Tech Tree Revisions
- Thread starter Vokarya
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<Nexus>
Traveler of the Multiverse
Is your problem about the name (my grammar mistake) or the content?
I'm okay with Public School too.
High School is not special enough to be a limited building. Limited buildings are a narrow window between every-city-buildings and National Wonders. University isn't a limited building, so High School shouldn't be either. Think of what a major city would have, probably in multiples, and go from there.
I'd like to move Music, but right now it has an important purpose of making it not too easy to get to Theology. The last column of the Classical Era (Classical-4) is Music, Sanitation, Smithing, and Vassalage. You need one of these techs to get to the Medieval Era. Music is required for Theology, Smithing is required for Machinery, Vassalage is required for Feudalism, and either Sanitation or Vassalage-Feudalism is required for Civil Service. Without Music, it's quite short to get from the beginning of the Classical Era to Theology (Mathematics - Monarchy - Code of Laws - Alphabet - Literature - Scriptures - Meditation - Philosophy). Keeping Music where it is adds Athletics - Aesthetics - Drama - Music to Theology's prerequisite pyramid. Moving Theology to the Classical would mean we would have to shake up a few things regarding trick placement.
As far as civic buildings go, I don't think they really need to formally obsolete at any point. The real check on the continued existence of civic buildings is the viability of their civic. For example, the Plague Hospital is the Charity civic building. Plague Hospital goes obsolete at Medicine, but if Charity stops being a viable civic choice before that point, then Plague Hospital doesn't really need to go obsolete.
I'd like to move Music, but right now it has an important purpose of making it not too easy to get to Theology. The last column of the Classical Era (Classical-4) is Music, Sanitation, Smithing, and Vassalage. You need one of these techs to get to the Medieval Era. Music is required for Theology, Smithing is required for Machinery, Vassalage is required for Feudalism, and either Sanitation or Vassalage-Feudalism is required for Civil Service. Without Music, it's quite short to get from the beginning of the Classical Era to Theology (Mathematics - Monarchy - Code of Laws - Alphabet - Literature - Scriptures - Meditation - Philosophy). Keeping Music where it is adds Athletics - Aesthetics - Drama - Music to Theology's prerequisite pyramid. Moving Theology to the Classical would mean we would have to shake up a few things regarding trick placement.
As far as civic buildings go, I don't think they really need to formally obsolete at any point. The real check on the continued existence of civic buildings is the viability of their civic. For example, the Plague Hospital is the Charity civic building. Plague Hospital goes obsolete at Medicine, but if Charity stops being a viable civic choice before that point, then Plague Hospital doesn't really need to go obsolete.
HorseshoeHermit
20% accurate as usual, Morty
So I found this one way of doing Ancient era F6, Pottery acquires an arrow onto Trade, Priesthood gets both Stargazing and Mysticism, and Agri/Hunt/Rit are still maximized onto Husbandry/Slav/Herb . You just give up HBR onto Warfare, and you have to do this thing with Stone Tools having really long arrows.
Is that worth something?
I also have this, to back up something I said page 39, that HBR-Warfare is interchangeable for Pottery-Trade off of the current overall picture:
Is that worth something?
I also have this, to back up something I said page 39, that HBR-Warfare is interchangeable for Pottery-Trade off of the current overall picture:
I had a couple thoughts about the Tech Tree and the Spaceship.
1. Should Railgun be required, perhaps as a prerequisite to Orbital Flight? If you queue up all the technologies required to build the Spaceship, Railgun is the earliest that is not selected. Railgun currently only leads to Warmachines. I decided to count how many techs you can skip to complete the spaceship, and AND actually has fewer skippable techs than BTS, despite a much larger overall tree. I'm not saying you should have to complete the entire tree to build the spaceship, but I wouldn't want to leave too many techs behind.
