Tech Tree Discussion

[Hydromancerx]

So you get attacked by men riding strange creatures called horses but cannot learn to defend against them because they were clever enough to never show you their elephants?

By the time Armored Cavalry come along you will have already learned the other mounted creature techs. This is the last of the techs you can put off without not having to learn Elephant Domestication.

Thus in your scenario where you do not have horses then you are either riding elephants, camels, an exotic megafauna or have nothing. If you are riding elephants then its not an issue if Armored Cavalry requires Elephant Riding since you already know this tech.

If you are riding Camels then you are in the situation the horsemen were, but probably already learn Equine Domestication from Mounted Archery tech. If you are Riding a Mega Fauna mount then you already needed to learn Equine, Camel and Elephant Domestication.

If you have none I do not know why you are researching Armored Calvary in the first place.

 

[Azurian]

@MrAzure

Looks like Invention was looked over when we sperated out Alchemy from Invention. Thus the following need to be changed.

Armored Cavalry
Req Techs: Stirrup AND Armor Crafting AND Elephant Domestication AND Invention

Clockworks
Req Techs: Invention

Gunpowder
Req Techs: Education AND Invention

Mountaineering
Req Techs: Invention

Perspective
Req Techs: Paper AND Architecture AND Invention

Printing Press
Req Techs: Education AND Invention

Note these changes can be included with your Trans-Human tech stuff.

All changes DONE.

Forensics
(x72, y19)
requires Modern Healthcare

Aquaculture
(74, y17)
requires ecology and marine biology
UMM..building changes are needed

Media Psycology
moved 1 down (x78, y17)

ADDED


Digital Culture


Modular Amarment

Gene Enhancement

Marine Architecture

 

[Vokarya]

I'm really looking forward to seeing all of these new Transhuman Era techs. I would just like to ask if maybe we could spread them out a little on the tech tree so it doesn't look like a solid wall of techs once you get there. I think this might work:

• Transhuman Era: Columns x79 through x109
• Galactic Era: Columns x110 through x142 (open up more room for expanding this)
• The End (Analyze Strings or whatever else we want): x143

 

[Azurian]

I'm really looking forward to seeing all of these new Transhuman Era techs. I would just like to ask if maybe we could spread them out a little on the tech tree so it doesn't look like a solid wall of techs once you get there. I think this might work:

• Transhuman Era: Columns x79 through x109
• Galactic Era: Columns x110 through x142 (open up more room for expanding this)
• The End (Analyze Strings or whatever else we want): x143

Let ne get started..this is a good idea!

 

[Azurian]

@koshing
@Hydro
What do you think?
Use Your Right Direction Button to Move

Spoiler :

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

By the time Armored Cavalry come along you will have already learned the other mounted creature techs. This is the last of the techs you can put off without not having to learn Elephant Domestication.

I repeat (since Koshling had it backwards), why should I need Elephant Domestication for armoured cav? I don't have elephants but I do have horses. Can't horses be armoured without elephants showing them how it is done?

 

[Hydromancerx]

@koshing
@Hydro
What do you think?

Its up to how much work you want to put into it. The main limit of the tre tree has been space. And it takes a lot of work to move the techs. It also can easily lead to tecs getting accidentally covered up.

So as long as your careful and willing to do it, then feel free to spread out the tree to the right as much as you need.

 

[Vokarya]

I was hunting through the tech tree and a few things stick out regarding the Poetry and Chivalry technologies. Poetry only leads to Romanticism, which is two eras away. This makes Poetry really skippable for the entire Medieval Era, until you need to get to Romanticism which is in the Renaissance (and as I've mentioned before, historically belongs to the Industrial Era). The other is that Chivalry is only needed for Clockpunk (dead end) and Tournaments, and Tournaments is only needed for Grand War. So, I suggest the following changes to tech requirements to tie these techs closer into the tech tree:

Chivalry
Required Techs: Armored Cavalry AND Heraldry AND Poetry

Cavalry Tactics
Required Techs: Chivalry AND Dueling AND Matchlock AND Mounted Archery

Leadership
Required Techs: Chivalry AND Divine Right

Romanticism
Required Techs: Chivalry AND Free Artistry

Do you think these changes would work?

