I'd say that sums it up for me. The tech trees don't make sense, it just seems like some things were placed further down the tech tree to force you to "work" thru the other techs to get to it.

I really don't mind the UI, it sounds like some people do though. I do enjoy the challenge of you expressing exactly what you see as the shortcomings and trying to come up with alternatives. It's a great opportunity as a fan to be able to have this much input (whether it is implemented or not) into a game like this.

My feeling is that the difficult balance is you want to give the player enough contro that it is not complete RNG, the player has control, but there is also enough random factors to make each new game fresh. I will spend some time thinking on this and see if I can come up with something to post tomorrow.

I really don't like the idea of taking away the players ability to select research. I know there's some realism but playing a game like this is about selecting your own path not having it selected for you. Selecting the research paths you take is surely no less realistic then selecting your culture or the traits you (the sovereign) were born with.

I like random and situational techs as long as they don't affect to key technologies or buildings. I don't like infinite research though, it tranform the research process into something boring. I think current system is quite interesting, although still need some work, but not a complete rebump...

Reminds me (again) of Sword of the Stars. The random tech tree in SotS is one of the best things about that game. Should be in every game in my opinion!

And as we are at it: Also include random shortcuts from one tech to another.

(Terrible) Example: A prerequisite for "Young Genius Sponsoring" might be "Universities". But you might also reach it by first researching "Efficient Education Policies". Or on top of that only one of it might lead to "Young Genius Sponsoring" but you don't know which one until you try.

I really like the idea of situational techs ... I think you should compare average yield of tiles/starting areas, to the advantage of relative situational tech.

For instance, situational techs could be added to certain factions with a less-than-par starting location to better take advantage of their environment.

aka. Surrounded by mountains? Feel some-what limited? You have a good chance of getting Mountaineer tech (mountain movement), Terraces (limited farming/production), Cave Mushroom Farming (extensive farming), and better Windmill techs (extensive production) ....

for some example numbers, a 20% chance for a lower-tiered "mountain" tech for each mountain 1 tile away from city square. Up to max of 80%. a 15% chance for a high-tiered "mountain" tech for each mountain 1-2 tiles away from city, for a max of 75% chance.

Mountaineering could open up varying "Mountain combat" techs, some basic mountain combat being defaulted to open up with acess to mountaneering, although some "super mountain combat" or very specialty snow-skiing troops, ect, would be in the "random" techs, and certain Cave Drillers, or Mountain Climbing elephants, will have a 20-30% chance of showing up in game each, but still only accessible by the situational mountaneering tech.

I think it would be cool to have several nifty branches such as this, which are just an Extra Methyl group to add upon the complex Organic molecule which is the Faction's unique technology tree. Because each faction does have their own tree ... right?

These situational techs could be alot similar to my Environmental type model, only instead of catering the race to live in a certain environment, these situational techs could aid factions with "poor" starting locations, like Icy tundra, barren mountain ranges, vast Deserts, Thick Steamy Jungles ... with advantages in these ecosytems on resource collection and military strategy/tactics.

Who is the best at fighting in the mountain highlands? That crazy tribe that lives off mushrooms in the north. That Incan civilization ... sure did take to terraces soon after they started learning about basic-advanced farming techniques ... maybe someone just started experimenting on all of those mountains?

Man, what kind of armor are those Sand-men wearing? it seems like the Heat and Sand have no effect on them ...

Ice, snow, snow, ice ... It's snowing pretty hard ... our feet keep sinking into new-snow and permafrost ... Whats that large figure in front of us? no wait ... it seems to be an army .. but moving at a normal pace? not slowed down by the snow and ice? what? oh ... lookit Skis! Cross-country skiis?! Its possible to have ski troops! ::gets stabbed and dies::

Jungle ... so much wild-life density, but most civilizations lack the patience or respect to harvest just enough to continue the ecosystem. Techs to attune a civilization to life in the Rainforest will not make them the Industrial or Commercial giants as some nations, nor will they perhaps have enough food to compete with larger nations. Chopping down Rainforest in certain areas may prove cost effective, although being one with the rainforest will provide several advantages. One, you will still have a decent productive rate, just not AS great, Two, your science ability will far exceed your commercial ability, because of all the diverse plants to reasearch (medicines attract scientists globally to your cause, you nation is a research station for an international community). Also, enemy armies will suffer disease and poisons while travelling through the rainforest, and perhaps suffering random losses from encounters with the occasional Caiman or Anocanda (if wading through swamps) ... (wading through a river could be attacked by African River Crocodiles, that would be HEAVY losses indeed, although thats more of a Savanna thing) ... with Knowledge of the jungles ... the Jungle Nation could turtle in the depths of the Rainforest, using their biodeverse dome as a shield. Of course, Situational and Random techs will determine if they can completely successfully turtle there, or if they need a little more ambition to stay ahead. It will not always be smart to settle there, but if you do end up settling there, there will still be hope of at least some good news.

