dunkleosteus
Roman Pleb
As far as I'm aware, Civilization games have always forced tech and research to advance. You always had to select a technology or research to work on, and if you didn't have one selected, you wouldn't be allowed to end your turn.
Part of this is probably so that you don't forget to choose one, and I agree that this is important. But it doesn't have to be a hard and fast rule... This assumes you're ABLE to research a tech or civic at any given time.
Techs and civics require earlier techs and civics before you can start researching them. I'm imagining though a scenario in which techs or civics might have other requirements outside of their native trees. Sort of like miniquests that you could either go out of your way to complete or wait until they happened naturally.
This isn't necessary and there's no reason that all techs or civics would require this, but it would be interesting if a few well-chosen techs or civics had this limitation. If you ever ran out of techs you could research, you'd be able to end your turn without selecting one. If you were able to select a tech (after unlocking it), you'd have to select it before you could end your turn again however.
Simple examples of how this could be used might be that certain civics or techs have requirements on the other tree; for example there are probably a number of civics I can think of that should technically require writing to be unlocked (trivial for most of them, but if you had massive culture and no science, it would be possible to get them without writing). Examples include: recorded history (very obviously), but I might argue that even early empire or state workforce might require them as well.
Certainly there are many parts of the world that did not have writing until recently, compared to certain areas where it was developed early. Most of Europe lacked writing until around a couple thousand years ago, yet at the same time these areas did not have complex governments, taxation, etc. because many of these things are very difficult in a society where all messages and communications have to be done verbally and in-person.
There are other examples though: Guilds should require Apprenticeship; Naval Tradition should require Sailing.
There are a few "Civics" that actually sound more like techs, yet because these trees can't interact with each other beyond providing eurekas/inspirations, they're forced to pick one or the other.
Personally, I think Natural History is more of a science than a civic, and having it and conservation on the civics tree preclude techs like biology from existing on the tech tree.
Finally though, I'd like to talk about "miniquests" which as I mentioned above, are requirements for unlocking techs or civics that happen outside of the tech tree. Examples might include: sailing REQUIRES a city settled either on a river, lake or the coast. Settling on the coast would still give the eureka, so unlocking the tech by settling on a river would mean you'd have to research it at full cost.
Chemistry should REQUIRE the availability of a certain number of chemicals/elements through trade or improving them yourself. These include: silver, copper, iron, uranium, mercury, salt,, diamonds, oil, niter, coal, and aluminum. To unlock chemistry, you might have to trade with other civs until you had access to a certain percentage of these.
There's a lot of potential for adding new and interesting features to the game.
Part of this is probably so that you don't forget to choose one, and I agree that this is important. But it doesn't have to be a hard and fast rule... This assumes you're ABLE to research a tech or civic at any given time.
Techs and civics require earlier techs and civics before you can start researching them. I'm imagining though a scenario in which techs or civics might have other requirements outside of their native trees. Sort of like miniquests that you could either go out of your way to complete or wait until they happened naturally.
This isn't necessary and there's no reason that all techs or civics would require this, but it would be interesting if a few well-chosen techs or civics had this limitation. If you ever ran out of techs you could research, you'd be able to end your turn without selecting one. If you were able to select a tech (after unlocking it), you'd have to select it before you could end your turn again however.
Simple examples of how this could be used might be that certain civics or techs have requirements on the other tree; for example there are probably a number of civics I can think of that should technically require writing to be unlocked (trivial for most of them, but if you had massive culture and no science, it would be possible to get them without writing). Examples include: recorded history (very obviously), but I might argue that even early empire or state workforce might require them as well.
Certainly there are many parts of the world that did not have writing until recently, compared to certain areas where it was developed early. Most of Europe lacked writing until around a couple thousand years ago, yet at the same time these areas did not have complex governments, taxation, etc. because many of these things are very difficult in a society where all messages and communications have to be done verbally and in-person.
There are other examples though: Guilds should require Apprenticeship; Naval Tradition should require Sailing.
There are a few "Civics" that actually sound more like techs, yet because these trees can't interact with each other beyond providing eurekas/inspirations, they're forced to pick one or the other.
Personally, I think Natural History is more of a science than a civic, and having it and conservation on the civics tree preclude techs like biology from existing on the tech tree.
Finally though, I'd like to talk about "miniquests" which as I mentioned above, are requirements for unlocking techs or civics that happen outside of the tech tree. Examples might include: sailing REQUIRES a city settled either on a river, lake or the coast. Settling on the coast would still give the eureka, so unlocking the tech by settling on a river would mean you'd have to research it at full cost.
Chemistry should REQUIRE the availability of a certain number of chemicals/elements through trade or improving them yourself. These include: silver, copper, iron, uranium, mercury, salt,, diamonds, oil, niter, coal, and aluminum. To unlock chemistry, you might have to trade with other civs until you had access to a certain percentage of these.
There's a lot of potential for adding new and interesting features to the game.
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