 

[strategyonly]

nvm . ... .. -

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Chivalry
Required Techs: Armored Cavalry AND Heraldry AND Poetry

Makes sense since the whole chivalric idea comes from poetry.

 

[Vokarya]

I have been thinking about our discussion regarding Standardization, and in general looking at the Ancient and Classical Eras, and I noticed we do not have a tech that represents the evolution of the state. The traditional order of the evolution of society is band (default), tribe (Tribalism), chiefdom (Chiefdom), and finally state (which we don't have). We have the Despotism civic enabled at Bronze Working, but I think we need something earlier. Also, I have never been comfortable with the Monotheism prerequisite on Monarchy. I think a polytheistic society could get to Monarchy just fine.

So, these are three technologies for the Ancient Era that I came up with:

First off is The State. Possible other names would be Government or Law. This would be the emergence of an actual state, with the first prototypes of government. The OR prerequisites here represent a society becoming large and complex enough that a Chiefdom cannot manage it effectively.

The State (Ancient Era)
Location: x21 y3
Req Techs: Sedentary Lifestyle AND (Agriculture OR Boat Fishing OR Caste System)
Cost: 90
Leads to: Civic Religion
Allows: Despotism civic

Second would be Civic Religion. This would be when religion becomes a government act.

Civic Religion (Ancient Era)
Location: x23 y15
Req Techs: Priesthood AND The State
Cost: 100
Allows: State Church civic

Third would be Divine Ruler. This would cover concepts like the Pharaohs being god-kings, the Roman imperial cult, the Chinese Mandate of Heaven, and others. The OR prerequisites simulate needing to discover the concept of a god before you proclaim the leader to be one.

If you think the name is too close to Divine Right, we could change Divine Right to Absolutism. This is what Realism Invictus does.

Divine Ruler (Ancient Era)
Location: x25 y15
Req Techs: Civic Religion AND (Dualism OR Monotheism OR Polytheism)
Cost: 110
Leads to: Monarchy
Allows: Divine Cult civic

Finally, change Monarchy to merge this chain back into the main tech tree.

Monarchy
Req Techs: Bronze Working AND Divine Ruler

This change would break some of the redundancy chains I found earlier. These techs could be restored back to a previous version:

City Planning
Required Techs: Road Building AND Writing

Code of Laws
Required Techs: Monarchy AND Oratory AND Writing

Construction
Required Techs: Masonry AND Mathematics AND Monarchy

Road Building
Required Techs: Masonry AND Monarchy AND Trade

What do you think of these changes?

 

[Vokarya]

Makes sense since the whole chivalric idea comes from poetry.

That was another concept I was building on, that being the whole idea of the chivalric epic.

As far as the Chivalry -> Romanticism link goes, that one is droppable. I was reading Wikipedia for ideas and it suggested that Romanticism involved a "revived medievalism", so I thought Chivalry was the best option.

Ideally, I would like to kick Romanticism all the way to Enlightenment + Free Artistry + Steam Power, because the Romantic movement was a response to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. I posted that once, but no one responded.

 

[Thunderbrd]

How about calling it Dynasty or Dynasticism to represent the extension of rulership beyond one chief to another.

 

[Vokarya]

How about calling it Dynasty or Dynasticism to represent the extension of rulership beyond one chief to another.

For which technology? Dynasticism sounds to me like a synonym for Monarchy more than anything else. (Incidentally, this is yet another Realism Invictus name -- the Dynasticism technology allows the Monarchy government.)

 

[Thunderbrd]

Well... dynasties are families of rulership. It would be the natural extension into a State to assign family members of the Lord minor rulership domains such as 'mayorships'. I mean... lets face it, we mislabel monarchy as coming in a bit late in our historic Civ outlook anyhow since Monarchy was fully in place in Sumeria, aka as far back as written history can currently go. In every way we think of a Monarch, passing down rule of succession based on first born sons, having a divine right to the throne as established by God or 'the gods', having absolute authority over his domain... the only difference really was that Sumerian Kings had a tough time commanding more than one city as each had their own 'god' and thus their own appointed King.

