Some more early tech reshuffling needed

[[to_xp]Gekko]

well, I think some of the early techs need some tweaking for the better. I really like the way animal husbandry and fishing now have no prereqs to allow for more flexibility and I think this should be expanded for a couple reasons.

for example, Crafting -> Mining makes sense but I'd much rather have mining with no prereqs. Mining is a tech you will almost always want sooner rather than later, while Crafting has a more limited use: excellent if you've got wine, otherwise it can wait until later. needing to research it to get Mining for forestchopping is annoying.

similarly, Mining -> Archery. it doesn't make a lot of sense, and for example when playing Elves it would be nice to be able to ignore Mining all game if so I choose, and focus only on recon and archery lines. I'd much rather have Crafting -> Archery, makes more sense also.

this would also be good to balance RoK and OO as now OO only needs fishing and mysticism, while RoK needs crafting, mining and mysticism.

which leads to the last, and worst of these which has been feeling wrong for a long time: Hunting. very expensive tech in the early game, and needed for FoL. which is bad because it means Fawns are totally useless as by the time you get them you already have hunters. Fawns are supposed to be good when you beeline for religion, so that you can get a T2 unit out of it.

it also means that FoL is a lot harder to get than the other 2 early religions, which feels unfair. more, one of the tech prereqs for Hunting is Archery. why does a t2 enabling tech lead to another t2 enabling tech? you don't need both, that's a lot of beakers.

best thing here imho is to split hunting between hunting and tracking. tracking enables camps and camp resources, is available from the get go and leads to FoL with mysticism. Hunting gives hunters and hunting lodge, and needs Exploration.

these changes would allow for more fairness, flexibility and balance in the vitally important early game.

each early religion would need one worker tech + mysticism , and each T2 tech would need one tech before it. beaker costs should get a couple slight changes to be balanced against each other.

what do you people think?

 

[graywarden]

Gekko,

I found your ideas and suggestions, fair and balanced. I would support these changes.

 

[Kalina]

what do you people think?

Did I mention I like Orbis tech-tree ? Everything that makes Wildmana's techtree similar is step in good direction

But seriously, I certainly agree about Mining without Crafting. Resources enabled by Mining aren't more important then ones enabled by Animal Husbandry (any if they are, this should be balanced) and player shouldn't be punished for starting near them instead of other ones.

Split of Hunting into Hunting and Tracking is great idea... it makes starting in tundra with Deer/Fur less painful and makes Doviello more viable with certain mapscripts. I have a feeling it was already discussed several times
EDIT: Thanks, Pazyryk, forgot about Exploration.

Archery without Mining is mainly flavor thing, isn't it ? Usually when going for Archery you should already have Mining, at least in most cases or be able to spend bulbs required for Mining without much pain. One thing to consider here is that it makes early rushes little harder which may or may not be a good thing

 

[Pazyryk]

I agree with removing mining -> archery requirement. No flavor reason: elves should be able to build archers (or even higher level archery or recon units) without metal extraction technologies. No real world reason either, or at least I can't see any reason why archery depends on mining.

I was a big fan of getting the food techs up front so that civs could diversify their first tech choices a little (rather than everyone having to go ag first). But I'm not so convinced about moving mining up. I often go for mining right after getting a single food tech. However, in many games (not most, but quite often) I delay mining for quite a while to pursue other objectives. The value is high but the cost is also high at least in the very early game. If you cheapen mining (I'm counting crafting in the "cost" here) then my decision will be much easier -- I will always go mining after one or two food techs.

I do think that OO is too early period (doesn't bother me that some are harder/easier than others). This happened when fishing no longer required exploration. I always go for fishing first if there is any seafood available (one source of food + fishing village for super early commerce boost). Since I also prioritize Mysticism, OO always becomes available for research very early, even if I'm playing Elohim or Bannor and don't want it for role playing reasons. Why not use sailing as prereq rather than fishing? This way, all 3 early religions require at least 2 tech progression down their respective branches.

Hunting is a little pricey, yes. I'd lower the cost a little and move hawks to animal handling (but I've made that argument elsewhere).

