Starting techs

[Mik1984]

Some civs have some starting techs, those starting techs have been historishly attributed to the civs, however the reason why those civs had those techs early is because of the environment they existed.

In my recent Immortal games it has shown how much does the correlation of the four basic resource harvesting techs and the starting spot count in the game. I tried a couple games with Cyrrus: Agriculture, Hunting. The usually great starting location with sea resources failed, because I couldn't start building the first workboat until I got fishing. However having a historishly similar starting location with flood plains, Ivory, Cow and Horses (to be revealed) the game flourished as never before. I could take a shot at Animal Husbandry easily, because of both optional prerequisites.(And thanks to the horses in bfc I could take a shot at the wheel and develop my Immortals before others had spearmen)

The civ4 made a step towards balanced starting locations by making the capitals bfc resourceful enough, however this generator does not take in consideration the specialty of a civ.

There could be some ways how to deal with this problem. For now on I will leave it open for brainstorming.

 

[Rvil Plum]

The most sensitive starting tech is definitely fishing, because if you pick the wrong civ and then find that you are in a coastal location with seafood resources, then you simply can't work any sea tiles until you research fishing. You can however work all inland tiles, even if you don't have the tech to improve them. Yes, you don't get any huge benefit until you improve inland tiles, but like I said, at least you can use them in the interim.

My gut feeling is that all civs should have the innate ability to fish, because in reality all civs did. Yes, many civs were located deep in the heart of a continent and far from the coast, but they all had streams, rivers and lakes, and they all fished to supplement their diet.

I would therefore allow all civs the ability to work coastal tiles that are directly adjacent to the coast, but would deny them the ability to build fishing boats, or work coastal tiles located two tiles away from the coast, until they researched boat building. As such if there is a seafood resource directly adjacent to the coast, and there usually is, then at least all civs could work it.

Regards - Mr P

 

[Mik1984]

The biggest pain of not having fishing is not that you can't harvest, since there's really nothing to harvest before you build a work boat. If you have fishing first thing you start producing in a coastal city is a work boat. The turns you need to research fishing put you in a big disadvantage.
Not having any of the basic techs is a setback, even if you don't need to have it from beginning because it is an additional tech you need to research before alphabet.
My idea is that if you have a resource in your territory that needs one of the basic techs to be harvested, you get a +50% bonus towards that tech. So the inconvenience of not having the right starting tech is balanced by the research bonus for an additional tech. If you have right starting techs, you don't get any bonuses. But I don't really know how to mod it in.

 

[omnimutant]

Maybe a Future Game could not have starting techs, but assign two random ones based on your first city start location. Since you can't research until you plop down anyway, it could assigned at the time of settlement. IE, if you plop near deer and wheat you'd get Agriculture and Hunting. If you plop near fish and hills, Fishing and Mining or whatever. The only down side is that Civ's who normally start with Mysticism or Wheel, would be hosed.

So Maybe let every Civ start with one Trait and assign the other based on settlement location? So you could start with one of the less obvious traits, Mining/Wheel/Mysticism then get Fishing, Hunting, or Agriculture depending on where you settle.

 

[Mik1984]

Maybe a Future Game could not have starting techs, but assign two random ones based on your first city start location. Since you can't research until you plop down anyway, it could assigned at the time of settlement. IE, if you plop near deer and wheat you'd get Agriculture and Hunting. If you plop near fish and hills, Fishing and Mining or whatever. The only down side is that Civ's who normally start with Mysticism or Wheel, would be hosed.

So Maybe let every Civ start with one Trait and assign the other based on settlement location? So you could start with one of the less obvious traits, Mining/Wheel/Mysticism then get Fishing, Hunting, or Agriculture depending on where you settle.

You need the basic techs only to survive until you grab alphabet and get the rest from others. The sooner you get A, the better. Being 20 turns late may cost you the entire game.

 

[Supr49er]

Maybe a Future Game could not have starting techs, but assign two random ones based on your first city start location. Since you can't research until you plop down anyway, it could assigned at the time of settlement. IE, if you plop near deer and wheat you'd get Agriculture and Hunting. If you plop near fish and hills, Fishing and Mining or whatever. The only down side is that Civ's who normally start with Mysticism or Wheel, would be hosed.

