The tech tree is silly

[anarchywrksbest]

In previous Civ games there was a heavy drag effect on each tech you researched when bee-lining down a particular path. I feel like that doesn't exist in Civ6? Or is maybe less noticeable due to the boosts? I like the boosts by the way - but they could maybe do with being nerfed.

 

[Ryika]

As pointed out by the OP; you can build Mechanized Infantry without bronze working, iron working, or metal casting.
Good luck constructing and powering such a vehicle with only stone & wood.

So? It's not a simulation, don't take the tech names literally.

@topic: I'd say the problem is more that the costs and the yields don't inflate enough, than that the techs don't have enough connections/prereqs. Being able to beeline something is great, but it's clear that beelining through a whole era without the new technologies take ages of their own is pretty silly.

I think the ideal way of tackling these problems would be increased tech costs, combined with Eurekas that actually require technologies from other paths of the tech tree. That way beelining would still be possible, but less efficient, and only of temporary benefit but with some heavy downsides in the long run, because by beelining you're missing out on Eurekas.

 

[Lord Shadow]

As pointed out by the OP; you can build Mechanized Infantry without bronze working, iron working, or metal casting.
Good luck constructing and powering such a vehicle with only stone & wood.

Fair enough, I had missed that list.

However, it seems to be a purely theoretical problem. Good luck getting to the Information Era in the first place without those seminal technologies. What is the actual, practical point in cluttering the UI mentioning 30+ prerequisite techs?

 

[Returning Lurker]

To train a mechanized infantry, the strongest infantry unit in the game, you only need 24/68 (35%) of the techs in the tree. Here's an incomplete list of techs that you DON'T need to train a mechanized infantry:

Mining, Wheel, Bronze Working, Iron Working, Construction, Engineering, Machinery, Gunpowder, Metal Casting, Ballistics, Rifling, Steel, Replaceable Parts, Combustion.

Just for fun I tried to think of a way to make mechanized Infantry without any of these technologies. For the sake of argument I'm going to use the general sense of mechanized infantry being "Mechanized infantry are infantry equipped with armored personnel carriers (APCs) or infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) for transport and combat" rather than mechanized infantry as we typically understand them in our current timeline.

For starters without metal casting or any hard metals we're going to have to completely throw the idea of an all metal vehicle. Metal may only be used in small imperfect quantities from what one would be able to recover on the surface (since we lack mining). That leaves us with wood, rubber, basic plastics (we lack machinery and combustion to refine it), stone, fabrics, and livestock for primary building materials. Originally I considered some kind of wagon vehicle but then I remembered I had no wheels, so instead I considered a form of low flying armored war balloon, but without a combustion engine to generate hot air that idea would have to be nixed. Then I remembered something important, I AM allowed to use electricity and there ARE surface deposits of copper and gold. So I revisited the war balloon idea with an engine that ran on burning kindling/gas via the use of heat conducted by running an electric current through low grade imperfect copper and gold rather than a petroleum or coal based combustion engine. The balloon however would make for an easy target to firearms or arrows on its own (you said we don't have gunpowder, not necessarily that they don't, so we have to consider the possibility of their shooting at us) which is why we'd need some kind of armor. I considered just declaring it Kevlar but while machinery isn't TECHNICALLY required to manufacture Kevlar the amount of time it would take would be beyond reason and it would be impossible to make the large sheets required. So then I considered alternating layers of highly tensile/flame resistant wood and similarly durable cloth, but by doing that the weight would be increased which would necessitate a larger balloon which would need more armor and you'd have this infinitely escalating arms race against its own design. It was at this time that I realized that the balloon doesn't need to fly, it just needs to reduce the weight of the craft enough to make it mobile, it's the basic principle behind hovercraft which are APCs in their own right which is what I was trying to design in the first place. So by mounting the balloons within the main carriage of the vehicle or in side mounted pods and making the main body out of highly polished and durable wood you would in essence have an ancient era hovercraft. Then came the problem of propulsion. I thought about livestock pulling the hovercraft around but it didn't feel in the spirit of the thing since it's no longer mechanized. I also thought about sails being used to guide it but then you'd reach the same problem of making a large protruding target right where the balloon would have been anyway. Then my mind fell on what real hovercraft use, propellers, but I had to come up with a way to use propellers without a combustion/metal engine. I of course could just have a bunch of dudes cranking its axle to make it spin but that wouldn't reach the desired velocity, I'd need something faster. Well, since I was inflating the balloons with hot air created by gas being burned by electricity I realized I could just funnel the runoff hot air from that non combustion non mechanical engine to the axle to spin it thus creating propulsion and, with the use of a rudder, steering.

