tech tree redesign
- Thread starter davidlallen
- Start date
hey guys,
half og the tech tree structure is done,
i need some help from you,
if you can i need you to write me the flavours of each tech on the sheet, so id know what to assign to each tech - gold, military and etc.
thank!
half og the tech tree structure is done,
i need some help from you,
if you can i need you to write me the flavours of each tech on the sheet, so id know what to assign to each tech - gold, military and etc.
thank!
SwordOfJustice
Chieftain
Hmmm, I just did some more tech quotes and pedia text and submitted them. I think I will hold off doing anything else for now. Hope you guys can use what I did. I had fun writing the quotes anyway.
Cheers,
Sword
Cheers,
Sword
Ahriman
Tyrant
If you want to work on quotes, take a look at the tree in the Excel files in this thread.
davidlallen
Deity
Thanks for the update! Keep up the good work, we are all praying for you.
hey guys,
ive finished the tech tree...after over 20 hours of sweat...
its just the first draft,
all i did is repositioning and renaming the tech descriptions,
i still have to:
-do the costs
-do the flavours
-do the tags for each tech
after this:
-start re assigning every item in the mod according to the excel sheet.
note:
i had to change some of the tech preqeq that ahriram did,
the changes ive made i made cause i had no choise cuase there was no room to use the original preqeq by ahriram here are my changes:
Internment camps - Social mobility instead of Imperialism
Arrakis transformation - sand farms instead of way of liet
Suk school - only Mind training instead of Mind training OR Genetic manipulation
Mentat logic - only Genetic manipulation instead of Mind training OR Genetic manipulation
Research labs - and instd of or in this - Mind training OR Genetic manipulation
Kwizatz Haderach - preqeq - Holtzmann generators + No-fields + The Golden Path
+ Atomics
its 6 changes that i had to do, in order to keep an aesthetic tree arrows.
i attach the tech file, if anyone wishes to help me and do either the the flavours, coss, or tags, that will be nice, but if not , dont worry about it.
also attacked a picture.
hope to here your thought,
i pray , i beg, i hope i sing, i aspire, i desire, i dont know what else, that this will be our finalized tech tree for the next at least 3 official versions of dune wars.
your freindly modder, keldath.
ive finished the tech tree...after over 20 hours of sweat...
its just the first draft,
all i did is repositioning and renaming the tech descriptions,
i still have to:
-do the costs
-do the flavours
-do the tags for each tech
after this:
-start re assigning every item in the mod according to the excel sheet.
note:
i had to change some of the tech preqeq that ahriram did,
the changes ive made i made cause i had no choise cuase there was no room to use the original preqeq by ahriram here are my changes:
Internment camps - Social mobility instead of Imperialism
Arrakis transformation - sand farms instead of way of liet
Suk school - only Mind training instead of Mind training OR Genetic manipulation
Mentat logic - only Genetic manipulation instead of Mind training OR Genetic manipulation
Research labs - and instd of or in this - Mind training OR Genetic manipulation
Kwizatz Haderach - preqeq - Holtzmann generators + No-fields + The Golden Path
+ Atomics
its 6 changes that i had to do, in order to keep an aesthetic tree arrows.
i attach the tech file, if anyone wishes to help me and do either the the flavours, coss, or tags, that will be nice, but if not , dont worry about it.
also attacked a picture.
hope to here your thought,
i pray , i beg, i hope i sing, i aspire, i desire, i dont know what else, that this will be our finalized tech tree for the next at least 3 official versions of dune wars.
your freindly modder, keldath.
