Technological Degeneration

[Gisli]

I'm planning a post-apocalyptic type mod right now and plan on having the tech advances in the first era show a degeneration in technology rather than an advancement. For example, the players may start with the ability to produce riflemen, but as the factories break down and cannot be fixed, the ability to make these units is lost and only inferior units can be built. If I make it so that the more advanced units are obsoleted by the later units will this cause any problems for the mod or for the AI?

Also, correct me if I am mistaken, it is impossible to remove terraform abilities after they are available, right? Can I make so the players can mine a square at first but lose that ability for a while later? Probably not but I figure it's worth asking.

Gisli

 

[Androrc]

The problem is that people will simply not research...unless the other ages have a significant increase in strength(in general, in all things)...

 

[A Viking Yeti]

I have no idea, but it sounds cool . I have a question similar, if you have global warming change a tile from terrian you can settle on to one you can't? Would the city die, or just stay there. Would units be able to get to it? Seems like you could fit that in, like at first you can have cities on desert and the you "lose" irrigation, all cities on the desert would then either starve or (mostly likely) cause Civ to crash. Just a thought.

 

[MarineCorps]

The anwser to both Q is no. Currently it is impossible to do either. Nor can I think of a way to do it with the current system.

 

[Gisli]

Would it be better to simply have the players start out with a few advanced units and be unable to build anymore until they reached the required technology level? The idea is that the first era will basically be recovering from disaster and rebuilding society from a medieval type level. After the initial decrease in technology the return to a modern level will be quite fast as the knowledge is not all lost, simply the infrastructure needed to utilize it. As with most post-apocalyptic games and scenarios, the technology will eventually be more advanced than now. The endgame will be quite futuristic. But I'm rambling.

I really just want to know if AI will reduce or stop research speed to avoid losing it's best unit. Will it research at normal speed if that would lead to a short-term disadvantage? Thanks,
Gisli

 

[Gogf]

Well, you make the best early units upgrade to less good units. You would then make it so that about an era later you would get better than first units, giving you incentive to go into the era with worse units, after building a lot og good ones, for defense.

 

[A Viking Yeti]

Sorry if this is considered bumping, but that wouldn't work very well, Gogf. The AI would probably build a lot of the good units, avoiding the bad science as long as possible, then when finally time to downgrade to the worse units, they just wouldn't. They would wait for the era in which the unit would upgrade to a better. Though they still wouldn't be able to make the good units, they would never downgrade, half the time they're either to poor or too lazy to even upgrade, I know I am .

 

[Gogf]

I don't advocate them downgrading, but if you have the unit "uplgrade" to a worse unit, then you can't build it anymore, because units don't go obsolete (the civ meaning: you can't build them anymore). The AI wouldn't downgrade, and the player shouldn't either. Get it?

 

[BeBro]

For the upgrading - most players would probably try to avoid upgrading if it results in units with lesser abilities/values.

But you can set the techs so that good units are made obsolete by new, weaker units. Isn´t it possible to specify min. and max. number of turns needed for every tech? In that way you could force the player to research certain techs even if he sets research to the lowest speed. You could also balance out the values of those techs, eg. a tech that gives a weaker unit should be valuable in another aspect, eg. should give better buildings or wonders too.

Not sure if it would work, or if the AI can handle it, but worth a try IMO

Edit. maybe it would work to have good units followed by weak units, followed by good units again in the research path. You could set it up so that you have to research the weak units (which would make initial good units obsolete) to get the better units at the end.

 

[Gogf]

No, if you turn off research, than it's "--".

 

[Gisli]

Hmm, I thought it was possibvle to simply make units obsolete with a certain tech rather than requiring an upgrade path. Well, interesting though the problem may be, I have decided to just add the good units as starting units rather than trying to really simulate the process of degeneration itself. The game could end up being really unbalanced if some players had more than a couple of powerful units at the beginning of the game.
Thanks all,
Gisli

 

[Gogf]

No, unfortunately you can't make units obsolete.

