The Tech Tree - Why Bother?

[Rooftrellen]

The only way you should need to get all techs is if you are going to space. I've had cultural games (on Prince difficulty, so few RA's) that were over at the start of my industrial era, and I won a Deity game by snatching up CS's and winning a diplo victory, I think before industrial.

Those little windows are important and can snowball. Taking to the ocean quickly can allow you to set up relations on the other side of the world, be the first to find unclaimed islands, and expand the number of civs you know with techs you ignored, allowing you to research them faster.

Going heavy into military techs can allow you to remove a few early neighbors and claim enough land and resources to sustain growth for any VC you want.

The window to benefit isn't always huge, but it sometimes is. On an extreme, you might have someone trying to take your cities with a strong navy while you defend the surprise attack with artillery because you've yet to research sailing.

One of the more interesting choices is going for a strong military or a strong economy (including science). A strong military could make you keep up in science, while if you go for more economy you're more interested in hanging on to allow your economy to take over.

Putting 2 or 3 techs into one over the other gives you a nice advantage there but if you don't exploit the advantage, you'll be left behind.

I feel this is more acute on faster speeds, due to the fact that the game develops so quickly. A military disadvantage on marathon can easily be overcome due to the fact playing defense is easy with units hard to replace. On quick, if you are outnumbered and outproduced, the steam could be nearly endless, making the choices less vital on marathon, simply due to the power of defending.

 

[Buccaneer]

I agree about the windows of opportunity. I think the key to all of this, regardless how it gets there, is to get to the desired tech as quickly as possible. There are several turning points in the tree and if you can get there much earlier than your opponents...and take advantage of it...then that will get you a headstart on winning the game. For example, the popular strategy in vanilla was 'Chivalry in 80' for those with Chivalry UU. That created a huge window of opportunity. Your opponents still uses the same tree as you, so it's a matter of climbing it faster.

 

[Browd]

I continue to be puzzled about what tech/research scheme you think would be better. Complaining that the choices don't matter and it's just annoying to have to make choices isn't IMO very credible. So, what do you suggest?

-- Eliminate the concept of technology altogether, and let the player build whatever they want, at whatever era? (Wanna start by building a Mech Infantry unit? -- Gonna take a while, but OK)

-- Keep tech, but eliminate tech dependencies/prerequisites, so you can choose to tech, e.g., Atomic Theory from the beginning?

-- Keep tech and prerequisites, but eliminate the intertwining (create multiple beeline tech paths), so you can tech straight through, e.g., all of the ranged units (from archery to stealth bombers) or all of the melee units (from spearmen to mechanized infantry), in a single beeline?

-- Have the computer randomly give you a tech when you have invested a given number of research points (like goody huts with "free" techs)? ("Damn, I got Mining. Really needed Archery to deal with these barbs.")

-- Have only one tech path that is set by the developers (pottery, then animal husbandry, then mining, then sailing (even on a Highlands map), etc.)? (Or, better yet, make the tech research order alphabetical - Acoustics, Archery, ....?)

-- Give a choice among techs in the same "tier" (those with roughly the same research cost), but not allow research of any tech in the next tier until you've researched all of the techs at the prior tier?

Of course, none of these is going to be implemented but they would at least spark interesting discussion (the last one was the subject of a "no beelines" thread a while back).

So, if you really want to get out of tech "micromanaging" (i.e., choosing what tech to research next), just click on Future Tech when you start your next game and let the game decide the tech order for you.

(Or, for fun, train your dog to pick the techs for you -- "Sparky! Mining, Archery or Writing?" <Woof, yip, yip> "OK, Mining it is.")

 

[Buccaneer]

I believe some of the changes they made to the tech tree were to have the AI be more well-rounded. A human player could take better advantages of beelines (and not be hurt much by the incompleted techs) but apparently the AI needed to move better along a broader path in order to compete better.

 

[JohnYoga]

I continue to be puzzled about what tech/research scheme you think would be better. Complaining that the choices don't matter and it's just annoying to have to make choices isn't IMO very credible. So, what do you suggest?

-- Eliminate the concept of technology altogether, and let the player build whatever they want, at whatever era? (Wanna start by building a Mech Infantry unit? -- Gonna take a while, but OK)

-- Keep tech, but eliminate tech dependencies/prerequisites, so you can choose to tech, e.g., Atomic Theory from the beginning?

-- Keep tech and prerequisites, but eliminate the intertwining (create multiple beeline tech paths), so you can tech straight through, e.g., all of the ranged units (from archery to stealth bombers) or all of the melee units (from spearmen to mechanized infantry), in a single beeline?

