tech tree

I think the initial circular 'improvement' technologies really slow down the early game and research, it would probably be better if they were removed or merged into the next research items.

I'm always a bigger fan of soft caps then hard ones. I think they should keep the ages, but have penalties for researching techs above your level. Another way that might be cool would be to have the techs have severe price increases at the age levels, but then your Civ gets a big boost to over-all research when you enter a new age.

No Perugrine23 ages suck and are purposeless. Thinking that penalties are the answer is also a horrible idea. Ages are a bad idea.

I like ages.

It's a nice way for enforcing cross-fields requirements, without making complex (and somewhat arbitrary) tech requirements.

Think about what a "plane" tech tree could look like:

helix plane -> jet plane -> supersonic jetplane -> modern supersonic jetplane -> drone

Each tech level takes more than it looks, from other fields that have nothing to do with planes:

* To get to jet planes, you requires jet engines. Okay, that is the next improvement and iit looks like that's enough.

* To get to the supersonic jet plane, you need pure plane improvement (you need delta wings for exemple), but also specific motorization improvement (engines that can accept supersonic input flow), as well as material improvement (first planes just dissassembled in the sky while passing the wall of sound) ; a bit more complex than just "plane tech".

* To get to a modern jet plane, you have to throw in sensors (that tells the pilot the state of the plane), radars, electronic commands, computer assisted navigation and whatever you want to throw in. None of which techs remotely come from "plane" background! The improvement now comes from taking from other technologies (many) and putting them into planes. But there is no discussion that a modern jet fighter would blow apart a WWII jet fighter! So that's indeed a new tech.

* To get to drones, you have to throw the pilot out and replace him with more sensors and commands, working remotely. That requires complex and high speed secure transmissions, possibly satellites... Once again it's done by integrating new technology thats outside the field of the "plane" itself into the concept of the plane.

That's what ages are all about: you can't go further because your research base is too tiny.

Indeed, another acceptable way to get rid of them is a complex formula that would basically use exceedingly expensive research costs, then discounts based on the number of lower techs of whatever field you master.

Game wise, the idea is also to prevent the possibility of winning easily by mounting super-powerful weapons on throw away cheap ships: too simple strategies such as climbing too fast into the tech tree should be prevented or the game might risk becoming not fun. Civilization imposes it through multi-tech dependencies. GC3 does the same using the concept of ages.

For my part, I even think that ages go by too fast...

You can't very well throw all your resources into weapons to win, you still need to develop ship hulls to fit the huge lasers, miniaturization to get more bang for your ship, engines or your ships cant do anything, production or you will need to outright buy ships, economy to support all that, population to invade and militarization to successfully invade. It's always a gamble to cut corners and rush, you may make big strides early game then crumble over your overextended empire. That's the fun part deciding what you can push where you can cut corners, how long you can hold off on one thing or the other. Do you push or do you turtle up and research like crazy. The tech ages take away from the fun of the game immensely, and also forces you to play a rounded conservative play style. I like to play my way and my style, some times I win some times I hit cnrl N (the function of cntl hasnt been brought over from gv2 yet ). 

Quoting twilight024, reply 5

The tech ages take away from the fun of the game immensely, and also forces you to play a rounded conservative play style. I like to play my way and my style, some times I win some times I hit cnrl N (the function of cntl hasnt been brought over from gv2 yet ). 

End of twilight024's quote

No, you certainly don't have to play conservatively. You can ignore whole branches of the tech tree and still pass ages. You just can't ignore all but one or two (say weapons + big hulls that I see some would be willing to be able to do to the exclusion of whatever else.)

I certainly don't play conservatively as I push my own agenda and am sometimes limited by ages. That's fine. Time to move on a little to something different. 

Another vote for liking ages, through I do believe there should be a soft cap (yes, you can research a tech in the next age but it is expensive).  The classic model for this is the Civilization games.  I believe Civ 5 got this just right.