Robert Zubek: Humankind and the rhetoric of tech trees

The_J

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Robert Zubek, the author of "Elements of Game Design", has written a blog post about the tech tree differences between Humankind and Civilization 5. He first talks about the tech tree as a game mechanic device to simulate progress, and afterwards talks about the differences between the two games, mostly that Humankind's tech tree focuses way more on warfare than the Civ5 tech tree, while omitting other fundamental achievements of humanity.

An excerpt:

"In this tech tree, the arts and sciences are simply not a part of the model. They don't exist in the game world, they can't be researched, they're not part of human history at all. Instead, war technologies are first-class innovations, and must be researched in order to progress through history.

This is a very martial view of history, of what kinds of human developments are worthy of rememberance.

But this isn't the only way this could have played out. For instance, if we look at another game like Civilization 5 (which was a clear inspiration behind Humankind), its tech tree is very different. All the items I mentioned as missing, the various arts and sciences, show up there."

You can read the full blog post here: http://robert.zubek.net/blog/example-humankind.html

(The picture is availabe under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, from Humankind Wiki: Technology)
 
Very insightful post by Mr. Zubek. I agree that a key part of the narrative, the story that the player tells in their head, is influenced by the names given to the elements on the tech tree. Three earlier members of the Civ franchise (Civ3, Civ4, and Civ5) all chose to name the technology advance as something distinct from the units, buildings, or governments that they unlocked. Civ6 took that a step further, by developing a separate civics tree where additional non-military attributes are "researched", .... or rather, learned or developed.

I'm telling myself a different story if I'm beelining to Liberalism or beelining to Siege Cannons. Not better or worse, but different.
 
One could ask the question though if things like Poetry and Rhethoric belong in the tech tree at all, or whether there would be better places in the game to put them in. Or rather, is Philosophy a tech that is researched, or is it a whole Philosophy tree on its own. I think some of the things show up in the Civics for sure, and all returns to gameplay. I have no problem with the tech tree being materialistic and warfare focused, it makes a lot of sense gameplay wise.

I'd rather ask whether we need a technology tree (and a science yield) at all or whether there couldn't be better systems to model the "progress" of Humanity.
 
Very insightful post by Mr. Zubek. I agree that a key part of the narrative, the story that the player tells in their head, is influenced by the names given to the elements on the tech tree. Three earlier members of the Civ franchise (Civ3, Civ4, and Civ5) all chose to name the technology advance as something distinct from the units, buildings, or governments that they unlocked. Civ6 took that a step further, by developing a separate civics tree where additional non-military attributes are "researched", .... or rather, learned or developed.

I'm telling myself a different story if I'm beelining to Liberalism or beelining to Siege Cannons. Not better or worse, but different.

I love to play with the randomized civics and tech trees. I always get a little sad for humanity when the civics tree bottlenecks at cold war, scorched earth, totalitarianism or some of the other unsavory civics in the Industrial-Atomic eras. What a dark moment in history.
 
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