Design: Technologies

[Lunargent]

What if you started with the one for your civ's alignment. Then research would go to the other ones if a variety of ways:
a) if you were worshipping a religion you could research the tech for its alignment.
b) getting a holy city for a religion gives you that religion's alignment's tech.
c) once you had researched all 5 of the religion founding techs you could research any of the alignment node techs.

The way I'll probably implement this is to make a new branch about where philosophy is now (it and it's free tech come FAR too early to be balanced, and I have plans to move to a late spot), and make each of the techs lead to a different religion. Depending upon how far Kael wants to go with it, I could have further techs leading off of those developing the lines further.

The way it is now, each of the religions requires one mystical branch tech and one other tech. This would expand the mystical branch nicely, I think, which is a bit narrow at the bottom for my liking.

 

[loki1232]

All of those are pretty rare, they certainly won't rack up the kind of counts that the others would get, and they also have the dis-advantage of being entirely out of your control.

Maybe....some combination of number of times that you build a golem plus number of mines that you dig with your dwarves? The mines wouldn't hve to neccesarily find anything (which is out of your control, and rare to boot), but you can cover every hill inside your borders that you want with a mine- it doesn't even have to be within any city's fat cross.

I like that dwarven digging idea very much. Now that i think about it, mines dug by dwarves should have a very high chance of finding a resource.

 

[Kael]

Added a tech spreadsheet to the first post. To use it you have to have macros enabled. If they are make whatever changes you want to the spreadsheet and then run the macro and it will write out a CIV4TechInfos.xml file for you with all the spreadhseet.

Im trying to make some spreadsheets that allow you to do all the XML stuff because:

1. Its easier to manage everything.
2. I want to release the spreadsheets with the mod to make it easier for scenerio makers and such to mod our mod (if that makes sense )

 

[Lunargent]

Ok. I'm re-installing Office so I can look at it. My CD drive is on its last legs, so it's taking alot longer than I thought it would ( i.e I thought I'd be long done by now). I have it on the other computer already, but I don't always have access to that.

 

[Lunargent]

Nice, am I correct that they need to be in a certain order for the tech tree to be drawn correctly in game?

Also, any idea on what new religions, if any, you plan on adding. One new good and one new evil would be nice, but i have the mystical side of the techs for them penned in.

Tenative re-do of the area where philosphy was. (I'm moving up the tree to keep the free tech from being early cheese, which I admit to taking advantage of every chance I get )

                                  Dark Whispers 
                 (Leads to CoS and any other evil religious techs)
                                           |
                                  Songs from the Ether           Commands from above
                                  (Leads to OO and FL)           (Order and good)
                                           |                        /
                                           |                       /
                                           |                      /
      Simple Runes, etc             Ancient Chants------------
                 \                          |
                  ---------------    |
                                         \ |
                                       Mysticism

These would probably go away as pointless if we don't add any new religions though, unless we enough new stuff to justify them.

Anyways, the effect of this is to move the Order up to teir 8, and the Veil up to Teir 7 as per Loki's earlier suggestions. Leaves, Runes, and OO remain at 6. Also, you it makes you go for either a good, neutral, or evil religion as part of your tech strategy. I there a way to weight the different techs differently depending upon AI alignment? So that a good civ is more likely to go the good route than the evil one? Maybe add a "flavor- good", "flavor-evil", "flavor-neutral"

 

[Kael]

Nice, am I correct that they need to be in a certain order for the tech tree to be drawn correctly in game?

Also, any idea on what new religions, if any, you plan on adding. One new good and one new evil would be nice, but i have the mystical side of the techs for them penned in.

Tenative re-do of the area where philosphy was. (I'm moving up the tree to keep the free tech from being early cheese, which I admit to taking advantage of every chance I get )

                                  Dark Whispers 
                 (Leads to CoS and any other evil religious techs)
                                           |
                                  Songs from the Ether           Commands from above
                                  (Leads to OO and FL)           (Order and good)
                                           |                        /
                                           |                       /
                                           |                      /
      Simple Runes, etc             Ancient Chants------------
                 \                          |
                  ---------------    |
                                         \ |
                                       Mysticism

These would probably go away as pointless if we don't add any new religions though, unless we enough new stuff to justify them.

If im understanding your question correctly no, the order of the techs in the xml file don't matter (they were stuffed in as I made them).

I have no idea on the religions. I would make the best tech tree possible with what we have, we will modify as need be. I would hate to modify the design to incorporate something that is so far off.

By the way Im adding a request for repeatable techs based (or loosely based) on the spell spheres. Spirit should give +1 happiness each time it is researched, Life should give +1 health, Water should give +1 Domain_sea move.

 

[Lunargent]

Hmm..so 15 new (well not really, I can stick them in anywhere that makes sense, but odds are that I'll need at least a few) repeatable techs ( and the five that would give access now also being repeatable)

How would you do that? Give it an ORprerequisite of itself?

 

[Kael]

Hmm..so 15 new (well not really, I can stick them in anywhere that makes sense, but odds are that I'll need at least a few) repeatable techs ( and the five that would give access now also being repeatable)

How would you do that? Give it an ORprerequisite of itself?

