They already do this. Why try to re-invent a new system when a relatively new one is already in place? There is no need for this proposal.
I don't think you're understanding his proposal. He's saying:
Let's say you skipped some techs, like Poultry Domestication, in the Prehistoric before taking Sedentary Lifestyle.
Currently, there may be a step up in all tech costs once you enter the Ancient, but it applies to ALL techs, not just those in Prehistoric.
What he's suggesting is that by taking Sedentary Lifestyle, perhaps at that point all prehistoric techs should immediately increase in cost for you because you skipped them and went to the next era. Thus once you've gotten in and raided the next era for a lot of the research bonuses that are opened up in techs there, then you turn around and research those older techs you left behind, the amount you spend in research overall on those techs you skipped costs more so as to make them cost something more similar to any other tech you could research at the cutting x-grid edge you're at.
This could help to enforce that the rounds you skipped by not researching Poultry Domestication aren't sped through later because you raced forward to grab more research bonuses from the next era, which would HELP you in your efforts to guage the expected turn length of a given era so the game dating adheres a bit more to expectations.
It would also make the choice to move forward into the next era one you may want to be a bit more reluctant to do right away because the techs in your current era stay much cheaper in research costs if you take them before you breach into the next era.
Each tech is assigned a "research" cost per era (already in game).
It's not per era. The base research cost is currently assigned by the x-grid. According to this chart:
Modder's Documentation
If you notice on that chart there is a flat increase that props up the base cost with each new era but each grid is exponentially growing as well. I can show you a better breakdown of how these costs were assigned. It's a mathematically derived process and not arbitrary.
@Hydro: Please note that changing the x-grid location of a tech should immediately change the base cost of the tech as well according to that linked chart! Your last grid changes did not adjust the costs of the techs or the buildings or units those techs unlock, as they should. This is not an automatic process in the code (though I should strongly consider making it one, lol)
Each Era adjusts the research rate.
As for an overall Era adjustment, apparently there are 2. One I knew about and one I did not...
I agree, therefore I would suggest removing one or both of these two tags from the erainfo xml.
<iResearchPercent>100</iResearchPercent> (value of 100 means no change to tech cost)
<!-- Do Not Use/Change! BBAI start: effectively modify cost for all techs from this era. Default: 18 -->
<iTechCostModifier>65</iTechCostModifier> (Value of 0 means no change to tech cost)
The latter one doesn't affect techs from earlier eras, and I think it stacks with the same modifier for the later eras.
Its function is more or less the complete opposite to what I'm proposing.
It can be good for making a wholesale change to all techs within an era without having to change them all individually, this is something we have done heavily with this tag in C2C, so removing the tag would be an headache as all techs would have to have their cost changed individually.
It modifies the cost of techs within its era when you start the game so this modifier won't make any changes to any tech costs mid-game at an era transition, the calculation was made for all techs the moment you started the game.
The former is the one that makes, imo, the least sense to keep as we have it at 100% for all eras except for the transhuman era when all techs suddenly only cost 80% of their usual value. I don't really see the logic in changing the cost of all techs based on eras.
This one (iResearchPercent) change the beaker cost of all techs mid-game when you reach an era transition.
The first is in place to ensure that if our base charted value assignments are increasing at a rate too fast or too slow for the amount of research bonuses that are being accessed in the game that we can start to adjust the costs of techs across the eras to balance out against that research income development. I'm finding in the US MP game, for example, that the late classical/medieval era techs are being torn through far too fast because the amassing of missionary and other religious sources of research gets massive pretty quickly at this point. Thus, if I were to, in playtesting on current assets, find the same thing still applies, I might increase the Medieval era tech costs because I find there's an unusual amount of unexpected research income increase leading up to and into and through that era... and maybe beyond as well so perhaps even Rennaissance would need a bit of an increase.
I did not realize we weren't currently zeroed out on that variable but that's fine. Are they all currently the same though throughout the eras? That I'm curious about. The amount of necessary variation is the measure of how well the incremental increases in the base chart are appropriate.
The second one... I can see why you'd think to remove that one. Easier to just leave them all at 100%. There may be a discovered purpose for it later. Somebody put it in place for some reason. Maybe the 80% when reaching transhuman is to reflect that all techs get easier to research some because of the better data processing during that era or something.
In eras where such techs would be world wide knowledge.
In a world without lead anywhere, how would lead working ever become world-wide knowledge? Just an example. What happens in that world? Does it end up being limited never progressing past a point in the tech tree? How necessary IS lead, really? A well thought out tech tree allows this to be reflected imo. And that's for most all resource reliant techs. The tech should have the resource as a prerequisite (and I can build that out specifically if it would make things easier to consider, though the proxy building prereq someone else mentioned is already possible.)
I can work on making earlier specific resource techs less needed, but I want to make sure other techs are not getting broken because of it. Likewise I want to make sure alternative solutions to techs are presented early on. For example Requiring Oil Lamps OR Candle Making.
I agree completely that if a tech shouldn't ABSOLUTELY require one potential solution to get to that tech, that should be considered. For example: How many other ways can we conceive of a tech being reached if, say, there are no oceans or seas to justify taking large ship naval techs? Would that really hold us up from later game technologies? Probably not so what is the alternative tech prerequisites?
OR is a big thing to consider in this.
For example knowing Mountaineering can help for later techs like Volcanology, Modern Seismology, Climate Models, etc.so you might not have mountains in your empire but the earthquakes or climate systems of your neighbors may influence you. Look even within C2C itself and pollution where mountains naturally block pollution.Imagine if there was a mountain outside your borders which was blocking the spread of pollution. Knowing more about mountains would greatly help here.
What if your civilization was developing on a planet with no mountains? At all? I could see how Mountaineering would never be a tech until maybe they get off world and encounter mountainous terrains, but would it really stop scientists from figuring out how climate systems and weather patterns work just because we never figure out how to traverse mountainous terrains?
If you want to trade for camels from your neighbor, then you have a very good reason to invent the camel domestication tech, it is even possible to have the tech require a building that is given for free if you have access to the camel bonus.
To me it is fine to have camel domestication be a dead end tech (nothing else require it) without a building requirement.
Exactly. Even better if we can require that you have access to camel resources before you can research the finer points of camel domestication imo. I'd quite like to create such a resource prereq tag.
The current system does not do this. Perhaps if you actually played a game or 2 on even Normal GS you would have a better idea of how it works now.
No, it doesn't. That's why he's proposing it. Which would make certain balancing factors easier to guage, as discussed above.
What does this operator mean in your expression?
Instead, you should look at the "width" of an era and scale the Tech Era Factor with that width, so you could get (roughly - the change is only applied per era after all) the same change to the old techs you get for the respective current techs.
I get your point but if we are adjusting the previous eras by a unique percentage for that era, the human brain calculator can be used to establish that variable rather than trying to build it into the code inherrently.
fool's rant over a wrong modifier usage.
