Tech Tree Revisions

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I might restrict tunnels to cultural borders. But to tell the truth even on the biggest map the Chunnel is just one tile. Anything bigger than that hasn't been built yet, let alone on smaller maps where a tile would cover the distance between Crete and north Africa and two would be a tunnel between Athens and Libya.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Personally, just move them to Seismology, and leave construction as is.

Who builds intercontinental tunnels anyway. By that time, you have Airports, take one city, cash rush an airport and air freight troops in.

Linking off shore islands/resources etc is what the AI seems to do on auto build mode. It will build a tunnel between an oil resource, with a well/platform to the shore network. To 'pipe oil' to the continent, seems more realistic. Maybe all offshore mineral resources, Oil, Methane gas, Geothermal energy, should be required to be linked Via a tunnel/pipe.

But 'shipping' the resource, as is current, is just as fine.

 

[Vokarya]

I've always felt that tunnels come way too early. No matter if you use them to only connect a one tile away island, technically you might connect two very distant continents which is absurd in early modern. We might have coastal tunnels and ocean tunnels but it requires additional coding which I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

I like the idea of splitting coastal tunnels and ocean tunnels, but I agree that it would require additional coding. I think it could be done without supreme amounts of work by coding a <TerrainStruct> like the <FeatureStruct> that currently exists in Civ4BuildInfos, since that is how building improvements on forests or jungles is handled, but that's speculation on my part. I would probably put ocean tunnels off until Megastructure Engineering. I think that would be the most appropriate place.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Or we could just limit tunnels to be built only between two coastal tiles?

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Limit of 10, scaled to map size would be better.

Ability to link those Island groups, would help greatly.

Limiting pillage ability of tunnels to Modern shipping, or post Sonar, can this be done easily.??

 

[<Nexus>]

3) Move them to 1950ish Seismology but restrict them to coastal (or within cultural borders?). This eliminates the possibility of a vanity project intercontinental tunnel but involves extra coding to clean up something that seems irrelevant in actual play.

That sounds reasonable and IIRC it's also possible with current coding, isn't it? (EDIT: Haven't read newer replies.)

Anyway I think it would be good to restrict tunnels to coast or cultural borders and re-enable Warp Lanes on water tiles and setting it to <bSeaTunnel>1</bSeaTunnel>. I know it's late in the game, but that late it doesn't matter if you connect Europe with the Antarctic

 

[Vokarya]

I noticed we are currently awarding +1 naval movement at both Compass and Navigation. Do we still need both of these bonuses? I don't like these bonuses halfway through the tech tree. The Refrigeration bonus in BTS works for me because it comes after most naval units are already available. "A bonus that you can't avoid isn't much of a bonus" is a guideline that I've tried to hold to.

Without the naval movement, Compass still has 3.5 tricks (Adventurer, Caravel, Seaport, +1 food from Fishing Boats) and Navigation has 4 (Ocean trade, Brigantine, Magellan's Voyage, +1 production form Whaling Boats/Navigation III promotion). So it doesn't matter too much to the overall tech stability.

 

[<Nexus>]

IMO it's safe to cut both.

 

[Rezca]

IMO it's safe to cut both.

I feel the same. Don't think either are particularly necessary.

 

[Vokarya]

I'm halfway considering pulling the naval speed bonus off of Refrigeration as well and giving a naval speed bonus to either Metamaterials or Biomimetics. Metamaterials has the lower trick count (2.5 vs. 3.5) but Biomimetics seems more appropriate. A naval speed bonus there wouldn't automatically hit any unit except for the Fusion Sub, which is available at the same tech. Refrigeration could get Burgerworld back from Globalization - Globalization has a current trick count of 7.5 and could be taken down a bit.

 

[GreedyManul]

I'm halfway considering pulling the naval speed bonus off of Refrigeration as well and giving a naval speed bonus to either Metamaterials or Biomimetics. Metamaterials has the lower trick count (2.5 vs. 3.5) but Biomimetics seems more appropriate. A naval speed bonus there wouldn't automatically hit any unit except for the Fusion Sub, which is available at the same tech. Refrigeration could get Burgerworld back from Globalization - Globalization has a current trick count of 7.5 and could be taken down a bit.

It all sounds good. I'm all for removing all that excess naval speed bonus, along with moving Burgerworld to Refrigeration. As for adding the speed bonus somewhere else, I'm iffy.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Continuing the conversation here:

I don't have a high regard for the F6 screen. I'm not about to change the underlying logic of the tech tree just to make that screen look better. In the early eras, I want to preserve as many plausible alternate paths as possible. The tech popups and chooser bar at the top of the screen can tell you what researching a given tech will lead to. So you can try, but I don't think it's likely.

If Priesthood definitely required Stargazing, then Writing would imply the possession of Math's disjunctive prerequisites and you'd solve two birds with one trip to the dentist.

Assuming also that we're limited in terms of the x-position of each tech, some tricks can be used to communicate these prereqs, especially in the case of techs that list a prerequisite with the same beaker cost. Misaligning techs on the vertical axis which have an alternative predecessor from the one shown could be a visual cue to investigate the tech for invisible paths. There also remains the tool of odd-numbered y-positions to evade arrow jams.

I am going to be messing around with tech positions under these restrictions, starting with Pottery, Agriculture, and up through the Classical Era.

