Tech Tree mod discussion

[Naokaukodem]

I remember the feeling I had when I played Civ for the first time: I was at the head of an entity that was making discoveries, and those discoveries were like the real Earth people ones. I was "rewriting" History, in the sense that nothing more that I did had happened yet. I mean I was at a point of Science History, and not further. I was progressing on a line that I was not supposed to know. Though, I was recognizing some parts as being the Earth Science (or Tech, or call it what you want), what was giving me a real feeling of rewriting it. I had the feeling that I could write or rewrite anything according to my good pleasure. That was great. Unfortunately, as I was replaying the whole game, I get accustomed to this familiar History line. Not only that was the one of the real Earth as we know it, or a basic representation of it, but I began to know it by heart. Game after game, I had not anymore this feeling of rewriting History. That was the only one good old History, and a basic representation of it.
Now I would want to have this feeling again. I would want to be able to recreate History. That's why I thought about being able to truly recreate the Tech Tree. Being truly able to do so would mean to be able to take another direction, to discover techs that never appeared on Earth. Of course the Tech Tree that I would need to represent would have to be very large and have very inventive techs in it.

Now that is a very ambitious mod. I don't really know if it would be feasable for the moment. But I would want to design it so the Tech Tree would be big and with many new innovative techs. For example, what if salpeter have never been discovered? Weapons and machines would continue their evolution on a more classical maneer. (History of Science engineers are nowadays doing experiences to rebuild ancient war machine to understand more their working) What if some secrets like the Greek fire would not have been lost? Maybe new things could have emerge from it. What if Monotheism would have not been discovered? Maybe Science would have been better and the industrial age reached more quickly. Etc... Finally, the working of the tech tree would be so that the path we take would be different according to different variables, like the presence or not of salpeter, the loss of secrets, the random discovering or not of some techs, etc... this may imply a change in the Science working also, like we may not be able to choose the next tech to discover, this being more random.

It would be cool if people to discuss about these kind of differences in this thread, and count every thing they discover about changes they could do in the tech tree. Techs that would do a great difference if missing, or being added, secrets that have been actually forgotten, etc.

 

[the100thballoon]

love the idea! btw, greek fire is no mystery: its oil dumped into the harbor of Constantinople and set on fire. This was done to prevent the Turks (Ottomans) from taking the city.

 

[Kell]

Actualy. The exact recipie for Greek Fire was lost...That liquid fire that they used on thier boats and other such things.

They might have used oil set aflame to keep turks away. But they did have a special recipie that we do not know.

 

[Naokaukodem]

The recipie was so secret that it has been forgotten.

To add to the topic above, I would say that the tech tree would not be predeterminated. It would not be possible to see it, as it could change with the discovering of a special tech. (example: Monotheism adds all the Middle Age techs. Of course for people wanting to discover it, after they have understood that not discover it can make their research faster, it would be full of advantages, like a way better control on the people) Only the next possible techs would be visible, like in Civ1.