Tech Tree Discussion

[Dancing Hoskuld]

It is Platyping's tech screen he does not do BUG.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Sometimes I wish we would not do BUG either.

 

[Toffer90]

I guess I'm saying that's when we learned, in say, the US, the Mummification tech so perhaps the Mummification tech should be ignorable all the way up to Archaeology, at which point it has Mummification as a prereq.

To me it makes far more sense if archeology leads to mummification tech, though this would make it hard to invent mummification at the time it was a common practice. ^^
I would prefer to have it so that archeology halves the cost of inventing mummification. Late civilizations did rediscover mummification methods by practicing archeology. Rediscovering mummification methods was not, imo, a step in the direction of discovering the value of, and how to practice archeology.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Sometimes I wish we would not do BUG either.

BUG, WoC etc. are what allow more than one modder to work on the mod at the same time. If we did not have them all changes would need to go through one person and they would be the only one able to update the SVN.

The only way we could include all these things when we started out was to use Revolutions as we had no one who would do dll work.

I for one would not like to go back to those bad old days.

 

[pepper2000]

Yes, we need for hammers on Earth starting around the mid-Modern era. Even with the Fusion Plant (which should be nerfed), production tends to fall behind. I'm working on a few factories and power plants that will boost production, but I'm not sure it's enough.

Regarding off-planet colonies, I started with something close to option A but am shifting more toward option B, so production boosters in space are more meaningful. Scales are very different from Earth. I still don't feel that I have the balance right.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Since Pepper2000 posted while I was editing my previous post I thought I better put my tech tree discussion in a new post

Back on topic - my mod has a totally different take on the tech tree and eras

Era 1 - Wandering ends with technology Gathering

• Family unit wanders around the map getting what it can and exploring. Similar to the Nomad unit by Johny Smith and in Albert's(?) Nomadic Start mod
  
  
• The Family unit is the only unit available at this time

Era 2 - Migratory ends with tech Animal Husbandry

• "Tribe" has a seasonal range, just like all the other animals on the map. Represented by seasonal camps on the map inside a territory. A screen similar to the city screen is used to manage the tribe. The range is like the city cultural borders but not the same shape.
  
  
• New ones will wander off to find a new range.
  
  
• Disasters like the flooding of the North Sea or Ice ages also have the "tribe" become a unit with all its gear which can then move to a new location
  
  
• Two settler type units "new band" and "evacuating band" are available as well as a small number of hunters, recon and warrior units. I am aiming for 1 hunter, 1 recon and 2 warrior per settlement. Note both settlers are strong defenders but the "evacuating band" is very week on attack.
  
  
• Chiefs (Great Generals) are allowed as Commanders.
  
  
• Unit size is limited to solo unless you have a Chief which would allow squad size.
  
  
• movement inside the range is twice as fast as outside to represent the fact that the units could be anywhere inside the range at any time. I achieve this by having a special route placed in all tiles in the range.

Era 3 - Pastoral - ends with Agriculture (become Agrarian) or Animal Riding (become Nomadic)

• a small era similar to migratory except you can now have very small settlements to exploit some resources eg salt.
  
  
• People living in these settlements don't migrate like the rest of their nation.
  
  
• The settlement only uses the plot they are on and can't grow bigger
  
  
• same units as above but can have 1 more of each
  
  
• Unit size still limited as above
  
  
• movement as above

Era 4 - Pre-urban?

Era 4a - Nomadic ends with Agriculture (note it does include such techs as Iron Working and Gunpowder which don't need Agriculture to discover them)

• range can now be bigger. The size will depend on the number of food resources, the more the smaller the range.
  
  
• specialist settlements can now grow a bit bigger but still only use the plot they are on.
  
  
• Settler type units can move farther and can include herds in them
  
  
• Number, type and size of units now only dependent on technologies but most of the military techs that affect this require Agriculture so require your nation to be Agrarian.

Era 4b - Agrarian ends with Urbanisation(?) somewhere in the late Renaissance

• standard Civ cultural borders so changing from a range to a city will probably reduce your territory. Specialist settlements may become cities or mines or fortifications (more than normal fortifications) as decided at the time of becoming Agrarian.

