A dynamic Tech tree Mod, help please.

[FuriousGreg]

I'm not a Modder so I have no idea if this is possible to build or how to do it. I'm looking for a Mod that can break up ages better so that we don't see such a disparity of advancement between Civs. I don't want to penalize players or the AI for handling research well but I'd like to have the ages be a little more uniform.
Ideally there would be a Tech that bookends each age that you need to get to move on to the next age. This Tech would have a research value that starts high but drops with each Civ that starts researching it. For example a Tech between Ancient and Classical Ages that the Civ that reaches it must spend X research to achieve however as soon as a second Civ starts researching it the value drops to X-1, and when a second Civ starts becomes X-2 etc. The first Civ to start researching still remains in the lead but the last Civ gets a little boost to catch up because by the time they get there the needed research value is super low. I think this would help close the gap and make for a more challenging game.

So, has anyone tried this or knows how to do something like this and if not how would I go about making something like this?

 

[Jopo]

I see you´re a newcomer to the forums? Welcome!

So what you´re proposing is a "finisher" tech for each era? Required to advance to the next? This tech would bring all tech prereq. "lines" to it and then advance to next era?

An interesting idea, I might be interested in taking part or doing a techtree project on my own (would be great though if we got a group for this) and such a feature could very well be interesting. One foreseeable effect would be to stop "rushing" certain tech lanes ahead of time.
If anyone is familiar with Paradox interactive´s strategy games, they have in EU4 for example an "ahead of time" penalty which effectively shuts down any attempts at getting too far ahead of your current era by increasing research costs the more you are ahead and similar to what you´re proposing as you get a bonus or cost reduction if any of your neighboring nations already has the tech.

I would propose to assemble a mod group if there are willing volunteers and work with the vanilla Civ 6 tech tree as a base or starting point and then add to that or rework it when necessary?

For Eras I would propose;

Ancient Era (Bronze and Iron revolutions) -> Classical Era (Ancient Greece, Rome etc. maybe 500 BC to 500 AD) -> Medieval Era (500 AD - 1500 AD) -> Renaissance Era ( 1500 AD - 1700AD) -> Enlightenment/Napoleonic Era (1700-1850) -> Industrial Era (1850-1900) -> Modern Era (1900-1950) -> Atomic Era (1950-2000) -> Information Era (2000-2050) -> Possible Future Eras (Fusion/Nanotech Era?) if techtree is continued towards the future?

Considering your proposal for bookend/finisher techs, it would have to be some sort of pivotal achievement in technology that marks a watershed between eras, right?

A few proposals for such techs;

Ancient -> Classical transition; Hmmm, maybe Philosophy or Iron Working? Philosophy, mathematics, etc. marked the start of the classical civilization and culture, so perhaps that would serve as a good bookend tech? On the other hand ancient Egyptians knew geometry etc. as they built the Pyramids, so maybe add Geometry as a kind of "early mathematics" tech which would be a prereq. to Philosophy? And what did Philosophy require in order to evolve? I´d say that one requirement was enough wealth in the Civ to support free thinkers who had time to dedicate themselves to such pursuits instead of working the land etc. That and a stable enough and peaceful society and surroundings so no one would come to "disturb the philosophers circles", as happened to Archimedes with the Roman legionary. :-D

Anyway, welcome to the Forums and thoughts?

 

[FuriousGreg]

Jopo,

Thanks for the response, I think though that what you are proposing is more complicated than what I'm looking for, but your comment on how EU4 handles getting too far ahead in research is much closer to what I'd like to build. The problem is I don't know how or if it's possible to create a Tech that can change it's research value dynamically based on how many Civs have or are researching it.

Ideally there would be a Tech that would bottleneck between ages that would start out at 100% the research cost for the first Civ that reaches it and then drops by 10% with each following Civ that begins researching it. This would take affect even while the first Civ was still researching so the more Civs that are, or have completed, researching it the less is Science necessary to complete it.

