Techs Require Era mod

[ChillyFlake]

I'm looking for or interested in making/requesting a mod that prevents you from researching a tech or civic from an era that the game hasn't reached yet. I'm sure a large many things are jumping out at you to say in response, but the problem i'm trying to solve seems to necessitate this.

The short version is i think snowballing is such a supreme balancing issue, thanks in no small part to pillaging, that once youre an era ahead youre 2 eras ahead and then 3 and then no matter WHAT you do its impossible to lose. So limiting what you can research when i feel would solve this, as no one would be able to snowball so effectively.
As for what would happen with the science and culture, i don't know for sure. Thats why i post here. My current idea is converting science and culture, once you have all techs and civics, into gold, perhaps at a 1:1 or 1:2 rate. It wouldn't be as high as it ought to be, because in that scinareo science civs can buy a billion units and runaway with the game anyway, with a hundred billion warriors just printing out turn after turn. One way to solve that would be, whatever the conversion rate from science and culture to gold is, you award it to the civ as flat gold each turn, rather than adding to gold per turn. That way, amassing too large an army would cost you too much to maintain, even if technicly you get enough each turn to do so.
This might also require you to raise the maintenence of every unit by 1, so that free units like warriors or some unique units cant just bypass this restriciton. Still, what do you all think?

Long version with many thoughts under the cut (It's basically just my previous versions of this post where i talk outloud about snowballing and pillaging)

Spoiler Long version :

This is my original post that got way too long lol:

In trying to figure out how i want to best play my games of Civ, i came to the realization: There's no inbetween with the current ability to research techs and civics beyond the world era. You or one of the ai either Roll through them and so a peaceful civ ends up having line infantry against domanation civ's crossbowman and heavy chariots, or you have the low tech nothings that get stomped by the AI.

So i wanna make/request a mod that only allows you to research a tech or civic when youre in that era or beyond. As in, once youre done researching all the techs in the ancient era, you cannot research anything in the classical era until the game reaches that state.
The way you would have this not punish science focused civs is that after this point, any science or culture you generate would be converted to gold, perhaps at a 1:1 rate or like a 1:4 rate or some such. That way scientific civs could still buy warriors and infrastructure and rapidly expand, as is true to life for advanced civilizations rapidly expanding, but they'd spreading themselves thin with their gpt funneled into armies

This, in effect, turns every game into a game where non-combatitive players are the most powerful, and combatitive players are the least powerful. What makes this worse is pillaging. There's just no way to justify not pillaging, and assuming you have an army big enough to invade an enemy or to counterattack an enemy invasion, you probably can pillage everything you want. Even without Raid or Total War, the gold, science, culture, and faith is just off the charts, and snowball doesn't cover half of the benifits to doing so.

But the REAL problem with pillaging is that the ai basically doesn't know how to deal with it, or that if its a human player theyre not only stuck having a losing war, but they also now have to dedicate time to fixing their place. I can tell that the intended effect is that powerful science and culture civs would likely not be producing units, and so a less advanced domination civ could come in and cause pandamonium, raid their stockades, and runaway with a bunch of science culture and gold to catch up, while the "stronger" civ has to play catch up, thus balancing it out.

What ends up happening is the stronger civ, with the advantage, just stops producing science for a little while to mak ea few cavalry, ranged, and bombards, and then just boslters their already incredible stockpile with weaklings to stomp. Pillaging is almost always just "The rich get richer." even after pillaging, its likely youre just gonna start taking cities just to keep putting them behind, and even if you give them back after the war there's just not much that they can do to recover.

Snowballing is such a massive issue that i think it needs to be addressed, and pound for pound, for my playstyle i think its limiting when you can research beyond your own era.
This is because youre either not raising an army, so the ai or other players attack you, or youre raising an army and you attack other players. In the former, you either lose cause you had no army, or you train better units than them because of your science and therefore production, defeat their armies, and then you lead a counter offensive. The thing is, if you can fight off attacking forces, you know that they have no army to defend with while you do, so pillaging them is basically punishment free. And at that point, choosing not to invade, even just to get a few pillages in, is doing nothing but shooting yourself in the foot. Given theres no downside, not doing so is an active choice that you have to make, and it seems pointless to pick and choose when to use features the game expects you to use.

The issue, in my opinion, is Snowballing. Either a domination civ catches a scientific or culture civ with their pants down, pillages everything, and not only does the nerd civ not have the army to defend or to counterattack, but now they can't raise one because of their resources going to fixing what's been broken. You might say that's on them for not having a defensive force at the ready, and i'd be inclined to agree, however the problem is actually the agressor's reward.

