Technological peculiarities

[Cromagnus]

Actually, aside from balance, *readability* is the biggest reason the tech tree doesn't match reality. If you made Bronze Working a direct dependency of Industrialization, and Mining a direct dependency of Archaeology, it would make the tech tree unreadable. They're trying to keep it a simple, readable, *mostly linear* tech tree. It would look like a cat's cradle if you made it realistic.

 

[qemist]

submarines before Combustion. in this case i would argue, due to subs' being pretty powerful, that it's both bad gameplay as well as realism.

Combustion, WTH? "Combustion" is just a $64 word for fire. See any dictionary. I'm pretty sure combustion came a looong time before even agriculture. Maybe they are referring to the internal combustion engine. Which you also need for aircraft.

 

[Arachnofiend]

They are indeed referring to the internal combustion engine. The increased length of land trade routes is a reference to the advent of automobiles and highways to drive them on.

I think there's good game design reasons to make planes require combustion though; you have to go to Steam Power to get to Plastics for Labs, which means Flight as it currently stands requires you to diverge only one tech off the standard science path to get. GWB's are too powerful to be so easy to get with such minimal military investment. Requiring Combustion would open up more opportunity for Blitzkrieg offenses since you'd already have access to Landships before you even get to Flight. More options is good but I shouldn't have to say that.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Hmmm, let's add a tech that enables building a shoop da whoop face and have it not require laser

 

[Sturmgewher88mm]

BtS had a more balanced tech tree, and most of the techs and units have at least two prerequisites.

 

[qemist]

But Frigates requires Iron to build, both in CiV and in real life.

So? what good is iron without iron working? Iron does not occur in nature per se. Iron ore is a red rock that does not spontaneously transform into nails etc.

 

[Walter R]

Artillery -- Possible to make a cannon with rifling without knowing about rifling.

Yeah. Artillery without animal husbandry - what's that all about?

All I can say is that it doesn't really bother me too much, although I do doff my hat to the 'realists'. Unrealistic AI diplomay bothers me more.
Oh and before anyone corrects me, yes I do realise that you will need animal husbandry...

 

[qemist]

Plastics without petroleum (what they are made from) or chemistry (how they are made).

 

[George Abitbol]

submarines before Combustion. in this case i would argue, due to subs' being pretty powerful, that it's both bad gameplay as well as realism.

Some of the first submarines were steam-powered, then elecrical before Diesel engines.

And Clément Ader's airplane was also steam-powered, so basically you could discover Flight without Combustion.

And Plastics without petrol: what about Bakelite?

 

[qemist]

Some of the first submarines were steam-powered, then elecrical before Diesel engines.

How many successful steam powered combat subs made it into operation? a number starting with "z".

And Clément Ader's airplane was also steam-powered, so basically you could discover Flight without Combustion.

Never flew successfully. That is why the Wright Brothers are credited with the first successful manned heavier than air powered flight.

And Plastics without petrol: what about Bakelite?

Bakelite is made from phenol which is produced from petroleum. You don't seem to be engaging in good faith.

 

[George Abitbol]

How many successful steam powered combat subs made it into operation? a number starting with "z".

I never stated about any successful steam-submarine, I just said steam-submarines did exist. Can't you read? Oh, I just forgot man-powered submarines (one of them succeed in the Civil War, even if the ship sunk with its target)

Bakelite is made from phenol which is produced from petroleum. You don't seem to be engaging in good faith.

Phenol from petroleum? Seriously? I forgot to mention Galalith, made from formol and milk (yes, milk), and Parkesine, made from cellulose; these products are believed to be the first plastics.

 

[jlim201]

Any tech without Education???? How can you learn something without educating yourself or others about it?

 

[PhilBowles]

Your people can know how to draw people using those awesome glowbox things without having them. The bonus from internet is all about using the internet to show other peoples your culture and landmarks, as I understand it.

Gatling guns, without gunpowder, is a bit more of a problem, but remember that the tech gunpowder doesn't really mean the discovery of gunpowder (Korea would have a UU problem without it), but the use of it. I suppose that is the use of gunpowder in small personal weapons.

