How to make Custom Tech Trees FOR EACH CIV!

[computerdude113]

Ok, I've done some testing and I've found out how to do this, and frankly it's pretty easy but it is truly amazing!
First, you make an Era_None tech, call it whatever you want. This will be the building block for the custom tech tree. Next, take the techs you want and put them in order, what is a prequisite for what, ect... For each of these techs, make the newly created Era_None a prequisite aswell. Now give the Era_None tech to a civ and that civ will have those techs that you have created as a custom tech tree for themselves! You can even mix and match, having some of the tech tree custom per civ and some standard for all civs, meaning that you can have a baseline of lets say tanks and have a custom "German Warfare" for instance tech tree for the Germans and have a baseline tank tech be a prequisite for a custom German Panser tech, giving the germans pansers! Best of all, this works FOR ALL ERAS!

The improtance of this. Let's do an example using a fantisy mod idea.
You have basic techs you want to give to all civs, but you want only a few to have Magic techs. You make an Era_None tech called Magic. then you make an Ancient Era Magic baseline:
Witchcraft->Voodoo->Conjuring->Sorcery
That's the baseline magic tech line. Give each of these a prequisite of the Era_None tech of Magic and give your Warlock civ the magic tech and THEY GET THE MAGIC TECHS! If you then go to play as Humans, they not only will not get Magic, THEY WILL NOT EVEN SEE THE TECHS ON THE TECH TREE! (This is in C3C)
Now for something more complicated, let's say you want enchanted catapults, just do a jump from a baseline tech for catapults, which everyone can get, to the magic line and tada! For example:
Witchcraft->Voodoo->Conjuring->Enchanted Catapults
...Mathematics^
Enchanted Catapults now requires both mathematics and Conjuring! be sure to check the magic tech for Enchanted cataults aswell though.

Now for the only downside, the only version I'm sure this works for is the patched version of C3C, however I know that it should work with unpatched C3C and fully patched PTW, however for PTW I'm not sure if the techs will still show up on the tech screen, something they don't for C3C.
Have Fun!
P.S. Now we can have Aliens and Humans and not need to come up with middleground techs for them!

 

[Dom Pedro II]

All this was explained in the release of the last patch for PtW was it not? Or at the very least, the Help menu gives a good description of how it works in the Editor.

I've been pulling hair trying to come up with unique tech trees for every civilization in the regular game and its been a helluva lot of work... and really the main problem I see comes into play that you essentially have to make a common tech tree in addition to the civ-specific tech trees... there isn't a way to make two civs research their own prerequisite techs to come to the same common technology.

That's a real bummer... that's just made it all the more frustrating to pull this off, but hopefully, the Age of Man mod shall rise!

 

[computerdude113]

See, I didn't know that because whenever I use the help things that come with Civ3 they always wid up pissing me off because they don't tell me the stuff I wanna know.
As for them not being able to come to the same tech, yah taht's a bit annoying; you could of corse give it to them both in their custm tech trees...?
o, BTW, so no one else calls me on it (not that it's bad, just gets annoying) I figgured that no one else had figgured out how to do this because my post about custom tech trees earlier yeilded using Flavors and no one seemed to grasp the idea of a custom civ tech tree, so i figgured that we hadn't figgured out how to do it yet, but silly me, it was in the Help all along.

 

[mrtn]

computerdude, the important thing isn't whether you grasped it first or not, the important thing is that you posted about it to help your fellow modders.

This is possible in PTW 1.27, btw.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Well, the AI Flavors are good to a point, but in the regular game, they're relatively useless I think.

As far as just putting a tech for say Gunpowder in each tech tree, the problem then becomes, well, how do we expose Saltpeter. We can either make 31 different kinds of Saltpeter, or we can make it so that Saltpeter and all resources are exposed from the very beginning of the game. Personally, I don't like either option.

So basically, the only other thing to do is make two tech trees... actually, it winds up being a great deal more than two...

A scientific tech tree (based on real technological development that is not culturally specific)

and a cultural tech tree (cultural developments that allow for civ-specific cultural improvements, citizens, resources, etc.)

And, of course, as you said, you can always make common techs prerequisites for civ-specific techs... you just can't do it the other way around.