Tech Tree Revisions

[HorseshoeHermit]

Medieval ended up oddly cluttered in certain lanes while leaving large vacuities elsewhere. I thought that a shape more like this:

could achieve the same goals you decided on, while having a straighter and evened aesthetic. Please forgive the MSPaint skill.

I continue working with Ancient, and I'm just gonna say, you can do a lot if you float Fermentation or Mysticism. If you wanted...

 

[Vokarya]

Let's not float any techs we don't have to. I think that's more useful than getting all the OR prerequisites visible.

I think you've got something good going with the Medieval. I did some of those changes (especially moving Papacy to the top row) in my current working version, but I'd rather keep the Charters-Paper line.

Like this.


The only things I have any sort of problem with are having to bend the Politics-Vassalage line, but that's needed to create some space between Civil Service and Feudalism, and having to bend the Sanitation-Civil Service line, but if I don't, then the Civil Service-Usury line runs through Charters' shadow, which I don't want.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

If you wanted to keep Charters and Theology attached, there's a trick you can do - put Theology and Papacy on Y=3, and put Holy War and Paper on the row below that. The arrow snakes around the Theology leaves. Alchemy can go to Y=1.
Actually gimme 10 minutes... edit: nvm, my idea looks worse.

If you want to get wild you can do


Charters or Alchemy can get onto Paper like this.

 

[Vokarya]

If you wanted to keep Charters and Theology attached, there's a trick you can do - put Theology and Papacy on Y=3, and put Holy War and Paper on the row below that. The arrow snakes around the Theology leaves. Alchemy can go to Y=1.

The lines won't bend that way. If you've got Alchemy on 1, Papacy on 3, and Paper on 5, then Alchemy-Paper is going to cross Theology-Papacy. If you try and put both Holy War and Papacy on 5, then Theology-Papacy goes under Holy War. Either way won't work. I'd much rather keep Charters-Paper rather than Theology-Paper. I don't think very many people are likely to try and go directly from Theology to Paper.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I wasn't trying to link Alchemy to Paper.

With the objective of spacing things out, and the choice to sacrifice Theology-Paper, and wanting to minimize squiggles, along with other restrictions already stated, you could go for flipping the Machineries with Theology. Put Mechanics off Iron Working again, then Feudalism stays up top, Sanitation comes off Canals and Civil Service is spaced by Charters below and Crop Rotation above. Crop Rotation Y=9; Alchemy Y=15. Guilds is still cleaned up... yeah it's entirely straight lines on the left side.
edit:: like this

 

[<Nexus>]

I remember you wanted to change Ancient Medicine name. How about Treatment? I think it well covers the Hippocratic Oath and the rest in the tech.

 

[Vokarya]

I remember you wanted to change Ancient Medicine name. How about Treatment? I think it well covers the Hippocratic Oath and the rest in the tech.

I think that's too general to be a good name. Ancient Medicine is not great, but Treatment is even more general. Ancient Medicine at least is understandable as the medicine of the early eras. (We can support one medical tech per era, but not much more than that.)

 

[Pongui]

From Wikipedia: Pharmacopoeia literally means "drug making". This actually refers to manuals copied and followed by ancient physicians - it seems these manuals were essential prior to schools and medical degrees. First pharaohs and later governments enforced strict adherence to the best pharmacopoeias.

But that got me thinking. The pharmacopoeia was merely the most common form of ancient treatise. And the "technology" of treatise writing and dissemination, crucial to modern science, is no where on the tech tree. So re-name Ancient Medicine to "treatments": Treatises.

 

[Vokarya]

From Wikipedia: Pharmacopoeia literally means "drug making". This actually refers to manuals copied and followed by ancient physicians - it seems these manuals were essential prior to schools and medical degrees. First pharaohs and later governments enforced strict adherence to the best pharmacopoeias.

But that got me thinking. The pharmacopoeia was merely the most common form of ancient treatise. And the "technology" of treatise writing and dissemination, crucial to modern science, is no where on the tech tree. So re-name Ancient Medicine to "treatments": Treatises.

Nice tries, but they are not going to work for me. Pharmacopoeia is just too complicated a name for a tech and especially doesn't fit what I consider appropriate for the era. In the early eras, I want to get the names down as short and casual as possible. Later on we can have more technical names, and even then I still try for natural-sounding names.