Pillaging is straight up broken and i can't imagine how you'd fix it. either is a Win more button, where an advanced civ goes and gets bursts of gold science culture and faith from a lowly civ, or a civ thats far too big isnt protected in all corners, and youre jumped way way up on the tech tree for basically free. It shouldn't be, at least for my playstyle, that Dom civs are the best science civs, and science civs are the best Domination.

It's really the domination part that makes it so difficult. nearly every time i run away with science and culture (whether or not i pillaged), im sending cavalry anywhere from 1-3 eras ahead of anyone else over just to pillage and let my science or culture victory come faster. I know i could just "not" do that but the fact is if im trying to win the game thats the only option youre left with besides clicking next turn, and even if i didnt its not as if theyd be able to win anything if im already 1-3 eras ahead.

 

[Monene]

I'll share my opinion. Looting is absurd. Many civs used scorched-earth tactics, and looting ceased to be beneficial, forcing those cultures to civilize themselves in order to progress. Looting should only grant bonuses when the player is lagging behind in science or culture. Looting civilizations that are technologically or culturally backward shouldn't yield any progress except monetary gain. Rather than limiting available technologies, I think the ideal approach would be to "help" the less advanced civilizations. There are many examples of backward civilizations that imitated (at the cost of their own identity) more developed ones. This could be implemented as if a civilization is lagging behind, granting them more tourism to help them culturally dominate, and then providing them with culture or science.

 

[ChillyFlake]

I'll share my opinion. Looting is absurd. Many civs used scorched-earth tactics, and looting ceased to be beneficial, forcing those cultures to civilize themselves in order to progress. Looting should only grant bonuses when the player is lagging behind in science or culture. Looting civilizations that are technologically or culturally backward shouldn't yield any progress except monetary gain. Rather than limiting available technologies, I think the ideal approach would be to "help" the less advanced civilizations. There are many examples of backward civilizations that imitated (at the cost of their own identity) more developed ones. This could be implemented as if a civilization is lagging behind, granting them more tourism to help them culturally dominate, and then providing them with culture or science.

I feel like this definitly would be a help, if lacking civilizations pillaged and "stole" the advancements, rather than rolling civs stealing imaginary science from nothing. With that said, i also still think id like to pursue my idea of limitation, for i think it would make the game a fair bit more "realistic", but not in the "hurr durr realism = good" way. More like in the way that tons of people like the "Real Era Stop" mod, which just stops advancement at a given era. What i want from civ games is marathon style, huge map empire planners and defenders.

In essence, i like to play defensively, and without striving for one victory type over another, just to see how good of an empire i can make. The issue is i both want all victory types to be open (To add stakes, as if i just had score victory on its the same problem just way longer), and i want the choice of whether or not to go to war to actually mean something. I want spies to be useful, i want joint wars declared against me to matter, i want to really think about what districts to place, etc. But going to war and pillaging is too powerful, and unless i specifically go out of my way to declare friends with as many folk as i can (so i cant be war'd), even if i choose not to attack, defending my borders inherently is an offer for, essentially, free gold science and culture, and even IF i didnt take it (which is dumb, because trying to win is still part of the fun), they would just continue to harass and pillage me in a stalemate. Plus, in that scinareo i cant use fun spy mechanics

i would say thees a lot of problems with the current game progression and just how powerful science is, and while this wouldnt fix everything, it would at least make the game more engaging and interesting without it being a total overhaul.

 

[Monene]

So, should all technology and civic principles be locked away if they're not in their current era? Should surplus science and culture be converted into gold, and maintenance costs be adjusted? I feel like that's still keeping the snowball rolling. This happens in Civ7; it's like cars, but at a certain point you lift them off, they keep accelerating, and after a while you let go and they leave everyone else behind. Better to just keep up with the others.

 

[ChillyFlake]

So, should all technology and civic principles be locked away if they're not in their current era? Should surplus science and culture be converted into gold, and maintenance costs be adjusted? I feel like that's still keeping the snowball rolling. This happens in Civ7; it's like cars, but at a certain point you lift them off, they keep accelerating, and after a while you let go and they leave everyone else behind. Better to just keep up with the others.

honestly, i would love to discuss this and critique my own ideas, but to be frank i cant get the cotton pickin' mod to work. Just as a seperate thing, i have a completely bare bones mod thats only purpose is to change all tech costs to 100, simply as a way to make sure the mod buddy is working as i expect it to. Yet no matter what i do, it works up to the buttress tech, and then it + everything after is unaffected.

I have dependencies to gathering storm and rise and fall (even though in theory just rise and fall should work), ive set a LoadOrder to 999, and i even included an Ancient Road movement cost modification to .60 just to make sure the mod loads (It always does). Before i even think about debating if the mod is a good idea, how would i even get it to function properly?

 

[Monene]

Share what you have so I can help you.