So Maybe let every Civ start with one Trait and assign the other based on settlement location? So you could start with one of the less obvious traits, Mining/Wheel/Mysticism then get Fishing, Hunting, or Agriculture depending on where you settle.

Not bad. What good is knowing how to mine, if there are no hills? Or fishing when you start in the middle of the continent?

Many discoveries were based on need. For instance, could you really discover Animal Husbandry if never saw pigs, cattle, sheep, horses?

 

[Rvil Plum]

Errr - yes.

Llamas - South America

Probably other examples, but can't think of any at the moment other than Camels, but they don't count, as the civs who used them also had access to cattle, goats, pigs, horses, etc. Same problem with the civs using Yaks up in the Himalayas.

However, Llamas do count, as the South American civs were isolated from everyone else, and yet they still managed to independently "invent" (if that's the right word), domesticated livestock.

Regards - Mr P

 

[omnimutant]

However, Llamas do count, as the South American civs were isolated from everyone else, and yet they still managed to independently "invent" (if that's the right word), domesticated livestock.

We as a species are pretty intuitive, and I'm sure given a long enough time line we could figure out a use for everything. Once a practical use is found for something it generally sticks. So even being separated by time, oceans and even isolated from other cultures, we still seem to come up with many of the same concepts in History(we all have the same biological functions so it only makes sense). Look at all the Pyramids all over the world. Many cultures independently invented many of the same things/concepts around the same time(give or take a few hundred years).

 

[Mik1984]

Maybe it should be the other way around? Maybe instead of uniforming the civs by giving them the techs for their lands you should give them lands for their techs.

Every civ would start in a predefined type of a region. This would also include the longitude. The type of starting region would be one of the properties of a civ. This would not only define the capitals bfc but some resources found not further than 5 tiles off the starting point. There would be no Mongols without horses, Romans without iron, Greeks without marble or Egyptians without stone etc...

 

[InFlux5]

It would be very nice to have starting locations weighted for historical accuracy. It would make games easier; but that's perfectly alright, because it would also make them more consistent. You could move up a difficulty level, and know that in each game your starting variables and capital location would have some degree of synergy.

 

[Mik1984]

It would be very nice to have starting locations weighted for historical accuracy. It would make games easier; but that's perfectly alright, because it would also make them more consistent. You could move up a difficulty level, and know that in each game your starting variables and capital location would have some degree of synergy.

This wouldn't make the game easier, since the AI would also have a synergy of starting location and the civ's specifics.

 

[sydhe]

Starting without fishing isn't much of a problem because it's such a cheap tech anyway. I can usually find something else to build (typically a barracks or warrior). If I feel I really need fishing, I can research it in a few turns and switch production to a work boat.

It's more of a nuisance if all your food sources require animal husbandry and your civ lacks both agriculture and hunting. If you also lack the wheel, you need to research three techs to hook up your food source.

 

[Mik1984]

Starting without fishing isn't much of a problem because it's such a cheap tech anyway.

It does matter, on Immortal it does. It's not only the fact that you waste 21 m-turns to research it, but you are not producing the boat, which deprives you from early access to a high yield tile, which delivers a deadly snowball effect. This causes you to get alphabet like 50 turns later in end effect, which usually costs you the entire game.

PS It's not that bad if you need to make a pre-alphabet detour for fishing to meet the needs of your second city, if you have a well placed capital, since then:
- there's no snowball effect
- you'll research it much faster, since:
- you have contact with civs that have it
- and you produce more
- finally you weighted all the options and found that a detour is good, since that city is most probably something you need to found fast to grab some resources.

 

[omnimutant]

Just curious why you feel a delay in alphabet costs you the game?

