Lots and lots of discussion here, as there usually is with this topic!
I was trying to be conservative with adding techs. Believe me, there are a lot of techs across the board I would like to add if you guys want me to propose them. i was not sure if you guys thought there were too many already.
Mostly we're just saying between late classical and early rennaissance. I wouldn't mind some stretching out in the earliest phases of the prehistoric so that we stretch out the space between first and second generation units. That's a bit of a tough spot at the moment.
My fear is that adding this structure to the tree is yet another way that we lock in the present era structure.
We do need to lock in the era structure at some point though because a lot of things do rely on era shifts and era counts. Merges and splits are currently limited by how many eras you've unlocked. Education demands go up by one per population per era and the maximum benefits/penalties for education increase per era. Era is a neat way of totalling a general sense of development and overall civilization knowledge. There is generally a goal of one upgrade per unit upgrade path per era (with the exception of the first and second generation unit upgrades in the first portion of the game and some other individual exceptions all over the place.) If we add too many eras, or have them be too imbalanced in tech counts, we start to suffer from rate of improvement and growth of challenges staging imbalances. Yes, the transhuman is too long and it's probably necessary to stretch the prehistoric further into two distinct ages at some point (along with an adjustment to the starting date to 200k BC), and the medieval is too short. Many of the other ideas being thrown around about restructuring the eras are things I'm dubious about.
1) I agree that we need to solve this beeline issue. Can we do it without creating these start-of-era bottleneck techs? The Transhuman Era, although very long, is well-structured in that it prevents the player from running too far ahead on one line of techs without developing the others.
This helps but it's not always appropriate to demand one tech require another when there is no real cause for it rationally. Transhuman does naturally rationally demand one tech build on another due to the nature of high-technological progress. At lower ends, a greater 'imbalance' can naturally take place. The Native American Plains Indians, for example, did quite well for never developing Mining.
2) What content will go with these new techs? For instance, are there any units or buildings that naturally should have Medieval Lifestyle as a prereq?
Immediately, the most obvious to me is to set education demands higher and the higher potential education levels opening up here. Anything else is just a matter of other generic 'by era' adjustments. One unstated benefit would obviously be the ability to merge and split another level if you're on Size Matters. A free tech for first to achieve is a good standard, as is some strong obsoletions of powerful but short term wonder benefits graspable throughout the era preceding it. Sedentary Lifestyle establishes a lot of neat strategic reasons to go for and to NOT go for it quickly.
3) If we do go with this system, let's be more creative with the tech names. The Ancient Era starts with Sedentary Lifestyle, which is much more descriptive and meaningful than "Ancient Lifestyle" would be.
I can agree with this. Something that captures the ultimate mindset and essence of the era being entered in a generic sense.
However, I do think it should be the only tech on its x-grid layer.
4) Maybe existing techs could be employed for this purpose. We're not far from having Steam Engine be the only entry-level Industrial tech, for instance.
The problem with this is how it overlaps too much with the 'generic representation of entering this era' aspect of the tech. An invention shouldn't define the era... the social mindset should.
Except that there are techs in the wrong eras, that I agree with.
We really should both take a moment soon to identify those we feel are out of place and why if we're going to be doing some restructuring here.
I am not even convinced that being able to get to the Medieval Era without studying 60% of the Classical Era tech is a problem at all.
Maybe not but I feel that entering the Medieval Era should have its own singularly defined 'gateway' tech to enter it. There are a number of times I've found it very frustrating that there isn't such a clear boundary tech to place certain things as mentioned above.
I am all for dead end techs and dead end branches full of techs.
I can get behind that. I like this thinking too. I don't think the intent of a gateway tech for entering an era should at all be about eliminating this element of tech progression.
I am against techs that make no sense to you nation being mandatory eg Camel Domestication when you don't know what a camel or llama is.
I completely agree with this too. Techs based on specific resource access should very much be something you can work around entirely if you need to or if you choose to so as to give yourself a faster route forward.
I thought once you reached an new era the cost of techs only went up for you only. This means that if you get to Medieval all those Classic era techs you missed would now cost you more to learn that the AI which hadn't reached Medieval. Which would mean they would catch up better.
Yes and no. The current tech cost chart adds a flat increase as well as the incremental increase per x scale for each time you cross into a new era, yes. But the era modifier is there to help craft the progression through the era to be a better match to the dating and to the amount of time we hope players to spend in the era. It helps to adjust to the less controlled variable amount of research increases and losses from obsoletions. So sometimes the % increases, and sometimes it might decrease.