Justify the way things are, so I don't feel compelled to change them

[SevenSpirits]

Long story short, I hate it when things make no sense historically. There are two ways to fix this: one is to be convinced that the game's interpretation is plausible enough to be justified by gameplay reasons, and the second is to mod it. Since I'd rather mod as few things as I can get away with (because I set myself a high bar for making changes from the standard version), I would love being convinced that the following things make some kind of sense:

- Civil Service (medieval) giving +1 food to river farms. In Civ IV it spread irrigation and this made sense, because it represents a period in Chinese history (~500ish AD) where they had a significant merit-based army of civil servants, and built many miles of canals. In Civ V it instead boosts riverside farms, which seems like they copied the farm boost from Civ IV without realizing it was canal-related. The whole point is getting water to places far away from the river!

- Trapping. OK, so apparently, in order to hunt animals, you must first have domesticated cows and horses. What??

- Trading Posts. The Civilopedia says (only!) this about them: "Trading Posts are outposts where hunters and trappers may sell their wares to civilians in exchange for food, weapons, whiskey, gold, and all the other trappings of society. They can generate a lot of wealth for a society." Guys, this is our only gold-making improvement. It makes sense that this comes with "Trapping", but it doesn't make sense that it's in the game at all given that camps already are.

- The Wheel letting you build Watermills. Yes, I get that watermills are powered by waterwheels. But the prevalence of those two things are a thousand plus years apart. Watermills should give food starting in the classical era and/or production starting in the medieval era.

- Optics. What the heck does that represent?? Apparently it was impossible to move people across water until after triremes had been invented. (I guess triremes existed only to ram other triremes before then. What a great invention.) Incidentally I can't figure out what optics has to do with it. Was there a development in navigation techniques in the classical era that I'm not aware of? I was under the impression that navigation advanced mainly in the medieval/renaissance periods.

I'm not going to worry about the prerequisite branches. I understand those are important for gameplay. Obviously there are other silly things too - I haven't even touched on anything past first row medieval, and I only mentioned the ones that bother me the most. If you have your own questions, feel free to add them, though I do recommend trying to do your own research first. And like I said I consider prerequisites to be off-limits.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Civil Service could also just be more efficient uses of canals. Better maintenance due to better organization, etc.

That might be the most easily justified. Watermills appear to have been a later invention (although I've been told there are some ancient equivalents, I don't think it was in mass use). Optics is clearly anachronistic. There were advances in sails, cartography, and interest in trade that could be represented by that period. They basically wanted to make sure people had boats to defend their costs before others started raiding them, so I don't blame them there.

Trapping is a mess in other ways. I don't know why it leads to Civil Service, for starters. Likewise, Archery leading to Mathematics makes no sense. The only reason for the latter is to connect Archery to Machinery, which is a fair idea. Whatever change you make, you want to keep Civil Service reasonably far away so people don't get it right away. You could move trapping to after Archery (which would make a lot of sense), but, unless you want to connect it to Math or to make it a dead end tech, I'm not sure what to do afterwards.

Basically, three things to keep in mind. Keep the "paths" straight (Chariots->Horsemen->Knights, Archers->Crossbows->Muskets, etc), keep the distance to an important tech about the same, and don't crisscross too many tech lines.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Sorry about the doublepost. I was going to edit, but the forum going down for a second delayed my post. Here's an idea:

Move trapping under Archery and have it go:
Archer --> Trapping --> Currency

If you want, have Archery lead to the Wheel (for realism), although it will mean more techs for HBR than IW.

The tricky part is in the Middle Ages.
Have Civil Service require Philosophy, Mathematics, and Currency

The problem with my idea is Philosophy will cross over HBR's tech line for Chivalry and Mathematics will cross over Currency's tech line for Engineering.

My other suggestion would be to add an Aqueduct with Construction and move the Watermill to the Renaissance. Perhaps have it so river tiles automatically give +1 food to the city and Aqueducts will give that +1 food to any city. It doesn't give as great a bonus, however, so maybe something else would be needed instead. But that's my suggestion.