There is a bRepeat flag on techs, if it is set then after you research it it is marked as unresearched (so don't put anything behind it )

 

[loki1232]

I hope you are planning on having a repeatable end game tech for each sphere.

ie: earth could give one free metal discovered, death ressurects a unit of yours, nature plants a new forest, etc

 

[Lunargent]

Ahh, ok, so in most cases, it will have to be a new tech, to keep that line of the tree from dying off. Also, it will have to be given a low AI weight to keep the AI from researching it over and over and over.

In the Song of the Moon mod, there are two buildings that you can build to change the aspect of a city, biodomes and military worlshop or something similar. Building one destroys the other ( you have to specialize your cities) and makes the other your top recommended building to make. Looking around, after a while when I had 6 cities, most of the AI only had one, 2 had managed to squeeze out a second city. I'm not THAT good. It seems that the AIs were building biodomes (which give +health and growth), then switching to the military production center. But now the Biodomes are recommended, so i bet they were building that in a never ending loop. I even got caught in it a few times in my cities before I figured it out. ( I have a no-text anywhere bug with that mod and 1.57, so it took me a bit)

The moral is that never ending loops can kill the AIs, so we'll have to be carefull. Even stuff with really low weights gets recommended when you've researched beyond it, so these techs will all have to be late game. (though it would be funny to see an AI that had researched +1 sea navigation 100 times)

 

[Lunargent]

I hope you are planning on having a repeatable end game tech for each sphere.

ie: earth could give one free metal discovered, death ressurects a unit of yours, nature plants a new forest, etc

Yeah, by my above post, you can see that they will have to be late or end game or the AI could bog down on them. They're all gonna go up in the "too high up there for me to bother counting up the exact teir and extenting the document size anymore" level over 15.

Basically, they'll replace future tech. But will have mana and tech prerequisites. Probably sit in the same spot in the tech tree unless something should obviously go elsewhere, and also require a certain number of nodes of the correct type.

 

[loki1232]

Yeah, we'd have to watch out for loops. IMO none of these future techs should be researchable until the rest of the tech tree is done.

 

[Lunargent]

I wouldn't go that far. Future tech loops, and is researchable before the tree is done, but it is far enough up there that even if the computer does somehow get into a loop, it has researched enough of the tree not to cripple itself. Also, it has a low flavor weight and high cost . As for the cost itself, the repeatable spell tech will be less than future tech, because the effects will be more specialized, but still not cheap.

 

[Kael]

I wouldn't go that far. Future tech loops, and is researchable before the tree is done, but it is far enough up there that even if the computer does somehow get into a loop, it has researched enough of the tree not to cripple itself. Also, it has a low flavor weight and high cost . As for the cost itself, the repeatable spell tech will be less than future tech, because the effects will be more specialized, but still not cheap.

I think we are far enough in to start playing with the techs Lunargent. Take a look at the editor in the version i release tonight, or if you dont want to use the editor just let me know what your thinking in whatever method is easiest for you.

 

[Lunargent]

Ok. I think first thing is for me to go through all the changes that have been made since I last looked at it, and update my visual chart first. I'll post the updated version here, and let you glance at it and make any suggestions. Then I'll work on changing it in the editor. I'm a visually oriented person, plus, it's easier to see if anything is screwy if it's laid out in chart form. It's too easy to have redundant requirements and techs that take far longer to get to than you intend if its only in a mostly text file.

 

[Chalid]

For the release please check which ERA "Golem Mastery" belongs to. (Im not at home atm) It should be last era but i think its second era and that is the reason those copper golems come and burn your cities if you start in the second era....

 

[Lunargent]

I'm falling way behind on this. I've been so busy with work that I've not had time to even play any games in weeks. I think it would be best if someone else coded the chart, otherwise it won't get done. The version that's up now is old, but it's not too far off from what I want the final to be.

The only thing that I think needs changing is the level of the various religions. After thinking about it for a while, I think that having some religions start way before other religions in a religion dominated mod is extremly unbalancing. What almost always ends up happening is that the first one or two religions to be founded end up dominating, and that's that. Changing them all to be the same teir (and then same speed) would make games with many more different religions interacting even more likely. They can be changed to be even pretty easily, ( I had to fudge some things to get the Order up to teir 8 )I'll try to work on an update tomorrow if I get time.

 

[Chalid]

Just a my thoughts abaout this. (I have your ne tech tree not in mind)

It seems not be to unbalanicg as it was in FfH I. I had severaltimes that the Veil has been founded before any of the other religions (and not by me but by the AI) so a small difference seems to be good. As the religions in 1 were near similar techs it helped to differentiate the Religion.

 

[Kael]

Just a my thoughts abaout this. (I have your ne tech tree not in mind)

It seems not be to unbalanicg as it was in FfH I. I had severaltimes that the Veil has been founded before any of the other religions (and not by me but by the AI) so a small difference seems to be good. As the religions in 1 were near similar techs it helped to differentiate the Religion.

Ive also added an AI block in the latest version so that ai's wont discover techs that would change their alignment. So if they are good they wont discover message from the deep or corruption of spriit, etc etc.

Along with your change to the convert chance it should help keep religions from fanning out as quickly. Or at least of being adopted as state religions as quickly.

 

[Chalid]

Along with your change to the convert chance it should help keep religions from fanning out as quickly. Or at least of being adopted as state religions as quickly.

Speaking of this i will submit my code as soon as the Version for the crowds is out. Have you read the comment of Lunargent above mine? I just replied to his one so i do not want it to be overread.