Attachments
davidlallen
Deity
Looks good so far! Do you have updated building and unitinfo files yet? If not, I can update the tags in those maybe this evening. Do you have an updated civics file yet, with Ahriman's proposed new civics? If not, somebody can work on that also.
hey david,
no i havent done anything but this,
as i said, it took me over 20 hours to do it, i had to put much thought on the x's and Y's.
anything you want to do is great,
but be sure to tell me what, so we wont do the same work...
before the items - if youll look at the tree xml - youll see that the tags arent the same as the description - you can have tech_exploration but in the description it will sat - desert warfare,
so this needs to be changed before assigning any item....
no i havent done anything but this,
as i said, it took me over 20 hours to do it, i had to put much thought on the x's and Y's.
anything you want to do is great,
but be sure to tell me what, so we wont do the same work...
before the items - if youll look at the tree xml - youll see that the tags arent the same as the description - you can have tech_exploration but in the description it will sat - desert warfare,
so this needs to be changed before assigning any item....
Ahriman
Tyrant
Obviously I appreciate the massive amount of work this takes, and some design intentions may have to give way. But a few comments:
These are opposites. The social mobility tech is a "benevolent" government civic, while Imperialism is neutral and Internment Camps are "Malevolent". It would be very unfortunate to have this requirement, since they're thematically so opposite.
Maybe Internment camps could require Feudalism AND Imperialism? So have the arrow come from Feudalism, and have Imperialism as an extra requirement?
These are also somewhat unfortunate.
The intention was that mind training and genetic manipulation be two different paths that you could follow to get things like Mentats or doctors. The Bene Gesserit and most factions would canonically favor mind training, but the Bene Tl would use genetic manipulation instead, to grow their twisted mentats rather than training new ones.
The Suk school change is fine, its not that big a deal.
But it looks like you *could* get the Mind training OR Genetic manipulation for Mentats if you shifted the genetic manipulation box up, to be horizontal with desert industry, moved the line from space guild to space ports up above this box, and then drew a line from mind training to mentat logic (and made this OR).
Then we could make Research Labs require Suk School OR Mentat logic, so it would still be possible to get to research labs *without* mind training by following the genetic manipulation path, or to get to reserach labs without mind training by following the mind training->suk school path.
Kindjal Blades should have an AND requirement with Personal shields; this was my omission for which I apologize. Multiple levels of melee should be prereqs.
Low energy vehicle should similarly be an AND requirement for Plas-steel armor; again my fault.
Improved Suspensors should be an AND requirement for Cooling systems - my fault.
And finally for aesthetics, we could consider cutting the tiers down by 2, condensing 18 into 17 and 20 into 19, the top of the tree is very very sparse.
Otherwise, this looks excellent.
We may have to make further minor changes due to playtesting, but otherwise I hope this is solid.
These are opposites. The social mobility tech is a "benevolent" government civic, while Imperialism is neutral and Internment Camps are "Malevolent". It would be very unfortunate to have this requirement, since they're thematically so opposite.
Maybe Internment camps could require Feudalism AND Imperialism? So have the arrow come from Feudalism, and have Imperialism as an extra requirement?
This sounds fine, it looks like Way of Liet is an implicit requirement since that is required for water discipline?
These are also somewhat unfortunate.
The intention was that mind training and genetic manipulation be two different paths that you could follow to get things like Mentats or doctors. The Bene Gesserit and most factions would canonically favor mind training, but the Bene Tl would use genetic manipulation instead, to grow their twisted mentats rather than training new ones.
The Suk school change is fine, its not that big a deal.
But it looks like you *could* get the Mind training OR Genetic manipulation for Mentats if you shifted the genetic manipulation box up, to be horizontal with desert industry, moved the line from space guild to space ports up above this box, and then drew a line from mind training to mentat logic (and made this OR).
Then we could make Research Labs require Suk School OR Mentat logic, so it would still be possible to get to research labs *without* mind training by following the genetic manipulation path, or to get to reserach labs without mind training by following the mind training->suk school path.
Kindjal Blades should have an AND requirement with Personal shields; this was my omission for which I apologize. Multiple levels of melee should be prereqs.
Low energy vehicle should similarly be an AND requirement for Plas-steel armor; again my fault.
Improved Suspensors should be an AND requirement for Cooling systems - my fault.
And finally for aesthetics, we could consider cutting the tiers down by 2, condensing 18 into 17 and 20 into 19, the top of the tree is very very sparse.
Otherwise, this looks excellent.