One situational (or random) tech I see for Desert Tribes would be "Cactus Orchard" ... providing a healthy supply of food n water, cactus Orchards provide where farms might not (in the desert), and also provide fresh water (clean rain and ground water) from within the Cactus. If one knows how to grow Cactus in great numbers, they need not concern themselves too highly with looking for Oasis. Im sure there will be some penalty or other for no fresh-water in the desert, wether fixed by magical (to upgrade terrain) or mundane, perhaps the penalty is inherently there.

As to getting horseback-riding early, or some-such ... having "bare-back riding" as a situational tech requiring a nearby abundance of horses might work. This tech could also provide an extra bonus to the added benefit of Saddles (since they can already ride the horses) ... perhaps allowing faster speeds for the horses with saddles, because the people will excell at not falling off their horses, and will know how to handle their weight better as to lessen the tired-ness of the horses.

perhaps that tech or some other situational horse-based tech could increase the chance of a horse-husbandry/fighting tech arriving with the completion of an agriculture-type tech, and perhaps decrease the cost slightly.

On that system, I think that techs of similar tiers should have a certain random chance of arriving as the next tech in the tech line-up, and others having a pre-requisite.

For instance, 3 tier 1 techs are in the agriculture line, and you devote 40% of your tech to agriculture so you get a tech twice as fast as if you had devoted 20%, but different techs have different speeds so your not really sure what you are going to get. And lets say that tier1-techA has a 30% chance, B has a 30% chance, and C has a 40% chance. Perhaps the chances could be determined by situational factors. Anyways, so you end up researching C, which is probably basic field-plowing, or something (while B was herb gathering and A was animal taming), and C alone can lead to techs X and Y, so now you have a 30% chance for A, a 30% chance at B has a 30% chance, X has a 20% chance and Y has a 20% chance. (or if Y was the most natural progression, X could have a 15% or 10% chance, and Y could have a 25% or 30% chance)

Just thinking some more, the Random techs are perfect for Quests.  Say each level of Questing tech opens a rumored powerful tech or item  (magic superfast exploding crossbow), after you successfully research it (again sort of like Sword of the Stars situational tech projects that let you take over neutral cyborgs) you find the location.  Then you have to get to the location  and beat the guardian (giving you exp and a neat tech or even tech tree like Unicorns).

Ren

I'm not exactly loving the random tech concept.  It seems .. well arbitrary. Maybe if it's just exotic techs.

I like Sarudak's idea of keeping theory from practical applications, and this would let you  capture an enemy tech, retroengineer it and make improvements on it but not nessicarily know how it works.

If the goal is to make it so you have to adapt you playstyle and keep the game fresh every time  you play through, how about weighing the Practical Application Tech tree to the player's territorial control?

So if you have a bunch of fire nodes under your control, your wizard researcher minion types have easy access to lots of fire magic to let them experiment with and thus make research easier  for fire magic.

Same thing, lots of forests under your control, that makes learning how to build walls and sturdy houses easier.

Train 1,000 soldiers, you're gonna get better at equipping them and know how to make improvements to their armor and weapons easier. So making 1,000 swords will make it easier to research Fine Steel Swords, but it will be just as hard to learn how to make compound recurve bows, even though they're both under the Tech Field of Simple Military Weapons.

etc..etc.

 

Ok tech idea. What if Techs were divided up into two major categories:

1. Tech Fields - The theory - Tech Fields don't actually unlock specific technologies (except maybe accidentally but I don't know if I'd like that entirely. Research into tech fields is more or general knowledge. It represents your scientists/philosophers/smart guys gathering and recording information, having philosophical discussions, analyzing recorded data on a certain subject, possibly even just teaching people. Researching a tech field is more akin to raising the general knowledge and education level of your society than what research is in most strategy games. Examples of  fields of research might be physics, chemistry, alchemy, architecture, social sciences, mathematics, etc.

