Alternate Tech Tree Development (Thread 2)

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Yoshi2942

Warlord
Joined
Jan 25, 2007
Messages
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Ok, The old thread got buried/off topic, but I still wanted to share my latest tech tree design with anyone who cared. :)

I have been away from the internet for two weeks or so, and am just now downloading .21 (been using .20) - and am very glad to see that some of the issues which I found with .20 may be resolved in .21..

On to the tree: While I was away I managed to put together what I feel is a great tree layout. I got as far as modifying a LOT of the units/buildings/everything for balance and flavor purposes -- and the gameplay was much better than using the default tree.... in version .20. I realize that things will need retweaking with .21 -- but that won't keep me from looking at changing the tech tree, because frankly - the default tree is not my cup of tea.

Here is what I have: Any thoughts?

Spoiler :
CIV_FFH_Alt_Tech_Tree_C.JPG
 
The image is from ver .20 -- there was only 1 high priest unit. With the introduction of various High Priests I decided to put Theology back into the tree, right above Fanaticism, based off of philosophy. I will have all of the High priests placed there.
 
Open borders (cartography) and plantations (Calendar) are too "high" (they should be with 2nd tech), same with Warfare, Honor and Deception.

Fellowship has Feral Bond, Animal Handling and Commune with Nature (+ a second hero to this religion, the Baron), Order and Veil have Religious Law, Rune has Alchemy and Golem Mastery when Octopus has nothing.
 
gandalf51 said:
Open borders (cartography) and plantations (Calendar) are too "high" (they should be with 2nd tech), same with Warfare, Honor and Deception.

Fellowship has Feral Bond, Animal Handling and Commune with Nature (+ a second hero to this religion, the Baron), Order and Veil have Religious Law, Rune has Alchemy and Golem Mastery when Octopus has nothing.
Click to expand...


Open Borders is supposed to be at Exploration, just isn't pictured correctly. EDIT --- Open borders IS pictured at Exploration, not Cartography).

Calendar is "high" - I agree. I have looked a number of times of moving it back a few, but havent been able to do so in a manner which was satisfactory to me. At this point, I justify the placement by making it comparable to the regular tree requiring sanitation to remove jungles - which is approximately the same placement, and my tree moves tree removal to crafting and jungle removal to bronze working.

Warfare -- meh.

Honor in my tree is for Perm Alliances.
Deception - to be honest, most of the different "strategy" techs I haven't placed that much attention on. I will probably cut some of these techs, and they will require and techs once I have decided what I want them to be, but I do know that I want them to be end game techs. Perm Alliances, the 7th Altar, things like this.

As for comparing the various religions for balance - OO gets Saverous and Hemah. That should be enough said. When I play, and I usually play as Balseraphs, when I land Saverous - I'm like: good game. The problem is that the AI has no clue how to use Heroes. In reality, it is almost imposible to compare the religeons because of the way that they interact with the races. Elves + Leaves > Dwarves + OO, true But that doesn't mean that OO is weaker than Leaves.

The "weakest" religions in my tree are AV and Order, AV because of the drawback of summoning an insane neighbor (maybe .21 fixes this), and Order because it is a "later" tech than the others. But as a bonus, both offer paths to both Education and Philosophy...
 
Ok, I figure I'll probably get more responses if people who would be interested in what I am doing - actually have something to toy around with.

I have uploaded my XML folder. I have made... MANY... changes to different aspects of the game. I still have a number of changes which need to be incoroporated (mostly units) due to a few of the changes between .20 and .21.

I have changed nothing except XML files. If you rename your current XML folder and unrar this one into your FfH directory, you should have no problem just firing up and begining a new game.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/109168/xml.rar

Examples of changes which I've made (for balance and flavor):
- Almost all of the Civics have been tweaked.
- Starting Techs have been modified slightly to fit my tech tree, and in some cases for flavor.
- Default civics have been modified slightly - basically most civs now begin and default to Nationhood, except those who seem specifically interested in Pacificism or Religeon, and civs which start with the Agri tech will default/start with the agri civic also.
- Many of the units have been modified to improve flavor/balance: but I still need to rework many others. Mostly I've been working on making the civs even more unique though modification of their civ specific units. An example would be the Balseraphs. The Harlequin is the Balseraph version of a ranger, but in reality it has nothing to do with being a Ranger - so I made the unit much less Ranger like and much more of a trickster... Another example would be the Vampires - though they are still a work in progress.
- There are many many other changes - most of which are small, and mostly to appease my sense of realism and structure.

Anyways, I hope that some of you will download and atleast give this a whirl. I'd love to hear feedback from Dwarf/Clan/Doviello/and Hippus players. I do not play these civilizations so I am sure that these will need more work than many of the others.

What I would like to know:
Game speed
World size/Number of Civilizations
Did the pace of tech acquisition seem too fast ( I think that it is, but this is mostly because playing through games just to test small changes gets a bit long if the tech speed is where I really think it should be.. but it shouldn't be so fast that playtesting becomes silly)
Did the units seem appropriately powerful for their placement relative to the other units and the units which you faced?
How did the AI play? In my experience, using this tree, the AI sometimes trounces me, and othertimes I get off to an early start and out research the AI by a lot.

Anyways, if anyone downloads and plays, I'd love to hear some feedback.

Remember to back up your XML folder.
 
My problem once again would be that the religions each "control" too many techs. This would cripple the Grigori for one thing.
 
Play it, then tell me that it cripples them.

