New plans for the future eras

[pepper2000]

I haven't done much modding in a while until a few days ago, but I have been coming up with some plans. I don't know how much of the following I will actually get to, but these are the things I am thinking about.

- There is a backlog of nearly 100 new buildings, mostly filling in blank spaces for space cities where the content dries up.
- In particular, I want Mars to have a rich building tree all the way into the Transcendent Era. I have planned a wonder at Metaverse (first column of Transcendent Era) which, like Terraformed Mars, will be the culmination of a long chain of buildings, but unlike Terraformed Mars, will also depend on other things in the universe. Similar wonders are planned for Venus, the Moon, and maybe other space zones.
- There will be a simplification of the Deep Space building tree, where some of the buildings will produce resources, which will in turn be the requirements for later buildings (so when a new Deep Space city is in the trading network with older ones, you can work through the buildings faster).
- Starting at Hypothetical Biochemistry, there are various speculative lifeforms that can be built as regular buildings. I am thinking of replacing them them cultures (so there will be a culture tree similar to that for Human Mods) or National Wonders. They will be tougher to get.

The two big things concern the Cosmic and Transcendent Eras. Right now I feel that the last two eras are a bit boring. In the Information Era (and tail end of Atomic) you can start exploring space and building space stations as map improvements. In the Nanotech Era, you start developing your first space cities. The Transhuman Era opens up the outer Solar System, and the Galactic Era opens up the whole set of interstellar concepts. By the Cosmic Era, it feels like you are doing the same thing again except with Clarketech. So I am hoping the two new concepts I have planned will make the final two eras feel fresh and interesting again.

Seeding Life in the Universe

One of the new units in my recent update is the Bacteria Swarm, which becomes available at Directed Panspermia at the start of the Cosmic Era. It is a large swarm of genetically engineered bacteria that can cross interstellar distances and seed star systems with life. Right now it doesn't do anything, but I plan to make it and derivative units central to how the Cosmic Era unfolds.

The Bacteria Swarm will get a Disperse mission, which causes a random effect. It might terraform or add an improvement to the map where it is, multiply itself, spawn a reward unit that can be used to get a building, evolve into a higher level unit, or if you are unlucky, turn into a barbarian unit. The types of synthetic life you have developed up to this point in the game might influence the outcome or give you new missions that give you more control on how the Swarm behaves.

As the Cosmic Era progresses, more highly evolved forms of the Bacteria Swarm will appear. You will want to build and evolve your swarm, as the higher level units will be necessary to grant some of the best buildings, wonders, and resources in the game.

There is also the Von Neumann probe, which is a self-replicating space probe that becomes available at Folding Space. At Galactic Ecology, the Von Neumann probe goes from merely self-replicating to self-evolving, and thus a line of robotic "life" forms opens up. Value drifting Von Neumann probes can be a powerful method for settling the universe, but they might diverge from your civilization's interests and turn on you.

At Grand Unification Biology, the biological and robotic evolutionary trees will converge at the Life Swarm unit. This in turn will open up new evolutionary lines for the Transcendent Era.

Mining Hyperspace

In the Transcendent Era, you can start chronoforming space into various types of hyperspace. Sending highly evolved life forms or probes into hyperspace, branespace, or supermassive black holes can have unpredictable impacts. Doing so will spawn random rewards that are necessary to build most of the Transcendent Era wonders and map improvements.

Exploration of exotic planes of existence in hyperspace will be modeled by map features and improvements on hyperspace tiles. The mechanism for exploring hyperspace will not be too unlike that of developing the first space stations in the Information Era, but there will be some randomness and branching paths incorporated.

I am still in the early phases of planning how the trees of life evolution and hyperspace exploration will work, but I intend for them to be major projects that will occupy nearly as much of the player's attention as building and developing cities.

 

[raxo2222]

Well there is no reason to place more than one supermassive black hole unless you make galaxy with two separate cores - that is one after recent collision.
Small and Large galaxy feature can count as supermassive blackhole, since they have them.

By the way does Local Group and Virgo Supercluster space terrains represent empty space?
That is is it like Transtellar space in that regard?
Or its like Orion Arm terrain and galaxy features represent more interesting galaxies?

 

[pepper2000]

Good point on supermassive black holes. Again, much planning to do on how this system will work. I don't have any of the specifics nailed down yet.