And there we have it, mechanized infantry which don't use "Mining, Wheel, Bronze Working, Iron Working, Construction, Engineering, Machinery, Gunpowder, Metal Casting, Ballistics, Rifling, Steel, Replaceable Parts, Combustion" You see, with just a touch of imagination, a complete disregard for practicality, a ton of mental gymnastics, and a very tenuous grip on what words mean, anything is possible! I'm sure smarter minds than I could come up with even more practical or functional designs, that's just what I came up with after an hour of mulling this over in my head.

 

[DonPato]

I have definitely found this to both an interesting mechanic in the sense that I can much more easily beeline techs and skip things that aren't relevant to me at the moment, and also a huge annoyance in the sense that I don't want to see a spearman as a viable unit to create in the modern era. I have come up with what I think could be an interesting solution and would love to hear some thoughts:

What if a player had to research all techs from the earliest era within two eras of where the currently are on their research path before being able to advance to the next era. So in other words: I am currently about to advance from the Medieval to the Renaissance era, but I still have unresearched Ancient era techs. Any renaissance era techs that I would research should be locked to me until I finish researching all ancient era techs. Once I have researched all ancient era techs, I can then research any Renaissance era techs that I have the prerequisit Medieval era techs for. This would require us to have a (slightly) more realistic tech pathing, without presenting too much of a burden (those ancient era techs would probably only take 1 or 2 turns each to research).

Does that make sense?

I think that this would benefit us in two ways:

• First, the AI doesn't beeline as well as we do (does it really know how to beeline at all?), so this would allow at least a slightly more equal footing for them.
• Second, for players who needed to fart around in earlier areas longer for whatever reason (perhaps you needed to defend in a war and so you needed to divert from your beeline plan, perhaps you needed to research extra techs for your luxuries, etc.), it would be a small equalizer for them against players who were allowed to beeline certain techs earlier.
• Third, it would require us to at least have a slightly more sensible and realistic research path, such that you at the very least wouldn't have the option of building ancient era units alongside modern armor.

What do y'all think?

 

[UWHabs]

I have definitely found this to both an interesting mechanic in the sense that I can much more easily beeline techs and skip things that aren't relevant to me at the moment, and also a huge annoyance in the sense that I don't want to see a spearman as a viable unit to create in the modern era. I have come up with what I think could be an interesting solution and would love to hear some thoughts:

What if a player had to research all techs from the earliest era within two eras of where the currently are on their research path before being able to advance to the next era. So in other words: I am currently about to advance from the Medieval to the Renaissance era, but I still have unresearched Ancient era techs. Any renaissance era techs that I would research should be locked to me until I finish researching all ancient era techs. Once I have researched all ancient era techs, I can then research any Renaissance era techs that I have the prerequisit Medieval era techs for. This would require us to have a (slightly) more realistic tech pathing, without presenting too much of a burden (those ancient era techs would probably only take 1 or 2 turns each to research).

Does that make sense?

I think that this would benefit us in two ways:

• First, the AI doesn't beeline as well as we do (does it really know how to beeline at all?), so this would allow at least a slightly more equal footing for them.
• Second, for players who needed to fart around in earlier areas longer for whatever reason (perhaps you needed to defend in a war and so you needed to divert from your beeline plan, perhaps you needed to research extra techs for your luxuries, etc.), it would be a small equalizer for them against players who were allowed to beeline certain techs earlier.
• Third, it would require us to at least have a slightly more sensible and realistic research path, such that you at the very least wouldn't have the option of building ancient era units alongside modern armor.

What do y'all think?

Yeah, I think this makes some sense. Whether it's done with an explicit mechanism, or just by adding extra pre-reqs so that this is implicitly true. I'm fine with having some beelines, but there's some way too straight paths right now without extra pre-reqs. For example, Education -> Astronomy -> Scientific Theory -> Sanitation -> Chemistry is a direct path which requires no other techs and takes you from the medieval era to the modern era.

I think a big part of how it was designed is they never wanted to "cross lines", so that leads to some weird cases. I'm sure they would have liked to have Metal Casting as a pre-req for Industrialization, but because that science line got caught in the middle, it broke them up. And then because they end up with the "banking" line right below that at the same time, it makes it so that you can go virtually to the end of the tree at the top while never researching the "bottom" of the tree.

The other issue is the cost, as people mentioned. If you have a eureka for a more modern tech, it can make it cheaper than an earlier tech without a eureka, which can aid in beelining. I think the tree needs to have a much more exponential cost structure rather than a linear cost. The fact that I can get Apprenticeship cheaper than Construction has a big impact in how things get planned. If the costs grew larger as you went, then at least at a certain point it becomes too cheap to not back-fill techs instead of moving forward.

 

[Disgustipated]

mech infantry without the Wheel. Sounds about right. LOL

Perhaps they are using something non circular for tires.