I have the same problem that I never build many Fawns. They are only slightly more powerful than hunters (free woodsman promo and no city attack penalty) but more expensive, and at this point I've already got hunting lodges and plenty of experienced hunters in the field. I think a good solution here is to lower their cost to be the same as hunters. They would be better than hunters then (I don't see this as a big problem -- they are restricted to FoL and have a more limited upgrade path).

@Kalina, you can build camps with exploration now. (I'm otherwise pretty neutral on the hunting/tracking split.)

Edit: although I haven't played it for 9 months now, I agree that any changes in the direction of Orbis tech tree are good, at least for early stuff (the many extra late techs are fine too if you want many extra late techs).

 

[youtien]

Agreed. Tier 1 tech costs too much, and AI usually doesn't know to balance their research.

 

[Verdian]

No flavor reason: elves should be able to build archers (or even higher level archery or recon units) without metal extraction technologies. No real world reason either, or at least I can't see any reason why archery depends on mining.

Off topic, but I would like to see a resource called "Ironwood", revealed at an appropriate tech in the archery line. An incredibly strong wood that could be used to make wooden weapons that are a match for iron. Basically, it would be a new resource that provided iron, just through a different tech path/harvesting method. That way high tier non-melee units could still get upgrades to iron weapons.

Never needing bronze working as the elves... that'll be the dream.

 

[Valkrionn]

Off topic, but I would like to see a resource called "Ironwood", revealed at an appropriate tech in the archery line. An incredibly strong wood that could be used to make wooden weapons that are a match for iron. Basically, it would be a new resource that provided iron, just through a different tech path/harvesting method. That way high tier non-melee units could still get upgrades to iron weapons.

Never needing bronze working as the elves... that'll be the dream.

.........You've been reading the RifE forum, haven't you.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

One thing to consider here is that it makes early rushes little harder which may or may not be a good thing

If you cheapen mining (I'm counting crafting in the "cost" here) then my decision will be much easier -- I will always go mining after one or two food techs.

keep in mind that you can always tweak the beaker cost of the techs to keep 'em balanced if you add/remove some of their reqs mining for example could be made more expensive if crafting was removed as a prereq.

regarding exploration giving camp, I think it's excellent, but it has a drawback of taking away 90% of the usefulness of doviello camps. they were great when normal camps were still at hunting, but now they really really need to provide a yield boost to be actually useful.

 

[Calavente]

teaser Valkrionn

 

[Tarquelne]

Agreed. Tier 1 tech costs too much, and AI usually doesn't know to balance their research.

I really like that reason to change the values, even if it comes from a self-identified grad student.

I'm not so sure about the OP's rationale for making access to mining easier: I'd say the tech's high desirability is a reason to restrict access, not increase it. (Though, OTOH, I'd say that the basic economic necessity-techs should all be equally accessible/inaccessible. That may be what G. is getting at anyway.)

What I'd really like to see is more "interesting decision making" in the early tech tree. I think the Hunting change suggested would help there. (I'm a little worried about making access to the Hunter too easy, but I currently believe going for Axemen is a better bet, so tilting things a bit in the other direction seems fine.)

But except for adding more techs, or pushing the most desirable techs back further (both highly problematical suggestions) I don't have a suggestion on how to make things more interesting.

 

[tesb]

well the best way would be custom techtrees imho, but for that to work techs from other civilizations would need to be blocked from appearing in the techtree to reduce cluttering

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I'm not so sure about the OP's rationale for making access to mining easier: I'd say the tech's high desirability is a reason to restrict access, not increase it.

basically, since in the early game you don't have beakers to spare, it's very annoying to HAVE TO research Crafting to get to mining, considering most of the time you don't really need crafting and would be happy to forego it until later.

we removed Agriculture as a prereq for animal husbandry, but I think everyone will agree that Agriculture is a hell of a lot more useful than crafting is, unless you've got wine in your BFC ( same thing for exploration leading to fishing really )

Crafting would make a much better prereq for Archery imho. also, Mining leading to 2 tier2 techs on different research paths ( melee and archery) feels wrong imho, it means everyone absolutely has to get it ASAP unless he's going for hunters ( which imho of the 3 t2 units are the least commonly used. )

as you said, the tech already has a high desirability, so that would decrease it a bit and bring more variety to the table in the early game as far as tech research goes

 

[Tarquelne]

well the best way would be custom techtrees imho

(The partially-random tech tree is the primary reason I really, really wanted to like MoO 3.)

basically, since in the early game you don't have beakers to spare, it's very annoying to HAVE TO research Crafting to get to mining,

That's not necessarily a problem, since Crafting acts to increase the cost of Mining.