Within the Local Group and Virgo Supercluster, tiles without a galaxy feature should be assumed not to contain galaxies. However, they probably have many stars that are not affiliated with any galaxy. Likewise, Transtellar space has plenty of brown dwarfs and rogue planets. Even the Voids in the far universe are not empty space; they have galaxies, but at a much lower density than the non-void regions.

 

[raxo2222]

Good point on supermassive black holes. Again, much planning to do on how this system will work. I don't have any of the specifics nailed down yet.

Within the Local Group and Virgo Supercluster, tiles without a galaxy feature should be assumed not to contain galaxies. However, they probably have many stars that are not affiliated with any galaxy. Likewise, Transtellar space has plenty of brown dwarfs and rogue planets. Even the Voids in the far universe are not empty space; they have galaxies, but at a much lower density than the non-void regions.

Well in Transtellar zone Brown Dwarfs and Rogue Planets are actual features.

This means if no feature or other terrain is present in Transtellar space, then this plot is literally devoid of any larger objects.

 

[Faustmouse]

Sounds very interesting! I wondered first about bacteria (biological) Life, but with the other two it makes Sense.

Have you considered direct trade routes to Earth? Would make sense to have them at Solar economy...

 

[pepper2000]

Have you considered direct trade routes to Earth? Would make sense to have them at Solar economy...

That is something I would like to have. It has been a long since I thought about this, and as I recall the issue is that, as Orbit is an impassible terrain, routes don't allow trade networks to cross. My pretext for disallowing Earth-space trade routes is that I want space cities to develop their own resources, but that issue is easily addressed by adding manufactured bonuses that are only built in space. So, I think we would need to

- Make Orbit a passible terrain.
- Do not allow route-building units to enter Orbit until we want to allow direct Earth-space trade (maybe at Planetary Trade).
- Make sure space settlers cannot build cities on Orbit, as that it still something I want to prevent.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

In theory terrain does not need to be passable to be traded over. They are two different tags.

 

[Faustmouse]

I know your reason for Not allowing trade and I like it. But at some Point it seems strange

 

[raxo2222]

@pepper2000 Spreading life should result in creation of civilizations, if you spread it in hyperspace tile.

On game start multiple civilizations are placed on Earth, they start at equal level.
AIs are civilizations secretly controlled by aliens

When you can make hyperspace cities (and ones in distant universe) you also posses total control over evolution.
This means Civilization game starting in microbial stage on universal scale - just like C2C but infinitely bigger and more complex.

 

[raxo2222]

10464

- Added three new map improvements: Interstellar/Intergalactic/Research Base.
- With the above improvements and ones that already existed, it is now possible to harvest all bonuses on space maps.
- Solar System Life mission is now available at Prototyped Pathogens instead of Hypothetical Biochemistry.
- Reduced the movement of the far future swarm units.

You forgot about Quantonium Crystal - Transcendent era space resource.

I like that life spreading units are much slower than other space units.

Does Titan have building, that allows to work on third radius?

 

[pepper2000]

You forgot about Quantonium Crystal - Transcendent era space resource.

I'm not sure how I want to deal with that one yet. I am thinking of designing a mission where Quantonium Crystal has to be "found" in hyperspace and then placed on the map, rather than appearing naturally.

I like that life spreading units are much slower than other space units

Thanks. I am still in the early phases of designing how that system will work.

Does Titan have building, that allows to work on third radius?

It's on the list, but it might be a while before I get to it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I know your reason for Not allowing trade and I like it. But at some Point it seems strange

It'll be easier to control appropriately when we have multimaps and some direct coding into enabling us to determine what can and can't be traded across various maps.

 

[raxo2222]

@pepper2000 did you read Michio Kaku books?
Newest one is about future of humanity in space.

 

[pepper2000]

I haven't read too much of Kaku's material. I have trouble articulating it, but something about his writing style grates on me. It almost feels like a Tomorrowland kind of style.

The latest book looks interesting. It looks like he took the Nanotech through Transcendent Eras of Caveman 2 Comsos and put them into a book form.

 

[raxo2222]

10494
More Tweaks to Gov't, Rule, Power, and Society Civics up to Information Era.
I have not made any attempts to balance Pepper2000 late Era Civics to date. Not enough game play feedback to even attempt to do so.

I think since future era civs rely on technology they should be more expensive to run and have less drawbacks in general.
Also those civics should account civilization being multi planetary/stellar/galactic/universal empire depending on game stage.