I'm still thinking on it because I don't want to penalize good strategies or significantly lengthen development but at the same time I don't want there to be the, sometimes huge, Age gaps between Civs. I'd rather give laggards a boost to get a more challenging game than be so far ahead in Tech that I'm dealing with Classical and Renaissance Civs while I'm in the Industrial Age or beyond.

Maybe there is a way to give Eurika bonuses each time a Civ completes this "Bottleneck" Tech? Not large ones but every Civ gets it. So for example Civ1 completes the bottleneck tech and every other Civ gets X% off of every Tech in the previous Age.

 

[Jopo]

Hmmm, I must admit I´m still quite a lot on the learning curve myself as to the Civ 6 new dynamic modifiers mechanic which allows us to create those as we need them (with some limitations of course) from the effects, requirements and collections combinations. I think though that with this new mechanic in place, a lot more is possible than with say Civ 5, but that´s just my gut feeling, I just recently bought the game on steam so haven´t had time to study it extensively yet, so I can´t say definitively.
Besides, I must say that, sadly, I´m not a coding expert. My fields of study in the university are English language, history, educational studies etc., but not computer sciences, although I´ve learned a fair bit from modding just about every game I´ve come across. :-D

From the long hours of playing EU4, I can say that the mechanic there, works as thus;
- base Tech research cost for all techs 600 monarch points of which there are 3 types, admin, diplomatic (includes trade and naval) and military, so tech cost remains the same throughout the game, but each tech has a historic discovery year tag attached to it, so if you try to rush ahead of time to get an advantage, you get an increasing tech cost increase, so far so that as the max amount of stored monarch points is 999, the tech cost goes above that, effectively forcing you to wait until you get closer to the tag date.
However since monarch points are used to do just about every major action in the game, like province base value (tax income, production income, manpower etc.) upgrades, you are always short of those points, so the game tips "value your monarch points" tip is very much true. :-D

The idea of a bottleneck technology which transits you to a new era reminds me a lot of the Age of Empires-series, with it´s era-techs.

Just to add to the idea... Could there possibly be a civic-tree prereq. for discovering certain techs, like those bottleneck technologies? I think it might create a similar effect to the EU4´s "institutions"-mechanic, which further hampers research if your society is lagging behind in adopting new ways, like feudalism, renaissance, colonialism, printing press etc.?
So basically with a civic tree prereq. the idea would be that if your society isn´t "ready" to adopt new technologies, you lag behind. For an example, you cannot advance to medieval era by researching the transition tech, unless you have the feudalism civic, reflecting the fundamental nature of medieval society and social order. Game mechanic-wise it would emphasize the need to keep up in culture yield production, so you don´t stagnate to a feudal society which faces black steamships from other civs in it´s harbors. :-D

Anyway, if you´re considering some sort of tech tree overhaul mod-project, I´d be happy to help and contribute in any way I can, since I worked on a tech tree of my own for Civ 5, but then Civ 6 came out and... :-D

 

[IllustriousYou]

Technologies have a fixed cost that you cannot alter, and I don't know whether you can attach multiple boosts to a tech. You can, however, set the research progress of a technology in Lua.

There's a method available in gameplay scripts for players: player:GetTechs():SetResearchProgress(technologyIndex, progress)

technologyIndex - identifier for the technology you want to boost. Look up using
GameInfo.Technologies["TechnologyType"].Index
where TechnologyType is the name of the technology to look up (from Technologies.xml).

progress - the absolute number of science points researched on the tech. One way to calculate this is as [# of people with the tech] * [size of boost].

Example usage can be found in the Napoleon scenario of the base game. NapoleonScenario_StartScript.lua, lines 15, 18, and 21.

I have no direct experience using this function. The above information I inferred from the code.

Gedemon created an awesome spreadsheet to help find these functions. See the first post on this thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/lua-objects.601146/

I hope it helps