Heck, for the total beakers you're not only getting the very-valuable Mining, but Crafting, too! Put that way you shouldn't be complaining about the annoyance, you should be thanking the Civ Gods for their grandmotherly kindness.

we removed Agriculture as a prereq for animal husbandry,

Which also effectively lowered the cost for Animal Husbandry... and I think that's fine. Removing Crafting as a pre-req for Mining would act to lower the cost of Mining. And the cost of Bronze Working, too, with Copper and Axemen. Maybe that's fine, but I really don't like the reasoning (to paraphrase) "It's valuable so it should be cheaper." (OTOH, changing Crafting plus boosting the cost of Mining and/or Bronze Working would kill any objection on these grounds, and perhaps do everything you want, too.)

The "flexibility" thing is a much better argument IMO. I like the idea of an elven civ that doesn't pick up Mining for a long time. Still, I've never thought the need to go through Crafting to get to Mining (and beyond) much of a burden.

Crafting would make a much better prereq for Archery imho.

I agree it'd seem more realistic/sensible. Contrary to Mining, my initial reaction to the idea of making Archery cheaper/quicker-to-get is "Good." I wouldn't mind tipping things a bit more toward defense.

 

[Breez]

Removing Crafting as a pre-req for Mining would act to lower the cost of Mining. And the cost of Bronze Working, too, with Copper and Axemen. Maybe that's fine, but I really don't like the reasoning (to paraphrase) "It's valuable so it should be cheaper." (OTOH, changing Crafting plus boosting the cost of Mining and/or Bronze Working would kill any objection on these grounds, and perhaps do everything you want, too.).

Easily solveable by increasing the cost of mining by 10 or 20% (AND I just read you OTOH lol)

The interesting route may be then make it so IF you already have crafting Mining is then 10 or 20% cheaper

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

(OTOH, changing Crafting plus boosting the cost of Mining and/or Bronze Working would kill any objection on these grounds, and perhaps do everything you want, too.)

that's exactly what I want. I am very aware that removing Crafting as a prereq would make Mining too easy to get if the beaker cost weren't raised. that's why I said in the OP that some tweaking of beaker costs would be in order to keep things balanced after these changes

 

[Verdian]

.........You've been reading the RifE forum, haven't you.

No, but if you're doing that, maybe I should start.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

well, the thread seems to have had some support. I'd love to hear Sephi's opinion on this

 

[Sephi]

Mining->Archery is indeed weird. a few things in the current techtree feel like BTS leftovers. For example the biggest function of Crafting Tech currently is to make the melee path cheaper for all civs who start with crafting. Since FFH has real unique units like Pyre Zombies and you are already encouraged to pick a path that fits your civ I do not see how Techs like crafting or ancient chants really add to the game.

I do have plans to for early techs to

• increase the tech pace of the early game
• increase the "choose one path" element of FFH
• increase the options that you have at gamestart (not just warrior/worker/settler)

but not in 9.0 as enough changes already

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

sounds good, looking forward to WM 10

 

[Micky Onimusha]

I know this thread is a bit old so I'm kind of bumping it from the dead, but something in the original post that I wanted to chime in my opnion/support with:

needing to research it to get Mining for forestchopping is annoying.

This part does get on my nerves a fair bit, simply because a lot of resources found at Calender appear on Forest tiles, so in order to access them (unless you're the Elves) you need Crafting+Mining as well as Agriculture+Calender, which makes Gems/Gold starts all the more attractive in comparison to starts around Dyes/Silks/etc. Since this thread is about very-early tech balance, I was hoping to maybe chime in with the idea that either all civs can build Plantations on Forested tiles (as opposed to just the Elves) or moving Forest chopping to Crafting (but maybe making Mining be the first stage where you get a hammer bonus for chopping a forest).