 

[A Viking Yeti]

You would, also, have to make two sets of units. One for before the degeneration, and one for afterward. The reason being, the units can't upgrade to more than one other unit, so the tank downgrades to cavalry, cavalry upgrades to tank. Unfortunatly, the tank would then have to downgrade to cavalry. So you could never use the same unit in 2 different eras, with lesser units in between.

 

[Xerol]

wait...that gives me an idea....if you could create an "upgrade loop" you could create a set of units with changing abilities, for example, a rifleman that could switch from 4.6.1 to 6.4.1 for a cost of 20 gold, and back again for 20 gold again. of course, you run into the same problem, but you could just call it a "versatile rifleman" or something like that. also, you could do something similar with mounted units, de-mounting them to give higher defense or something(imagine a cavalry that can change to something like 2.6.1 or so, giving great defense before you even have to research education)

 

[Madeira]

You cant stop research, unless you have a gov with tech cap of 10 (100%, like democracy), so you must change these governments to make sure they're cap is no bigger than 9, then make maximun turns to research a smaller number to make sure every civilization will research no longer than n turns. This way, the only way you could stop research is to keep doing revolutions to stay in anarchy, but then you wouldnt be able to build either

So you could have modern units upgrade to weaker units, and much later, the weaker units would upgrade to better units, these better units cant be the same as the modern units when you start the scenario or any after that, i dont think you can have "loops" in the upgrade path (not sure about that), but you can just make copies of the modern units and give them a different name (just add a space in the end, that will do).

I think its an interesting idea

 

[A Viking Yeti]

I agree with Madeira, you'd probably have to redo the rate cap unless the unit downgrades were out-weighted by some wonder/improvement. Also, I see 2 main options for units. You could A: make 2 sets of units, one with normal names; the second with either the space idea or post-apocalyptic in the name. B: make a completely new path for scientific evolution. I.e.: start off with tanks, lose tanks, get a new unit that's the equivilent of a tank but looks different. Who says that we'd build them to look the same after such a long time. They could have 2 cannons, or cannons on the sides; who knows? Or you could start them off with 2 or 3 modern units, probably the easiest idea.

 

[Gisli]

Given all this wonderful advice here is what I think I will do: have the players start with a couple of good "ancient" (as in higher tech) units, the ability to build a cheap sort of factory, and be able to make a fairly decent defensive unit (maybe like a musteteer). Then, with a later tech advance they will lose the factories and the musketeer will upgrade to something like a pikeman to show the loss of armament manufacture. It is possible to obsolete improvements now, right? Or should I make the factory a very cheap small wonder?

There are going to be three cultural groups with somewhat differing tech trees in the scenario and only one group (the "human" civilizations) will be undergoing this degeneration. I don't want to give them tanks or any strong offensive units because the other groups will be starting off at a more medieval level.

Another question: is it possible to have one civ never advance beyond the first era but have all of it's possible techs available in the first era for very high research costs? What I want is essentially a super-barbarian civ that has no overlap into the standard tech tree and so cannot get the techs required to advance in era. If I increase to tech costs in their branch a lot and then set the max. turns for reserach to, say, 50 turns and include all the techs they could get in the first era (i.e. 10 tech in 500 turns) will this cause any problems?

Much appreciated,
Gisli

 

[A Viking Yeti]

Hmm... I didn't even know you could have different sciences for different culture groups. Do you have Conquest or something, I only have PTW. It sounds like you'll get the civilization3.exe error or something if you try the tech limitation idea. It'd be very cool if you could pull it off, I bet it would be an entertaining scenerio. Wish you luck.

 

[Mobilize]

Or you can make all those units obsolete with the a tech called "Degeneration" and make techs like the old ones but with different names and units and buildings and research those.

Theres a lot of ways to do this I don't know if they're successful however.