Free Techs AKA Franco-Ibera vs Slavic Federation

[gunnergoz]

People will game any system. This tech web is a new idea for Civ and I applaud it as refreshingly innovative. Like anything, can and will be abused by those who enjoy doing such things. If there are obvious weak points in the design, no doubt they will be plugged lest the MP players in particular rise up and mutiny over it. I certainly don't want the next Civ game to resort to the old linear tech tree if there is some better way to do things that can be made to work 99% of the time for most gamers.

 

[Acken]

I also approves of the tech web. What I'm worried about is mixing it with free techs. When your costly game techs don't have many prerequisites I don't know if it's a good idea to offer free techs.

It's also 100% valid to raise concern right now. Firaxis isn't renown for fixing things fast (balance wise) once the games are out.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I'm dubious about this bonus. It seems like it takes too long to snowball. How many total techs can you expect to get from this through a full game 2-3? I think a better way to handle this is to give a certain amount of Beakers for every virtue chosen. Something like 25% (or what ever works) of the virtue cost in Beakers for each virtue chosen. You still get the effect of bonus techs. The effects are more immediate and, also spread out more evenly over the entire game period. It also still has the potential to snowball depending on how you leverage your tech/culture.

I think the actual free techs are more interesting, particularly with the tech web.

If you focus on culture you are probably looking at 4 of them... and given the nature of the web they can all be ring 3 stem or leaf techs

and I think Free techs are designed to be used on the costly techs.

After all Everyone can get 2 free techs from virtues (15 Tier 1 and 15 Knowledge)
and
1 from the bionics Quest

Just because you have a costly tech doesn't mean you can use its benefits (abilities are often +1 yield to an improvement, OR Affinities.. but those are Leaf techs)

 

[Seek]

Going by MadDjinn's current LP, he gets his 10th virtue at turn 109 (including the free one from the width kicker). He has two t2 stem techs open at this time and only 12 culture on four cities. I could imagine a Holomatrix slingshot. The Holomatrix satellite provides 2 culture on every tile in a one-tile radius and lasts 60 turns. With four cities at six pop that is 56 more culture per turn! Far more than any known building, and 14 more for each 6-pop city (cultural domination game, anyone?). This will rocket the virtue accumulation, allowing for slingshots to Deep Memory (wonder that grants 2 free virtues), Memetwork (+25% culture in city) or other key techs/wonders. Seems far more powerful than one early free tech in my eyes.

 

[Aeson]

FI is going to work well with hammer style and peaceful builder players.

SF is more suited for dagger plays to grab a quick advantage and then leverage it into compounding returns.

With Health being less of a restriction than Happiness in BNW, early advantages are going to compound more. We haven't seen the penalties for extreme un-Health yet. It will be interesting to see just how hard you can push into REX/military expansion before hitting negative returns from added pop/cities/trade routes.

 

[Umbral Reaver]

FI is going to work well with hammer style and peaceful builder players.

What's hammer style?

 

[Aeson]

Sledgehammer... build a massive economy peacefully and then go wreck things with it.

 

[ConanTLibrarian]

Well there are a lot of culture fans in the Civ world and this UA is custom made for them, er, us.

Right there with ya bro, love me some culture.

Also love that sledgehammer term

 

[Tomice]

There are quite a few strings attached regarding SF's free tech.
You may or may not find a free satellite, you may not yet have the prerequisite techs you need for your free tech of choice, you may have to go down the eccology path without need for miasmic repulsors (and build one without need), the waiting satellite may block the production of civilian units....

FI's may come a bit later, but you can time it much easier. You might be able to rush to tier 3 even, or tier 2 leaf techs for a massive affinity boost and tier 3 units. And you'll get a free tech soon afterwards (maybe even at 15 virtues from the synergy bonus as someone said already).

Overall, SF will usually get it's free tech earlier, but FI will often get far more benefit from free techs overall practically without opportunity cost. Which is good, because the SF has another bonus regarding orbital units, FI not.

I'm even inclined to say that FI's free techs are so strong that they easily beat SF's combined bonus. Many orbital units don't profit from staying up there longer at all (miasmic repulsor/condenser, probably climate control) and for many others the time bonus is nonessential.

 

[ConanTLibrarian]

Know what ya mean Tomice, the more I see and hear about how the Salvs' UA works with sattelite duration, the less appealing it seems (can they seriously get some sort of perk for Miasmic Repulser?). As discussed earlier (and in other threads), it seems their appeal will be more short-term goal oriented.

 

[Aeson]

SF beelines will be rather easy to time out. They will necessarily be short and at most require Ecology to trigger. Its also a very flexible bonus because you choose timing and effect. You can push in very fast to Battlesuits, and pretty fast to the the other two Affinity 4 unit techs. Combine with a 5 virtue line down Might.

You can take economic paths as well, and shooting for early economic Satellites has a lot of synergy going for it.

We havent seen any playthroughs that take a dagger approach, extreme beelines, or make good use of satellites yet. Those will be the type of games SF excels at.

 

[Seek]

Know what ya mean Tomice, the more I see and hear about how the Salvs' UA works with sattelite duration, the less appealing it seems (can they seriously get some sort of perk for Miasmic Repulser?). As discussed earlier (and in other threads), it seems their appeal will be more short-term goal oriented.

I'm in the same boat, SF are looking weaker and weaker - how about giving them the ability to move their satellites (removing the free tech if necessary)? That sounds far better - and more fun - to me.

 

[OldEarthRelic]

By turn 250, Maddjinn has 18 virtues. While he didn't have a huge culture focus, and went wide, he did pick artists. I think FI players may get to 30 for 3 free techs, but it will require sacrificing other parts of the game. I don't know how Pete got to 40 - maybe he was on an easy level (where virtues may cost less - they did in BNW) and went 400 turns.

 

[Rakshasa72]

I think Maddjinn was using Holo-Satellites to boost his Culture. That's how he got so many Virtues.

 

[Aeson]

Maddjinn didn't have Culture as a priority for most of the game, so the PAC game isn't a good indication of what is possible in regard to number of Virtues.