 

[Pegasos]

There should be a clearer tech path for the development of agriculture. Kind of like this:

Irrigation > Crooked Ploughs > Crop Rotation > Fertilizers > Industrial Agriculture

These would all represent great advances to agricultural labour, and have some kind of improvement to either the farms' yield or cities' food improvements.

It's actually quite odd that this wasn't yet in the tech tree, because historically the development of agriculture is more important than the development of warfare.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Watermills appear to have been a later invention (although I've been told there are some ancient equivalents, I don't think it was in mass use).

Actually, there's increasing evidence that the Roman Empire made extensive use of Water Wheels to grind the vast amounts of grain they needed to feed their massive empire. We're talking nearly *industrial scale* water-wheels here!

Aussie.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Thanks!

Civil Service could also just be more efficient uses of canals. Better maintenance due to better organization, etc.

That might be the most easily justified. Watermills appear to have been a later invention (although I've been told there are some ancient equivalents, I don't think it was in mass use). Optics is clearly anachronistic. There were advances in sails, cartography, and interest in trade that could be represented by that period. They basically wanted to make sure people had boats to defend their costs before others started raiding them, so I don't blame them there.

Trapping is a mess in other ways. I don't know why it leads to Civil Service, for starters. Likewise, Archery leading to Mathematics makes no sense. The only reason for the latter is to connect Archery to Machinery, which is a fair idea. Whatever change you make, you want to keep Civil Service reasonably far away so people don't get it right away. You could move trapping to after Archery (which would make a lot of sense), but, unless you want to connect it to Math or to make it a dead end tech, I'm not sure what to do afterwards.

Basically, three things to keep in mind. Keep the "paths" straight (Chariots->Horsemen->Knights, Archers->Crossbows->Muskets, etc), keep the distance to an important tech about the same, and don't crisscross too many tech lines.
Sorry about the doublepost. I was going to edit, but the forum going down for a second delayed my post. Here's an idea:

Move trapping under Archery and have it go:
Archer --> Trapping --> Currency

If you want, have Archery lead to the Wheel (for realism), although it will mean more techs for HBR than IW.

The tricky part is in the Middle Ages.
Have Civil Service require Philosophy, Mathematics, and Currency

The problem with my idea is Philosophy will cross over HBR's tech line for Chivalry and Mathematics will cross over Currency's tech line for Engineering.

My other suggestion would be to add an Aqueduct with Construction and move the Watermill to the Renaissance. Perhaps have it so river tiles automatically give +1 food to the city and Aqueducts will give that +1 food to any city. It doesn't give as great a bonus, however, so maybe something else would be needed instead. But that's my suggestion.

Sadly I don't buy that excuse for Civil Service. They had good irrigation quite a bit earlier.

"Navigation" would be a good wishy-washy name for Optics. I guess then I just need to rename the Navigation that follows Astronomy!

Yeah, trapping is ridiculous. I think it won't make sense no matter what, so there's no sense mucking up the gameplay. Also I definitely want to keep no dead-end techs and no crossing lines.

Archery to Math actually makes a twisted kind of sense, in that Math is not actually Math, but rather Catapults and Courthouses. Archery leading to Catapults is totally fine.

There should be a clearer tech path for the development of agriculture. Kind of like this:

Irrigation > Crooked Ploughs > Crop Rotation > Fertilizers > Industrial Agriculture

These would all represent great advances to agricultural labour, and have some kind of improvement to either the farms' yield or cities' food improvements.

It's actually quite odd that this wasn't yet in the tech tree, because historically the development of agriculture is more important than the development of warfare.

Good point! I guess it's just that you can't have four +1s to farm yields. That would be kind of absurd. I wonder if there's still a way to fit them in though.

Actually, there's increasing evidence that the Roman Empire made extensive use of Water Wheels to grind the vast amounts of grain they needed to feed their massive empire. We're talking nearly *industrial scale* water-wheels here!

Aussie.

In this context (Watermills becoming available in the bronze age concurrently with the wheel), the Roman empire is "later"!