We may have to make further minor changes due to playtesting, but otherwise I hope this is solid.
davidlallen
Deity
I'm not sure this will help, but I cleaned up the file a little bit. For each tech, I took the description, converted it to uppercase, and replaced the type, civilopedia, strategy and quote fields. This is similar to the "great renaming" I did. It does not change what is displayed on the screen at all, but it will make updating the other files easier. The original had:
I will try to put this into the unitinfos file.
The new has:
I did not try to bring it up because none of the other files are updated with these names. But I think this will make going forward easier.
I will try to put this into the unitinfos file.
Ahriman, hi,
thanks for the feedback,
ill see what i can do.
the problem is, that you made mind training to be a required tech for too many techs, and i couldnt implement it, you can clearly see that ihad to place each tech after mid training carefully.
i also thought about the sparse ending, i will make it denser, not problem.
if you feel that some techs needs to be removed just say the word.
i will implement your suggestions the as best as i can.
david,
thanks a lot buddy.
thanks for the feedback,
ill see what i can do.
the problem is, that you made mind training to be a required tech for too many techs, and i couldnt implement it, you can clearly see that ihad to place each tech after mid training carefully.
i also thought about the sparse ending, i will make it denser, not problem.
if you feel that some techs needs to be removed just say the word.
i will implement your suggestions the as best as i can.
david,
thanks a lot buddy.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Another alternative that might help if mind training is needed for too many things; take mind training as an AND requirement away from Riding the Worm, and make Riding the Worm require Water of Life instead of Sand Worms AND Mind training.
It also look like you have Water of Life requiring Riding the Worm; it was supposed to be the opposite.
The Water of Life tech is supposed to require Sand worms and be required for Space Guild, so it is placed strangely.
I think you should move sand worms left (so that it lies under academies) and put Water of Life where sandworms are now.
davidlallen
Deity
I have updated my local area by putting the tech changes into unitinfos. Next I will work on buildinginfos. Then I will try "civcheck" to see what else needs to be changed. My local area already has a ton of changes related to new civ abilities and other fixes. So, what we had called 1.4.6 and 1.4.7 may arrive together.
Keldath, as you make changes based on Ahriman's feedback and other changes, please update the tech file I gave in my previous post. That way, your updated tech file and my other files will remain consistent.
Keldath, as you make changes based on Ahriman's feedback and other changes, please update the tech file I gave in my previous post. That way, your updated tech file and my other files will remain consistent.
davidlallen
Deity
I have merged the tech tree changes into all the other files, except religion and civics. For religion I have kept the original religions, just updated the names of the techs to something that seemed appropriate. We can add the "religion rewrite" separately. For civics I am about to start the "civics rewrite" which Ahriman designed.
There are a huge number of changes now and it is impossible to make progress in parallel; any further changes will introduce merge problems. Once I get the civics done, I am strongly tempted to release a 1.4.6 update with everything. It may be difficult to test all the new things separately, but at least further tuning can go onto a consistent view of the files.
Here are some things which I have learned from this project so far.
1. In terms of hours spent, assigning the x,y coordinates is a huge task. This could be considered part of the design, not the xml implementation. As we have seen with some of the arrow densities, this can push changes back onto the design as well.
2. Designing the flavors would also have been helpful. This is not directly visible outside the xml files. There are 5-6 different flavor values, such as culture, production, military. Each tech may have a weight for each of the flavors; for example, gunpowder may have a weight of 10 for the military flavor. Each leaderhead is given an "interest" in each of the flavors. This helps a military leader to research military techs first. We now have a random collection of flavors, unless keldath has been very careful to update them.
3. Having a sheet of all the existing objects to populate into the tree is very helpful. But it should have *all* the objects. I left out the "process" tasks like "Can Build Research", and also the projects (the space race victories). I have randomly stuck the process tasks and projects into some techs which made vague sense to me. There are a bunch of individual special abilities, like "enables gold trading", which we did not consider either. It is hard to make a list of all of these, but I am sure many are missing.
