 10,000BC to when:
Med to when from when?
Ren ?
Ind? When did Ind end? 1900? 1950?(post WWII)
Modern ? When should modern end? 20 years in the future from now? 50?

Once these are answered with a general concensus then TH Era is easier to do as it is Future in reality. But what time should TH end? 3,000 AD? 5,000AD? 10,000AD?
Where ever we decide then Galactic can start and can go for Thousands of Years too. And vitually no one who starts a Game in Preh era will ever make it to the 1 Future tech. No one is going to play a game already decided for X years to get there on the 2 longest GS.

And here is the Bad apple in the barrel for TH and Galactic Eras, C2C just does not allow a normal player the opportunity to play these Eras from a Preh Era start on most of our GS Except Normal and Epic. So both are diminishing returns to the Amount of Effort being done in both eras.

You can play these Eras by choosing to start in say Ren era on almost all of the GSs. But on Eternity and Eon you will still be taking quite some time to get from Ren to TH Era. I have tested a Ren era start and it is doable to get to TH Era on Epic GS. I have not tried or started a Test game for each Era to start a New game in. Sparth says you can start in Modern with no problem so I'll take his word on that. But I still need to verify a Class, Med, Ind, TH, and Gal start.

The more I dig into these GS and their ultimate ramifications for C2C being a playable Mod from Preh to Future Eras the less convinced I am of it's realistic possibility. Caveman2Cosmos when it started was designed for Preh to end of Modern Era. The TH and Galactic idea was added later (and without much forethought I'm sorry to say). In terms of the Mod the TH and Galactic Eras actually need to be Modular Expansions of the base C2C (Preh thru Mod).

Now I've posted a lot of observations, ?s, and thoughts; what I really do now need is a consensus for When, no matter what GS used, does each Individual Era Start and Stop. An Exact point of Time or stay with the Range of Times for each GS that the Eras start and stop? You tell me, please.

JosEPh

 

[strategyonly]

I also think the TH era has too much content. Many techs can and should be combined or converted into a building.

I believe WE need to do that with ALOT of techs, starting with Ancient and beyond . . .

Some techs only have 1 item, really not worth making it??? What do you'll think??

 

[Thunderbrd]

I also think the TH era has too much content. Many techs can and should be combined or converted into a building.

Where some techs can be converted into a building might be an interesting discussion but should be done on a one suggestion at a time basis so each proposal of a conversion can be discussed on its own merit without it becoming a project to just see how many techs we can get rid of.

What we need to keep in mind is that with the techs we have we have landing pads for further developments. At this stage, if we are trying to make the goal of the design to only have what we need we are basically saying our further development is complete and now its time to cut the fat.

But I don't think we're there yet. I may be on a slowdown phase and taking the modding a little easier here but I still don't think we're ready to say it's time to look for what we don't need and cut it out because what's going to happen, for example, when we're developing out in full a line of cyborg unit chains (which are very sparse and underdeveloped at the moment) and we start using more of the techs that currently aren't getting use? Or when we start working on underwater cities and we realize the value of some techs we hadn't seen value in previously that we have now removed?

Pepper recently confirmed what I felt about the TH tech tree which was that it's a good structure for finding placement for most ideas that come to mind. I believe most of the techs there will eventually find themselves fully justified even if they don't seem to be now. And there probably will emerge a few that aren't.

We have not well thought out future civics. We have not well considered future religions. We have not added the ideas project and considered where future ideas will start emerging and how they will clash. I have not fully implemented equipment which will be a huge new need for a more developed tech tree rather than less.

It was recently stated that there are many techs purely in the game to satisfy my preferences but that's coming from one person who would prefer a minimalist game development style. The point of this mod is to NOT be a minimalist mod. Many techs that don't seem to have much content now could be swelling to burst after a few projects in the future. And many of those serve a valuable strategic function already.