Yes, that makes sense. Though since Civ games essentially rewrite history, we can envisage certain of these developments taking place without their precursors in reality: a Gatling gun represents the development of a hand-cranked, rotary, wheeled cannon. In reality the charge consisted of gunpowder, but there's little reason a similar weapon couldn't have been invented in a world that bypassed the gunpowder stage and developed other explosives (not included as separate techs) - after all, no modern military weapon uses black powder charges.

Writing leading to Drama and Poetry is the most insane thing on the tech tree, though. It may be the only thing that I really can't even hope to justify. At least other things, I can generally twist it to work, but in that one place, there's no hope of it.

You can use the same fudge as you just did with gunpowder - it leads to the development of written drama and poetry, hence National Epic and Writers' Guild (though naturally that doesn't explain the amphitheater), for which writing is a prerequisite. The name's a shorthand, in the same way that the tech Civ games have always called "Combustion" represents the internal combustion engine rather than the discovery of fire. Non-written forms simply aren't represented as techs. They should just have called the tech Literature, as in past Civ games, though that still wouldn't solve the amphitheater issue.

 

[PhilBowles]

There's more LOL than that in the tech tree:

Horse Archer (Huns) -- Possible for an archer to ride a horse without knowing how to ride a horse.
Frigate -- Possible to build a ship that has cannon on it, without knowing how to make a cannon. In fact you don't even have to know how to make iron or bronze.
Artillery -- Possible to make a cannon with rifling without knowing about rifling.

Nuclear submarines - possible without Atomic Theory or the ability to locate uranium.

rather see Computers take a role more like Civil Service has (passive bonus, lots of techs requiring it, slightly higher in the tree vertically), since, you know, in real life they're kind of important.

I find it pleasing in those cases where the tech tree gets it exactly right: radio (both in itself and in Civ V terms as the tech that encompasses the invention of transistors) was probably the single most important technological development of the 20th Century, and there it is as the most crucial entry point to the Modern Era in Civ V. It would certainly be welcome if the game had a few more cases like that - though, as has been noted, Civ V generally does a better job than past Civ games; no wheel-less automobiles, and everything on the tree (except "Drama and Poetry") plausibly represents a technological or conceptual advance, unlike Civ IV's Divine Right or Meditation, or Civ III's Prophecy; plus, while a few abstractions like Philosophy, and developments in social organisation like Civil Service, are still there, "techs" like Monarchy, Liberalism, Republic etc. have been more appropriately assigned to other game systems, making Civ V's tech tree the first Civ tech system to try and approximate 'pure' scientific development.

submarines before Combustion. in this case i would argue, due to subs' being pretty powerful, that it's both bad gameplay as well as realism.

It's better realism than it is gameplay. Functioning submarines were developed by the American Civil War (and less effective attempts before that), a couple of decades before the development of the internal combustion engine. The submarine depicted in the graphics is of course fully modern, however.

In any case a better way to look at techs in Civ games generally is as abstractions representing a general period by one of the technologies most associated with it, rather than as that specific tech. So Combustion = period between around 1885-1914, for example.

GWB's are too powerful to be so easy to get with such minimal military investment.

Except that they have the same constraint as another powerful unit, the Frigate. You don't need Iron Working to build Frigates, but as pointed out you need iron. You can get GWBs without Biology, but you still need a source of oil, adding to the teching you need to do to obtain them.

In any case I think GWBs are about right power-wise for their era (both in reality, and in terms of their tech placement in game) - they're drastically less effective than the bombers you can upgrade to with Radar, and won't dent equivalent-era cities unless you have a lot of them. The power of early planes comes from the ability to stack lots of them - relatively speaking a GWB as an individual unit is less dominant than the frigate is for its era. And lots of planes require lots of oil and lots and lots of hammers.

BtS had a more balanced tech tree, and most of the techs and units have at least two prerequisites.

It was also verging on unreadable; as it was the game had to compromise and make sure that the prerequisites weren't very far from one another on the tech tree (had it had an Archaeology tech, it wouldn't have required Mining as a prerequisite), so that they could be mapped reasonably on the schematic.

I think a better approach would be to keep the Civ V (and Civs I-III) linear tech tree, but adopt the BtS system for buildings and units, as many of those had multiple prerequisites (which BtS didn't even try to map). In most of the cases discussed here, both gameplay and realism issues relate to the units found at certain levels (Flight without Combustion? Fine. A bomber that requires oil without Combustion? How does the oil power it, then?), rather than the actual tech progression.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Any tech without Education???? How can you learn something without educating yourself or others about it?

