Is there/do you want a better tech tree graphic?

[magic9mushroom]

It has come to my attention that CFC hosts this tech-tree poster. It is kind of awful for figuring out anything about the tech tree, due to half the requirements not being shown as arrows and many of those that are shown going backwards (presumably to help it fit a poorly-chosen aspect ratio) - for Christ's sake, Space Flight/Plastics/Superconductor are in three different quadrants! I'm not blaming Styx66 for that, of course, since it's just a graphical improvement over this official poster with the same abominable layout.

Has anyone made a tech-tree graphic that is not based on the official poster and hence does not suck?

If the answer to the above is "no"... would anyone be interested in one? It won't be that pretty, but I'm fairly sure I could hack one together that does at least have a consistent directionality to "early" vs. "late" techs* and does show all the techs a given tech leads to. Suggestions for what should and shouldn't be on there would be appreciated; I'd personally be leaning toward including stuff unlocked but omitting the age/type icons.

*Obvious candidates for directionality are longest-chain and overall-number of prereq techs. The other dimension is honestly the trickier one, but I should be able to finagle it and avoid getting too tangled.

 

[average_communism_enjoyer]

I don't know of one and that would be great!

If it's helpful to you, i wrote a utility that parses RULES.TXT and spits out a Graphviz directed graph file - https://github.com/hoodlm/civ2-tech-tree-visualizer . (just dumping these into graphviz gives you a tangled, aesthetically-horrible mess; but might be a helpful starting point for something more visually appealing)

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi magic9mushroom,

I don't know if this is what you were looking for but over the years I created the attached compendium of Civilization 2 references, including for the base tech tree (the excel file has 6 different tabs associated to it).

In addition, if you are interested, you can check out the Scenario Creation Excel Sheet thread post #2 here, which has a series of other related documents and links.

I hope this was useful.

Tootall

 

[Bubblewrap]

Would you want a static graph or something interactive like this?

SMAC Tech Browser by Squishtronics

If you have some typescript knowledge, this could be used as a starting point:

GitHub - squishtronics/tech-browser-starter-kit

Contribute to squishtronics/tech-browser-starter-kit development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[magic9mushroom]

I put a tree together. As promised, and unlike the official tech tree, it actually shows all the prereqs (aside from redundant ones), and has an objective "up" and "down". As also promised, it is not pretty; I decided to use straight lines for all the requirements, so that they're easier to follow with the eye, and as I also didn't want to split "Environmentalism" across two lines, this forced a very-big tree (A2) due to geometrical difficulties.

Would have uploaded the actual master-copy, but this forum apparently doesn't allow .odg files (I made it in LibreOffice Draw).

EDIT: Updated to v1.1; aesthetic adjustments only (switched the Y-axis scale for the second time at Metallurgy instead of Refrigeration, removing the whitespace in the mid-Industrial era; centred the tree on the page a bit better; prettified a few connections that were more ugly than necessary).

 

[Rambo919]

you exported it wrong.....

 

[magic9mushroom]

No, the PNG file I have works fine; CFC just doesn't seem to want to accept the upload properly. Uploaded to PostImages instead. Let's see if I can hotlink... nope.

Ah well, here's a link.

 

[Rambo919]

Much more complicated than later games, probably more optimized for randomness but in a messy way. I think in this case some kind of small program might work better if the UI design can be properly done.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Much more complicated than later games, probably more optimized for randomness but in a messy way. I think in this case some kind of small program might work better if the UI design can be properly done.

It's more that it's designed around the assumption of (almost) all techs having two prereqs, which inherently produces a tangled web and seems to have been dropped in later games. My efforts to get related techs together and keep an objective Y-axis, and the geometrical constraints of using straight lines, also made this a little messier than it could theoretically be.