Is the tech/civic tree profound enough?

[Esperr]

In my experience tech is way faster then culture, just because tourism has a build up time.

 

[ShakaKhan]

I think there's already about enough techs & civics; but what should happen is all remaining leaf civics and techs should be added as a prereq for a tech/civic in the next era and instead of two repeatable civics, a new civic requiring both current repeatable ones should be added that gives extra VP points but does nothing else with that one made repeatable.

It might also be a good idea to increase tech costs (probably not civic cost though; the human's civic progression rate in the Let's plays I see appeared fine to me, it's only the human's science that's too fast.)

I concur to an extent. I'm on the fence regarding the point about having all leaf techs (and civics) become prerequisites for something. A good example of where leaf techs added a positive game element was Civ4's Horseback Riding: it was an expensive tech for the period, and wasn't necessary; the rest of the tree could be filled out to entirety without it. However, it unlocked a very useful unit (later, a building too) that while useful, could be ignored and successful strategies could be made without it. The fastest way to most victory conditions (a speed run) was to ignore it completely, one of the safest ways to play was to beeline for it.

As far as LPers having fast science progression but civic progression that's only on par, I think that's just because the game is still relatively new and people still maintain a mentality from previous iterations of the game to fill in the gaps of what we don't know or haven't mastered yet. Civic progression is one such thing; I think people still view technological research (and consequently campus development) as the fundamental power source that unlocks elements that facilitate generalized progression, whereas people still view cultural research as something specific to a cultural victory and consequently prioritize campus investment heavily over theater investment. While it is true that more units and buildings are unlocked with tech research, policy bonuses can provide critical boosts to those units and can be nearly as important. You may have found that the LPers progress better with tech than with culture, I'm sure you'd also find that those people invest earlier and more heavily in campuses than theaters, and moving forward as we all achieve greater mastery of the game, I predict the investment in theaters will increase, and that cost will be balanced by a reduction in campus investment.

 

[vonJahgmann]

For sure tech is too cheap and needs to be more costly. Instead the game design appears to focus on making things cheaper, especially when on the boosts parade.

Right now I feel most of my games are on tech auto-pilot. In my opinion we don't need more choices but diversity of choices or at least diversity of cost.

One thought is to correlate game choices we make in the areas of culture, religion, government, budgets, war weariness, resources, happiness, map location, etc. factor into how much something costs.

• If being peaceful helps reduce the cost of whatever tech, then warmongering should increase the cost of whatever tech.
• Haven't built planes? Spacey techs are way more expensive.
• Is your Civ is located in the middle of Pangaea? Then sailing techs should cost you mega more.
• Didn't build the building or unit that the whatever tech granted you? 50-turn penalty on all derivative techs from that whatever tech.
• etc.

Hmmm. Now that I think about, maybe I can run with this idea and create a Science Penalties mod.

 

[unpossible251]

Mmm, my two cents?

Civ 4 was good, with those expensive but valuable diversions, eg horseback riding. Civ BE was good with the tech web, i'd like to see that return but also acknowledge that its probably hard to implement.

I'd like to see more "dead end / voluntary" paths that unlock potentially useful techs or civics that u can pursue if its of particular use to you. Reformed church is a great example, a huge asset if you aim for religious victory, a waste of time if you just let your neighbours sweep their faith over you.

Ages ago, someone suggested filling the tech tree with these sorts of dead ends. Done architecture? You can put research into "vaulted ceilings" which unlocks some wonders from Eastern Europe. Education done? How about "pharmacology", another dead end that gives housing bonuses for rainforest tiles? Or after theology, "religious revival" which gives bonuses for spreading a late religion in cities that already practice a foreign faith? Very valuable if you just get a medieval era prophet, but rubbish if youre hosting an anceint religion.

Also? More leap frogging. At a certain point, some old techs should be obsolete or given. Once, i had people who were launching sattelites but perplexed by rifles.

 

[Leyrann]

For sure tech is too cheap and needs to be more costly. Instead the game design appears to focus on making things cheaper, especially when on the boosts parade.