So looking at the step out from Chiefdom, where do we have to go but immediately to Monarchy? When we look at Chinese and other cultural histories, we see something LIKE kingdom but differentiated in the fact that they extended rulership authorities not just to appointees and 'employees' of the state but to Family of the ruler. These were Dynasties and if we're looking for a missing gap that may have taken place between Chiefdom and Monarchy, sharing some concurrent side development with the iron-fisted Dictatorship approach, you could find that Dynasties were natural evolutions of Chiefdom and were naturally a preceding step just before Monarchy.

Unfortunately, the King Lists in Sumeria don't give any supporting evidence that Monarchy was predated by any other system. In fact, they suggest that Monarchy went back beyond the existence of the Human species and was passed along to us reluctantly as the 'Gods' decided to fade into the background of our politics to allow us to 'grow up' as a species a bit. Since our current model is not based on Sumerian evidence of an Ancient Alien manipulation creating the 'modern man' we know today, then we must figure they were embellishing on an invented pre-history so they could simply tell their people what they wanted the masses to believe. This means basically that by the time writing was established in any truly effective form, Monarchy was already firmly developed.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Chivalry
Required Techs: Armored Cavalry AND Heraldry AND Poetry

Cavalry Tactics
Required Techs: Chivalry AND Dueling AND Matchlock AND Mounted Archery

Leadership
Required Techs: Chivalry AND Divine Right

Romanticism
Required Techs: Chivalry AND Free Artistry

Do you think these changes would work?

I like these changes. I approve.

@MrAzure

Please make these changes to the tech tree.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

So, these are three technologies for the Ancient Era that I came up with:

First off is The State. Possible other names would be Government or Law. This would be the emergence of an actual state, with the first prototypes of government. The OR prerequisites here represent a society becoming large and complex enough that a Chiefdom cannot manage it effectively.

The State (Ancient Era)
Location: x21 y3
Req Techs: Sedentary Lifestyle AND (Agriculture OR Boat Fishing OR Caste System)
Cost: 90
Leads to: Civic Religion
Allows: Despotism civic

Second would be Civic Religion. This would be when religion becomes a government act.

Civic Religion (Ancient Era)
Location: x23 y15
Req Techs: Priesthood AND The State
Cost: 100
Allows: State Church civic

Third would be Divine Ruler. This would cover concepts like the Pharaohs being god-kings, the Roman imperial cult, the Chinese Mandate of Heaven, and others. The OR prerequisites simulate needing to discover the concept of a god before you proclaim the leader to be one.

If you think the name is too close to Divine Right, we could change Divine Right to Absolutism. This is what Realism Invictus does.

Divine Ruler (Ancient Era)
Location: x25 y15
Req Techs: Civic Religion AND (Dualism OR Monotheism OR Polytheism)
Cost: 110
Leads to: Monarchy
Allows: Divine Cult civic

If I may make a suggestion, I think Divine Ruler should come a bit earlier in the Ancient era. In addition to what Thunderbrd said, if Divine Ruler reflects the Egyptian Pharoah/Gods, it should be available on the early side of the Ancient era, as opposed to the later. It could be a matter of switching the order of Civic Religion and Divine Ruler, on the basis that first comes a ruler stating he is a god, and then comes building up an organized church around that idea. Or you could push it back to the tier of techs that come right after Sedentary Lifestyle, so that Divine Ruler requires Sedentary Lifestyle and Mysticism?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

One of the stories about the early Pharaohs was that when they became pharaoh they changed the religion from having two main gods basically ("Just Rule" and "Rule by Might"). Making the first evil, the second good and hence validating the pharaoh's rule. So what I am trying to say is that we do not yet have the religion techs in the tree to go with these state techs.

Johny Smith (Rapture & RoH) suggested, in order:-

• Supernatural (our Ritualism)
• Animism
• Gods (our Mysticism?)

along with

• animal sacrifice (both in Sacrifice Cult)
• human sacrifice

all pre Sedentary Lifestyle and

• Polytheism (our Polytheism)
• Veneration of the Dead (our Ancestor Worship)
• Mysticism
• Monotheism (our Monotheism)
• Esoterism
• Henotheism

One problem with his suggestions is that they are just a single word and sometimes that word can man many things.

