Tech Tree Revisions

[Vokarya]

Here is what I propose to do with the last 3 early naval techs.

Ship Building

• Keeps:
  • Transport I promotion
• Gets:
  • Galley -- moved from Sailing
  • Trade on Coast -- moved from Sailing
    • I think Ship Building should be the tech where over-water transport becomes real. Before this, you are fishing the coasts and building boats, not ships.
  • Lighthouse -- moved from Seafaring
  • Great Lighthouse -- moved from Seafaring
  • Fisherman's Hut -- moved from Seafaring
  • Harbor -- moved from Seafaring
    • Fisherman's Hut, Harbor, Lighthouse, and Great Lighthouse need to stay in the Ancient Era. Great Lighthouse could move to the Classical Era, but it's hard to find Wonders for Ancient Era techs.
• Gives Up:
  • Trireme -- moved to Seafaring
  • Siege Quinquireme -- moved to Seafaring
  • Shipyard -- moved to Seafaring
    • All three of these need to stay in the Classical Era. I especially want that you can't get Shipyard boosts before your first ships. Otherwise, it's too easy to get the bonus and you might as well build it into the stats.
• Net Trick Change: +3 (goes from 3.5 to 6.5)

Naval Warfare

• Keeps:
  • War Galley
  • Coastal Assault I promotion
  • Coastal Guard I promotion
• Gets:
  • Amphibious promotion -- moved from Sailing
• Gives up nothing
• Net Trick Change: +0.5 (goes from 2 to 2.5)

Seafaring

• Keeps:
  • Port
  • Navigation I promotion
• Gets:
  • Piracy promotion -- moved from Sailing
  • Trireme -- moved from Ship Building
  • Siege Quinquireme -- moved from Ship Building
  • Shipyard -- moved from Ship Building
• Gives Up:
  • Fisherman's Hut -- moved to Ship Building
  • Harbor -- moved to Ship Building
  • Great Lighthouse -- moved to Ship Building
  • Moai Statues -- moved to Sailing
    • All of these need to stay in the Ancient Era.
• Net Trick Change: 0 (stays at 5 tricks; Port is now a major trick, as Seafaring moved to the Classical Era. While Seafaring was Ancient Era, Port was a minor trick because the other requirement was and is City Planning, another Classical Era tech. When a trick requires two techs from different eras, it counts as a major trick for the later era and a minor trick for the earlier.)

I know this seems like a lot. My goal is to make the Ancient Era last a little longer and the tricks more evenly balanced. I was able to lower the maximum tricks from 7.5 (Sailing) to 6.5 (Ship Building) and raise Naval Warfare by half a trick.

 

[<Nexus>]

I did something similar in my In the Beginning module (though I added extra content too) so I think I'm okay with all those bellow.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I like your changes Vokarya, I have your same doubt about workboat and fishing boat. It's ok to me if you want to change it that way, but I could also live without that change.

 

[Arakhor]

I agree with 45*.

 

[Noyyau]

While I do agree with the logic of moving Workboats and the Fishing Boats improvement, I also think that the ability to improve seafood right from the beginning was one of the major advantages of civs starting with the Fishing Tech, and in this way the tech becomes much less desirable as a starting one.

Unrelated: should the Piracy promotion also go with Naval Warfare rather than Seafaring?

 

[Vokarya]

While I do agree with the logic of moving Workboats and the Fishing Boats improvement, I also think that the ability to improve seafood right from the beginning was one of the major advantages of civs starting with the Fishing Tech, and in this way the tech becomes much less desirable as a starting one.

Coastal tiles give +3 food, and the ability to work water tiles is still tied to Fishing, so I think it's still pretty valuable. Unimproved seafood resources are also worth +1 food over ordinary coast tiles. You just won't get the jackpot right away.

Also, you would be able to jump quickly to Myth of the Sea as soon as you got both Fishing and Storytelling, since Myth of the Sea has no requirements other than a coastal city. Myth of the Sea is deliberately priced cheaply and provides an effective +2 science. MotS is being moved backwards so Fishing isn't completely gutted.

Unrelated: should the Piracy promotion also go with Naval Warfare rather than Seafaring?

Piracy requires Navigation II and Coastal Assault I. Navigation I-II require Seafaring (Navigation III requires Navigation tech). With Seafaring in the Classical Era, that makes the Navigation promotion the limiting feature. I do want to keep Navigation promotions tied to Seafaring.