2. Projects - The application - Projects would be the actual application of the knowledge of tech fields. This represents the actual time required to work out the problems with a new design. These are engineering problems often. Projects could also be social in nature implementing a new form of governance or tactical training method. While tech fields would have little real application projects would be all about real application. Examples of projects might be, horse domestication, iron smelting, aquduct construction, recurve bow, javalin, dragon language. (The number of projects could be endless)

 

 

I love these ideas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How random is random? Predictability isn't always a bad thing.

I suppose having 1 set of visible options is acceptable, although I would rather have the actual research to be completely blind, and X% out of a 100 assigned to each color-group, (Military Recruitment and Strategy, Resource Gathering and Refinement, Education and Research (parallel but different), Agriculture(wild animals, wild herbs, and domestic farming), and Architecture (housing, barracks, granaries/silos, Acadamies ... the heart-n-soul of the construction companies). With a 6th color-slot being open for terrain ... wether Ice, Desert, Mountain, Jungle, or some unforseen ability to come later with modding (like cave dwelling, under-water, extra-planar, Undead, Daemonic Legacy, Angelic Ancestry, ect) ... in the cases of Daemonic and Angelic Legacy ... perhaps tapping into hidden Demonic or Angelic powers, with perhaps the ability to evolve into even more powerful daemons (or angels) for those that are worthy.

So yea ... if someone places all 100% of reasearch into agriculture, and places all of his focus on horses/aquiring horse resources, what-not, perhaps there is a 50% chance of gaining the relevant horse technology instead of the standard 20 or 30% chance. While if he places 50% of research into agriculture, he will still have a 50% chance to gain a horse technology, but it will take twice as long.

Same for a Wild-Herbs technology if some-one focuses on gathering herbs: AKA rainforest n jungle mediciens, or Desert Wildlife. Focusing on Wild-Herbs mixed with some basic know-how of Agricultural Orchard methods (learned from Neighbors?) could lead to the Project "Cactus Orchards" which allows you to build cactus Orchards in Arid, unarable, sandy lands ... allowing the productive (if slow growing) cacti to fulfill your nation. Perhaps the spines and skins of the Cacti could be used for more efficient Desert armors with more research in the Military Strategy color-group.

Perhaps, once you realize the concept of using cactus for armor, you will unlock the ability to synthesize Cactus skin + spines into clothing/armor ... or rather you will have to research this newly unlocked ability in Resource Gathering. Additionally, if you were to aquire Cactus Skin-Usage tech under Resource gathering, you would unlock the tech under military strategy to figure out how to use it as an armor. The "figuring out to use it as an armor" would be the theoretical from Military Strategy, while "making the armor" would be a practical tech-ability from the Resource Gather n Synthesis branch. Additionally, it could be random as to wether you need the practical tech to unlock the theoretical tech, or the theoretical tech to unlock the practical tech. It could be a 50/50 shot each time ... or something. Just a possible suggestion of how a system could interact. (I'd prefer requiring the theoretical tech first, unless you fight people with cactus armor, then you could research the cactus armor tech and then tech the theoretical tech (without needing any of the standard requirements) in order to use it. Of course, this would still require a hefty supply of cacti, hence the need to naturally aquire cactus Orchards before any further steps are possible.

It seems rather complex, but I think its actually quite organic ... just allow for new objects to be added into the game, and to allow its own tech abilities/progressions, Im no programmer but im sure it could be done elegantly and organically. I mean, most features of a game need to be under player control, but I think situational-based technology could have a much more organic flow to it ... while mundane core techs would always be available as long as a nation had enough scientific minds thinking about the Group for long enough.

Basically I think there needs to be lots of situational/randoms, and that technology growth should be completely blind. Also, although I may be losing the audience here, I think there should be two types of technological development (to speed up the process) ... Education and Research. Education would allow for more percentage points (beyond 100) to be distributed, based upon raw research ... while research/experimentation will out-put raw research. A meeting of the minds, and discussion, can only go so far without an influx of raw data, and I think it would be awesome to have that represented. As opposed to having research % modifiers being tied to the strength of your economy ... which just seems less than mundane, where economy is a single all-powering choice, rather than a physical choice between economy and research that cannot simply be altered at a whim.

What are the system requirements?

I took a glance through what has been posted, but my quick scanning didn't reveal it, so forgive me if I repeat someone else's ideas.

It seems to me that if the problem is linearity, then you should follow a system like Sword of the Stars or Fall from Heaven, both of which seemed to me to open up the possibilities of a variegated tech tree, mostly by having a ton of options available from the start and making the general process of research a little bit slower/more expensive than in some other games, forcing one to choose...

Of course, balance will be a nightmare. But that's what we're here for.