SevenSpirits
Immortal?
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2007
- Messages
- 512
My mind recently has been on the development of technology throughout history, and how it has played out. And the main thing that keeps leaping out at me when I think about how Civ represents it is how weird it is to have prerequisites.
The vast majority of technologies and other advances are not strictly necessary for ANYTHING. There are just so many possible ways for things to come about. Math? You don't actually need anything else to invent math. You can draw with your fingers in the sand, and figure out quite a bit if you're smart enough. So maybe the prerequisite should be a specific amount of leisure time?
Steam engines? Well, the main thing you need, is, um, apparently, to have mined out a lot of your easy-to-get-at ore, so that you need a portable replacement for suction-based methods of draining mines of water. It also helps to have achieved some level of precision in manufacturing techniques.
Basically what I'm getting at is that specific technology concepts, such as we would summarize as "techs" in a "tech tree", don't actually require other "techs" in most cases. Instead, they just very vaguely require a certain level of development.
So I've been pondering if there's a way to represent this in the game, which would play out reasonably well. I think the following are important qualities to retain:
1) You are incentivized to research most or all technologies eventually.
2) You have the useful ability to form multi-tech research plans (beelines) to reach a specific tech more quickly.
3) There are many possible good orders to research your techs in. (This should just be a matter of balancing the techs themselves well.)
One idea I had was the following scheme: Techs are organized into columns, each of which represents a single short era. To research a tech, you must either have it's prerequisite, or already have any other tech in that era. (With both, you get a discount.) Techs in your current era, and the single previous era, are discounted, to curtail beelining multiple columns ahead. (Of course, subsequent era techs are more expensive anyway, but this makes beelining actually less beaker-efficient.) Here's a sample first few eras:
So for example, if you wanted to reach Masonry, you could get there through Agriculture->Calendar->Masonry, or Pottery->Writing->Masonry. The arrows aren't really requirements, they are ways to advance!
Obviously this is only lightly described at the moment. I guess the questions are:
1) Do you think this is an improvement in terms of realism? Do you have alternate ideas? (Do you know about the relevant history or does your knowledge just come from Civ?)
2) Do you foresee any fundamental gameplay problems with this system, keeping in mind that all kinds of numbers and effects are quite tweakable?
3) Do you see any superficial gameplay problems, and how could they be solved?
I appreciate any input.
The vast majority of technologies and other advances are not strictly necessary for ANYTHING. There are just so many possible ways for things to come about. Math? You don't actually need anything else to invent math. You can draw with your fingers in the sand, and figure out quite a bit if you're smart enough. So maybe the prerequisite should be a specific amount of leisure time?
Steam engines? Well, the main thing you need, is, um, apparently, to have mined out a lot of your easy-to-get-at ore, so that you need a portable replacement for suction-based methods of draining mines of water. It also helps to have achieved some level of precision in manufacturing techniques.
Basically what I'm getting at is that specific technology concepts, such as we would summarize as "techs" in a "tech tree", don't actually require other "techs" in most cases. Instead, they just very vaguely require a certain level of development.
So I've been pondering if there's a way to represent this in the game, which would play out reasonably well. I think the following are important qualities to retain:
1) You are incentivized to research most or all technologies eventually.
2) You have the useful ability to form multi-tech research plans (beelines) to reach a specific tech more quickly.
3) There are many possible good orders to research your techs in. (This should just be a matter of balancing the techs themselves well.)
One idea I had was the following scheme: Techs are organized into columns, each of which represents a single short era. To research a tech, you must either have it's prerequisite, or already have any other tech in that era. (With both, you get a discount.) Techs in your current era, and the single previous era, are discounted, to curtail beelining multiple columns ahead. (Of course, subsequent era techs are more expensive anyway, but this makes beelining actually less beaker-efficient.) Here's a sample first few eras:
So for example, if you wanted to reach Masonry, you could get there through Agriculture->Calendar->Masonry, or Pottery->Writing->Masonry. The arrows aren't really requirements, they are ways to advance!
Obviously this is only lightly described at the moment. I guess the questions are:
1) Do you think this is an improvement in terms of realism? Do you have alternate ideas? (Do you know about the relevant history or does your knowledge just come from Civ?)
2) Do you foresee any fundamental gameplay problems with this system, keeping in mind that all kinds of numbers and effects are quite tweakable?
3) Do you see any superficial gameplay problems, and how could they be solved?
I appreciate any input.
