Is it me or is tech tree seriously flawed?????

[jkadabomb]

I have noticed alot of anachronisms in the tech tree as well as stuff like getting nukes so late and not getting very much time to use them before antiballistics comes along. Stuff like that.

depends on what you consider worse: lack of historical realism or lack of game balance

[Christian B]

I perfer both game balance and historical correctnes.

(as if there is anyone who doesnt want both)


what about if you cant have both?

[jkadabomb]

Well actually I think it is quite possible to have both, I just think activision didnt spend much time on tech tree, I think they spent more time on the gameplay.

[Christian B]

If you don`t have both can you then really call it a great Civ game?

a really great civ game is one that is FUN. both(historicall accuracy and game balance) is needed. it's just that the right mix is different from player to player....

[Maximus42]

"No compromise between historical accuracy and playability?" What are you, drunk? Do you have ANY idea about the number of variables you'd need to make it 100% historically accurate?

Here are just a few things that Civ games don't take into account:

1) Erosion/natural shifts in ecology
2) Ice Ages
3) pestilence (except briefly in Civ1)
4) Natural disasters in general
5) treason
6) How come you can still rule by fiat as a democracy or other representative government?
7) Crazy or wildly inventive battlefield tactics (use of plague-infested horses as catapult shot, poisoning water supplies in sieges, etc)
8) Bigotry/racism
9) WEATHER! It (helped to) defeated Hitler and Napoleon, for Chrissakes!
10) How about the fact that immortal guiding spirits DON'T manipulate things in the background of history?

All of these games are mere approximations of history. They're useful as entertainment or learning tools, but can never be accurate. There's just too much stuff to simulate. And since choices have to made as far as what stuff to include, the designer has a responsibility to include stuff that the average user of the software will enjoy.

[Darkknight]

Great now you just ruined all civ games for me

yuou missed out the whole penquins or maybe tigers eating humans, i just read a while ago about some battle in india where both armies where using elephants and in the midst of battle several Indian tigers(big)
where caught in the middle and made the elephants go berserk and start trampling their own troops
or rather

[jkadabomb]

Maximus42 you are not very smart. The Ice Age was millions of years ago and has no chance of fitting into the Civ time periods.

[jkadabomb]

Oh ya no game can take everything into account, for example in C&C and StarCraft your units magically appear from minerals.

[Rollo Tomasi]

There's always the Little Ice Age (ca. 1000 AD), in which the global world temperature dipped a few degrees. This resulted in lower crop yields, more starvation, and the increase of barbarian raids throughout Europe. So I think that point is valid, even if it is made in jest

[Taliseian]

Civ and Civ2 had their Tech Trees fairly well balanced and historically accurate (with a few exceptions taken to make the game more enjoyable).

IMHO, CtP and CtP2 haven't done this, and CtP2 moreso than the original. Perhaps this is one reason (among many) that CtP, while a very challenging and fun game to play failed the "Civ" Test that all games of this genre have to pass.

Also IMHO, there can really be no compromise between historical accuracy (again, some exceptions can be made) and playability.

As for the exceptions mentioned above, they really should be few and far between and not a kind of loophole in the tech tree.

Taliseian

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The World of Lyrlusa
A Dungeons and Dragons Campaign World
http://www.crosswinds.net/~lyrlusa
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[TheBirdMan]

Hi Maximus42.

No, the game dosn't have these "features" - but some might be made by "our" terrific modmakers

Now I take your points one by one. I have to compare them to CTP as I dosn't have CTPII

1) Erosion/natural shifts in ecology

Kind of it has. Pollution and the ability to use PW to restore to grassland or whatever you want.

2) Ice Ages

This might be done. I don't know what possibilities, there are hidden in the socalled "events".

3) pestilence (except briefly in Civ1)

As for no. 2.

4) Natural disasters in general

As for no. 2 again.

5) treason

No, unfortunately not.

