Just for reference what exactly is said in the video. (fluent in German)
"die Entwickler haben aber ein bisschen aufgeraeumt und ungefaehr die Haelfte der Technologien rausgeworfen die es in Civilization 5 gab, ich glaube da waren es ungefaehr 100 jetzt sind wir nur noch bei der Haelfte. Keine Sorge wir werden da auf andere Weise entschaedigt da koennen wir jetzt aber noch nicht gut drueber spekulieren. Also, um zu vermeiden dass solche Standardstrategien ausgefuehrt werden die man dann in jeder Civilization und in jedem Gelaende gleich durchfuehren kann, wird es jetzt Forschungsbooster geben, also Verstaerker, die richten sich jeweils danach was fuer Aktivitaeten man als Civilization durchfuehrt."
English:
"the developers have cleaned up and have removed roughly half of the technologies that were present in Civ5, I think there were around 100- now we have half of that. Don't worry, we will be compensated through other means but we can't speculate too much on that right now. So, to prevent that there is a standard strategy that everyone plays with every civilization on every map regardless of its terrain, there will be technology "boosters" that will depend on what you actually do as a civilization." -> then goes on to explain that for example a civ that's building around the water and is ocean-centric, will get technology boosts so that, for example, researching maritime technologies will cost less (i.e. something like 80% of the normal tech).
I tried to translate it by keeping the colloquial language so that it becomes clear that the guy speaking in the video does not have all the information on how the technology system will work out.
@EaglePursuit Right, Civ expansions rarely shake up the tech tree in a major way. Sometimes a tech or two are added, sometimes a tech is removed and buildings/features/moved around but the tech tree remains the same.
If Civ6 is as feature rich out of the box as they promise, there could be a lot of room to move in new directions in expansions.
I don't mean that they will increase the number of techs back up to Civ V through expansions. Rather that cutting down the number gives them freedom to add a few back here and there as they need to.
I don't mean that they will increase the number of techs back up to Civ V through expansions. Rather that cutting down the number gives them freedom to add a few back here and there as they need to.
I know what you mean. They could add 10 techs per expansion (random number I pulled out of my head) and assuming 2 expansions we won't get near Civ5 level at the end of those 2 expansions.
That said, even 10 techs per expansion, it would would be a huge change
Chopping half the techs sounds really radical. My initial reaction is that I don't like it but I'll adopt a wait and see attitude. Perhaps the compensation they speak of will be brilliant.
Just for reference what exactly is said in the video. (fluent in German)
"die Entwickler haben aber ein bisschen aufgeraeumt und ungefaehr die Haelfte der Technologien rausgeworfen die es in Civilization 5 gab, ich glaube da waren es ungefaehr 100 jetzt sind wir nur noch bei der Haelfte. Keine Sorge wir werden da auf andere Weise entschaedigt da koennen wir jetzt aber noch nicht gut drueber spekulieren. Also, um zu vermeiden dass solche Standardstrategien ausgefuehrt werden die man dann in jeder Civilization und in jedem Gelaende gleich durchfuehren kann, wird es jetzt Forschungsbooster geben, also Verstaerker, die richten sich jeweils danach was fuer Aktivitaeten man als Civilization durchfuehrt."
English:
"the developers have cleaned up and have removed roughly half of the technologies that were present in Civ5, I think there were around 100- now we have half of that. Don't worry, we will be compensated through other means but we can't speculate too much on that right now. So, to prevent that there is a standard strategy that everyone plays with every civilization on every map regardless of its terrain, there will be technology "boosters" that will depend on what you actually do as a civilization." -> then goes on to explain that for example a civ that's building around the water and is ocean-centric, will get technology boosts so that, for example, researching maritime technologies will cost less (i.e. something like 80% of the normal tech).
I tried to translate it by keeping the colloquial language so that it becomes clear that the guy speaking in the video does not have all the information on how the technology system will work out.
I don't mind the number of techs - the issue I had in Civ 5 was the the game always moves too fast too really get immersed in an era.