Treatises sounds far too narrow to be a tech on its own. It doesn't seem to me that you could distinguish this from Literature or Philosophy. I want to keep Ancient Medicine separate to keep the medical aspect clear. As it currently is, and where I want to keep it, you can skip if for a while unless you either need the health bonuses or get to the point where you need it for Alchemy and then Invention. So then, where would Treatises's tricks come from? There's a two-trick minimum for any tech in AND to be viable. Pure science techs of any type suffer pretty badly from this. Aside from a science building and then a few possibilities that often get into the stretch area (Cannons with Physics come to mind), there isn't a lot you can do. I've chopped off several pure science techs in the later eras because of this, like Thermodynamics, Quantum Physics, Modern Physics, and Superstring Theory.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Since you eschew the horse war techs, I would like to make a case to abandon Shipbuilding and fold it into Seafaring. I gather the reasons you want the two, though, are because the trick count is so high.

I thought that bit about Treatises was really educational, and wouldn't it be great for other players, startled by its non-casualness, to have that moment from this game too?

 

[Vokarya]

Since you eschew the horse war techs, I would like to make a case to abandon Shipbuilding and fold it into Seafaring. I gather the reasons you want the two, though, are because the trick count is so high.

The various ship techs have enough variety to keep them available. I don't like Ship Building very much either, but I want Galleys available during the Ancient Era and I think Sailing is too early, so it needs an extra tech to push it off a little further. Also, as you suggested, there's 14.5 tricks between Fishing-Sailing-Ship Building combined. That's a lot for two techs, but manageable for three.

The horse war techs are almost all dead. I haven't given up wanting to get rid of Cavalry Tactics. Stirrup is the only one left that's completely a war tech. Horseback Riding, Horse Breeding, and Chivalry all have tricks that don't directly affect mounted combat (Courier System; Caravanserai and Circus Maximus; Blarney Castle and Himeji Castle, respectively).

I thought that bit about Treatises was really educational, and wouldn't it be great for other players, startled by its non-casualness, to have that moment from this game too?

It's not worth the extra complexity. Every tech adds a bit more weight to the tech tree, and at least on the theoretical level, pushes every other tech a bit faster. Also, clever bits like that start to get annoying the more times you see them. I'm making it my goal to sand off the rough edges, not gild them.

 

[Pongui]

I don't like Ship Building very much either

Perhaps call it Ships. That'd conform with other tech names like ...."Computers" NOT "Computer Making".

...hmm. No, there's no consistency. Bridge Building NOT Bridges.

(Treatises) It's not worth the extra complexity. Every tech adds a bit more weight to the tech tree...

I wasn't proposing a new tech. There was discussion about changing Ancient Medicine's name, Treatment was suggested, and something clicked.

 

[Pongui]

The horse war techs are almost all dead. I haven't given up wanting to get rid of Cavalry Tactics. Stirrup is the only one left that's completely a war tech. Horseback Riding, Horse Breeding, and Chivalry all have tricks...

Perhaps solve several problems at once, by completely merging horses and elephants, and using words like "steed" "animal" "mount" "beast" etc. for universality e.g. Horseback Riding becomes Riding (or perhaps Saddle), Horse Breeding becomes Breeding (or Animal Breeding)...

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

You'd be willing to give up HBR -> Warfare to get Pottery onto Trade, right? I think it's worth it. Trade is a central tech.
The modification for it is simple, just flip Wheel to the bottom of Stone Tools and get a line to Bronze Working up top. Bronze goes to Metal Casting, Sculpture is tucked underneath.

Everything else I've ever come up with cuts more lines than that, just to get one or all of Trade. Fermentation is a real bummer.

 

[Vokarya]

Perhaps solve several problems at once, by completely merging horses and elephants, and using words like "steed" "animal" "mount" "beast" etc. for universality e.g. Horseback Riding becomes Riding (or perhaps Saddle), Horse Breeding becomes Breeding (or Animal Breeding)...