 

[joncnunn]

Hum, that IS an interesting idea probably easier to implement if the fat X of the starting settler location is used rather than waiting for the city to be founded:

Presence of Gold / Silver / Gems : Increase weight of Mining
Presence of Fish/Crabs/Clams : Increase wieght of Fishing
Presence of Wheat/Corn/Rice : Increase weight of Farming
Presence of Fur/Deer: Increase weight of Hunting
Presence of Stone/Marble: Increase weight of Masonry
Presence of Flood Plains: Increase weight of The Wheel.
Presence of Mountain Peaks: Increase weight of Mystism.

 

[dragodon64]

Masonry isn't a possible starting tech, but the others look good. Though I would include base terrain as well.
For example
Hills- Mining
Forest/Tundra- Hunting
Flood Plains- Agriculture
Coast- Fishing
Grasslands/Plains- Wheel
Ice/Peak- Mysticism (leftovers...)

 

[Mik1984]

Just curious why you feel a delay in alphabet costs you the game?

I don't feel it, I know it. It does cost you the game on immortal, whatever civ, whatever strategy. You must get alphabet to trade and steal techs and getting a tech for which you can buy alphabet is virtually impossible, given the fact that the civ that discovered it has already most of pre-alphabet techs thanks to it. It's slightly gamebraking. I believe it would be less of a gameplay shock if the requirement would be that both civs need to have alphabet for tech trading.
Being slightly late after someone can still go, but the civ will quite soon trade the alphabet first to AI civs who have more techs than you and then you are out of the club - or you may rather sit with a club in a cave.

I don't like the ideas above. They are all in a philosophy for techs for lands, lands for techs would be much more cool.

 

[Rvil Plum]

You don't need to beeline Alphabet on Immortal, as the AI will trade far more early tech if you go along the top of the tech tree and offer them Aesthetics and then Literature and then Music, as few civs take that research route. I hardly ever go the Alphabet route on the higher difficulty levels, as it's a dead end tech. By this I mean that the AI will happily research Mathematics or Alphabet for themselves, so you may as well let them, and research something else that will give you a genuine tech lead and other advantages, (i.e. ability to buy off hostile civs with tech they don't have, first pop at wonder building, etc). The route along the top of the tech tree gives you a tech lead in three techs, whereas Alphabet just gives you a temporary tech lead in one tech and then a dead end, as you are then researching the same tech as the AI.

I'm not saying don't research it, as there are times when I have gone straight to Alphabet, but I am saying you don't need it to win, and that there are better paths than teching straight to Alphabet.

The main problems with following the top of the tech tree and then trading those techs are:

1) You won't have Mathematics, and you really do need cats on the higher difficulty levels at about this stage in the game, so you may have to do a very poor trade to get Mathematics.

2) Some rival civs will research along the top of the tree, after they have researched other stuff first, so although it's easy for you to be first to each of the three techs, someone will always be close behind you. This means you will probably have to trade all three techs whilst still wonder building. If you wait until the wonders from each tech are built, then some AI will have discovered the tech for themselves, and you lose much if not all of it's trade value. You therefore may have to trade all 3 techs with wonders 30% - 70% built and hope the AI don't have an Engineer.

3) Having a tech lead in Aesthetics and then Literature and then Music will cause hostile civs to repeatedly demand each of those techs from you. Refusing them over and over again messes up your Diplomatic relations with them and can easily start a war, so you have to plan ahead, because they are going to be very insistent - LOL.


There are other tech paths that produce similar results as does sling shot and light bulbing and all of these various methods allow you a continuous tech lead along paths the AI have not reached yet, or rarely research for themselves.

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Starting without fishing is a huge problem on the higher difficulty levels. Imagine you are India on a coastal location, with seafood resources. You can't use the sea without fishing. If you research fishing, then bang goes any chance of founding an early religion, or of doing a slingshot off the Oracle, or of etc. In fact you can easily be to slow to build something as easy as the Great Wall if your very first tech is fishing on the higher difficulty levels.

Regards - Mr P

 

[omnimutant]

Well since I turned off tech trading the AI does not seem to acquire techs as fast as before.

 

[Mik1984]

I've tried other options, but researching Alphabet is the most reliable way to get from the lower quarter of the table to the upper one. And I usually get mathematics promptly after by bulbing it.