-- Have the computer randomly give you a tech when you have invested a given number of research points (like goody huts with "free" techs)? ("Damn, I got Mining. Really needed Archery to deal with these barbs.")

-- Have only one tech path that is set by the developers (pottery, then animal husbandry, then mining, then sailing (even on a Highlands map), etc.)? (Or, better yet, make the tech research order alphabetical - Acoustics, Archery, ....?)

-- Give a choice among techs in the same "tier" (those with roughly the same research cost), but not allow research of any tech in the next tier until you've researched all of the techs at the prior tier?

Of course, none of these is going to be implemented but they would at least spark interesting discussion (the last one was the subject of a "no beelines" thread a while back).

So, if you really want to get out of tech "micromanaging" (i.e., choosing what tech to research next), just click on Future Tech when you start your next game and let the game decide the tech order for you.

(Or, for fun, train your dog to pick the techs for you -- "Sparky! Mining, Archery or Writing?" <Woof, yip, yip> "OK, Mining it is.")

I've already made my suggestion:

1) Allow for stronger influence via spies (perhaps include other units to have this ability, too) to steal technologies, in order for the other Civ(s) to leap frog their way to catch up. This happens in real life...

2) Have larger "costs", and/or varied types of costs (faith, coin, happiness, hammers) associated with techs, because, in real life, technologies have associated cost trade-offs and they are often varied in what the civ has to sacrifice in obtaining

3) Allow for accidental discoveries of Techs (real life, too).

All of these are very credible to add.

For folks that want the linear fashion the way it is now, merely have these variables toggled at the start of a game.

Make the tech tree much more interesting by implementing the above. Again, for those that enjoy its current state, then they are free to keep any of these variables un-toggled.

Regards,

Marc

 

[hr_oskar]

Now, I play on quick and fairly easy settings, therefore, these windows are tiny at best.

This pretty much answers the question. At low difficulty, the choices you make are not as consequential and you can expect to win regardless of the order in which you pick your techs. On deity or even immortal, if I chose to, say, tech straight to compass before mining or archery, I'd be dead by turn 60. On high difficulty, every choice matters.

 

[JohnYoga]

Understood, hr_ oskar. I bet it does!

Marc

 

[Matthew.]

Ya, the dichotomy between infrastructure and military power becomes more apparent in higher difficulties. There is also the choice of which wonders you will likely need to sacrifice. E.g., if you go to education straight after NC, it becomes very difficult to get Notre Dame.

 

[Browd]

I've already made my suggestion:

1) Allow for stronger influence via spies (perhaps include other units to have this ability, too) to steal technologies, in order for the other Civ(s) to leap frog their way to catch up. This happens in real life...

2) Have larger "costs", and/or varied types of costs (faith, coin, happiness, hammers) associated with techs, because, in real life, technologies have associated cost trade-offs and they are often varied in what the civ has to sacrifice in obtaining

3) Allow for accidental discoveries of Techs (real life, too).

All of these are very credible to add.

For folks that want the linear fashion the way it is now, merely have these variables toggled at the start of a game.

Thanks. Missed those details amidst all of the debate on this thread.

1) There is much to criticize in the clunky implementation of spies in G&K. Re your thoughts, I'm not sure what other units you think would contribute to the effectiveness of spies. Ability to put multiple spies in a single city? Build a special "spy master" unit in your capital?

2) Your second point is indirectly addressed in the existing game. As many have noted, in order to get to a level of beakers that will keep you competitive, you need to divert production (both turns and hammers) and/or gold to science buildings - you can choose to delay the buildings or rush-buy them with gold, but there are "costs" associated with those decisions -- you aren't building units or other buildings and aren't spending your gold on other things. Putting specialists in science buildings also involves costs and trade-offs. These costs aren't tied to a particular tech, but a particular tech may be important enough to change the equation. In Industrial, you can also burn faith to get Great Scientists (rather than other types of Great Persons or other uses of faith). Also, the National College (and less frequently, Oxford) will require that you pause your expansion to get Libraries (or unis, for Oxford) in all your cities and/or divert gold to rush-buy one or more science buildings and take the turns to build the NW (or burn a GE to bulb the NW).

All involve costs, trade-offs and strategic decisions. You may not regard those costs as substantial enough or varied enough (the only inherent variation is in the cost of a tech--later era techs cost more in beakers -- and you can't directly convert beakers to gold, although you do spend gold on RAs and can convert hammers to beakers), but they involve both direct costs and opportunity costs and the optimal decision in each case is usually very debatable.

