Tech Tree Discussion

[Yudishtira]

In continuation of the 'flexible tech tree' discussion, we also have techs that should be prereqs but aren't. In early Industrial I just got two in a row. I tech Railroads, but of course I can't build any because they require a "later" tech namely Steel. Then I got Gas Lighting (which obsoletes Torches thus ironically making Oil Lamps worth building), but I won't have the option of any actual gas lights until I get Refining...

I suppose this may be because the column of the tech tree has a set beaker value, so the 'easy' techs are put before the harder ones. As a hard and fast rule, I'm afraid that is a design disaster waiting to happen (if it hasn't already...).

 

[Hydromancerx]

What ever you did to the tech tree HELPED out a ton, the WB goes to the tech tree now 5 times faster and so the turn times improved also like 2% , nice !!!

Well some techs I removed some redundancies, also now flowing through a bottlneck there are less choices you can make at a time. Meaning you have to get through more of the Ancient Era before progressing to the Classical Era.

I may do something similar at the beginning of the Medieval Era too. However the Classical and Medveal Eras did not get so many techs added to them like the Ancient Era did.

BTW where are you in your game SO?

 

[Thunderbrd]

In continuation of the 'flexible tech tree' discussion, we also have techs that should be prereqs but aren't. In early Industrial I just got two in a row. I tech Railroads, but of course I can't build any because they require a "later" tech namely Steel. Then I got Gas Lighting (which obsoletes Torches thus ironically making Oil Lamps worth building), but I won't have the option of any actual gas lights until I get Refining...

I suppose this may be because the column of the tech tree has a set beaker value, so the 'easy' techs are put before the harder ones. As a hard and fast rule, I'm afraid that is a design disaster waiting to happen (if it hasn't already...).

We WERE going to make rails require iron due to this... whatever happened to that?

And what can we do about putting Gas Lighting AFTER Refining? Anyone have any suggestions (I'm not looking at the tech tree at the moment.)

 

[strategyonly]

Well some techs I removed some redundancies, also now flowing through a bottlneck there are less choices you can make at a time. Meaning you have to get through more of the Ancient Era before progressing to the Classical Era.

I may do something similar at the beginning of the Medieval Era too. However the Classical and Medveal Eras did not get so many techs added to them like the Ancient Era did.

BTW where are you in your game SO?

I am in Industrial Era now, but i also have one game in I just reached Classical, then another in Medieval Era just about into Indus, then One in TransHuman, then one in Modern, hows that?? Plus i have more . . . . . . .

 

[Hydromancerx]

We WERE going to make rails require iron due to this... whatever happened to that?

And what can we do about putting Gas Lighting AFTER Refining? Anyone have any suggestions (I'm not looking at the tech tree at the moment.)

I think its clear that game design has to trump historical accuracy here. I will look into the Gas Lighting as well as the Railroad problem. No offense to Vokarya, he did a great job but I think in these cases we need to reverse the order. Rather than ...

Railroad -> Steel
Gas Lighting -> Refining

It will need to be ...

Steel -> Railroad
Refining -> Gas Lighting

Note there may be some other techs from other mods that we might want to add as well. Such as

- Crucible Steel
- Coal Mining

Also TB didn't we have some techs we might want in the Naval Unit discussion?

 

[Thunderbrd]

I think its clear that game design has to trump historical accuracy here. I will look into the Gas Lighting as well as the Railroad problem. No offense to Vokarya, he did a great job but I think in these cases we need to reverse the order. Rather than ...

Railroad -> Steel
Gas Lighting -> Refining

It will need to be ...

Steel -> Railroad
Refining -> Gas Lighting

Note there may be some other techs from other mods that we might want to add as well. Such as

- Crucible Steel
- Coal Mining

Also TB didn't we have some techs we might want in the Naval Unit discussion?

The last discussion on this subject brought up that the first rails were Iron anyhow so shouldn't need to be moved to after steel. The 'gas lighting'... I wonder if that was historically fulfilled by Whale blubber rather than refined oil at first. If I recall my history that was how it went so to simply add the Whale prereq should suffice.

As for the tech tweaks per the naval unit stuff let's wait til after the release- we ARE in a freeze right now and this kind of potentially destabilizing actions should be restricted at the moment right?

 

[Hydromancerx]

@TB

So I have been looking closely at both the C2C tech tree and the RI tech tree and I think I have a solution for the steel problem.

Crucible Steel (NEW)
Location: X47 Y5
Req Techs: Guilds AND Armor Crafting AND Agricultural Tools AND Alchemy
Buildings: Blast Furnace
Resources: Steel

Coal Mining (NEW)
Location: X48 Y5
Req Techs: Crucible Steel
Buildings: Coal Mine
Resources: Coal

Armored Calvary
Req Techs: Elephant Domestication AND Stirrup AND Invention AND Crucible Steel

Gunpowder
Req Techs: Education AND Invention AND Coal Mining

Steel (Rename to "Mass Produced Steel")

What ay think? That would mean steel exists before Railroads. So Railroads and Steel can stay where they are.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Vulcanized Steel I believe is the term you're looking for. You can mass produce Crucible Steel all you want.

Actually I REALLY REALLY REALLY Like this idea because I THOUGHT there was a form of lesser steel available throughout the dark ages and Renaissance that weapons and armors were made from (which was kinda messing with my head when I looked at our armors plan last...) so this would fill that bridge oh so nicely!

(Armor Crafting should REQUIRE Crucible Steel if I'm thinking of it correctly and Armor Crafting does mean 'Heavy Armor' crafting (perhaps we should change the name of the tech to reflect this if it does.))