People are freaking out about turn speeds and wanting to shave the whole thing down to address that when the problem is particular spots in the code rather than the 'weight of the mod's content'. These issues can and will be eventually resolved if I can get past this stupid hang bug that's currently confusing the hell out of me that I'm wondering if it should even be priority to address. And all the reported crashes and oddities that have emerged due to the NPC split... which I may just need to take the few months its going to take to reprogram in a different way.

I'm not saying that there aren't some techs that don't feel unnecessary at the moment but it's hard to say whether they will be in the long run or not. There truly will come a time when the projects we have intended to complete will be pretty much there and at that point is when we should then fully reconsider how and what to edit out based on a lack of necessity.

The concept of considering some techs to be better as buildings is interesting. But at the same time we should then consider the opposite. For example, I personally dislike the Internet being a building rather than a tech. Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me particularly since the Internet is by definition a DE-centralized entity.

Since Classical and Medieval is the time when the battlefield was ruled by iron weapons, both eras combined could be called Iron Age. Seperating those two eras was mostly done, I think, when it was still believed that there was a massive downfall of civilization, which seems to have been a bit overrated. And even that downfall didn't really happen outside of Europe.

This actually is a very good point and we clearly have divided the two at an incorrect juncture anyhow. We have techs that are clearly introductions to the Medieval age by historical definition having been included in Classical, such as Feudalism. And it drives me nuts. The Medieval age is massively underdeveloped in comparison.

But then again, the reason NOT to break them up is clear too. The essence or feel of these ages is clearly differentiated by Roman and Post Roman. If you were writing a historical fiction you could not blend the two eras without obvious anachronisms and there were enormous strategical battlefield differences between these eras. Then there's also the pain in the arse of manipulating the ages in this manner.

Regarding the micro-techs: I know that some people like them, but with the exponential increase of beakers that is a problem. Just how immersive is the image that an entire civilization makes a research effort of many years (roughly on par with the Manhattan Project) to develop Expressionism? While techs earlier in the tree (like Steam Engine or Electricity) had much less beakers, which is the game saying they are easier to develop?

There are different ways this could be handled, but I think the number of beakers really should take the difficulty involved with the development into regard. I can see 3 different ways of doing this:

1. Take out the micro-techs and make all techs "big ones" (like one tech for modern art)
2. Split up the big techs so that all techs are minor (this could prove to be a problem with performance and with imagination)
3. Take the micro-techs out of the exponential progression and reduce the number of beakers to a point where these techs could be researched in less than one turn.

DH answered to this in the way I would've. Nice to see we're on the same sheet of music there DH!

Here is another idea (rather long-term, I am not sure if I have already said it somewhere): Would it be possible to define buildings that are absolutely necessary to contribute to a research effort? Like: This city cannot partake in the research of Modern Physics, there is no University (or Physics Lab)? That could (again long-term) replace many cases of beakers providing buildings, perhaps to a point where the exponential curve could be replaced with a lower curve, eliminating one souce of overflow. Plus, I think there is a limit how much our current civilization could accelerate the development of prehistoric or ancient techs, if they were lost to us (if there were no more carpenters, how quickly could we redevelop the tech, even with computers?).

I don't think we're bugged with the building prereq for techs are we DH? I would appreciate a more intricate pathway through techs that they may be able to introduce. I would also like to back up DH in reconsidering the tech tree for the purpose of potentially skipping entire branches of the tree simply because a resource may not exist, like horses for example.

And I'm still strongly feeling like Great Scientists and/or Engineers or other GPs should be necessary to access the special alternative timeline techs. I wouldn't even mind it if we took each of the special riding buildings like Bear Trainer and put them in unique techs that can only be unlocked by a Great Hunter or something along those lines.

Last point (sorry for the long post, and again long-term): Would it be possible to give techs "education maintenance"? To keep knowledge does not require research but education (it is arguably the point of education) and could give this property a flavor of its own. The main problem I can see with this is that education is a local property, but perhaps an average (education per citizen) could be considered.