Civilization runs along a simulated technology tree where everything accumulates. It doesn't factor in the loss of knowledge from the collapse of large empires etc...
Personally I'd favor faster expansion in the first 50 turns. The ancient era in Civ 5 is basically trying to get some cities down and unlock all the land for improvement.
Its very hard to be able to have a large classical era civ and be able to expand militarily and get some wonders down - you can only ever really do just one of those things.
Thus its mostly impossible to actually achieve a civilization like ancient Rome or China in the space of 100 turns... Considering it can take nearly 10 turns just to build a settler and nearly the same amount to build your first monument.
Not sure how the tech tree could solve this though. Maybe earlier techs and expansion is cheaper but it gets much harder to keep expanding later on. So early rewards and later punishment?
What if less techs means longer research times but the trade off is as you research a tech you unlock things at certain thresholds...so to use Civ V as example, 25% of iron working researched reveals iron, 50% let's you build swordsmen and 100% let's you build the Colossus.
Just for reference what exactly is said in the video. (fluent in German)
"die Entwickler haben aber ein bisschen aufgeraeumt und ungefaehr die Haelfte der Technologien rausgeworfen die es in Civilization 5 gab, ich glaube da waren es ungefaehr 100 jetzt sind wir nur noch bei der Haelfte. Keine Sorge wir werden da auf andere Weise entschaedigt da koennen wir jetzt aber noch nicht gut drueber spekulieren. Also, um zu vermeiden dass solche Standardstrategien ausgefuehrt werden die man dann in jeder Civilization und in jedem Gelaende gleich durchfuehren kann, wird es jetzt Forschungsbooster geben, also Verstaerker, die richten sich jeweils danach was fuer Aktivitaeten man als Civilization durchfuehrt."
English:
"the developers have cleaned up and have removed roughly half of the technologies that were present in Civ5, I think there were around 100- now we have half of that. Don't worry, we will be compensated through other means but we can't speculate too much on that right now. So, to prevent that there is a standard strategy that everyone plays with every civilization on every map regardless of its terrain, there will be technology "boosters" that will depend on what you actually do as a civilization." -> then goes on to explain that for example a civ that's building around the water and is ocean-centric, will get technology boosts so that, for example, researching maritime technologies will cost less (i.e. something like 80% of the normal tech).
I tried to translate it by keeping the colloquial language so that it becomes clear that the guy speaking in the video does not have all the information on how the technology system will work out.
That's kinda big. If it takes 3 techs to get to a "major" combat unit or major building, you'll reach it several turns before other techs.
If you can spend gold to upgrade, Shaka could have fully levelled Impi when everyone is stuck with ancient spearman just by slaughtering barbarians. Who needs libraries, man.
That would be a good solution. I worry about a pruned tech tree because it could result in bizarre situations, like in CivRev when I had stealth bombers and no pottery.
I keep coming to this idea too. It need't be deep , maybe only 1 or 2 extra tiers. This would give those Civs who start near water for example an advantage over those who did not long into the game.
If it's just a handful of techs tied to seafaring, especially in the early game, nothing is going to stop a Civ to found/take a city on a coast, go back to the seafaring tree and crunch through the 1 or 2 techs they couldn't get earlier.
There is something to the mechanic we're not quite getting. It's quite possible there are techs that are simply not available if certain starting conditions are not met, or tech prices inflate upwards regardless if they were early seafaring techs or not. So a later Civ going back to the seafaring tree (using that example again) would face time inflated costs to search those techs.
Or it could be a combination of these elements plus some others.
the developers have cleaned up and have removed roughly half of the technologies that were present in Civ5, I think there were around 100- now we have half of that. Don't worry, we will be compensated through other means but we can't speculate too much on that right now. So, to prevent that there is a standard strategy that everyone plays with every civilization on every map regardless of its terrain, there will be technology "boosters" that will depend on what you actually do as a civilization." -> then goes on to explain that for example a civ that's building around the water and is ocean-centric, will get technology boosts so that, for example, researching maritime technologies will cost less (i.e. something like 80% of the normal tech).
