Acken
Deity
I just do not see this in the same way as you do and that's our problem. You are looking at tech tree choices and evaluating them as good and bad, the right decision or the distraction. You evaluate them in this fashion because you know that choosing certain techs will be very bad if you are going for, let's say Supremacy because you will lose the game if you don't pick the optimal path through the tech tree to get the win. You don't have the luxury of making different choices when playing under the pressure you're under playing at max difficulty. The AI bonuses are insane and so you have to make the best choice or 'die'. This is your strategy. When playing like this, the tech tree is not optimally designed to give you interesting choices.
Me? It's not 'good' or 'bad' for me at all. There are no 'distractions' as I don't have to worry too much about being so precise and can chose techs which best fit with my chosen strategy for that game. I'm role playing and so am more fascinated by seeing what will happen in my game if I do A and B. I want to watch my empire evolve as a result of my decisions in what is still an interactive, highly competitive, and very dangerous environment. That is my strategy. I still really want to win but as long as I have fun while doing so, I am happy.
For example, just now I'm playing as PAC. I chose to bring engineers to add to my strength and I've been chosing from the Industry tree for my first few virtues. This would be an insane choice if I were playing Apollo because I'd most likely have to go Prosperity to get the free settler and worker.
Well it's your right to not view them as good or bad but only as options from a roleplaying PoV. But then you have to use that same PoV when trying to discuss if whether or not the game mechanics interract well or not together or whether they are balanced. And this is where the communication isn't possible. If I explain why an option is better than another or why a design is good or bad I'll try to use game arguments and maths while your argument is about how each option fit your roleplay or how fun they seem (feel).
We apparently clearly do not share the same idea over how a strategy game should be designed.
You have the right to view it like this and enjoy it but I'll continue to just disregard that kind of argument because in holds no weight for me on how I think a good strategy game should be made. Also there is nothing to discuss about it since it's about your feelings rather than more concrete stuff that you can debate over.
Acken while i agree with the sentiment against the beelining featuring on BE's research paths, the linealization of the tech web is not due the tech web being poorly designed, but victory conditions and the affinity system being poorly designed and tied to it.
It may seems like the same thing, but they are not. And hence why at lower difficulties, Kutuzov is probably having a lot of fun with how the tech web is designed, since he is not really on a rush propelled by how easy and efficient it is to just beeline to VC and affinity tiers to compete.
The problem is how to adjust the Victory conditions with the affinity system to not reward beelining the tech web. In my opinion, Affinity shouldn't be tied AT ALL at the tech web, but your actions to aliens and the ecosystem, "rewarding" you with how much you invest into terraforming and purging the aliens with purity XP for example, which should always go in detriment of other affinities, to force interaction between them instead of the full tech wins we have right now.
To me you're playing on words to say the exact same thing than I.
I have said it way earlier, the problem is how affinities are linked to the tree. You can even view a post about this in my LP thread back from november
Whether you want to call it a problem with the tree or a problem with affinities I don't really care, the result is the same: We agree that there is a problem with how techs are researched, where beelining affinities one after the other come turn 100ish is the only thing that is strategically sound.
And yes if someone had asked me how I'd fix the problem I would also remove the affinity from the tree and find a better way to make you level in it. In my first post in this argument I have clearly stated that I think that in itself the web is a good idea. But then they decided to powder affinity techs through it and this is how a good idea gets ruined.
And hell when it comes to BE I'm far from an expert so if with my limited experience I can see these glaring issues I can't help but wonder how better players feel about the game.