I suggested Riding once before and it didn't fly. Horseback Riding as a name does have a legacy extending back to Civ1. If we didn't have the Horseman unit, then I would probably have put HBR in the Classical Era (where BTS has it) in the spot where Horse Breeding is now.

 

[Pongui]

Women's Suffrage dates from Civ1; plus tossing that out must offend >50% of humanity. Ah well, I guess we fans have unique values.

I'm also considering AND as an open framework for modmods. To that end you'd want to eliminate deep-seated flavour quirks like the special places granted horses and elephants.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I found two other configurations for ancient era F6. The first one is kind of goofy:


Options are available, but none of them pretty. I kept it because it got my brain pumping, and it turns out it helped me see this:



You dispose HBR->Warfare, and use an override on Sculpture, but you get all 3 lines onto Trade, and you get Fishing + Agri onto Pottery. Priesthood exchanges its Mysticism override for Stargazing.
Mathematically this is an improvement over the latest version. No tech is floating.
edit: no, Scriptures gets an override to Priesthood. Darn.

 

[<Nexus>]

I was doing a little analysis on some techs. Some techs don't really feel appealing.
Here is how I used Vokarya's trick count principle:

• any feature available for all civs (building, unit, improvement, etc) is 1 trick
• any civic building, religious wonder, great person or free tech for the first only is 0.5 trick
• tech obsoleting a regular building is -1 trick
• tech obsoleting a wonder is 0 or -1 trick, depending on whether the civ has it or not

So there a some techs I find very "light":

Music:

(0.5) Sagas
(0.5) G.Artist
(1) Culture​

that's a total of 2 tricks

Algebra:

(0.5) settle cities on peaks (cool feature but has little impact on the game, so I weighed it only a half trick)
(0.5) Mosque of Djenné (requires desert in city vicinity, so it's not available for only, worth only a half trick)​

that's a total of 1 trick worth

Relativity:

(1) Einstein's Lab
(0/-1) obsoletes Dosan Seowon
(-0.5) obsoloetes Civil Servant's School (Bureaucracy)
(1) Uranium​

that's a total of 1.5 tricks, but if you have built DS and lose it, than it's only 0.5

Superconductors:

(0.5) G.Scientis
(1) Maglev​

that's a total of 1.5 tricks


So these are the problems. Now comes the suggestion for a solution. There is a feature not much used in the mod: tech changing building commerce. We could use that on these techs:

Music could give Theater and/or temples +1
Algebra could give School of Scribes +1
Relativity could give University +1
Superconductors could give Railway Station +1

 

[Vokarya]

Actually, I don't very much like the feature of techs boosting building commerce. It feels to me forced and inelegant; I'd rather have an actual new building. I don't even really like splitting Museum across Scientific Method/Archeology. But you have picked up some of the problem techs. Music I consider very nebular. It could fit just about anywhere on the tree from the Ancient to the Renaissance. Maybe it's worth a transplant to where it can get something else?

For Algebra, I've actually considered some kind of precursor to the School, but I can't think of what to name it unless the new building is School and the later building is Public School.

I also never count negatives when I'm doing trick counts. One thing that I have noticed is that the religious wonders do not shut down if you change state religions or switch to a civic with No State Religion. If that was in place, I don't think the religious wonders would really need to go obsolete. King Richard's Crusade might be an exception, but maybe a civic requirement (Divine Cult or State Church or Intolerant) is in order here.

 

[<Nexus>]

Music I consider very nebular. It could fit just about anywhere on the tree from the Ancient to the Renaissance. Maybe it's worth a transplant to where it can get something else?

Here's an idea:

Place Music after Mythology leading to Aesthetics. Give it Heroic and National Epic.
Move Music's Culture sliding ability to Literature, and find a good place for the Sagas (somewhere after Rudder) and the free Great Artist.

For Algebra, I've actually considered some kind of precursor to the School, but I can't think of what to name it unless the new building is School and the later building is Public School.

Be it a School and rename the former one to High-School requiring 3 Schools. Drop the Monasteries upgrading to School thing; makes little sense, they could also upgrade to Hospital.

I also never count negatives when I'm doing trick counts.

Maybe you should (at least some times). A civic building obsoleting may be a reason to switch out of that civic. A regular building or a national wonder obsoleting is always a negative trick for the tech.