==> I had suggested before that we have too many victory conditions, and the space race condition does not make too much sense to me. Should we keep it? If so, could somebody please pick which techs would make sense for the various objects?
There are a huge number of changes now and it is impossible to make progress in parallel; any further changes will introduce merge problems. Once I get the civics done, I am strongly tempted to release a 1.4.6 update with everything. It may be difficult to test all the new things separately, but at least further tuning can go onto a consistent view of the files.
Here are some things which I have learned from this project so far.
1. In terms of hours spent, assigning the x,y coordinates is a huge task. This could be considered part of the design, not the xml implementation. As we have seen with some of the arrow densities, this can push changes back onto the design as well.
2. Designing the flavors would also have been helpful. This is not directly visible outside the xml files. There are 5-6 different flavor values, such as culture, production, military. Each tech may have a weight for each of the flavors; for example, gunpowder may have a weight of 10 for the military flavor. Each leaderhead is given an "interest" in each of the flavors. This helps a military leader to research military techs first. We now have a random collection of flavors, unless keldath has been very careful to update them.
3. Having a sheet of all the existing objects to populate into the tree is very helpful. But it should have *all* the objects. I left out the "process" tasks like "Can Build Research", and also the projects (the space race victories). I have randomly stuck the process tasks and projects into some techs which made vague sense to me. There are a bunch of individual special abilities, like "enables gold trading", which we did not consider either. It is hard to make a list of all of these, but I am sure many are missing.
==> I had suggested before that we have too many victory conditions, and the space race condition does not make too much sense to me. Should we keep it? If so, could somebody please pick which techs would make sense for the various objects?
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
This was always going to be a tough process, with some tweaking and tidyup necessary afterwards. I don't have a problem with releasing a version that still needs further refinement - it's impossible to get something this complex perfect first time.
I say scrap space race too - it makes no sense in this mod.
I say scrap space race too - it makes no sense in this mod.
Lord Tirian
Erratic Poster
You might be able to change it into a "no-ship race", as the no-field techs are at the end of the tree anyway, but only if we're hurting for a additional victory condition.
Cheers, LT.
Ahriman
Tyrant
First, just noticed; the Satellites tech from the design doc appears to be missing?
I think the space-race victory should be cut for now, and re-examined if we think its needed. Its basically superseded by the terraforming victory anyway.
I would put:
Can build research at Education
Can build culture at Culture of Dune (should we rename this, it now sounds lame in retrospect - Cultural Achievements maybe?)
Can build Gold at Solaris economy.
Open borders at Desert Trade.
Can trade techs at Education.
Can trade gold at offworld trade.
Defensive pacts at Landsraad.
Permanent Alliances at Vendettas.
World map revealed at Satellites tech.
Any others missing?
I can add flavor values if you explain a bit more how they work.
What are the flavors? Do the values all add up to 10 for each, tech? So a pure military is 10 military 0 others, a military-industrial might be 5 military/5 industry/5 others, etc?
I think the space-race victory should be cut for now, and re-examined if we think its needed. Its basically superseded by the terraforming victory anyway.
I would put:
Can build research at Education
Can build culture at Culture of Dune (should we rename this, it now sounds lame in retrospect - Cultural Achievements maybe?)
Can build Gold at Solaris economy.
Open borders at Desert Trade.
Can trade techs at Education.
Can trade gold at offworld trade.
Defensive pacts at Landsraad.
Permanent Alliances at Vendettas.
World map revealed at Satellites tech.
Any others missing?
I can add flavor values if you explain a bit more how they work.
What are the flavors? Do the values all add up to 10 for each, tech? So a pure military is 10 military 0 others, a military-industrial might be 5 military/5 industry/5 others, etc?
davidlallen
Deity
I took it out in 1.1.x something and keldath put it back, so I will let him discuss.
You can see more about this in the civ wiki at this link, including an example. I don't think this shows up anywhere in the civilopedia or the game interface, so the only way to see more might be to look in the xml. It may be impossible for you to "level up" any further without researching the "Read XML" technology. It's just plain text.
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