 

[Vokarya]

I like your changes Vokarya, I have your same doubt about workboat and fishing boat. It's ok to me if you want to change it that way, but I could also live without that change.

I'd like to experiment with the change and see what happens. I think there should be more things that influence exploring a larger chunk of an era before you move on to the next one.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Problem - Mountaineering is an orphaned or Dead end tech, it leads to NOTHING, is a prerequisite for nada, and the A.I.'s seem to actively avoid its research. Actually it leads to Archaeology and Explosives, they seem far away.

Solution - Make Mountaineering a prerequisite for Astronomy, along with Optics, Algebra, and Calendar. How else are you going to build that Telescope on the Mountain (Ideal) or Hill ( Large hill)

That would give 4 Prerequisites for Astronomy, but 1 you'd already have. This would give an 'out' for Mountaineering, and wouldn't seem so 'Artificial'

Another problem seems to be Sanitation, leading to Civil service and Usury.

Solution - Tie Usury into either Mercantile or Economics as a prerequisite. I think Mercantile would be a better fit. *Doh*, leads to banking, close enough.

Vorkarya, just trying to help out and give some input as I see problems.

Next time, I'll go to the Civopedia on the tech, and not use tech tree.

 

[<Nexus>]

I was just wondering if we really need two different techs for Cartography and Compass? IRL neither is useful without the other; and both are low on "important tricks".
Map trading is not a powerful thing in Cartography (worth only a 0.5 imo) and the +1 movement could be removed, as it was mentioned many times that naval units get too fast. So by merging the 2 weak techs we could get a single strong one.
Just an idea.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I was just wondering if we really need two different techs for Cartography and Compass? IRL neither is useful without the other; and both are low on "important tricks".
Map trading is not a powerful thing in Cartography (worth only a 0.5 imo) and the +1 movement could be removed, as it was mentioned many times that naval units get too fast. So by merging the 2 weak techs we could get a single strong one.
Just an idea.

I could agree except for the fact that they're both medieval techs if I'm not mistaken and medieval era is already short of techs.

 

[Arakhor]

I'm sure we could find something in C2C to bulk out the Mediaeval Era a little.

 

[Vokarya]

The Classical and Medieval Eras are the lowest eras on tech count, with 29 each. I'm very reluctant to remove techs from either era, even though I really don't like Armored Cavalry and I think Patronage-Perspective-Oil Painting-Free Artistry is one artistic tech too many in that time range (if I didn't care about tech counts, I would probably remove Oil Painting and move Perspective to the Renaissance).

Personally, I would like to see more techs in the early eras to get a smaller overall spread between eras. For comparison, here are the counts for each era in BTS vs. AND (including Acoustics and Holographics and with the removal of Romanticism, Realism, Computer Networks and Wearable Computers):

Ancient Classical Medieval Renaissance Industrial Modern Transhuman
BTS 17 14 12 15 15 15 3
AND 37 29 29 35 55 45 52

The BTS spread runs from 12-17, not counting the 3 Future Era techs (Genetics, Robotics, and Stealth). If you include those three in the Modern Era, you have a 12-18 spread. AND has a 29-55 spread, which is larger than I think is proper; I think I'd prefer closer to a 40-50 spread and I think 30-40 would be interesting, but there isn't that much I could see cutting. It's one reason why I have been eager to cut techs from the Industrial Era. I think the Transhuman Era isn't in a position to remove any techs, so that puts an upper limit on how many techs an era can have.

However, there are so many strictures on what I think makes for a viable tech that it's really hard to add anything new; a new tech needs to lead to another tech (no dead-ends allowed), meet the two-trick minimum with at least the potential for a third trick (Chariotry and Submarine Warfare are two examples of techs that have difficulty with the 2-trick minimum) while not stealing tricks from any tech with a trick count of 3 or less, which is close to half the tree, AND not be taking a current concept and slicing it too thinly (we don't need any new computer technologies!). It's also tough to do new tricks; units need a niche and there aren't that many openings, and there is only so much that can be done with buildings before we wind up repeating ourselves.

 

[SnoopDogg23]

Vokarya, as a veteran AND player, I like your proposed changes to the naval techs. Have these been implemented in the latest version of AND? I'd like to try them out. What is the process for updating AND with your proposed changes?

 

[Vokarya]

Vokarya, as a veteran AND player, I like your proposed changes to the naval techs. Have these been implemented in the latest version of AND? I'd like to try them out. What is the process for updating AND with your proposed changes?

I'm working on getting my changes together. They aren't implemented yet.