Right now I feel most of my games are on tech auto-pilot. In my opinion we don't need more choices but diversity of choices or at least diversity of cost.

One thought is to correlate game choices we make in the areas of culture, religion, government, budgets, war weariness, resources, happiness, map location, etc. factor into how much something costs.

• If being peaceful helps reduce the cost of whatever tech, then warmongering should increase the cost of whatever tech.
• Haven't built planes? Spacey techs are way more expensive.
• Is your Civ is located in the middle of Pangaea? Then sailing techs should cost you mega more.
• Didn't build the building or unit that the whatever tech granted you? 50-turn penalty on all derivative techs from that whatever tech.
• etc.

Hmmm. Now that I think about, maybe I can run with this idea and create a Science Penalties mod.

This is, for me, what eureka's should be: Techs are super expensive by themselves, but there's a lot of things that all reduce it's cost. For space techs, their cost gets reduced by researching Flight, maybe one or two other techs, and further by each plane you build; this could just be a small eureka every time (assuming, of course, you can have more than one eureka for a tech). For sailing, you could get a small reduction for settling on a river, a bit larger reduction for settling on a lake, and an even larger reduction for settling on a coast. And so on.

 

[Joch]

@zoundmine I think they tried that to some extend with BE/BERT. It wasn't that successful in that case. But I really like the idea.

The Tech Web in BE was a great idea, but really only works in a science fiction game where future techs are only limited by your imagination.

The problem with a historical tech tree is that we have the benefit of hindsight to know exactly which technology are the most successful and should be researched.

On the whole it works pretty well. In my current game with standard turns, I just finished researching the Ironclad tech and it is 1806, so only 50 years off.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm pretty happy with the tech tree. It will get filled out more later in expansions of course, and that's fine. As mentioned earlier, there really needs to be a railroad tech, and I'd like to see actual railroads instead of the black roads (which can be hard to see as well). It'd be sweet if they gave infinite movement like Civ2, but I can only dream about that.

The number of techs is about right, but there needs to be more prereq's. I know Firaxis is worried about confusing us, but they give us little credit for our intelligence. We'll figure it out. Stop dumbing down the game. It's kind of silly how early Flight is available in the game. There are other examples as well, but I don't feel like looking them up.

 

[ShakaKhan]

I know Firaxis is worried about confusing us, but they give us little credit for our intelligence. We'll figure it out. Stop dumbing down the game.

I think it's less about insulting the intelligence of Civ veterans and more about making the game approachable to newcomers to the series and the genre. It's all about the Benjamins, baby

 

[whyidie]

Good thread, good discussion.

I'm firmly in the camp of number of techs are fine, need them do do more. Not against adding a handful more, but overall I feel its a problem of richness of existing techs (and social policies) rather than quantity of techs/policies.

 

[joncnunn]

; I think people still view technological research (and consequently campus development) as the fundamental power source that unlocks elements that facilitate generalized progression, whereas people still view cultural research as something specific to a cultural victory and consequently prioritize campus investment heavily over theater investment.

It's a lot easier to get adjacency bonuses for Campuses than Theaters as a normal civ. Any city near two adjoining mountain tiles can get extra powerful campuses immediately; Theaters would require next to world wonder (not happening early on high difficulty levels) or the usual district fallback of next to two districts (which campuses would also get.)

What I am seeing on later Let's Plays vs earlier ones is that civics granting culture bonuses have become a lot more popular along with extreme beelining to the ones unlocking Corps and Armies.

 

[ShakaKhan]

It's a lot easier to get adjacency bonuses for Campuses than Theaters as a normal civ. Any city near two adjoining mountain tiles can get extra powerful campuses immediately; Theaters would require next to world wonder (not happening early on high difficulty levels) or the usual district fallback of next to two districts (which campuses would also get.)

What I am seeing on later Let's Plays vs earlier ones is that civics granting culture bonuses have become a lot more popular along with extreme beelining to the ones unlocking Corps and Armies.

True. I imagine theater square adjacency (and theater squares in general, particularly the Acropolis) are going to have some fine-tuning or complete overhaul in expansion packs.