I built my first real tech tree for my current game and learned a lot about how to do it in conjuction with Excel. The fact that the game has a limited time frame helped enormously. It is mostly automated and driven by spending. Each "development item" in the game has specific levels associated with advances that can be made. Here are the levels for Defense:
Defense
1-City walls
2-Grand city walls
3-Siege 1
4-Castles
5-Fortifications
6-Siege 2
7-Trace italienne (star forts)
8-Siege 3
9-Battlefield forifications
10-Trench warfare
Each level has a value associated with it. For this discussion, say, City Walls has a value of 10 and Grand City Walls 25. Every time a player spends money in a way related to Defense, a percent of that money is added to his defense "score". When his score reaches 10, he gets city walls defense. Over time as more money is spent on those items that are linked to defense, his score rises until it reaches 25 when he gets Grand City Walls. Each of my "tech tree" items is linked to the various cells where spending goes and a look up table function checks each turn to see whether or not a new tech has been learned. In order to replicate nations learning from neighbors, I can add "tech dispersion" points to speed up the process. Any given tech can be linked to as many or few sources for growth as I choose and by adjusting the thresholds for advances, I can speed up or slow down the rate of advancement.
With a little planning, this concept could be applied to a morfe complex, civ-like, tech tree.
Defense
1-City walls
2-Grand city walls
3-Siege 1
4-Castles
5-Fortifications
6-Siege 2
7-Trace italienne (star forts)
8-Siege 3
9-Battlefield forifications
10-Trench warfare
Each level has a value associated with it. For this discussion, say, City Walls has a value of 10 and Grand City Walls 25. Every time a player spends money in a way related to Defense, a percent of that money is added to his defense "score". When his score reaches 10, he gets city walls defense. Over time as more money is spent on those items that are linked to defense, his score rises until it reaches 25 when he gets Grand City Walls. Each of my "tech tree" items is linked to the various cells where spending goes and a look up table function checks each turn to see whether or not a new tech has been learned. In order to replicate nations learning from neighbors, I can add "tech dispersion" points to speed up the process. Any given tech can be linked to as many or few sources for growth as I choose and by adjusting the thresholds for advances, I can speed up or slow down the rate of advancement.
With a little planning, this concept could be applied to a morfe complex, civ-like, tech tree.
p).