 

[GhostSalsa]

I don't think it's such a problem that you can beeline to space tech without having researched things like masonry or construction

Literally culture at all would never emerge without stone. Buildings and stone were the DNA of values and behavior more so than writing was, which is not to argue that the game can't allow for beelining but rather to point out that civic and tech progress should be intertwined, i.e. with cross-prerequisites.

No masonry, no republic. No monarchy, no cannons, etc. maybe at some point beakers might just be unusable until civic catch-up. I think a lot of VI elements are over-complex right now and this will add one more thing to balance later, but, make progress feel more meaningful and involved (the intention of eurekas, but they don't really work out that way)

 

[Ryika]

Ergo: You should not be allowed to establish a city until you've found a stone deposit on the map.

 

[Heklios]

I actually like the Tech Tree like that.

Gameplay wise, it is much more interesting being able to rush down some paths without always feeling like you need the entire tree to get there anyways.

It doesn't really matter how much it relates to how things unfolded in reality from a historical standpoint. Heck, you end up building the Pyramids in Japan in 1420 anyways.

Instead, it gives you more relevant choices to make, more variety in your games, and more surprises to discover like when you met that mechanized infantery. Next game you could be the one surprising them.

With the new Eureka System it's brilliant. I makes the tree very dynamic and evolutive. I think it's great.

 

[Wulf38]

Since posting this thread I've found out about [url=http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/maddjinns-tech-tree-mod.600302/]MadDjinns tech tree mod and I'm going to try playing with it, because it looks like it solves a lot of these issues.[/URL]

I'm seeing a false dichotomy in some of these responses, that the tech tree either needs to allow super deep beelines, or else it will be a straight jacket that prevents the player from having any choice. Neither of these things need to be true.

The example I keep coming back to is Civ 4's tech tree. That game gives you plenty of choice about tech order, and allows you to do limited beelines into future eras. But it also has what I call "gatekeeper" techs, which force you to backfill important old techs you might have skipped earlier before progressing into the late game. You can ignore classical/medieval stuff like Metal Casting, Machinery, Engineering, and Guilds for a pretty long time and push into the renaissance early, but you eventually need to get that stuff if you want to push into the industrial era.

That kind of design ensures that powerful late-game units are gated behind enough tech, that civs will not get them too early unless they invest very heavily in science. But at the same time, it still gives players plenty of options.

I dislike extremely deep beelines mainly for gameplay reasons, and I'm not a big stickler about historical accuracy in Civ games. Still, I would like the tech requirements to make some degree of logical sense. Like to build units involving guns, you should probably know what gunpowder is, and if you're going to make wheeled vehicles, you should know what a wheel is, etc.

To the guy who wrote a big wall of text theorizing about how mech infantry could be made without all that tech, that's very creative, but I forgot to mention that Civ 6 mech infantry also don't require Electricity. So back to the drawing board

One final related though I have, is that I feel too many things in this game are tied to which era you're in. The concept of "era" is kinda arbitrary, and I'd prefer it to just be a cosmetic thing while concrete changes in gameplay are tied to specific techs / civics.

 

[smartcanuck1988]

I'm not in the camp of "you cannot have mech infantry without all the technologies you need in real life", but I do think the whole concept of a "tree" needs some revisiting.

Definitely the parallel lines right now is making for some silly beelining. Realism aside, it's making some units/buildings go obsolete too quickly. We talked about this regarding units that require strategic resources but same can be said about many of the game concepts.

Maybe each Era can still be a tree with multiple links as usual, but to unlock the next Era's tree, you need 50% of the techs in the previous Era unlocked (any 50%). So while getting Sailing would potentially let you unlock Shipbuilding, the whole "Classical Era" is still blacked out until you research 5 of the 10 Ancient Era techs.

I think this solution could reduce some of the silliness we're seeing, without completely destroying the option of focusing on a specific type of technology (be it sea-related or growth related..etc).

 

[jekke]

To the guy who wrote a big wall of text theorizing about how mech infantry could be made without all that tech, that's very creative, but I forgot to mention that Civ 6 mech infantry also don't require Electricity. So back to the drawing board

this is hilarious

I do not know what is the best approach to a tech tree, but --
-- for those who reads further -- there is a huge flaw in seriously considering the possibility of researching mechanised infantry without mining, construction and such. Not because a mechanised infantry would be impossible - it might be all right - but simply because if you beeline certain high-level techs you will inevitably get the knowledge of mining and construction as by-products. This is simply how science works: every breakthrough has a number of consequences, and a lot of knowledge is obtained as a side effect.

 

[RealHuhn]

So the concept of doing a tech tree "well" means that you have to progress in a restricted linear pattern? I don't buy it.

You don't like the tree - that doesn't mean it wasn't done well. It just allows for more beelining than ever before which I think offers the players more interesting choices between teaching evenly or going straight for specific goals while making sacrifices in other areas.