The big thing that I'm working on is getting a bunch of graphics changes done. I'm replacing every duplicate icon with a new one, changing out the Japanese Longbowman since it gives some people graphics issues, giving Special Infantry a new unit model (and a new name as Bolter Infantry), including a new EMP Infantry unit, getting distinct graphics for Colonist and Pioneer, and repacking all the FPK files down to 3 (leaderheads, units, and graphics). It's a big job, so I want to do it all at once.

 

[philipschall]

One thing I noticed recently is the jump from infantry to modern infantry is very, very small. Would it be possible to move modern infantry to later in the modern era? Also, the future tech era could stand to have it's tech costs doubled/tripled. Right now they research WAY too quickly.

 

[Vokarya]

One thing I noticed recently is the jump from infantry to modern infantry is very, very small. Would it be possible to move modern infantry to later in the modern era? Also, the future tech era could stand to have it's tech costs doubled/tripled. Right now they research WAY too quickly.

I honestly don't think it is possible at the moment to move Modern Infantry later. I don't see an appropriate landing point for it other than Modern Warfare, and Modern Warfare is so trick-heavy right now that we would have to remove at least two units from MW before I would consent moving a unit there. If we could move or delete a couple units, then I think it would be manageable.

45* did most of the work to balance research speeds. I would love to cut all of the last 3 eras down to around 40-45 techs and decrease research speeds proportionately so that it does take more time to get from one tech to the next. I don't think there are enough cuts that I can make to the Transhuman Era, but I've still got a few that I would like to remove from the Industrial. I don't like going from 37 techs for the Renaissance to 55 techs for the Industrial.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

One thing I noticed recently is the jump from infantry to modern infantry is very, very small. Would it be possible to move modern infantry to later in the modern era? Also, the future tech era could stand to have it's tech costs doubled/tripled. Right now they research WAY too quickly.

Tech pace is working as designed. The reason is that each Era should last more or less the same number of turns, hence more techs in an era mean shorter research times.

 

[Vokarya]

Tech pace is working as designed. The reason is that each Era should last more or less the same number of turns, hence more techs in an era mean shorter research times.

And this is one reason why I want to reduce the number of techs in the Industrial and later eras. The other is the "what you see is all you get" phenomenon, where the two tricks that make the tech viable are pretty much all you can extract out of that tech. If I think this about a tech, it usually tells me we are splitting a concept too finely.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

And this is one reason why I want to reduce the number of techs in the Industrial and later eras. The other is the "what you see is all you get" phenomenon, where the two tricks that make the tech viable are pretty much all you can extract out of that tech. If I think this about a tech, it usually tells me we are splitting a concept too finely.

I totally agree. By the way, I can't check now if we've already done something similar, but if we can't remove too many industrial techs, are there some techs that can be simply reassigned to renaissance or modern? On the other hand maybe modern era has already a good number of techs, so I'm not sure it's a good idea.

 

[Rezca]

Tech pace is working as designed. The reason is that each Era should last more or less the same number of turns, hence more techs in an era mean shorter research times.

Unfortunately that pacing almost invariably messes with me in my games, at least in the initial stages of nations reaching the Industrial/Modern.

I'll be researching 17 ~ 24 turn techs, and one or several of the AI's unlocks the Industrial. Once they do, they almost ALWAYS - with very, very, very little exception - beeline straight for wonder-enabling techs like Electricity, at 4 ~ 7 turns per tech, and then build it while I'm juuuuust getting to the prerequisite techs for it.

Meanwhile, if I want to step back to finish up the several Rennesiance techs that weren't needed to unlock the opening Industrial techs, they still take a few dozen turns and while I'm working on just a single tech, the AI's all clean up several Industrial techs while I'm doing so.


I get that the eras are supposed to be relatively the same in length, but the sheer drop in research time once you hit the Industrial has typically been harmful in my games. Realistic Timescale doesn't do much to help that either, unless you mop up half or more of the Industrial before finally getting around to the last few Renesance techs.

But, that's just been my experience. The AI's almost always beat me to Steam Power or whatever, and then go straight for the World First and Wonder enabling techs, getting each of them in a few turns time and only going back to techs like Nationalism once they've mopped up the exclusives. The tech race is almost even right up until the AI's reach the Industrial, then it just gets horribly lopsided with anyone still researching Renescane techs getting left behind and wonder'less. Sure, we often end up being able to catch up eventually, but the first few leaders to open up the Industrial just clear out all the useful stuff ASAP while everyone else is still stuck on the 20+ turn techs.