A More Satisfying Tech Tree

[UncivilizedGuy]

Universal Tech Tree

Do you miss the great tech trees assembled in Civ IV like ...well... Rise of Mankind? Well so do I. Since no one else seems to be working on one I thought I'd do this myself!

This is a larger tech tree that will be compatible with any mod as long as those mods make no modifications to the tech tree. I created this for a better gameplay experience with realism in mind.

I selected technologies that have had an impact on most civilizations around the world. Changes were made to steer clear of Eurocentrism. No cheesy techs or minor techs. I created this with the big picture in mind. I have been researching this for months as a hobby or as my girlfriend would say, an obsession.

All new eras! This tech tree uses the Universal eras that historians use. This is an attempt to get away from Eurocentrism.

Many Buildings and Units require more than one technology for more realism.

It is dependent upon Beyond the Future and Cure for Cancer. Will only work with BNW. Let me know if there are any techs you may think need to be here. My goals are to have no redundancy and no empty techs.

Some of the elements from the prehistoric mod have been borrowed(I'm still deciding how much of it I will use). Merged in various Buildings mods including the immense Civ Advanced mod by Hugh Heggen and various buildings from thecrazyscotsman. I may add more techs to accommodate some of these buildings.

New Techs:

Prehistory
-Behavioral Modernity (First tech that encompasses man's early accomplishments)
-Intensive Gathering
-Toolmaking
-Hunting Tactics
-Art & Music
-Worship
-Weaving
-Woodworking
-Tanning
-Fermentation
-Warfare
-Fishing
-Leadership
-Watercraft
-Metal Working
-Trade

Ancient Era(was Classical)
-Theism
-Law
-Paper
-Games
-Cartography
-Sculpture
-Glassworking
-Herbalism
-Naval Warfare


Postclassical Era(was Medieval)
-Farm Innovations
-The Stirrup
-National Identity
-Distillation
-Fashion
-State Religion (was Theology)

Early Modern Era(was Renaissance)
-Scientific Method(was Scientific Theory)
-Anatomy
-Shipbuilding
-Matchlock
-Cavalry Tactics
-Humanities

Late Modern Era(was Industrial)
-Geology
-Photography
-Human Rights
-Mass Media
-Explosives(was Dynamite)
-Agricultural Science(was Fertilizer)
-Modern Physics(was Atomic Theory)
-Mass Production
-Machine Tools(was Industrialization)

Contemporary Era(was Modern)
-Antibiotics(was Penicillin)
-Meteorology
-Appliances
-Oceanography
-Guidance Systems(was Advanced Ballistics)
-Orbital Flight
-Genetic Engineering
-Cosmology(was Space Research)
-Information Technology (was Miniaturization)
-Renewable Energy

The Future(was Atomic)
-Neurotechnology
-Quantum Computers(was Grid Computing)
-Electromagnetic Warfare (was Superconductors)
-Artificial Intelligence
-Deep Sea Mining
-Regenerative Medicine

Beyond Earth..Hey why not?!
-Beyond Earth (was Future Tech)

Techs Removed
-Archery( I may put this back in, the Archer was moved to Hunting Tactics)
-Trapping (this never felt like an important, big picture tech. I created Hunting Tactics to take it's place)
-Chivalry(way too Eurocentric. Warrior Code exists in the Honor tree)
-Theology(also way too Eurocentric. I decided on State Religion.)
-Railroad (for now)
-Intelligent Machines (I may rename this and add it back in)
-Nanomaterials (for now)
-Globalization(this feels more like a social policy than a tech, don't you agree?)
-Industrialization (Broken down into a handful of techs)



Includes these mods either whole or partially:
-Beyond the Future by Arbogli
-Resolutions - Cure for Cancer
-Civ Advanced by Hugh Heggen
-Resource Buildings by Hugh Heggen
-Neolithic Wonders
-Prehistoric Era
-thecrazyscotsman's Omnibus
-and more!