@pepper2000 civics run by self-aware technology like AI, transhumans, posthumans and other black magic should be more powerful than earlier civics.
Not vastly more powerful, but just more powerful than earlier civics while still being specialized.
That is Nanotech era and later civics would be new generation of civics.

Prehistoric - Medieval is pretty much Natural epoch - before formal science is invented things are moving at snail pace.
Renaissance - Nanotech eras would be Technological epoch - civilization changes rapidly.
Transhuman forwards would be Space epoch - space exploration is a thing and everything is getting replaced by technology.

 

[pepper2000]

Makes sense. There should still be enough tradeoffs so that switching to the newest civic is not guaranteed to be the best decision.

 

[raxo2222]

Makes sense. There should still be enough tradeoffs so that switching to the newest civic is not guaranteed to be the best decision.

I guess gold cost (civic upkeep and maintenance from amount and distance) is only logical penalty for those civics.
Unhappiness from civics would fall as humans are becoming one with tech.

Essentially Nanotech and later era civics would be balanced with each other, but be better than older civics as ordinary human limitations are reduced or even removed from civics.

 

[Yudishtira]

All technologies can go wrong, and the more powerful they are, the more wrong they can go!

The costs associated with machine-dependent systems are (predominantly?) the costs of the "quality assurance" aka checks-and-balances aka controls that ensure that these 'mission-critical' processes don't fail, since that would potentially be fatal to everyone and everything (organics and cybernetics alike).

20th century tech already gave us the ability to genocide ourselves entirely. More powerful techs are likely to make that easier and easier. It is not safe to assume that every change will be for the better - indeed it is incredibly unlikely. Future civics, and future technologies, need to reflect that.

In the present, we have technologies 'shelved' by powerful entities that would be disadvantaged by them. We have (possibly) bio-warfare (and WMD/other) experiments that intentionally kill millions. You think these currents in history are just going to go away? By what mechanism do you feel this will come about? It could happen, and it seems worth hoping for, but it's by no means assured...

 

[raxo2222]

All technologies can go wrong, and the more powerful they are, the more wrong they can go!

The costs associated with machine-dependent systems are (predominantly?) the costs of the "quality assurance" aka checks-and-balances aka controls that ensure that these 'mission-critical' processes don't fail, since that would potentially be fatal to everyone and everything (organics and cybernetics alike).

20th century tech already gave us the ability to genocide ourselves entirely. More powerful techs are likely to make that easier and easier. It is not safe to assume that every change will be for the better - indeed it is incredibly unlikely. Future civics, and future technologies, need to reflect that.

In the present, we have technologies 'shelved' by powerful entities that would be disadvantaged by them. We have (possibly) bio-warfare (and WMD/other) experiments that intentionally kill millions. You think these currents in history are just going to go away? By what mechanism do you feel this will come about? It could happen, and it seems worth hoping for, but it's by no means assured...

So unhappiness in Nanotech and later civics would be from fear of tech failing spectacularly or being misused then.

On other hand there is no actual corruption, greed and incompetence in game, unless complex traits when using negative traits and NO pure traits simulate that at simplest level.

 

[Yudishtira]

So unhappiness in Nanotech and later civics would be from fear of tech failing spectacularly or being misused then.

On other hand there is no actual corruption, greed and incompetence in game, unless complex traits when using negative traits and NO pure traits simulate that at simplest level.

If you speak in such sweeping generalizations, you can't expect to be right very often...

Firstly, what I said was that most if not all of the cost of these techs would relate to ensuring they did not fail.

On your second point, negative traits (or aspects of positive traits) are one way the game does already simulate human 'vices' such as the ones you mention.
Another one I can think of is the cost when a corporation spreads to you (even your "own" corporation). It is probably not adequately represented (although that has significantly improved with unsanctioned criminal buildings and units), so by all means let us start a discussion relating not just to 'future eras'.

Just in case that doesn't happen (it does sound pretty daunting does it not?), I hope you will at least keep these things in mind within the scope of this thread, ie. as the "future" eras are fleshed out.

ETA: It now occurs to me that civic upkeep costs, and city maintenance costs and modifiers, do to some considerable extent 'factor in' corruption, incompetence and the like. I regret my assumption above that it "is probably not adequately represented" Let's have the discussion and find out whether that's the case.