Preface
This is an endeavor to make all items unlocked by technologies visible at a glance. As you might know, it's impossible at the moment because the tech tree interface only supports up to 5 items per tech, requiring the player to hover over them to see more. Due to this limitation many tech unlocks in VP are hidden. In an attempt to work around that, I've mainly redistributed some unlocks between some of the less busy techs and even decoupled some from techs completely, so that it's entirely possible to unlock some wonders and units just with policies. Yikes! More on that below.
First of all: this is intended to be as close as possible to a light quality of life modmod with minimal impact on balance. I had a clear goal of being as conservative as possible. So I've tried to go by these principles, from the most important to the least:
1) no more than 5 unlocks per tech - this is the main goal of the modmod, so even the big and the daring changes were made because there was no other better way.
2) balance as close as possible to Vox Populi - when I had to move stuff around, I tried to either move the least impactful stuff (e.g., specialist yield buffs are less impactful than wonders) and as close to the original tech as possible.
3) theme and real-world accuracy.
Discussion
As you can see, I couldn't completely clean up the tech tree without making changes to balance. That calls for a discussion! Let's break the changes down into major points.
1) Policy-tied wonders. Do you think these must be tied to technologies? Do you think it's fair if they all have equal costs relatively to each other? I personally find it a fun experiment that doesn't disrupt balance too much, although it does make culture stronger than it currently is. There also might be an issue of forgetting to start building these wonders, because the policy screen doesn't emphasize these wonders as much as the tech screen, so it's easier to accidentally ignore them.
I haven't changed the ideological wonders because, first and foremost, I didn't need to. Besides, they are not emphasized at all on the ideology screen, plus they provide a free policy upon construction, and there's no need to reward players leading in culture with so much more free culture.
2) Policy-tied units and observatory. Specifically, the Landsknecht. Maybe this change warrants a CS reduction, maybe it's fine. Ultimately, this means that you can be an effective warmonger with either tech or culture superiority. Fun! Besides, I've always found this finisher weird, especially the fact that an ancient policy tree unlocks units in Modern and Atomic era.
That's why I've moved Foreign Legions and Mercenaries to an ideology, but also because the Authority Finisher is so much stronger with the faster Landsknechts. Mercenary is sort of a successor to Foreign Legion, so they're still tied to techs. Once again, I didn't actually need to free up any of those techs.
Observatory is a really minor change, IMO.
3) Should any of these points actually be discussed in separate threads? Is there any chance they might be deemed reasonable enough to be included into VP?
So how about this: I present to you Tidy Tech Tree and in exchange you present (or don't) to me feedback and criticism, and together we create something beautiful.
This is an endeavor to make all items unlocked by technologies visible at a glance. As you might know, it's impossible at the moment because the tech tree interface only supports up to 5 items per tech, requiring the player to hover over them to see more. Due to this limitation many tech unlocks in VP are hidden. In an attempt to work around that, I've mainly redistributed some unlocks between some of the less busy techs and even decoupled some from techs completely, so that it's entirely possible to unlock some wonders and units just with policies. Yikes! More on that below.
First of all: this is intended to be as close as possible to a light quality of life modmod with minimal impact on balance. I had a clear goal of being as conservative as possible. So I've tried to go by these principles, from the most important to the least:
1) no more than 5 unlocks per tech - this is the main goal of the modmod, so even the big and the daring changes were made because there was no other better way.
2) balance as close as possible to Vox Populi - when I had to move stuff around, I tried to either move the least impactful stuff (e.g., specialist yield buffs are less impactful than wonders) and as close to the original tech as possible.
3) theme and real-world accuracy.
Spoiler Why I felt like this mod was needed :
Spoiler The new tech tree :
Spoiler Changes :
Discussion
As you can see, I couldn't completely clean up the tech tree without making changes to balance. That calls for a discussion! Let's break the changes down into major points.
1) Policy-tied wonders. Do you think these must be tied to technologies? Do you think it's fair if they all have equal costs relatively to each other? I personally find it a fun experiment that doesn't disrupt balance too much, although it does make culture stronger than it currently is. There also might be an issue of forgetting to start building these wonders, because the policy screen doesn't emphasize these wonders as much as the tech screen, so it's easier to accidentally ignore them.
I haven't changed the ideological wonders because, first and foremost, I didn't need to. Besides, they are not emphasized at all on the ideology screen, plus they provide a free policy upon construction, and there's no need to reward players leading in culture with so much more free culture.
2) Policy-tied units and observatory. Specifically, the Landsknecht. Maybe this change warrants a CS reduction, maybe it's fine. Ultimately, this means that you can be an effective warmonger with either tech or culture superiority. Fun! Besides, I've always found this finisher weird, especially the fact that an ancient policy tree unlocks units in Modern and Atomic era.
That's why I've moved Foreign Legions and Mercenaries to an ideology, but also because the Authority Finisher is so much stronger with the faster Landsknechts. Mercenary is sort of a successor to Foreign Legion, so they're still tied to techs. Once again, I didn't actually need to free up any of those techs.
Observatory is a really minor change, IMO.
3) Should any of these points actually be discussed in separate threads? Is there any chance they might be deemed reasonable enough to be included into VP?
So how about this: I present to you Tidy Tech Tree and in exchange you present (or don't) to me feedback and criticism, and together we create something beautiful.
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