This could all lead to a different way of doing the early religions. At Supernatural (our Ritualism) special features in the landscape take on extra meaning; river crossings, caves, volcanoes, springs and so on. In game terms this just allows a simple shrine. At Animism living creatures, special plants and animals now have importance. Your simple shrine can be upgraded with a shrine for each plant and animal in the vicinity. At Gods each city and each new built city get a"unique" set of gods depending on culture, shrines built and stuff in vicinity. At polytheism a "unifier" comes along and unifies the gods in all your nation into a polytheistic religion to which your nation converts (if you want). This means that there are no religions before Polytheism and each nation stats with a unique one. I am not sure how well that would fit with C2C as it is a big change. We could re-include some of AAranda's ideas though.

 

[Vokarya]

One of the stories about the early Pharaohs was that when they became pharaoh they changed the religion from having two main gods basically ("Just Rule" and "Rule by Might"). Making the first evil, the second good and hence validating the pharaoh's rule. So what I am trying to say is that we do not yet have the religion techs in the tree to go with these state techs.

Johny Smith (Rapture & RoH) suggested, in order:-

• Supernatural (our Ritualism)
• Animism
• Gods (our Mysticism?)

along with

• animal sacrifice (both in Sacrifice Cult)
• human sacrifice

all pre Sedentary Lifestyle and

• Polytheism (our Polytheism)
• Veneration of the Dead (our Ancestor Worship)
• Mysticism
• Monotheism (our Monotheism)
• Esoterism
• Henotheism

One problem with his suggestions is that they are just a single word and sometimes that word can man many things.

This could all lead to a different way of doing the early religions. At Supernatural (our Ritualism) special features in the landscape take on extra meaning; river crossings, caves, volcanoes, springs and so on. In game terms this just allows a simple shrine. At Animism living creatures, special plants and animals now have importance. Your simple shrine can be upgraded with a shrine for each plant and animal in the vicinity. At Gods each city and each new built city get a"unique" set of gods depending on culture, shrines built and stuff in vicinity. At polytheism a "unifier" comes along and unifies the gods in all your nation into a polytheistic religion to which your nation converts (if you want). This means that there are no religions before Polytheism and each nation stats with a unique one. I am not sure how well that would fit with C2C as it is a big change. We could re-include some of AAranda's ideas though.

I think that Animism in this list is equivalent to our Shamanism technology -- we have all the Invocation Huts and Shamanistic Temples, but they are religion-keyed. I don't think Esoterism and Henotheism are too different from Monotheism and Meditation to need specific technologies.

I could get behind moving Sacrifice Cult back to the Prehistoric Era. How about this?

Sacrifice Cult
Location: x17 y19
Cost: 60
Req Techs: Mysticism + (Livestock Domestication OR Slavery)

What you are suggesting with the early religions is a major change, but I think it fits with the individualized nature of early religions. Dualism would be another really early religion source (Zoroastrianism) and you could move Kemetism backwards (to Ancestor Worship or even further to have a second early religion), then let Polytheism, Monotheism, and the rest stay where they are with their religions.

 

[Vokarya]

If I may make a suggestion, I think Divine Ruler should come a bit earlier in the Ancient era. In addition to what Thunderbrd said, if Divine Ruler reflects the Egyptian Pharoah/Gods, it should be available on the early side of the Ancient era, as opposed to the later. It could be a matter of switching the order of Civic Religion and Divine Ruler, on the basis that first comes a ruler stating he is a god, and then comes building up an organized church around that idea. Or you could push it back to the tier of techs that come right after Sedentary Lifestyle, so that Divine Ruler requires Sedentary Lifestyle and Mysticism?

We could move Divine Ruler back to (Caste System OR Priesthood) - that would put it into the third tier of Ancient techs (my current setup has it at tier 5). Requiring Mysticism for Ancient technologies is redundant because Mysticism is required for Sedentary Lifestyle (via Megalith Construction).

I'd like to leave Civic Religion's prerequisites alone - the trick would be working it back into the tree. I don't think it should be necessary for any of the Dualism/Polytheism/Monotheism techs, and there aren't many other explicit religious techs in the later Ancient or Classical eras. It occurs to me, though, that Civic Religion would make a good prerequisite for Calendar since priests kept a lot of time rituals.