2. Would it hurt very much to move the SS Casing up to Megastructure Engineering? It's currently at Superstrong Alloys, which has 5 other tricks: Durasteel Plant, Extraction Facility, Peace Maker, Siege Droid, and Space Elevator. Megastructure has Arcology, Fusion Carrier, and the free Great Engineer. I'd actually be willing to trade the GE back to Superstrong Alloys in exchange for both the Space Elevator and the SS Casing. I'm in favor of clustering the spaceship parts together to minimize the impact one super-city could have on completing the ship. The closer together the enabling techs are, the easier it is for several less-productive cities to catch up with a smaller number of super-cities.
The current spacing is two parts at Transhuman-3: the Casing at Superstrong Alloys and the Cockpit at Holographics; four parts at Transhuman-5: the Stasis Chamber at Cryogenics, the Docking Bay at Space Colonies, the Life Support at Organic Cities, and the Engine at Shielding; and one part saved for Transhuman-6: the Thrusters at Interstellar Travel. Megastructure Engineering is on the path to Organic Cities, so it doesn't add any additional techs to the overall requirements package.
1. Should Railgun be required, perhaps as a prerequisite to Orbital Flight? If you queue up all the technologies required to build the Spaceship, Railgun is the earliest that is not selected. Railgun currently only leads to Warmachines. I decided to count how many techs you can skip to complete the spaceship, and AND actually has fewer skippable techs than BTS, despite a much larger overall tree. I'm not saying you should have to complete the entire tree to build the spaceship, but I wouldn't want to leave too many techs behind.
2. Would it hurt very much to move the SS Casing up to Megastructure Engineering? It's currently at Superstrong Alloys, which has 5 other tricks: Durasteel Plant, Extraction Facility, Peace Maker, Siege Droid, and Space Elevator. Megastructure has Arcology, Fusion Carrier, and the free Great Engineer. I'd actually be willing to trade the GE back to Superstrong Alloys in exchange for both the Space Elevator and the SS Casing. I'm in favor of clustering the spaceship parts together to minimize the impact one super-city could have on completing the ship. The closer together the enabling techs are, the easier it is for several less-productive cities to catch up with a smaller number of super-cities.
The current spacing is two parts at Transhuman-3: the Casing at Superstrong Alloys and the Cockpit at Holographics; four parts at Transhuman-5: the Stasis Chamber at Cryogenics, the Docking Bay at Space Colonies, the Life Support at Organic Cities, and the Engine at Shielding; and one part saved for Transhuman-6: the Thrusters at Interstellar Travel. Megastructure Engineering is on the path to Organic Cities, so it doesn't add any additional techs to the overall requirements package.
HorseshoeHermit
20% accurate as usual, Morty
It might make sense that Railgun is eventually a prerequisite for one of the spaceship parts - this is a deep space mission, right? Going to need to understand a lot about propulsion in order to make that trip. But Railguns are science fiction for a long time after they were invented. Anyway though, your specific example of linking it to Orbital Flight doesn't make sense to me, but I am a gamist when it comes to tech tree design. So do it if you think space should require more beakers. Railgun being a "small, twig of a branch" doesn't mean there's something wrong with its design.
That said, on a realist basis everything you said about Megastructure Engineering is very satisfying, and the balance justification is just nailing it.
That said, on a realist basis everything you said about Megastructure Engineering is very satisfying, and the balance justification is just nailing it.
I like skipping more techs, so you are forced too be weak while streamlining to it and neglect certain key technologies.
AND does not work that way. There are no dead-ends; every tech is required for at least one other tech, and I do not consider it a good sign for a tech's descendant to be too far away. Sanitation and Crop Rotation are notorious here. There are also a lot fewer opportunities to skip across eras. I regularly hit the Classical early through Warfare-Athletics, but I don't think it's that short compared to going through Writing. I just go that way to pick up Hellenism.
Currently, the Spaceship requires every single pre-Transhuman tech and almost two-thirds of the Transhuman. I'm questioning if it needs to be taken any further but I'm thinking it doesn't need to.