Notes on Era 4

1. The two sub-eras are side by side on the tech tree
   
   
2. If you wish to remain Nomadic you must not study Agriculture. Being Agrarian does not stop you studying the Nomadic techs.
   
   
3. only a small number of techs in this part of the tree require you to be Agrarian. Probably less that a third.
   
   
4. I am still working on the end point of this Era. The difficulty is catering for the Mongols who were and are a special case of Nomadic.

 

[Hydromancerx]

To me it makes far more sense if archeology leads to mummification tech, though this would make it hard to invent mummification at the time it was a common practice. ^^
I would prefer to have it so that archeology halves the cost of inventing mummification. Late civilizations did rediscover mummification methods by practicing archeology. Rediscovering mummification methods was not, imo, a step in the direction of discovering the value of, and how to practice archeology.

Game wise its a little backwards to do it like that even if its true. So in a way I am agreeing with you but the implementation is just in the reverse order due to how the game rules work.

meaning the only way to represent Archeology teaching you mummification is to make it a prereq since if you had archeology be a prereq for mummification then it would still be a dead end tech.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@DH

What is the advantage to staying nomadic?

 

[Toffer90]

Game wise its a little backwards to do it like that even if its true. So in a way I am agreeing with you but the implementation is just in the reverse order due to how the game rules work.

meaning the only way to represent Archeology teaching you mummification is to make it a prereq since if you had archeology be a prereq for mummification then it would still be a dead end tech.

Since I don't have anything against dead end techs, I might have considered making mummification speed up archeology research instead, that would require a new tag for techs though.
I don't intend to interfere with your plan for techs, I'll probably like the end result of your plans anyway; just voicing an alternate perspective is all.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@DH

What is the advantage to staying nomadic?

Faster cheaper units mostly but they are slightly weaker than the Agrarian units. Also as I said a third or less techs in that era require you to be Agrarian. I'll see if I can find of make a picture of that part of the tree.

 

[Thunderbrd]

To me it makes far more sense if archeology leads to mummification tech, though this would make it hard to invent mummification at the time it was a common practice. ^^
I would prefer to have it so that archeology halves the cost of inventing mummification. Late civilizations did rediscover mummification methods by practicing archeology. Rediscovering mummification methods was not, imo, a step in the direction of discovering the value of, and how to practice archeology.

You're right in that the only reason that it became a part of archaeology is because there were ancient civilizations that we were researching that had known mummification. So it's not like it was a prerequisite for archaeology really.

Your counterproposal makes sense as well.

Yes, we need for hammers on Earth starting around the mid-Modern era. Even with the Fusion Plant (which should be nerfed), production tends to fall behind. I'm working on a few factories and power plants that will boost production, but I'm not sure it's enough.

Regarding off-planet colonies, I started with something close to option A but am shifting more toward option B, so production boosters in space are more meaningful. Scales are very different from Earth. I still don't feel that I have the balance right.

Many of the factory buildings seem strongly undervaluated for what hammers they bring and could be made to give a lot more, given the modern+ eras we're talking about here.

I liked DH's intended method of making the factories more limited and something you can't build in every city though.


@DH: I've looked at your alternative tech tree previously, and as I look at that and I read what you have here, clearly it IS an entirely different mod. I can't even wrap my head around a lot of what you wish to do due to it being dramatically foreign in design ideals. AKA, I'd have to play it to get a deep appreciation for the whys and wherefores of your concepts. Are you looking to use the same DLL? Are we working on projects that overlap at times? Are you opening up your own SVN? Should I continue to worry about how you feel about my own design ideals or try to find middle grounds or a harmony between your opinions and those of others in C2C?

I guess my only reason for not wanting to entertain THAT degree of reworking is that it really is too different an approach and thus, in essence, destroys C2C as we know it to do so. Unfortunately, the loss of the teamwork we've long shared will be a dramatic detriment to both efforts. Which is exactly why I have not sought to go off on my own either.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I liked DH's intended method of making the factories more limited and something you can't build in every city though.

Well pollution was suppose to be be a way to discourage players from building all the factories in one city.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Well pollution was suppose to be be a way to discourage players from building all the factories in one city.