Sure, you might be able to get to Mech Infantry without mining - but who would ever make the decision to not learn Mining? It's an incredibly valuable technology. Making it simply mandatory to get into the Information age isn't good design - making the players feel like they could be missing out if they skip a tech is.

Now, in that avenue, I'll grant you, the tree could use some work - as there definitely seem to be a handful of techs that are straight skippable or only researched to get to something else. However, that's an entirely separate weakness than the one you've described.

Whether one needs 60% of the techs to reach a specific tech or 30% of the techs to reach a similarly placed tech is an irrelevant item, and if anything it encourages more decision making, which I can only see as a good thing. Through severe beelining, in one game I noticed I had one without ever researching Archery. This was game where I was just messing around on prince - if I were in MP or on Deity, I would have been punished for neglecting Archery in some form, eventually.

Being allowed to make those trade offs are positives, not negatives.


In terms of theme - who cares if you have a mechanized vehicle without the discovering of rifles? If you can accept the reality that is shaped in game where the Islamic state of the Aztecs puts a man on the moon, you should be able to accept the development of Mechanized infantry without Ballistics.

Agreed 100%.

Finally the tech tree allows meaningful beelines again (like in CIV4).
In CIV5, Firaxis listened to too many people who complained about realism and wrong connections. In the end, the tech tree was just linear boredom where the only choice you had was to go bottom or top first. And after a few techs you were already forced to backfill the rest which lead to a lot of mindless "press next turn" situations until you finally got the tech you wanted. Yes, it made more sense but it wasn't fun or rewarding at all.

In CIV6, there's actually a lot of strategy involved. Do I beeline to a new era to get a specific tech I need and lose the opportunity to complete more city state quests or the ability to declare war with less penalties? Do I beeline a lot of infrastructure techs or is it too risky to fall behind in military power? Is it worth it to focus on one yield like science or should I choose techs with a more balanced output?

I really hope threads like this do not change their way of tech tree design again. Sure, some beelines need some balancing and slight adjustments but overall, I'm really happy with it.

And last but not least, gameplay > realism.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Ergo: You should not be allowed to establish a city until you've found a stone deposit on the map.

I would instead phrase it this way: I feel more mystery and awe reading the wikipedia page for "Quarry" than I do wiping a jumbled up "improvement map" with my beelined "Car Soldiers."

Beelining as a simple trade for quick small gains to slow big gains is a good game element, but if you want to go to war in the game, or levy your populace to incredible feats of culture, I have always felt, you should have to put your hands in the mud.

 

[Returning Lurker]

To the guy who wrote a big wall of text theorizing about how mech infantry could be made without all that tech, that's very creative, but I forgot to mention that Civ 6 mech infantry also don't require Electricity. So back to the drawing board

Shoot!... Alright, let me contact my buddy Daedalus, see if he has any ideas on how we can rework the design to fit the requested parameters. Actually, would you kindly tell me what technologies ARE needed so I know what I can work off? Either that or link me to the tech tree so I can see for myself? I'll return when I've completed "Technologically Hindered Infantry Support Design for Upgrading Deployment Ease" MK2.

 

[MyOtherName]

Like several times have I seen the AI up at Rocketry or Satellites before having researched Archery (like no joke, you can see it live from the gossip system after all), which is both stupid and incredibly illogical.

I'm a human and I do that too. It's not exactly a new thing either; I know archery is a dead end tech in Civ 4, only relevant if you intend to build an archer/longbow/crossbow/horse archer.

 

[Kimurae]

I think what could improve things is if some technology instead of providing new units, just boosted existing units, or unlocked free promotions.

Then again I also think that Religion should be less about selecting 3-4 religious options that you compete over, and either like the Idealogical path selection B.E. had, or a series of civics unlocked by either faith (its own tree) or just included in the civics and science trees.

 

[King Jason]

Well, no. The Islamic state of Aztecs didn't exist and didn't put a man on the moon. But, had history turned out differently, that could have happened. It wasn't likely to happen, but it was at least possible. Having mechanized infantry without steel and so forth simply doesn't make sense. It's not possible.

Philosophically speaking, there's virtually no way you can even begin to know that. A reality where mechanized infantry exist without steel is no more impossible than a reality where the Aztecs sent someone to the moon. Unless you have some divine insight to the absolute infinitum of every possibility of every outcome of every deviation of every single thing that has every happened since this universe was formed - you're in no position claim otherwise.

Just because you have an easier time imagining the Muslim Aztec state putting a man on the moon than you do imagining Mech infantry without seemingly "required" ideas needed to come up with the design for such a device, doesn't make either one less or more likely - it just means your inclination to be creative with the material being presented to you has stricter limitations than others.

 

[Calouste]

Thanks for that OP. I'll have to try that in my next game. Beeline Mech Infantry and take over the World.

You'll only have to survive with just Warriors, Slingers, and Horseman for defense until you get to Flight. I'm sure it will be easy.