So you can concentrate on immediate breakthroughs, but focusing on something too far away is going to cost you in terms of the additional research you have to do.
HorseshoeHermit
20% accurate as usual, Morty
I'm not sure who else consults with you intensively, so just let this be a token, but I have to push back against you here. TechCommerceChanges is a tool, and sometimes advances just don't require any infrastructural investment, they show up because people change their behaviour.
A TechCommerceChanges lets you the designer balance some things against others with regard to the hammer costs. Can't be a good reason not to use them at all.
...
Sometimes it bugs me that Stone Tools, Fishing, Hunting, and Ritualism aren't just free for being a living body of Humans. Though it actually requires Stone Tools on the tree to use the latest option I suggested for Ancient F6.
I like to say I have the aesthetic sense of a razorblade. The fewer bullet points the better, and there's so only many mechanics to work with, so if I have to choose between giving a bonus to existing building A and creating new building B with lower stats, or amping up new building B, I'm going to go with the latter option. Plus once you start, where do you stop? University could theoretically be boosted by any number of techs, but I'd rather use it as a prerequisite for additional buildings, not just layering on bonuses.
That's not likely to change unless you're going to have an entire Prehistoric Era, and I'd prefer to leave that to Chronicles. I think the Prehistoric Era needs different mechanics than the rest of the game; no cities, no territory, no culture or gold or espionage, and it's only when you are ready to make the transition from the Prehistoric to the Ancient that you settle down and get your first city. I also think it gives civilizations a way to be slightly different out of the starting gate.
<Nexus>
Traveler of the Multiverse
Avoid if possible, use when essential.
Use it if there is no better solution at all.
Fozman
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2017
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- 133
Good conversation here. Just want to add a little piece to it. While sometimes an advance doesn't necessarily "require any infrastructural investment", it is good practice to gate-keep the spread of the technology's adoption to existing institutions whenever possible. Things usually don't change instantly in a society, regardless of it being behavior or infrastructure. This extra step of a building upgrade or a completely new building represents society's resistance to the new methodology or even simply a learning curve to it.
Sticking with the example of Universities, we have the Schools of Medicine and Law at the appropriate techs on the tree. These wouldn't necessarily require an infrastructure investment, as the administrators could just use existing buildings to teach the new concepts. Rather, these buildings represent something more to the effect of hiring teachers, developing lesson plans, creating requirements for accreditation, etc.
But let's take this a little further... Computers are a relatively new concept (relative to education in general), but they are ubiquitous at Universities today. Simply adding +
to existing Universities at the Computers tech would be bad form. A building like "Computer Lab" could represent the incorporation of the new technology to an existing institution.I think there are times when a simple bump in output to an existing structure is okay, but it should be used absolutely sparingly as ZN pointed out.
Does Vassalage tech need another prerequisite? Aristocracy is going away. I never liked it as a tech and I found a way to dispense with it by moving the Nobility civic up to Feudalism. (Stirrup gets the Great General, Monarchy gets the Villa, Calendar gets the Silk Road.) That leaves Vassalage with only Politics as a prerequisite. I don't really like leaving techs with only one prerequisite; it feels like then the later tech should be rolled into the prerequisite, while two prerequisites means mixing knowledge of both to get to the next tech.
I feel like Vassalage should have a military tech prerequisite, but I don't want to force Stirrup, and I don't think (Mechanics OR Stirrup) would work on the F6 screen as it's currently laid out, and I don't really want to rebuild it. Is Iron Working enough for this situation?
I feel like Vassalage should have a military tech prerequisite, but I don't want to force Stirrup, and I don't think (Mechanics OR Stirrup) would work on the F6 screen as it's currently laid out, and I don't really want to rebuild it. Is Iron Working enough for this situation?
HorseshoeHermit
20% accurate as usual, Morty
"Removing Aristocracy would do for the F6 what clean, cold fusion can do for the energy crisis."
