Tech-tree

[Aussie_Lurker]

Actually, I think that might be a misunderstanding Sgrig. I haven't actually heard ANYONE from Firaxis say that ALL techs only need 1 prerequisite. Its just now you can have an A and B to get C, or an A OR B to get C-something which was never possible before Civ4! The only question now is-can modders put in an A-but NOT B-to get C. i.e. if you get A and B, then you can NEVER get C, but if you get A, but never pursue B, then you can get C. Does that make sense?

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[sgrig]

Actually, I think that might be a misunderstanding Sgrig. I haven't actually heard ANYONE from Firaxis say that ALL techs only need 1 prerequisite. Its just now you can have an A and B to get C, or an A OR B to get C-something which was never possible before Civ4! The only question now is-can modders put in an A-but NOT B-to get C. i.e. if you get A and B, then you can NEVER get C, but if you get A, but never pursue B, then you can get C. Does that make sense?

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I do hope that you are right, but in the IGN Q&A (http://pc.ign.com/articles/614/614551p2.html ) Barry Caudill says:

"Second, you don't need all of the techs that lead to the one you want, you only need to connect to it. In previous versions you may have had to research two or three things to get access to the one they connect to."

I interpreted it as all techs having A OR B leading to C rather than A AND B.

If this is moddable then I don't really care.

 

[mastertyguy]

The only question now is-can modders put in an A-but NOT B-to get C. i.e. if you get A and B, then you can NEVER get C, but if you get A, but never pursue B, then you can get C. Does that make sense?

Is it like : you can't research facultative tech C if you already have (to make it a good decision) REALLY important tech B (key military unit, important gov). EDIT You would have the choice to rush to B, never capable to have C's effects, or research C, expecting to get B later.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Yep, thats what I am talking about Mastertyguy. Lets just say that I hope modders can, with the new editor, create a whole series of different A and B, A not B and A or B scenarios for the tech tree, because that would be cool.
Of course, it wouldn't hurt if Soren or Barry actually popped their heads up and let us know if this was all possible !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Roadrunna]

With so many new technologies in the beginning of the game and an overall gain of 2 techs from C3C, what have they taken out of the game from the other eras?

 

[V. Soma]

With so many new technologies in the beginning of the game and an overall gain of 2 techs from C3C, what have they taken out of the game from the other eras?

At this point I do not feel bad about having more techs at the beginning and maybe less at the end,
for two reasons:

1.
Many of us (I guess) feel that the ancient era should be longer.
Now, with about 30 techs belonging historically to this early period
we can have a feel of a longer ancient age,
I, personally, welcome that!

2.
Maybe the fact that less techs are at the later part of history can serve in that
smaller nations will not fall much behind
in the race, especially if earlier techs are cheaper and
later ones progressively cost more, which is as now and was always in Civ.

 

[mudblood]

Writing => Alphabet => Literature ?

This actually makes sense if you reinterpret it as hieroglyphics - phoenetic alphabet - literature. Not sure about the rest.

When I looked at the tree, I noticed there's not a lot of north/south in it; there are only a few power techs that will get you from one side of the tree to the other, so you can't skip over a lot of the techs on the tree if you want a balanced civ. There are also a few 'peninsulas' (branches that you can only get into with one or two techs, and which lead to a large number of technologies), so despite the changes in the mechanics, there are still bottlenecks and techs you can't do without. It just means that catching up for an island civ or for civs on the wrong continent will be easier.

 

[narmox]

I like this. New strategies will have to be discovered based on the style of play, plus it means there'll be more varieties in the kind of nations who are around!

 

[GoodGame]

Some parts look weird.
Writing => Alphabet => Literature ?
Animal taming => Writing ?
Mysticism => Masonry ? (maybe for temples, but anyway)
But I couldn't have done better, I wouldn't have given anything.

Animal taming => Writing ?

This comes from counting heads of cattle. The 'Alphabet' lettters of different languages usually started out as pictogram/graphs of things that were traded (livestock mainly). I lot of early written scripts are actually accountant sheets.

Writing in terms of any kind of scripts (including cuneiform) could lead to alphabet (Alphabet is really spoken sounds attributed to scribbed lettering, so the writing really comes first). They don't mean written composition by Writing.

 

[PriestOfDiscord]

With so many new technologies in the beginning of the game and an overall gain of 2 techs from C3C, what have they taken out of the game from the other eras?

God I hope not. I find the more recent eras of history far more interesting than the ancient age. Making the modern age even more of a borefest than it was in Civ 3 would be a major turn off for me.

 

[icko]

The only question now is-can modders put in an A-but NOT B-to get C. i.e. if you get A and B, then you can NEVER get C, but if you get A, but never pursue B, then you can get C. Does that make sense?

Well, to me it doesn't.
could you give me an example of A AND B forbids C ?
I mean a logical sequence of concepts and/or technologies that would make another one impossible.
The closest thing I can think of is something that says if you know how to make nuclear engines AND metal ships THEN you CAN'T learn how to make ironclads
Just because it's stupid and worthless doesn't make it impossible.
(In my example, you *might* still want to learn how to do the useless ironclads to gift it to a backward ally without making him too powerful, or something like that)

 

[Commander Bello]

I agree with icko upon that A AND B excluding C doesn't make much sense. I mean, where is the point in having a concept reading like this: If you have one of two prerequisites, you are allowed to access a tech, with both prerequisites you aren't?
If you have paper OR pen, you are allowed to write - if you have both, you just cannot??? No way....