6) How come you can still rule by fiat as a democracy or other representative government?

Yes, here we miss the senate from CIV II.

7) Crazy or wildly inventive battlefield tactics (use of plague-infested horses as catapult shot, poisoning water supplies in sieges, etc)

A few "older" new units á la the infectors could to this job. Easy to implement.

8) Bigotry/racism

Something like this has been discussed between the modmakers on the forums. I don't know (can't remember), what the result ended up with.

9) WEATHER! It (helped to) defeated Hitler and Napoleon, for Chrissakes!

If the modmakers can handle no2, 3 and 4 then they can handle this too.

10) How about the fact that immortal guiding spirits DON'T manipulate things in the background of history?

????


Though nothing has been written from Activision, I'm sure there will be a patch or 2. And there will certainly be made lots of mods(!)

[SeveB]

I think people are missing Max42s argument a bit. For someone to say the game isnt' historically accurate is a bit unrealistic, because there are hundreds and thousands of things that have affected history.

Birdman, I think Maxs last point about the guiding spirits is that, when it comes down to it, the whole premise of civ games is pretty historically inaccurate!!

[Nikolai]

quote: Originally posted by jkadabomb on 11-27-2000 09:36 PM Maximus42 you are not very smart. The Ice Age was millions of years ago and has no chance of fitting into the Civ time periods.

Well, that's a bit wrong.....

We had a ice age for circa 10.000 years ago. Then Europe from Scandinavia in north, to Germany(half) in south, was just ice!

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Who am I? What am I? Do we need Civ? Yes!!
birteaw@online.no

[JamesJKirk]

What's that over there?!?! The topic? Oh. Anyway, what's the deal with having both Jet Propulsion and Supersonic Flight advances? They're practically the same advance (I DID say practically). And JP giving you the bomber? Methinks I'll just call it Advanced Flight to sooth my nerves

Well I just wanted to make a point about techs. If we had the last 6000 years to relive we would never get the same result twice. Who knows we may discover atomic power in the 18th century if we had it all to do again. Much is due to chance. A civ game shouldn't play exactly as our history has (that would be pretty boring). The point of civ games is to make our own history. This means getting techs at different times than actually happened. Would you want some algorithm that says you can only research nuclear fission from the turns in 1940 and 1945 (not exact but you get my point). Now an exciting part would be to randamize the tech tree (impossible I know). But with mods you can do all sorts of things... I think I haven't purchased the game yet (later today)

One question though. Do you research exact techs or are there general areas you can research like in SMAC. That is the accurate thing about smac that was nice. Realistically especially in ancient times, advances came on luck not on putting forth a concerted effort.
[This message has been edited by Dissident Aggressor (edited November 28, 2000).]

[CyberGnu]

DA, yes and no.

Atomic power can't be discovered before quantum physics/relativity and metallurgy. QP can't be discovered without a sound base in chemistry and wave physics. Chemistry springs from alchemy and biology. Wave physics comes from optics. Metallurgy also comes from chemistry and civil engineering, etc etc. (OK, this is pretty simplified, but you get he idea).

So essentially you do need a tech tree.

But in one way you are right. The advantage of SMACs techtree is that the different branches are independent. Whether you have discovered optics should not influnce whether you discover democracy. (Then again, the abolishment of slavery came from the invention of the horse collar, so they do have some overlap... but I think that is a little bit outside the scope of the game). So, someone concentrating on atomic power should be able to get it in the 1800's, providing he ignores, say, advances in social science. You see?

Regarding CTPII's tech tree, I can't say I think much of it... Fascism as a requirement for democracy? OK...

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Gnu Ex Machina - the Gnu in the Machine

you're kidding about that last line aren't you. Maybe I'm regretting buying the game. I should be playing not posting here.

How easily is the tree modified?