Doesn't dissuade the AI at all. Thus the original design destroys the AI.

 

[Hydromancerx]

That's a good point. Have to baby the AI and sick them on rails a lot of the time.

 

[strategyonly]

I wonder if he(DH) was just thinking of the Nomadic side only??

 

[Thunderbrd]

That's a good point. Have to baby the AI and sick them on rails a lot of the time.

I could find a way to fix it but the complaint about the massive volume of these buildings to construct was also something to resolve. DH's plan was very good on this imo. I'll have to try to dredge up when he last explained it to me.

I wonder if he(DH) was just thinking of the Nomadic side only??

I was partially responding to:

And that is one of the reasons I am leaving this mod. It all boils down to irreconcilable differences of opinion on too many topics.

Which he just stated today in the Advanced Disease thread.

And I get what he means when he explains what he wants to do with the early part of the game, the tech tree, limits on ranges and populations and unit counts. Absolutely a lot of that strikes me as just as irreconcilable from my perspective. I get a lot of his frustrations and I'm saddened he feels as he does but I can't tell him not to and much as I've tried to explain my reasoning behind my opinions, it doesn't change his mind nor has he been able to change mine. And now with Hydro's return having included a tremendous all out assault on a lot of the adjusting DH has been doing to the tech tree, I figured that would tip him past the balance point since he was already hanging on by a thread to whether he wanted to continue working on C2C or branch off into his own mod.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@DH

What is the advantage to staying nomadic?

Nomads get more space on the map, move faster for the most part but have weaker units even if they are cheaper.

Are you looking to use the same DLL?

Are we working on projects that overlap at times?

Not completely sure yet but most likely.

There will be overlap. I still intend to get the User Interface module ready for multi-map experimentation.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Platyping's tech screen

Where is this controlled? All i could find is this. But I don't know where in C2C. I also looked in CvTechChooser.py but it doesn't seem to have the color values for Eras.

EDIT: Also found this even if its the wrong color code. Ex. White is #FAFAFA or 250, 250, 250.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The colours are set in CvTechChooser.py in lines 379 to 392. The RoM set is not used at all.

You need three colours besides the era colours

• Red (206, 65, 69) is currently used for techs that you can't research eg ones you don't have the resource or building required.
  
  
• Already researched techs are all the same colour ignoring era (222, 222, 22)
  
  
• Tech(s) you are currently researching needs to stand out, this includes all the unresearched techs to get to the one selected (100, 140, 220)

Plattyping uses a formulae for era colours based on the era number

iColor = Info.getEra() * 255 / gc.getNumEraInfos()
(iColor*5, (255 - iColor)/2, iColor)
​

The two lines with that code are where you need to put your if tests if you want the colours to be C2C unique.

Known bugs:

1) techs that require a tech you can't get are still showing as available at the moment. The assumption in the code was that the unresearchable tech was a dead end rather than there being alternate dead end branches.

2) Some screen resolutions are not working properly for vertical spacing. They are a couple of pixels out due to rounding causing there to be an annoying vertical scroll bar​

edit Platyping had a background screen unique for each nation. I replaced that with the C2C single default background since we have so many possible nations and Cultures.

 

[Hydromancerx]

So I was looking through the TTT- In the Trenches mod today. And they had soem interesting techs. Note their mod only focuses on WWI so its a very short tree. Here are all the techs they had ...

- Tear Gas
- Armored Vehicles
- Field Telephone
- Chemical Warfare
- Steel Helmet
- Cryptography
- Aerial Combat
- Flame Thrower
- Chlorine Gas
- Tracer Bullets
- Mining (As In Explosive Mines)
- Depth Charges
- Tactical Bombing
- Interrupter Gear
- Mustard Gas
- Indirect Fire
- The Tank
- Hydrophones
- Air Traffic Control
- Counter Battery
- Rotating Turret

Soem of those seem interesting. If not as a tech i like the idea of tear Gas, Chlorine Gas and Mustard Gas being used. Hydrophones and Tracer Bullets seem interesting as well.

the down side is that era on the tree is a bit cramped. So I am not sure how much WWI stuff we could fit in if we choose to use any of this.