Anyways, sorry for rambling so much -- as you can probably guess, this isn't the most organized mod, although I do have pages upon pages of notes I've been making to try and plan tech trees and such. I suppose it's just a product of my somewhat organic planning process.
:O
Not at all. Organic planning sounds fascinating. I don't have a word for my planning process, but the people who know me best would describe me as anything other than organic.
It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to rearrange those techs, but I'm fairly happy with how it worked out. It did cause an issue where I could get Modern Armor before Tanks. I believe I updated Modern Armor to shift it to Rocketry, but now that I think about it I'm not sure if that ended up in the version I posted? Hrm.
I'm intrigued you would mention that. The changes you introduced seem to beckon a backpropagating correction just as far as Railroad: To make Combined Arms not required in there for Rocketry at all, indeed to find someplace better for Combined Arms and Mobile Tactics, which are as much social innovations as technical ones (which, I could say, makes them more like the earliest era techs). Or to rename them (and then reslot them) when concepted as simply the development of the hardware and engineering to produce Modern Armor, APCs, and Anti-Tank guns.
"Combined Arms" is mysterious in that era and is a notion begun with Military Science. It only appears to represent the heavy inquiry into armoured warfare and mobile warfare that came about because of the contingent thing called the Great Wars.
Replaceable Parts especially is a socioeconomic revolution, but that's a larger scale mod.
A review of techs in modern era would reveal that some technologies are a stand-in for working at a refinement of an earlier tech, but the intervening 'breakthrough' isn't conceptually necessary in Civ IV's terms; it's just we need something to eat up some beakers. That's all well and good, but the problem is magnified for certain techs, like just mentioned, where now the line between actual research and mere "infrastructural investment" is blurred. This is Civ V, research isn't on a slider anymore (a mistake, but still, it has consequences). What Civ V can do is separate military R&D from public research, pulling you away from the other .... but this still fails to develop in the appropriate pacing with the engineering side of research.
Fixes that I like involve wholly new design technology, something I've refined from Civ:BE, CIV, CiV, and C-Evo.
A quick fix, actually, would be to make late era units depend on certain buildings. The Archaeologist does it. And those buildings have prohibitive maintenance costs.
All this just to get Mobile Tactics off the tech tree. Oh, and maybe Pentagon can creep backwards one era and actually get built before every unit you own is final tier. <.<
Still, I think I may modify it to be Molecular Genetics, reflecting the discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950s, through to the development of DNA sequencing and the polymerase chain reaction in the 1970s and 1980s. Cloning can then get moved a column over and reflect the cloning of animals, but not humans -- human genetic engineering will appear more in later techs, as I'm expanding the biotech tree along the top.
But you'll be nerfing your biotech tree. Another tech is another 8 turns research to move through it. You really want a reference to Cloning, I can see that. This may be tough.
[...]
On the other hand, I imagine this makes it difficult to give feedback, but if you've got ideas you'd like to share I'm certainly interested in hearing them.
Oh I do. I also have a habit of overwhelming the dialogue for things I'm really interested in. Between the two of us, I'm the one who needs to listen twice, speak once.
Here's something I've done for game design: Model the world one level below the one you'll actually present. I figure this makes design validity like measurement precision: the "significant digits" in your game will have
a valid measurement proofing them.
When people are playing games in ARPG, RTS, or 4X genres, there's a trope of response which is "The system is being stupid and I can't stop it." You are unable to execute a strategy which you know is relevant to the world presented, but the game does not present an interface of that kind - or just straight up automates something stupid. Avoid this! Think out the interactions and then abstract, but
only in holistic pieces that change the playing field equally. Thinking with abstractions in the first place, I think, is only liable to mess things up, and clearly for good reason - it's laziness!
So, about names:
Cybernetics is not the right name for Cybernetics. And conceptually, Nanotechnology requires the exploitation of nanomanufacture and Computer Networks, so here's an idea for you:
Memetics is quite bold in its current position. Every tech represents the mastery of its field - mastery of the principles - but memetics is just a phenomenon we've become
aware of. Assuming you did have a Memetics mastery technology, indeed it should be necessary for Arcologies, but you can stretch your bioline in there.
Your technology of Cybernetics seems to correspond to drone warfare. "Autonomous Systems"? A researcher Vijay Kumar pioneered methodologies in quadrotor technology that validates your linkage with nanomaterials to this advance.
So Globalization+Internet -> (some military technology for deep net surveillance) -> true Memetics .
Nanomaterials leads to two independent techs, your current Nanotechnology which I don't know why it's named that, and "Autonomous Systems", which inherits the contents of your Cybernetics tech.
The concept of Nanocomputing, Nanorobots, or Nanites, lies at the apex of Computer Networks and Nanomaterials, of course. The really named Cybernetics is a new tech which has prerequisites
Memetics and Computer Networks. For gameplay and simulationist reasons, I would then recommend sharing the goods of Computer Networks and Cybernetics, since nothing before Networks represents serious study of systems themselves.
The posterior techs get Arcologies from Genetic Engineering and Memetics as before. Artificial Intelligence arises from "Cybernetics" and "Nanocomputing", and I'd still like for "Real A.I." to get in there on a different branch, the question is naming it. 'Secrets of the Human Brain' too long. You know Anthropology isn't even on the tree, I guess the discipline starts around Archaeology-Ecology but oh hey, you could put it as after Globalization and make it "Memetics-lite" .
Hyperstructures I don't know; Mecha are now Autonomous Systems + Fusion. Autonomous Systems can explode into your industrial exploitation branch, Memetics and A.I. can bifurcate into hard computing and hardening the soft sciences.
If you are really hobbled by the diagrammatic restrictions of the tree, notice that a resource requirement can impose an effective prerequisite. Atomic Theory, though possible without Chemistry, can't employ Uranium until Chemistry, Dynamite, Ballistics, and Radar and Fission are researched. Your Nanomaterials can become a requisite for any tech you want to put on the bottom where an arrow can't go.
General notions:
Magnets? (If you're ever stuck on anything anywhere, ask "magnets?")
Spacetime Theory (Call it Field Theory, maybe? There are deep necessities to Field Theory, but a universe without Special Relativity might be metaphysically possible). Put it down there with Stealth. Actually magnets should go somewhere with Superconductors and Nanomaterials too.
The key to keeping the tech tree growing is to make sure some tech has a uniform advance (i.e. some tech has a singular prerequisite). Imagining such technology requires almost as much creativity as the real thing, but, that's where you can stir up real nonsense (i.e. fun).
About arrows: Horseback Riding - Civil Service ; Writing - Philosophy ; Theology - Compass. The tree can take larger distances. You said certain arrangements don't work?
Now I've put enough time on this, I had a brilliant idea I have to work on!