Maybe Politics really should just be part of Vassalage. All it's really doing now is saying there's a common initial investment into that and CS.
Or maybe, Vassalage should just be part of Feudalism. . .
Maybe Politics really should just be part of Vassalage. All it's really doing now is saying there's a common initial investment into that and CS.
Or maybe, Vassalage should just be part of Feudalism. . .
I'd much rather keep Politics than Vassalage. I think Politics is really important to cover ancient Greek democracy and the Roman Republic. (It used to be Democracy, and the current Democracy tech was Representative Democracy. I put in the Politics name and gave the Democracy name back to the Renaissance tech.)
We need something where Vassalage is, even if it isn't specifically Vassalage, in order to prevent having too easy a path to the Medieval Era. One way or another, you need one tech from the last column of the Classical Era to get into the Medieval Era. Civil Service requires Sanitation or Vassalage-Feudalism, Feudalism requires Vassalage, Machinery requires Smithing, and Theology requires Music.
We need something where Vassalage is, even if it isn't specifically Vassalage, in order to prevent having too easy a path to the Medieval Era. One way or another, you need one tech from the last column of the Classical Era to get into the Medieval Era. Civil Service requires Sanitation or Vassalage-Feudalism, Feudalism requires Vassalage, Machinery requires Smithing, and Theology requires Music.
There are still a few techs that I wouldn't mind removing from the Tech Tree. One of them is Cavalry Tactics. I've kept Cavalry Tactics only because it provides a space between Matchlock and Flintlock. But with Rifling moved to the Industrial Era, we can move Flintlock a little deeper in the Renaissance Era, giving Matchlock units a little time to shine before being eclipsed.
So I think we should move Flintlock to Matchlock + Leadership + Chemistry. The Chemistry prerequisite is the key. This pushes Flintlock from Renaissance-4 to Renaissance-5.
Then we can get rid of Cavalry Tactics and distribute its tricks.
So I think we should move Flintlock to Matchlock + Leadership + Chemistry. The Chemistry prerequisite is the key. This pushes Flintlock from Renaissance-4 to Renaissance-5.
Then we can get rid of Cavalry Tactics and distribute its tricks.
- Move Dragoon to Matchlock.
- Consolidate Cuirassier at Flintlock with Strength 21. This gives Knights a little more time to be trainable.
- Military Tradition requires Flintlock instead of Cavalry Tactics. Flintlock is removed from Rifling because it is redundant.
Fozman
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2017
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- 133
Yeah, I usually bee line to Flintlock and pretty much ignore Matchlock. I typically use a lot of light cavalry and want to upgrade my Riders to Lancers ASAP. This would certainly provide more time for Arquebusier to be useful before Musketmen.
Agree with this one as well. Suggest an "Armored Cruiser" or the like, using a skin similar to Iron Frigate, but without the masts and coal stacks instead (or just a smaller version of the Ironclad Battleship).
Stats put it at about:
- 32-36
- 4
- +50% vs. Wooden (Iron Frigate is 25%, Ironclad Battleship is 100%)
- 1 Range
- 70 Accuracy
- Bombard City -12%/Turn (IF -10%, IB -16%)
- +1
cost - Requires Steel (tech for sure, resource optional but recommended), Screw Prop, Military Science (and Rifling optional, if you think it's necessary). And probably Coal resource as well.
Steel (Industrial-3) + Screw Propeller (Industrial-2) seems like the best fit. Iron Frigate is Steel (Industrial-3) + Military Science (Industrial-1), while Ironclad Battleship is Artillery (Industrial-4) + Combustion (Industrial-4). There are some other mods with early cruisers, so we can pull a model from there.
HorseshoeHermit
20% accurate as usual, Morty
Wouldn't you transfer Aristo's requirement of Caste System onto Vassalage? Then it doesn't have only one prereq.
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