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Bloom Iron was used in early weapon making. Crucible came later. Although you would find both with perhaps blast furnace on a big sight. Each taking the out put of the former to make better quality steel. Each quality has its uses.

Gas Lighting did not use refined oil or whale oil, it used gas. At first this was for street lighting and came from the sewers. Later it was cleaned up for household uses. Other natural gas and coal gas were also used.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Bloom Iron was used in early weapon making. Crucible came later. Although you would find both with perhaps blast furnace on a big sight. Each taking the out put of the former to make better quality steel. Each quality has its uses.

Gas Lighting did not use refined oil or whale oil, it used gas. At first this was for street lighting and came from the sewers. Later it was cleaned up for household uses. Other natural gas and coal gas were also used.

Any chance you could translate all of that into game details? Y'know... tech suggests, resource suggestions and their sources (sounds like a building with a prereq of the sewer could be used to produce 'lamp gas' at first.) And Natural Gas is something we haven't really developed out very well in the mod - I'd be interested in seeing us research this better and implement it into the grand scheme of things more effectively. Coal gas... don't know much about that either...

 

[Rwn]

Actually I REALLY REALLY REALLY Like this idea because I THOUGHT there was a form of lesser steel available throughout the dark ages and Renaissance that weapons and armors were made from (which was kinda messing with my head when I looked at our armors plan last...) so this would fill that bridge oh so nicely!

Steel was known for quite a bit of time in fact, but was not very easy to make until the industrial age since you need specific conditions to make an alloy of iron and carbon at very high temperature without actually burning the carbon. Also, the mechanic properties of steel are highly dependent on its carbon content, making it even more difficult to mass produce good-quality steel at the time.

I'd assume at least some weapons and armors in the Middle Age were made with some kind of steel (or iron-something alloy pr bronze) since pure iron isn't that hard - tough, well, wrought iron is still better than nothing...

 

[Hydromancerx]

Ok I added the 2 techs and moved the buildings and resources to the appropriate techs. Now one can get coal and steel in the Medieval Era even if there are not modern applications for it yet. This should give one more than enough time to get steel online before you build railroads.

 

[Yudishtira]

Any chance you could translate all of that into game details? Y'know... tech suggests, resource suggestions and their sources (sounds like a building with a prereq of the sewer could be used to produce 'lamp gas' at first.) And Natural Gas is something we haven't really developed out very well in the mod - I'd be interested in seeing us research this better and implement it into the grand scheme of things more effectively. Coal gas... don't know much about that either...

Coal gas...yes!!! In London (well where I was anyway) in the early 1970s, 'natural' gas was only just arriving. And that's long after gas lighting had largely disappeared (ie. except at my grandparents' house). We had coal gas (for cooking and I think water heating) before that. So please remove the link between gas lighting and natural gas/refining.

As for whether you need a processing building to route sewer/coal gas into streetlights, I suggest not. If it is an arduous process, I suggest upping the hammer cost of gas (street) lighting to reflect this.

 

[olduser]

One thing i noticed is that some techs have their PrereqTechs wrong.

Example from TECH_RITUALISM

			<OrPreReqs>
				<PrereqTech>TECH_PREHISTORIC_DANCE</PrereqTech>
			</OrPreReqs>
			<AndPreReqs>
				<PrereqTech>TECH_PREHISTORIC_MUSIC</PrereqTech>
			</AndPreReqs>

This makes no sense at all because in that case from this xml code both of them are needed, this means TECH_PREHISTORIC_DANCE must be in AndPreReqs.

If you need only one of them both should be in OrPreReqs.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@alberts2

You have to have some tech in the OrPreReqs field. So that one above would actully read Prehistoric Dance AND Prehistoric Music.

Note if you added say another tech in the OR then it would be (A OR B) AND C.

Likewise if you added another to the AND it would be A AND B AND C.

And if you added it to both it would be (A OR B) AND C AND D.

 

[olduser]

I think you don't have to have a tech in the OrPreReqs, why whould this be required? Some techs don't have techs in there.

The example reads Prehistoric Dance AND Prehistoric Music. This means you need both of them to unlook that tech also they are AndPreReqs. If you have both of them in AndPreReqs it also reads Prehistoric Dance AND Prehistoric Music.
The issue is, if you have one tech as OR and one as AND they have a different weight in some AI evaluations but they should be the same.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I believe the first OrPreReqs makes the line on the tech tree. So it should be the tech you want the line to be connected to. If you don't use it then the tech will have no line on the tech tree.

 

[olduser]

Yes this is true, but i was told "the lines don't matter" after asking "why some techs don't have lines".

If they are OrPreReqs just to fix the display issue in the techtree it explains why they are in there. But i think this needs another solution because of the effect this has to the AI.

// Consider all the AND pre-reqs as worth 33% of the follow on,
// and any OR one as 25%

This makes in the above example one tech with 25 and the other has 33 but both of them need to be the same.

 

[Yudishtira]

The example reads Prehistoric Dance AND Prehistoric Music. This means you need both of them to unlook that tech also they are AndPreReqs.

Sorry to do this but just FYI 'also' in English means "additionally". The translation for German 'also' is "thus".

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yes this is true, but i was told "the lines don't matter" after asking "why some techs don't have lines".

If they are OrPreReqs just to fix the display issue in the techtree it explains why they are in there. But i think this needs another solution because of the effect this has to the AI.

This makes in the above example one tech with 25 and the other has 33 but both of them need to be the same.

Dang right there should be another solution! The way the Lines are established needs reworked and has needed it for a LONG time - it would be nice to be able to get 'lines' of differing types that SHOW ALL the AND and OR dynamics!