dunkleosteus
Roman Pleb
So Civ VI gave us the civics tree and the tech tree. You track through them independantly with limited communication between the two (the odd cross-over eureka being the exception).
The tech tree in general is not perfect, but as far as I am aware, has always operated in the same way: your turnly science output is applied to whichever technology you are currently researching.
It is my opinion that this system has inherent flaws (and also advantages), and that by stepping back and evaluating the science system as a whole, we have the opportunity to improve it. I believe that the system is flawed because it limits technological development to discrete and large jumps. There is also little room for variation between civs- except for unique bonuses, civs in the same era are equal in military strength if you adjust for army size and unit upgrades.
Additionally, I think the science system is a poor analog for technological research for the majority of the span of the game, and that many if not most technologies are unrelated to "science"- you won't figure them out by doing equations on paper or reading in a library.
My proposal is thus:
Science is treated as a generic unit called something like "research". Rather than being science, it represents your civ's ability to develop or try new ideas. However, there are also specialization points. Nearly all techs actually require a combination of research points and specialization points to be earned.
Rather than commiting all of your points to research over time, you instead must accumulate points into a pool (which has a cap) and can choose to spend them to purchase technologies which are available (with a 1-4 turn delay for the research to take place). I think this is reasonable because there are actually few examples in history of technological advancement occurring at the deliberate instruction of a government.
The types of specialization points are Economic, Productive, Cultural, Faith, Political, Military (land) and Military (naval).
Military specialization points are split into two sub-types: land and naval, and this is important. When spending military points, you can use the wrong type of point at double the cost, so if you want to spend 50 naval points but only have 40, you could use the 40 naval points and an additional 20 land points.
So the way this system would work is that you earn specialization points from various buildings or actions relating to that category- having a market for example will give you more economic points per turn, as will having active trade routes. Combat can yield military points from victory, but so can shipyards and barracks.
A technology has a cost based on the ideas that it represents, so for example Bronze Working might cost 50% research points and 50% productive points. All technologies require research points to some degree, with the ratio somewhat related to how "academic" the technology is or how novel it is. For example, writing might cost 10% political, 10% economic, 10% cultural and 70% research points. Early writing was used as an administrative tool for managing inventories and keeping records, which is why there is an economic and political aspect to its development.
Conversely, masonry would be more like 30% research and 70% productive, because its development is a smaller leap of ingenuity than metal working or writing.
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There's one more feature in this system that I think is important- innovations.
Innovations operate differently than technologies, but I guess you could call them sub-technologies. Unlike technologies, innovations are a lot cheaper and often do not require research points.
Innovations are chosen from a seperate screen and are sorted by technology: each technology has a set of innovations that become available once you have researched it. Many things that are currently unlocked by technologies would instead be unlocked by innovations of that technology, but there would also be new features to them.
Here are some examples of innovations:
Bronze working: Metal Armour- 50% productive, 50% military. Gives a combat boost to spearmen and swordsmen (for example).
Bronze working: Cast bronze- 100% productive. Bronze age units get a % production boost.
Writing: Arithmetic- 50% research, 50% economic. Gives a production and gold boost to your cities. REQUIRED to research mathematics. (this is one of the few innovations that requires research points).
Innovations can be used to give bonuses and effects to military units so that all units from the same era aren't identical, however if you spend a lot of points developing medieval military innovations, many of them won't be useful for gunpowder units.
The tech tree in general is not perfect, but as far as I am aware, has always operated in the same way: your turnly science output is applied to whichever technology you are currently researching.
It is my opinion that this system has inherent flaws (and also advantages), and that by stepping back and evaluating the science system as a whole, we have the opportunity to improve it. I believe that the system is flawed because it limits technological development to discrete and large jumps. There is also little room for variation between civs- except for unique bonuses, civs in the same era are equal in military strength if you adjust for army size and unit upgrades.
Additionally, I think the science system is a poor analog for technological research for the majority of the span of the game, and that many if not most technologies are unrelated to "science"- you won't figure them out by doing equations on paper or reading in a library.
My proposal is thus:
Science is treated as a generic unit called something like "research". Rather than being science, it represents your civ's ability to develop or try new ideas. However, there are also specialization points. Nearly all techs actually require a combination of research points and specialization points to be earned.
Rather than commiting all of your points to research over time, you instead must accumulate points into a pool (which has a cap) and can choose to spend them to purchase technologies which are available (with a 1-4 turn delay for the research to take place). I think this is reasonable because there are actually few examples in history of technological advancement occurring at the deliberate instruction of a government.
The types of specialization points are Economic, Productive, Cultural, Faith, Political, Military (land) and Military (naval).
Military specialization points are split into two sub-types: land and naval, and this is important. When spending military points, you can use the wrong type of point at double the cost, so if you want to spend 50 naval points but only have 40, you could use the 40 naval points and an additional 20 land points.
So the way this system would work is that you earn specialization points from various buildings or actions relating to that category- having a market for example will give you more economic points per turn, as will having active trade routes. Combat can yield military points from victory, but so can shipyards and barracks.
A technology has a cost based on the ideas that it represents, so for example Bronze Working might cost 50% research points and 50% productive points. All technologies require research points to some degree, with the ratio somewhat related to how "academic" the technology is or how novel it is. For example, writing might cost 10% political, 10% economic, 10% cultural and 70% research points. Early writing was used as an administrative tool for managing inventories and keeping records, which is why there is an economic and political aspect to its development.
Conversely, masonry would be more like 30% research and 70% productive, because its development is a smaller leap of ingenuity than metal working or writing.
---
There's one more feature in this system that I think is important- innovations.
Innovations operate differently than technologies, but I guess you could call them sub-technologies. Unlike technologies, innovations are a lot cheaper and often do not require research points.
Innovations are chosen from a seperate screen and are sorted by technology: each technology has a set of innovations that become available once you have researched it. Many things that are currently unlocked by technologies would instead be unlocked by innovations of that technology, but there would also be new features to them.
Here are some examples of innovations:
Bronze working: Metal Armour- 50% productive, 50% military. Gives a combat boost to spearmen and swordsmen (for example).
Bronze working: Cast bronze- 100% productive. Bronze age units get a % production boost.
Writing: Arithmetic- 50% research, 50% economic. Gives a production and gold boost to your cities. REQUIRED to research mathematics. (this is one of the few innovations that requires research points).
Innovations can be used to give bonuses and effects to military units so that all units from the same era aren't identical, however if you spend a lot of points developing medieval military innovations, many of them won't be useful for gunpowder units.