1. If I'm not mistaken, Civ5 even with BNW has only 80 techs. So, if developers told reviewer they cut techs by half, we have about 40 techs. If the reviewers counted themselves (and thought Civ5 had 100 techs), that's 50 or could be even more.
2. They've mentioned some compensation they don't want to speak about and that's not active research system, as they talk about it. Whenever it is, let's hope it will really compensate shorter tech tree.
I am interested to see where they go with this. Tech reduction isn't necessarily a bad thing, as most of the techs in CiV were merely stepping stones to important techs (i.e. the tech rush to university, printing press, architecture without actually caring about the techs for the most part as long as you got to the 'useful' techs).
I think that they will might be opting for an hybrid system of technologies:
Civilization linear tech tree
+
Beyond Earth's "leaf" techs (hence less "main" techs)
+
Master of Orion "pick one tech discard the rest" (hence "no two games are the same)
I think that it might work like this :
First, you research a "major" tech. For example, "Radio".
Major techs such as "radio" would most likely unlock world wonders, improvements and "must have" effects, and they will be the ones to be more affected by conditional research effects. For example, rearching the "radio" tech might unlock the "Eiffel tower" wonder, and you will be able to research it 50% faster if you have 15 or more naval units.
Then, several "applications" of this technology might be up for research after you have unlocked the secrets of the radio. For example:
Main tech: Radio tech
Possible applications: Radio station (building), Sonar (submarine promotion)
The catch would be: You can only research one Radio application. If you pick radio stations, you might not have sonars for your submarines.
This 2-tiered system would present many advantages:
- Huge replayability, since while 2 civs might have the same main techs, but they will hardly have the same tech applications
- Great decisions to be made, since you might "loose" some technologies in your decision making process
- Lots of strategic options with lesser tendency for "default tech routes" to appear
@Ikael: why do you think they will go for the "pick one" approach? It doesn't seem to fit very well with the game's theme, so I don't see it being implemented this way. Even your example shows the problems with this - there's no reason for a civilization to have radio stations but not sonars.
Optional techs (even if we consider them possible for a historical game) would require expanding the tech tree, not shrinking it.
Most likely we'll have some additional bonuses from techs depending on other systems, i.e. social/culture. Since that's nothing like we've seen in previous games, I don't think guesswork could bring us anything.
I suspect that there will be some kind of "optative techs" in place since the developers have stated that they are aiming to "avoid making two games the same". But Stealth-nsk suggestion about specific bonuses could also archieve that result as well! It would be intriging, to say the least
As for tech applications that never appears, that would be wholly realistic. Several advanced civilization knew about common techs yet they didn't knew how to apply it (the Aztecs knew about the wheel, but they never developed carriages since they didn't had horses, for example).
Most likely we'll have some additional bonuses from techs depending on other systems, i.e. social/culture. Since that's nothing like we've seen in previous games, I don't think guesswork could bring us anything.
Or the techs will all be researchable but some of the bonuses from techs will only be available if you research it earlier. ie: before Turn X you get X bonus/unit/improvement. Or only X starts get X bonus. Later Civs who power through the tech won't get that bonus or unit, or improvement.
Otherwise, I'm having a hard time seeing the advantage of these varied starts with the known historical civ mechanics (fixed tech prices) which means an empire later on can power through these techs. Or an Empire can grow large enough to gain access to said tiles and get all the same benefits as a Civ starting near those tiles. So it seems to allow those early benefits to be washed out fairly easily, or at least severely diluted.
In situations like that, we go back to games where everyone is near parity expect for 1 or 2 loser AI civs who didn't expand quick enough.
I don't mind there being fewer tech each one takes longer and unlocks more than in CiV. I never liked one-trick techs that only give you a single new unit. The "compensation" they mention might be a way to modif techs that you have already researched, like a merging of the policy system. After researching Writing you could spend culture to get an alphabet or something like Chinese characters, and you'd get different bonuses for that.
That would be a good way to add more variety even if you follow the same tech path.
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