The national college, where the children of plutocrats study so they can be famous for discovering something. The ruling class has to find something to keep itself occupied.

 

[RedThree]

It always bugged me that chariot archers come before the horsemen.

I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation, like...I can't come up with anything.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

It always bugged me that chariot archers come before the horsemen.

I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation, like...I can't come up with anything.

Early horses was smal and unsutiable for riding but they could be used to pull a chariot.

 

[PhilBowles]

It always bugged me that chariot archers come before the horsemen.

I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation, like...I can't come up with anything.

That one's pretty straightforward (and has been the case in most Civ games - chariots were always unlocked at The Wheel). A chariot is just a horse-drawn cart; it's an extension of using beasts of burden in agriculture (a la Animal Husbandry). Learning to ride them, to use weapons while doing so, and training the horses to fight while carrying a rider, is a whole different skill set and one that comes well after domestication. By contrast, all you need to do to turn an agricultural cart into a chariot is to teach the horse not to bolt in combat.

This is entirely historical - chariots were used by societies such as ancient Egypt and the Hittites who had no knowledge of riding horses in battle; horses weren't much used in warfare as mounts until the latter part of the Greek period, by which time chariots were obsolete.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

Perhaps some of the imbalances in the tech tree could be alleviated by a requirement that at some point you have to research all of the techs in a prior era before moving forward. Not to the extreme, but for example, maybe only allowing research up to 2 eras in advance of an era where the tech tree is not complete (or 3, pick a number).

However, I'm not sure this would improve anything from a gameplay perspective. When comparing the BTS trees, remember that you could basically (with Radio) research all of the culturally relevant techs pretty early and then shut down research. Instead of running through the middle of the tree, however, here we are running through the very top, making some very expensive scientific techs necessary for a cultural victory.....

Surely some more cohesiveness between the top of the tree and the bottom would improve things.

 

[PhilBowles]

Perhaps some of the imbalances in the tech tree could be alleviated by a requirement that at some point you have to research all of the techs in a prior era before moving forward. Not to the extreme, but for example, maybe only allowing research up to 2 eras in advance of an era where the tech tree is not complete (or 3, pick a number).

However, I'm not sure this would improve anything from a gameplay perspective. When comparing the BTS trees, remember that you could basically (with Radio) research all of the culturally relevant techs pretty early and then shut down research. Instead of running through the middle of the tree, however, here we are running through the very top, making some very expensive scientific techs necessary for a cultural victory.....

Surely some more cohesiveness between the top of the tree and the bottom would improve things.

I wouldn't use the odd BTS era model - because of the tree's asymmetric structure and the way era advancement was tied to specific techs (still nominally the case, but each parallel branch of the tree has an entry into the next era at the same point), you could get some very odd "medieval" techs like Liberalism (to cite an example from a game I played yesterday - pretty sure I didn't get the 'advanced to the Renaissance' notification).

You are right about the top/bottom imbalance in the Civ V tech tree, but that's mainly a balance issue rather than an artefact of the tree's structure.

They should try to work a way of making the naval techs more centralised, so that Navigation then links to the military tech path (since Frigates outperform any military ranged unit of their period, and every map at least has a coast, they're one reason the military path is unattractive) while Astronomy remains on the science path. Pikes should be migrated as well (and, in line with most other 'social policy' type techs, Civil Service probably removed as a technology). Perhaps make Engineering rather than, ahem, Theology the required tech (with Optics) for Compass, which would place it pretty much where Civil Service is now (move irrigation to Engineering, Chichen Itza to Theology - because there aren't enough Wonders there already - or Engineering, and pikes/landsknechts to Guilds, reducing strength to compensate) and rearrange the tech tree around that? Theology (representing a Medieval European/Abrahamic religious tradition) is not associated with the development of compasses; while they have their ultimate origins in ancient Chinese divination rituals these were not theological, and the magnetites used were not navigational compasses of the sort the tech represents. Navigation would make sense as requiring both Astronomy and (because of the units it unlocks) Metallurgy, which would link it nicely to the military path - alternatively it could stay with Astronomy as the only prerequisite, but Metallurgy would be needed as well to unlock the Frigate.