Industrial Era discussion

[phungus420]

As I see it there are a couple of issues with the industrial period, some of which relate to BtS, but are exhasperbated by LoR changes. First and foremost is that the technologies are kind of railroaded into necessary techs, you simply cannot advance without Steam Power, Steel, and Scientific Method. While this may be accurate historically, from a game dev standpoint it's not good to force players to do things. I'd like to have the tech tree opened up a bit in the Industrial period to allow for more customization in research paths and more novel strategies. Second is the steamships, the poll has been up a bit and it seems you the users have spoken, so the Protected Cruiser is staying. However I still feel the Steamship navies should be tweaked a bit to achieve a more logical and intuitive balance.

So I'd like to discuss ideas on how to achieve these two goals for the Industrial period:

1) Open up the tech tree research paths
2) Tweak the Steam ship units for better balance.


Specific suggestions are preffered. I'm usually pretty good at this sort of thing, but I'm a bit stumped, but it's more the specifics I'm stumped on, not grand ideas.

 

[Roland Johansen]

You could split the lower and upper half of the tech tree a bit:

Lower half: economic/wonder/ideological
Upper half: industrial/military

The lower half requires scientific method, the upper half steal and steam power (and in part physics which you get in the lower half).

Remove: Steam Power from Communism (the ideology could exist in a less industrial form), Gas Turbine from Electricity (the production of electricity could exist on a smaller less industrial scale). Note that players and AI alike will go for the advantages of higher production anyway when they really want to exploit the benefits of the lower half of the tech tree.

Optional idea: Remove assembly line from both refrigeration and radio. Both of these could exist on a smaller scale without industrial production means. As said before, player and AI alike will want to develop the production advantages of the upper half anyway without strict paths that lead them that way.

I've commented on the balance of the steamships/capital ships protected cruiser, destroyer escort and dreadnaught in the other thread about steamships.

By the way, you're absolutely right that balancing the tech tree versus allowing freedom is tough. I was looking at it for a long while before posting this suggestion.

 

[Alsark]

Yeah, one thing I have never liked is how if you're trying to win culturally via mass religion spread and by building every type of Monastery in your cities, then Scientific Method (which is a necessity) will really end up screwing you over due to losing 22 base culture per city (if you have the Sistine Chapel). Not to mention the loss of some science with Sankore and some production with the Apostolic Palace. It makes sense for Biology and Physics to require Scientific Method... but why Communism? Although, unfortunately, even if you broke it off there you won't be gaining that many poor techs - and while an argument could probably be made to allow Biology without Scientific Method (such as Mendel's pea experiments), the bulk of Biology has clearly been within more recent years, so I wouldn't change needing Scientific Method.

As for Steam Power and Steel... there's not really any disadvantage to researching either of these, so I don't think it's as big of a deal. Though, again, it does seem weird for Communism to require Steam Power. This might seem odd, but maybe have it require Democracy instead? Marxists considered capitalism to be a "step of evolution" in the chain of government, and while democracy does not equal capitalism, some people would say there is a link there, as they both emerged around the same time (though I'd disagree there is a link). Another way to think about requiring Democracy it makes sense to be down a path of other government-like technologies. Naturally, with this change, the requirement for Liberalism would be removed. This will also distribute the "Great Person Rush" as I call it. Once somebody is first to Scientific Method it's like, "Ooo! Now I get Physics and Communism first to get a free Great Scientist AND a free Great Spy!" Putting Communism in a whole different tech tree altogether will significantly reduce the likelihood that one person is able to grab both Physics and Communism first.

Steel, however, is a bit of a toughie. I can see the techs that require steel as actually needing Steel, so it wouldn't make much sense to remove that requirement.

As for navy... I seldom build a navy, so I can't help out much there.

 

[morchuflex]

I, too, think the tech tree is a bit too constraining as it is. Why do I need Divine right and Nationalism to develop an industry and a modern economy?
I also resent the Engineering requirement for Astronomy, BTW.

 

[warhead66]

Well in my opinion, if you want to keep your title as "that guy who made the unofficial expansion of civ4" which you have now, then you can't just change something completely banal in the games structure.

The tech tree is built around world history it's the most important thing in all civ games because it draws the path where your world, whether it's real world map or made up map, becomes a simulation of history and I don't think you can change that just to make the industrial era last longer.

what you however can do which not only would be historically correct but has also been used by a lot of mods is the collateral effect of the IR. When a nation becomes industrialiezed two things have either happened to it's neighbours, they got their asses kicked, or they joined the force.

If you're playing Real world map as Germany, and during the next 10 years every sorrounding nation has entered the industrious era, it's natural that it becomes 10 000 times easier for you to do it, they can sell you all the parts to build factories and what not cheaper because they're industrialized and make money on it, or you should be able to reasearch it by yourself very cheaply.
Now of course it wouldn't be fair that you invented infantry and then all of a sudden everyone else had it because of this, but if you are good friends with a neighbouring country and they discover scientific method it's only logical that you'd learn this from them much cheaper, if you're however sorrounded by backwater states then keeping up becomes difficult, that way trade becomes much more essential and spending those annoying 10 turns to research something that isn't really an invention, disappears.


I don't think you can alter the tech tree on what regards a time period because they're pretty damn obvious the industrial revolution is leterally impossible without the acceptance of the scientific method.

"But won't this make it basically impossible for a left behind state to ever catch on, and what about nations who are very far away from other nations like Mali or Russia?"

No because the main issue here is whom you trade with, if you're friends a high tech nation they will want you to understand somethings so they can trade more with you.. Examples of this would be the Western World showering Africa with techs so they can get hold of the oil.

Lastly there should of course be a compensation for whoever founds these ideological techs should of course be compensated, some are already but i think it's fair to say it should be a bit heavier, my idea is 100% great people birth for maybe 5-10 turns, and of course one great person for free like you already get.

 

[stagnate]

While I don't think a wholesale change of the tech tree is within scope, I do think that some modifications are reasonable. In fact there are already several changes and new technologies in place.

The focus should be on making sure that the user has a degree of freedom, and that the choices have some logical sense. Most of the tech tree is already this way, giving you three paths to research on (culture, government, and military) and the ability to focus on one path for quite awhile before having to catch up on the other paths.

However the problem that Phungus is looking at is where that breaks down in the industrial era. There is one point where every player gets into a funnel to get scientific method, steel, and steam power. I think Roland is on the right track; it might also be necessary to tweak the technologies a little bit (higher/lower costs) to keep some balance in choice.

I'll post more after I've played around with it some more.

 

[phungus420]

The focus should be on making sure that the user has a degree of freedom, and that the choices have some logical sense. Most of the tech tree is already this way, giving you three paths to research on (culture, government, and military) and the ability to focus on one path for quite awhile before having to catch up on the other paths.

However the problem that Phungus is looking at is where that breaks down in the industrial era. There is one point where every player gets into a funnel to get scientific method, steel, and steam power. I think Roland is on the right track; it might also be necessary to tweak the technologies a little bit (higher/lower costs) to keep some balance in choice.

This is it exactly. And every time I try to rearange the tech tree to deal with this bottleneck in the Industrial Era, the whole thing unravels. I'd really like to figure out a good way to allow for more freedom and divergent research paths in Industrial Period, but I can't see how to do this while maintaining a vestige of realism and gameplay logic with unit progression and such. That's my problem, I was hopeing someone could come up with an altered tech tree design in the Industrial Era I hadn't figured out, or envisioned yet to deal with the bottlenecks. Unfortunetely it seems just as hard for others as it is for me to do this.