UPDATE: I have promising results! Pottery's lines remain sacrificed to the greater good as with the current configuration, but I've been able to draw lines from every other tech up through the medieval era, except Priesthood. The change to Priesthood remains extremely tempting.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I prepared four slides of tech configurations to display the various tradeoffs I came up with for drawing the F6 screen. The key was sorting Scripture to the bottom, and then noticing that Monarchy, Math, and Currency could be inverted.

Here is a more conservative choice:
View attachment 461380
Here is what's possible if Sailing is plucked in virtue of the prereq icons:

Here is my personal favorite: lolno


Mainly, as I'm sure you can see, there is choice about where to dispose Horseback Riding, and whether to include the Warfare-HBR arrow , or preserve the arrows to Masonry.
I reiterate that if Stargazing were a definite prerequisite of Priesthood then this becomes miles easier.

EDIT: And here is slide 4. It keeps all techs on the odd-numbered y-positions as in the current configuration, has plentiful arrows, and maintains a misaligned y-position for techs with an invisible disjunctive prerequisite.


UPDATE: Revised "slide 4" (my internal name for it is RevisionU, so let's call it RevisionUU) (has a transparency mask because derp; open in a different window)


UPDATE: You would not believe how close it can get to perfect if HBR would just move outta the way.

 

[Vokarya]

I think #4 is closest, but I don't like it hanging Masonry and Bronze Working without inbound arrows. #2 looked similar, but I don't like it stranding Horseback Riding. Also, the arrows are probably not going to do what you want. On #2, that arrow you drew from Agriculture to Pottery is almost certainly going to go through Animal Husbandry and bend underneath it rather than bending before it.

The first thing I think we can do on #4 is drop Horseback Riding and Trade by one row. Then you can drop Caste System by one row as well. I'm looking at it in more detail.

I'm not going to make Stargazing a mandatory prerequisite for Priesthood. I want to preserve as many alternate paths as possible, especially in the early eras, and I think it's equally valid for Priesthood to arise from Stargazing or Mysticism.

 

[Vokarya]

Also, trying to use misaligned Y-prerequisites is way too subtle. I'm not going to go that far. I'm not even sure I understand what you're trying to say.

 

[Vokarya]

Here's what I think we might be able to do. All the information for drawing the F6 screen is in CvTechChooser.py.

I think it's possible to suppress the icons for an AND prerequisite that is being used as an override, and add an icon for an OR prerequisite that is being overridden. Then we wouldn't have to alter the placement of any tech on the tree.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

The first thing I think we can do on #4 is drop Horseback Riding and Trade by one row. Then you can drop Caste System by one row as well. I'm looking at it in more detail.

I like that suggestion. I'm working on a fifth model and am developing in-game screenshots as of now. Indeed the game's actual appearance puts these models in harsh relief, but I think it's clear slide #4 is faultless (with the changes you note).

I've moved on to the medieval era so as to straighten out the business with Monarchy and the literacies. It gets even better. I've managed to get all of Paper's disjunctive prerequisites to be visible, as well as drawn Meditation explicitly from Scriptures. The differences between slide 4 and my current work are entirely modular with the medieval changes, so no fear of lost time there.

I'm not going to make Stargazing a mandatory prerequisite for Priesthood. I want to preserve as many alternate paths as possible, especially in the early eras, and I think it's equally valid for Priesthood to arise from Stargazing or Mysticism.

Fair.

It is practical to abandon my idea of signalling hidden prerequisites with y-axis misalignments, as slide 4 certainly proves. However, in its place, I am working with "abrupt stop" signalling. What I mean by that is, take Pottery. Pottery has an apparently simple track on slide 4, but if you were to tech to Pottery bit by bit, you would find you can't choose it for your third tech. Then you'd go "WT$%@!" and have to investigate the pedia screen. It doesn't work for Trade, but I repeated this with Alchemy. Plus, sometimes the misalignments just work out as my forthcoming work can show, so you'll be able to see that in time.

 

[Vokarya]

I got the first part done. AND prerequisites that are being used for tech overrides will have the icon suppressed on the F6 screen.

 

[Vokarya]

I'm trying now to figure out the logic to determine when an OR prerequisite is in place and being overridden. I wrote a Python routine that should determine this, but something isn't working right. It is flagging everything twice and it is flagging 38 suppressed arrows when there should only be 28. It's going to need some more work.

We are definitely going to need a widget to handle OR prerequisites being listed as icons. AND prerequisites listed as icons use WIDGET_HELP_TECH_PREPREQ, which reads "This Technology Requires the Knowledge of " whatever tech. This isn't quite correct for OR prerequisites. So a second widget would need to say "This Technology Can Be Researched By Knowing " or something along those lines. I have no idea how to do widgets.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I just draw pictures, man.

Spoiler :

That and edit the xmlinfos by hand. The existing sorting by x-position is such a relief.

Speaking of which, I am patching in a picture of slide 4, revised as you said, to the above post. Just for reference.

You know, while I reported the duplicated icons as a "bug", that marked only my inexperience with the prereq system. I would say now that the icon used in addition to a track line is a good signal that the tech has some sneaky disjunctive prerequisites. Look at how your attention is drawn to Pottery's incompleteness in the pic I just mentioned. While some exceptions really were redundant (e.g. Feudalism : CoL), I would not want to give up this (er..) technology for flagging complex prereqs. I anticipate using it to signal that Civil Service and Alchemy have squirrelly prereqs.