3) The only examples of accidental discoveries in the game that I can think of are goodie huts and spying. Given how many folks decry the randomness of goodie huts, I suspect adding another "accidental tech discovery" mechanic to the game would cause some to howl (similar reaction to suggestions that the game include RNG-driven natural calamaties, like plagues, droughts, famines, tornados, mudslides, bad comedy shows, etc.).

 

[tommynt]

If u dont care which techs u tech just click at future tech one once at turn 0 and u r free from this silly micromanagment task.

Guess that should save u lots of time.

u r welcome btw

other solution might be to .. eh no you will be fine like this

 

[Buccaneer]

I agree with the latest sentiments, I was just trying to make a point about wanting even more risk in the tech tree choices: segregating the Industrial bottleneck a bit more. But that would make it worse for the AI, as evident by the reason for linking Railroads to Ballistics.

 

[JohnYoga]

Excellent conversation!

Thank you folks!

Marc

 

[Furycrab]

I think most people have already said what I think of the subject...

The only change I'd love to see is somehow change the techtree so that it isn't so much about using science to get more science, mostly because a lot of ways of going about the tech tree get invalidated if you ignore certain branches that improve science for even relatively small periods of time.

 

[kamex]

I think there is a quite a serious problem buried deep in tech tree concept. For example, say you are a land locked civ on a Pangaea. You can still research Pottery / Sailing if you wish, despite never seeing a coast or ocean tile in your civs history. Tech tree should be more dynamic. We all know that historically, wars accelerate science and innovation, as both sides desperately seek to discover more advanced weapons to win the war. In civ the opposite happens, your civ becomes third world due to neglecting the economy for so long...

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Deleted the previous two posts. Accusations of trolling is trolling, so please report the post instead of answering or quoting it in future. Thanks.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Daft73]

Odd this since Civ the series, Has had a tech tree as long as I remember, and that has always been part of the game. Obviously b-lining towards techs may help you, or if the economy, choices you make, other civs, may crush you because of b-lining.

Do I want to play a certain way, ok, I'll pick these techs..Oh wait maybe I want to destroy all in my path!!...or peace love happiness..or whatever.

To each their own but..why play Civ when tech-trees seem pointless..If I played baseball and decided learning how to hit Home-runs is all that mattered, learning how to run bases, is pointless...bunting pointless...singles pointless..you get the picture.
That is until opposing teams figure that out, and pitch around me.

Learning how to manipulate situations, via the tech choices, gives you breathing room, plus variance to your games.

 

[JohnYoga]

Odd this since Civ the series, Has had a tech tree as long as I remember, and that has always been part of the game. Obviously b-lining towards techs may help you, or if the economy, choices you make, other civs, may crush you because of b-lining.

Do I want to play a certain way, ok, I'll pick these techs..Oh wait maybe I want to destroy all in my path!!...or peace love happiness..or whatever.

To each their own but..why play Civ when tech-trees seem pointless..If I played baseball and decided learning how to hit Home-runs is all that mattered, learning how to run bases, is pointless...bunting pointless...singles pointless..you get the picture.
That is until opposing teams figure that out, and pitch around me.

Learning how to manipulate situations, via the tech choices, gives you breathing room, plus variance to your games.

I think what I had learned from others on this thread is that my playing Quick and/or or easier difficulty settings may be why I am not seeing the tech tree usage as germane. Spreading out the time must really matter. I think my tweaks should be considered, nonetheless.

Regards,

Marc

 

[tommynt]

We all know that historically, wars accelerate science and innovation, as both sides desperately seek to discover more advanced weapons to win the war. In civ the opposite happens, your civ becomes third world due to neglecting the economy for so long...

good player can manage wars the way their eco profits out of them instead other way run, at least in medium run but suaully in short run aswell

and about other stuff - maybe u should keep in mind that civ is still meant to be a game - a fun game - and not a 2nd reality

 

[Daft73]

Well, you seem to have a fairly good idea on what you'd like added to the game.
So you can try your luck at going to the Mods section, starting up a post to gathering Modders to your cause..

...or in the case you can mod yourself..have at it.
Good luck with the idea.

 

[RonMar]

If you beeline to advanced techs, when you research the by-passed techs you get them faster for 2 reasons: first, because your science production is greater, second, if the techs that have already been researched by 2 or more (I'm not certain of the number) of civs that you have already met, the beaker cost of those tech is reduced. This helps to compensate for the higher beaker cost you had to invest to get the more advance techs.

In fact, by looking at the beaker costs in the same column, if the costs are not the same, you know others already have researched the lower cost techs. If you want to compete for a wonder enabled by those "cheaper" techs, you need to take that into account.