Actually I love this idea! Very easily done too. A free building granted to all cities once the tech is achieved that adds -.01 - -1 education per population. This represents the added time and resources required to teach this new tech to students. I think this could be the wonderful trick needed to make education a little more challenging and doing that would help the mod tremendously in my opinion since we've now made it a bit too easy to keep education high imo. We've gotta be careful not to overreach with this though because if education becomes toooo difficult, the AI will freak out with building too many education units.

But since Education is much easier to manage on Noble difficulty level, we have a lot of room to make it more difficult without stressing the AI. Someone recently made a great point about how testing the game at Noble does let the tester see what the AI experiences in terms of gold balance and if it is made to not be so challenging for the AI but moreso as the game difficulties go up you can get the balance right that way.

Very similar with Education.

We would need someone to do the careful analysis needed to consider what techs should bring these education maintenance amounts forward, the justification for it, and the amounts, as well as to then implement based on that careful planning.

It is not simple to add another era. It is quite a lot of work actually. That is the main reason we have not done it.

Exactly. Far more important to consider this than to try to force each era to have roughly the same amount of techs.

As to the cost of techs - we always intended to go back and make the "minor" techs cost less than the "major" ones but first you need to settle on a scale. I like a 3 tier approach; no brainers, normal, and very difficult. It requires someone going through and deciding on the costs individually but it can't be done until we have everything in or at least everything in an era. We still have some big stuff to add into the prehistoric era (eg Nomadic Start) as well as the Classic (eg diplomacy with barbarians) and the Renaissance on (eg black ops). I think we have most of the techs we need for these but I could be wrong.

Again, I agree completely. Perfect perspective imo.

If the game has nine eras and 900 techs, clearly an even split would be to have roughly 100 per era. It certainly doesn't make sense to have nearly one-third of your techs stashed into the last two eras, especially if the mod has performance issues such that almost no one will ever reach that far in game.

Why react before the performance issues can be sorted out? Shouldn't we be more focused on those first?

Those players and Modders that want distinct Timeframes have to come to grips with the fact that our GS lengths are well beyond what Firaxis had in mind for Civ IV and subsequent expansion like BtS.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

So the question I have is When (what range of time) should each GS come out of Preh Era? The current 20,000BC to 6,000BC?

I strongly believe it should be 6k BC but there's an earlier date to rationalize a split in the Prehistoric as well.

But for the purpose of moving to Ancient, it should absolutely be 6000BC since that is roughly the current dating on the founding of the oldest permanent cities on record.

Ancient? 20,000BC to when:10,000BC 6000BC? 4000BC? 3000BC? etc.
Classical? 10,000BC to when:
Med to when from when?
Ren ?
Ind? When did Ind end? 1900? 1950?(post WWII)
Modern ? When should modern end? 20 years in the future from now? 50?

We discussed this out with Praetyre once a long time ago... I'll have to try to either find that or take some time to think these through again.

Once these are answered with a general concensus then TH Era is easier to do as it is Future in reality. But what time should TH end? 3,000 AD? 5,000AD? 10,000AD?[/qoute]
I always figured TH may be best to end around 3000 AD. I do think we'll be so rapidly developing at a point in the later TH that if it even needs to go this far into the future is in question but it feels about right looking at that estimation at this point of our ability to predict.

Where ever we decide then Galactic can start and can go for Thousands of Years too. And vitually no one who starts a Game in Preh era will ever make it to the 1 Future tech. No one is going to play a game already decided for X years to get there on the 2 longest GS.

This is why after Modern my initial game speed attempts had time per turn get longer rather than continuing to grow shorter.

And here is the Bad apple in the barrel for TH and Galactic Eras, C2C just does not allow a normal player the opportunity to play these Eras from a Preh Era start on most of our GS Except Normal and Epic. So both are diminishing returns to the Amount of Effort being done in both eras.

True we'll have to enable such starts eventually. We'll need to figure out what goes wrong when those starts are taking place and sort it out.