To have more early time techs seems to miss the crucial point: In Civ3, most players reported not to play much in modern times, as almost anything was already settled priorly. Now, if you have even less to invent later on, this would become even more true...
Not to mention, that the number of inventions has multiplied after the renaissance... To be at least a bit historically correct, you would assume to have a much higher number of techs in the modern age than in the stone ages...

 

[narmox]

I think I can understand it.. For some specific scenarios/mods it could be very useful, as a way of specializing different civilizations. So making examples with common techs such as writing and alphabet, or nukes and shipbuilding just to prove the idea is hilarious doesn't prove anything

It can be a way of forcing someone to go down a certain tech path and avoid certain techs in favor of others. And if they chose those others, well they have to go down a different path and not that path. Makes sense to me!

 

[mudblood]

I think I can understand it.. For some specific scenarios/mods it could be very useful, as a way of specializing different civilizations. So making examples with common techs such as writing and alphabet, or nukes and shipbuilding just to prove the idea is hilarious doesn't prove anything

It can be a way of forcing someone to go down a certain tech path and avoid certain techs in favor of others. And if they chose those others, well they have to go down a different path and not that path. Makes sense to me!

Especially if you're talking about philisophical techs -- atheism excludes religion, for example.

 

[icko]

I think I can understand it.. For some specific scenarios/mods it could be very useful, as a way of specializing different civilizations. So making examples with common techs such as writing and alphabet, or nukes and shipbuilding just to prove the idea is hilarious doesn't prove anything

It can be a way of forcing someone to go down a certain tech path and avoid certain techs in favor of others. And if they chose those others, well they have to go down a different path and not that path. Makes sense to me!

Please note the point that I was asking for an example, to be able to imagine it, and was giving the closest thing that my brain could make up that would resemble that idea.
I still don't understand how knowing something PREVENTS you from knowing something else possibly more advanced. If you have any example of a chain like "if you know A and B you are not able to understand C".

I comprehend the motivation (in terms of gameplay and scenario), but since CIV is a game based on the civilization metaphor, I would like at least one such example, to be able to, well, imagine it

BTW, mudblood: knowing about the concepts of "only 1 god", and "many gods" doesn't prevent me from thinking of "no god at all" ;-) in fact, it could also be construed as a prerequisite by some

 

[mudblood]

BTW, mudblood: knowing about the concepts of "only 1 god", and "many gods" doesn't prevent me from thinking of "no god at all" ;-) in fact, it could also be construed as a prerequisite by some

Poorly chosen example.

In a way this is already in the game; when Einstein discovered relativity he rejected some of the basic ideas of the Newtonian universe. B replaced A. The adoption of new ideas often causes the rejection of old ones, or at least their re-organization. But to follow on this, try to imagine knowledge not as pure, discrete units progressing to a clear-cut goal, but as fuzzy ideas that interact with one another and influence each other, and may be accepted and rejected. If I accept that the earth revolves around the sun, it becomes harder to accept that the universe is centered on humans and therefore influences my theology and its cohesiveness. If I reject that the earth revolves around the sun, I may save my theology, but why should I be able to discover space flight? The tech tree may not be the best way to model this, and I don't think this is a good model for civ IV, but if someone wants to mod it in, why not?

 

[playshogi]

If you want A AND B excluding C. Let's say C allows you to build missionaries. Then, upon
learning B, one of the characteristics of B is to prevent missionaries from being built even if you get C later, (or at least make missionaries prohibitively expensive).

 

[narmox]

ok here's an example. I call it Narmox's Patented Dynamic Unique Units Tech Tree

Let's say you want sortof unique units, but don't want to predetermine them in advance. You also want the civilization to be able to choose its unique unit, but not have access to other unique units once they chose one.

So you want to tech tree to be like "If you discover Legionaries, you cannot research Immortals, and vice versa".

Another example: Looking at Teturkhan's Test of Time map&mod, you'll see that different civilizations have different research paths. To accomplish this, Teturkhan had to fudge things a bit by giving these civs hidden starting techs that other techs would depend on, hence locking christian civs to christian techs, american civs to american techs, etc.

This could be made more dynamic though! IF you want christians and muslims to have slightly different tech trees, but you don't want to decide in advance who's christian and who's muslim, then the idea we're discussing works. "If you know Christianity, then you have access to this this and this, but not those techs." Same thing for other religions.

Let's take another example, with a lord of the rings mods. Early on you could have the chance to join the alliance of elves and humans, or mordor, or to be neutral.. The choice could be made with a tech too - thus giving you access to a different tech path depending on which alignment you chose!

I hope this clears it up a bit

Hm ok I just reread the posts above discussing this, and my examples are just SLIGHTLY different. But only slightly

 

[sgrig]

Well, nobody ever said that we will be able to include NOT prerequisites (that is logical operator NOT). Personally I doubt this will be in the game. As I said above, I'd be happy if we can still have AND prerequisites and not just OR.

 

[Arathorn]

Just a WAG, but it seems that getting through the tech tree and exactly how it works would be a perfect example of something to do with Python scripting. And with Python, it should be pretty straight-forward to set up all kinds of logical operations. That seems to me to be a really obvious demarcation line for a native code/Python cut-off that it has to at least crossed the mind of people at Firaxis, if not actually implemented. One can hope, anyway.

Arathorn