This is just the beginning of a larger mod that I'm creating called ImmerCiv. My goal and overall vision is to create a large mod with elements created by myself and others that will give a deeper experience while attempting to keep things realistic. Resources Gone Wild: World Trade will be merged with this tech tree in ImmerCiv.

This mod has exceeded 600 Mb. It will likely only be available from CivFanatics. Hopefully will have this available for beta test soon.

The images below have not been updated. I have added more techs and changed some things. But they will give you an idea where I'm going with this.

 

[mrc2022]

Seems interesting. But it somehow suggests there shouldn't be cities. The Settler would be available at the end of prehistoric no? Something like a Community tech
This would be awesome if there were a evolution from a settlement improvement into a city

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

The settler comes available at Agriculture. I am only adding one row of new techs before Agriculture. Like i said, I'm not creating a separate Stone Age. Just adding new techs to the first era to make it more interesting. You will have your first settler to build your first city. Basically your civ is becoming sedentary just before you discover Agriculture. I'm not adding any new units to the Prehistoric Era. Archer will be available at Hunting Tactics. Scout will be available at either Forest Gardening or Fire. I'm borrowing a couple of things from the Prehistoric Mod like wonders and possibly resources.

 

[mrc2022]

Ok, thought you were just preparing for a bigger launch

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

List of techs has been updated. Please see the first post.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

Updated intro and added screenshots!

 

[Hoop Thrower]

You know... historians don't use the "Prehistoric" Era anymore, at least none I know does, Paleolithic or something like that may be more fitting.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

In my mod I simply call it prehistory. Historians still use that. Technically it would be the Neolithic. I have considered that but I didn't want to promote the idea that there was an expanded prehistoric era in the mod.

 

[qadams]

Is this post just a teaser for UTT? I mean, is the mod not yet available for download and testing on Steam or elsewhere? It looks great and I'd really like to try it!

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

@qadams: Its under development right now. No download available yet. I have been working on this slowly. Doing a lot of game testing. I'm not finished with the tech prereqs for buildings and units yet. There is also a lot of text work that needs to be done. Thanks for expressing interest!

 

[killmeplease]

there can be several reasonable connections between two given techs, two can be split in three or combined into 1. that's being done to make special units or buildings come earlier or later to create an interesting gameplay. so i dont think your tech tree is usable by any and every mod... though your effort is great. personally i find tech tree building a very fun game by itself and was enjoying building different trees very much

comments on your tree:
1. do you think bananas and deer should be revealed by adv hunting and gathering techs? iirc homos hunted and gathered many kinds of things well before behaviorial modernity (and thus e.g. bananas and deer should be visible from start?)
2. wheat was gathered for sure before the advent of agriculture. there are hand mortars for grinding grain dated to >20k BC as well as microlite sickles.
3. sheep and cattle (as well as horses) were hunted before AH so should not be revealed by it imho.
4. dyes were also used before weaving, for body art, ritual purpose, fur clothes colouring.
5. pyramids and ziggurat dont require mysticism? mysticism may be preceded by primitive magic and magic by totemism..
6. no ancestor worship?
7. no microlites tech?
8. you may also be interested in addition of Jericho and Catal Hoyuk wonders.
9. dont woodmaiking and composite bows come too early? composite bow should belong to ancient era as was invented by akkadians iirc about 2k BC

will comment other techs later

 

[qadams]

Okay, about techs, this is something that really bothers me...

In real life, a civilization cannot possibly look ahead a hundred years or a thousand years and then decide in advance which techs to research in order to arrive at a certain endpoint. Every discovery or accomplishment may reveal unexpected advantages (or disadvantages) and often can lead in directions unseen beforehand. Thus it seems to me that Civs in our game should not be able to know for certain where their extended path of research could be taking them.