You can play these Eras by choosing to start in say Ren era on almost all of the GSs. But on Eternity and Eon you will still be taking quite some time to get from Ren to TH Era. I have tested a Ren era start and it is doable to get to TH Era on Epic GS. I have not tried or started a Test game for each Era to start a New game in. Sparth says you can start in Modern with no problem so I'll take his word on that. But I still need to verify a Class, Med, Ind, TH, and Gal start.

I've done a modern start and it IS rather interesting. I'm sure it will be moreso after the building consolidations Pepper's working on.

The more I dig into these GS and their ultimate ramifications for C2C being a playable Mod from Preh to Future Eras the less convinced I am of it's realistic possibility. Caveman2Cosmos when it started was designed for Preh to end of Modern Era. The TH and Galactic idea was added later (and without much forethought I'm sorry to say). In terms of the Mod the TH and Galactic Eras actually need to be Modular Expansions of the base C2C (Preh thru Mod).

Don't give up on it. The question is not CAN it be done (it absolutely can be), it's HOW must it be done to serve the game needs and development intentions.

Now I've posted a lot of observations, ?s, and thoughts; what I really do now need is a consensus for When, no matter what GS used, does each Ind Era Start and Stop. An Exact point of Time or stay with the Range of Times for each GS that the Eras start and stop? You tell me, please.

JosEPh

I used to have it completely charted out what dates the ages should shift and although Praetyre and I had a few disagreements they weren't all that bad and were completely negotiable. It's a very very very very very old discussion at this point though... sigh.

I believe WE need to do that with ALOT of techs, starting with Ancient and beyond . . .

Some techs only have 1 item, really not worth making it??? What do you'll think??

Not all techs need to be loaded with stuff to unlock. It's like paragraphs. Not all paragraphs need be long. Not all need be short. There should be a variety that ranges from the short paragraph to the long paragraph in a well written novel. The techs in our tree are no exception.

Does this make sense?

 

[JosEPh_II]

Okay from all that then:
1.Preh Era ends at ~6000BC (Certain GS will not land exactly on 6000BC, but I can get real close)
2. Ancient Starts at ~6000BC but should end at ?. I would venture 2000BC as it stands now. Any objections?
3. Classical Starts at ~2000BC but should end at ? 600AD? 700AD? or 800AD?
4. Medieval starts at ~600-800AD? Ends at ? 1200AD? 1400AD?
5. Ren Starts at ~1200-1400AD? Ends at ?. 1700AD? 1800AD?
6. Industrial Starts at ~1700-1800AD? Ends at 1920AD? 1950AD?
7. Modern starts at ~ 1920-1950AD? Ends at 2030AD? 2050AD?
8. TH starts at 2030-2050AD? Ends at 3000AD.
9. Galactic starts at 3000AD. Ends at 5000AD?
10. Future starts at ~5000AD?

This is why after Modern my initial game speed attempts had time per turn get longer rather than continuing to grow shorter.

Saw that and now have no problem with it after digging into it.

Originally Posted by JosEPh_II
Those players and Modders that want distinct Timeframes have to come to grips with the fact that our GS lengths are well beyond what Firaxis had in mind for Civ IV and subsequent expansion like BtS.

T-brd wrote:I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

Fairly simple really. We can't make every C2C GS follow Vanilla BtS timeframe of making the GSs run 6050 years from Ancient thru Modern ages. Historical accuracy on Dates matching Techs will not happen as in Vanilla. So when "they" gripe they need to be told No it's not possible for us to do that Because of our extended GS lengths. Period. Instead of constantly bending over backwards creating more work to even try to get within a few Game years of their expectations. We don't say No enough to all the push for Historical Accuracy. And Modders of C2C (past and present) have caused and allowed this problem to continue.

And finally sorry I didn't follow you and Praetyre's dialogue over GSs way back then. As our GS were different at that time as were expectations and Mod goals.

JosEPh