I think it is to early to make a dissension on this point.  Primary because the players starting at war really makes the ages feel stifling, once the game is more fleshed out, we can better balance the ages. But I am reluctant to just pull them, as they are a great way to help differentiate races, and help keep the the pace of the game feeling right. I think we can balance them to feel more natural.

That said, I am open to a game play option that disables them, or even pulling them if we cant make them work to our satisfaction. So keep the feedback coming. A great deal of design is balance, and tuning, and we have allot of that ahead of us still.   


 

It seems like a really easy issue to me.  The developers may or may not have reasons we do not yet understand for tech ages.  Also, some people like them.  So, taking them out would suck.  Some people hate them.  So, leaving them in isn't ideal either.

Add a checkbox on game setup (e.g. Game Settings > Advanced Settings) for "Enforce Tech Ages".  The developers pick the default setting (assume enabled). If you uncheck the option, it lets you research without the age restrictions.  The only real ugliness from a code perspective that I see is will the AI adapt accordingly (or does it even need to)?

Europa Universalis gives you an ahead of time tech penalty.  It cost more of what is the equivalent to research points to get a tech early but you can do it. 

No.

No.

Ahh, you are from somewhere that opposes critical thinking. Good to know, it answers a lot of questions.

I was not nitpicking, but trying to wade through your hyperbole to get to the real issue. In a truly open research format there would be no tree, and you could research any tech you want at any time with no prerequisites. So I'm just trying to figure out, given the fact that research is going to be limited in some way, what it is specifically about the way they are currently limiting research that bugs you. Then we can have a productive discussion that takes into consideration the goals and advantages of the tech ages as well as their limitations.

I liked the way research worked in GC2, you could research the next-level of any tech whenever you wanted/needed to.

I'm not ready to write-off the new tech tree with it's "ages" yet but it does make game-play more complex because of the sheer volume of techs there are to research, especially when the Branch-Headings are somewhat of a misnomer e.g. having Economic techs within the Governance section or having Production and Research techs within the same strand; the only branch that is clearly labelled is "War".  Probably what I would find simpler would be to have more "main Branches" [which is probably impractical now even though it's only Beta1+] labelled as simply as they were in GC2, although that would probably insult the devs egotistical desires to create something new, shiny and impressive.

It's not that I have a problem with "Tech-Ages", they seem more irrelevant than anything else;  what bothers me more is the cost and therefore the time required to research any tech, it's much too long in the early game.  Or it is for my standard strategy of researching to build infrastructure for not only production but also wealth, research and approval so that planets are productive in all senses and meanings of the word, to become a fully-active planet that's capable of Gearing up for war, trade and who-knows-what (Piracy/Spying-Espionage).  I am not totally averse to specialization but I'm never really happy about putting 'all of my eggs in 1 basket' tactics.  Talking of 'eggs', Food seems much more important now than it was in GC2.

I was so disenchanted with research timescales that I started a new game in "God-mode" [cheating with the Tech "unlock" feature from the bug-console].  It enabled me to play with the 'Terraforming' techs, and even with their inconsistent results, it was good to be able to turn 4-tile abominations into almost useful 10 or 12 hex planets with upgraded infrastructure, especially now that everything upgrades correctly from the latest patch.  However I did find the game too easy, being able to build Paladins and Overlords and more to decimate any opposition.

Anyway, the "Tech Ages" currently don't seem to add to or detract anything from the game but something nags me to say that crossing each barrier should add something fun or some reward to the game, a global increase in Research Ability perhaps or something, yet possibly only when all previous era techs have been completed ( from the hard slog to do so ).

The tech ages have a purpose and I don't want to see it disappeared. The game will be easier if you can max one tree straight from the beginning.

It just doesn't seem right that the ages are defined by the player.   Age should be a global thing, that's how it is in the history books.

Being the first to get into a new age should bring some benefits, maybe in terms of defining the age itself (or a bonus to something in that age)

It does smack a bit of new eras in Civ, though those weren't as limiting.

If you want to discourage beelining- maybe have it where once one race reaches the next age, the previous age's techs become very cheap to discover, and an ahead of time tech penalty for pushing too far without having the necessary techs discovered?