My idea:

Instead of players being allowed to see the entire tech tree right from the start of the game, everything further than perhaps one or two stages beyond the tech currently being researched is hidden. In addition, the tech tree should have some randomized variability from game to game, so that players can't simply memorize the tree or consult a reference to know what's coming.

I don't know much about modding, but would this be terribly difficult to implement?

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

@killmeplease: I get what you're saying about revealing certain resources. I just did this for gameplay reasons. Yes if I stick to reality many things would be revealed well before the beginning of my tech tree. I still may change this. I haven't decided if I like the way it is.

I actually have a much larger tech tree laid out on spreadsheet with a more detailed prehistoric era. I picked some techs that were very broad for the current tech tree simply because I'm avoiding empty techs. I was careful to choose Hunting Tactics and Intensive Gathering because archaeological evidence seems to show these were more recent concepts.

I'm keeping religious techs to a minimum. Totemism is good. Ancestor worship is represented in the pantheons. I'm intentionally not duplicating the pantheons in the tech tree. My original plan was to completely remove religion from the tech tree because we have the pantheons and beliefs. I decided to add a couple of techs because of the Shrine and the Temple. The pyramids do require Mysticism. I'm using the TechPrereq coding for the buildings and the units so that they require the appropriate techs. I'm doing this so that the tech piping is clean. The Composite Bowman for instance requires Leadership.

No Microliths or Megaliths. I kept it generic with Tool Making.

All of the wonders in the workshop are there. You just can't see them because the techs only hold 5 icons. If somebody were to create a mod that would make the icons smaller it would really make my day I know this is possible because it is done in the Tech Tree Creation Tool mod (don't remember the actual name)

Woodworking is sort of a border line tech. I wanted it to lead to construction and sailing. All of the ships require Woodworking. Egyptians practiced this tech very early on.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

@qadams: I had the very same idea about not showing the techs until you're upon them. This is beyond my modding know how though. Although it may be possible to make the tech tree invisible or not accessible from the drop down menu. I like this idea a lot. More realistic, yes. You would only see the next techs when it's time to research them. Hmm...now you got my wheels spinning. If the tech tree were invisible then I wouldn't have to spend so much time making it look pretty

Techs showing up in random order wouldn't be historically accurate. But it's not a bad idea for a separate mod.

 

[beewyka819]

Perhaps you can make it so you must research every tech in a column (tech tree columns) before being able to move on to the next? Seems more realistic to me, anyway, when will a alpha/beta playtesting release be available?

 

[qadams]

@qadams: I had the very same idea about not showing the techs until you're upon them... Techs showing up in random order wouldn't be historically accurate...

I don't mean, of course, that tech order should be entirely random each time. That would be ridiculous. But if there were, say, half a dozen different trees with small but significant variations, and if you didn't know which tree you were playing within any given game, that might be pretty cool.

 

[mbbcam]

Interesting project. The one thing that strikes me from a brief viewing of the images is that Horse Riding is *dependent* on the wheel. You no doubt have your reasons for this, but I find it a bit surprising.

 

[killmeplease]

Interesting project. The one thing that strikes me from a brief viewing of the images is that Horse Riding is *dependent* on the wheel. You no doubt have your reasons for this, but I find it a bit surprising.

iirc first horses were too small and weak to ride on their backs
so harnessing them into chariots was a necessary stage in development of their use

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

After an inspirational discussion with the legendary Afforess my modding gears have gone into overdrive. I'm making some changes to my original idea. I'm merging in Beyond the Future and various other mods. My goal is to keep this just a tech tree mod. But because some of the techs felt empty to me I decided to merge in some buildings mods. The largest buildings mods come from Hugh Heggen. His mods are excellent. I may add additional techs to accommodate some of these buildings. Most buildings from the Steam Workshop will be included. So all the player will have to do is enable wonders.

This mod is still a stepping stone to a larger vision that I have for my megamod called ImmerCiv. I do have plans to assemble a Wonders pack for that mod.