I guess I should note: the Grigori are by far.. not even close.. the most powerful Civ. They do not need religion.
Branding FTW.
 
By the way - Five minutes after posting the previous post.. I loaded up the game, began a new game as the Grigori, and eliminated 2 civs before the second Religion was founded. Would have been 3, but couldn't find the last city for one of them. I was in a dominant position scorewise - and all of the cities which I captured I immediately gave away.. in such a way that good and evil civs were very intermixed -- Was sowing the seeds for lots of battles which wouldn't involve me. :) Anyways, I stopped that game shortly after that point, but as I said previously - the Grigori ARE the most powerful civ. Branding FTW.

But what I really came on here to do was to write myself a reminder to check out the coding for the Warscript to figure out what causes the civs to rush AV once they have Philosophy.

Also -- no one has really replied, probably no one wants to try it out. No biggie, I had hoped some would - but that wasn't the purpose of this project. Enjoy.
 
Spoiler :
Yoshi2942 said:
By the way - Five minutes after posting the previous post.. I loaded up the game, began a new game as the Grigori, and eliminated 2 civs before the second Religion was founded. Would have been 3, but couldn't find the last city for one of them. I was in a dominant position scorewise - and all of the cities which I captured I immediately gave away.. in such a way that good and evil civs were very intermixed -- Was sowing the seeds for lots of battles which wouldn't involve me. :) Anyways, I stopped that game shortly after that point, but as I said previously - the Grigori ARE the most powerful civ. Branding FTW.

But what I really came on here to do was to write myself a reminder to check out the coding for the Warscript to figure out what causes the civs to rush AV once they have Philosophy.

Also -- no one has really replied, probably no one wants to try it out. No biggie, I had hoped some would - but that wasn't the purpose of this project. Enjoy.
Click to expand...
are you sure you needed branding to beat the ai?
 
Hero with 50 exp before Orthus hits the table? Seems good to me. It isn't about needing Branding to beat the AI - it's about beating the AI before religions are founded, and therefore the need for the Grigori to have access to the Religions is non-existent.
 
He he, looks like you already have most of your fixes in from pre fire. Glad to see all the religions are getting their high priests. Glad to see Feudilism and Monarchy aren't religiously restricted anymore.

Same basic concerns from before, if you're going to increase the number of religious only techs, seems they should be balanced. I would stick music and maybe drama to be OO only and commune with nature maybe should come off leaves. Druids already are restricted to neutral civs so that already limits who can get them.

I'd run that but I am still playing around on Fire when not engrossed into NOTW right now. I'd like to have a firmer base to compare your changes with the original mod.
 
Are you serious? Only people who can research Arete get alchemy? Only people who can do either the order or the veil tech can do priesthood? I really don't think that'll work.
 
No it works, game didn't crash or anything Bringa. Yoshi is just trying something new, and I think we should commend experimentation. Some of the stuff he is doing might later on be used by devs to tweak the game, which is why this is a Beta.

Fire isn't perfect, there are still two more phases left and the techs and civics are designed with the whole picture in mind. Who knows, in Shadow or Ice we might see more religious only techs (probably not priesthood or alchemy)

Anyways not all subtractions are bad. Consider when they got rid of things like the golden woods and those other special religious buildings. Basically, if you have an opinion fine, but try something more constructive then "That'll never work".
 
Druids -- I had been meaning to mention them.

I agree completely that the new alignment requirement + my religeon requirement is too much. I personally preffer my religion requirement, but have not decided on exactly how to handle them yet. My preffered method would be to just remove the Neutral requirement -- but I am not positive how to do this yet, and I fear that the requirement may be inside of the DLL file, which I would rather not tamper with at this point because updates are coming quite frequently - and changes which I make to the DLL would be incompatible. Changes which I make to the XML files are more likely to continue to be compatible to updates (admittedly, a number of the "balance" updates don't get registered, because I make my own balance changes).

As this currently stands, it is very simple for people to test it. But no one is ready to, primarily because FfH is still in works and I make a lot of changes which are pretty drastic.

But as for the Druid issue.. I don't want to change the DLL, and yet I have no desire to change the tech layout to allow those from outside of the Way from accessing units which I feel are appropriate to be placed within the religion.
 
Bringa, why would anyone who isn't of the Order or Veil need priesthood, please tell. I'm anxious to hear this.
 
Of course the game doesn't crash. Why would it? I meant that from a gameplay point of view that just doesn't work.
 
You still didn't mention, why any civ would need Priesthood - Maybe there is a reason that I can't see.

Also, I wouldn't mind hearing from a SINGLE person who has played my XML files who says that it doesn't work. Lots of people (ok ok, a few) who say that it wouldn't work who haven't tried it - but no one who has actually played it who says that it doesn't work.
 
Yoshi2942 said:
Also, I wouldn't mind hearing from a SINGLE person who has played my XML files who says that it doesn't work. Lots of people (ok ok, a few) who say that it wouldn't work who haven't tried it - but no one who has actually played it who says that it doesn't work.
Click to expand...

Probably because you make a lot of base assumptions that people don't agree with. Like restricting Druids to FoL, or werewolves to FoL, or priests to only Order and AV, or anything else you'll defend vehemently because its your Vision when somebody else says that its not their Vision.
 
Sigh, people keep mentioning the Priesthoood thing without actually looking at the tech-tree.

The ONLY priests which are left in priesthood, are those for AV or ORDER. The others were moved to the respective religions.

If people disagree with me on Druids being only for FoL, that's fine.. People don't need to agree with me.
 
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