[Depp]

Well, weather was the force that set the wheels in motion for development. When the climate changed 10 000 BC or so, it made all the open grasslands dissaper and with them the large animals that made it possible to live on hunting alone, and still support a tribe. So people eventually settled down and starting farming due to this change in the climate.
And there are more changes in the climate later on that pushed people in different directions. Pretty interesting.

And the techtree is ok, but could be done better. I would like to see different paths that could be take which would give different cultures which different goods/bads etc. After all, all countries are different, and whereas the large discoveries spread rather quick people often tend to take different angles to it.

And maybe the possibility to enchance your units by putting some science into them and getting a better version of it.

But anyway...

[Rollo Tomasi]

Hey, how does the the invention of the horse collar relate to the abolishment of slavery ? Sounds like something from James Burke's Connections

[jkadabomb]

"I think people are missing Max42s argument a bit. For someone to say the game isnt' historically accurate is a bit unrealistic, because there are hundreds and thousands of things that have affected history."

Well actually what I meant was the tech tree had lots of stuff out of order and prerequisites for some stuff I think is wrong and etc.

[CyberGnu]

DA,

Rollo: Before the invention of the horse collar, the only way you could get work out of a horse was to put a rope around its neck. Unfortunatley, when the horse applied pressure on the rope, it effectively choked itself, so it could only use a fraction of its strength. Consequently, a horse could do the work of four men, but ate as much as five... Therefore it was more economical to keep slaves for farmduty.

When the horse collar was invented, the horse (or ox) could use its full strength. Now the horse could do the work of ten men, but still eat (fairly) the same. Naturally, this makes owning a horse more economical than slaves.

It should be said, I guess, that it doesn't eliminate slavery all together, slaves were still used for more qualified labor, but the era when most slaves were used more for brute strength than their intelligence ended. Compare the societies prior to the horse collar (greek, roman, etc) to the medieval societies after.


Depp, considering you being in Lule I understand your name... How many hours of sunlight do you guys have right now?

Anyway, something I've always found odd about the civ genre is the fact that you will still pay upkeep for a phalanx even when the SAME CITY is churning out tanks... I think there should a function where you could upgrade a unit for a small fee and say, five turns in a city.


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Gnu Ex Machina - the Gnu in the Machine

Ok I started my first game. can anyone please tell me why I start out with Archers in 4000 B.C.? And why is religion a starting tech? I miss ceremonial bariel
This tech tree sucks ass, but I'm trying not to let it bother me, and am trying to enjoy the game.

[jbs]

I thought the tech tree in CTP 1 was bad and have spent the last year trying to rewrite it to make it historically balanced and still have good game play (getting close after having more than doubled the amount of techs). I can see some minor deviations from history depending on choices along the tech path, but certain basics are still necessary. From all the reviews and comments I am getting the impression that the tech tree in CTP2 is as bad or worse than the tech tree in CTP1. Since CTP2 has the same limitations in mod development as CTP 1, I am seeing less and less reasons to buy CTP 2. The only consistent good comment is diplomacy, even borders have their problems. I thought the growing city radius is a good idea, but the averaging of city tiles is obviously a bad implementation. So diplomacy, borders, and growing city radius are good game improvements. Averaging city tiles is bad, the tech tree is bad, and critical units are missing. I would rather buy a $20 add-on that fixed diplomacy and added borders and just an expanding city radius to CTP1 then buy another flawed game. Then add in that CTP2 has no hot seat, and has memory leakage problems and I see NO reason to buy the game for $49. Maybe for $20, I would give it a try.

[jbs]

My understanding is 128 techs or less - no problems. More than 128 techs and the number of techs cause some minor to major (depending on view point) annoyances. Basically, the game is very slow to initially load. When you encounter a ruin that will give you an advance the game appears to lock up, but you just need to be patient. 1-2 mins later you get the advance from the ruin and the game continues. (This could be bypassed by disabling the ruin giving advances feature) Time from turn to turn increases slightly - in seconds (which I thought was acceptable). An advance can be a perquisite to another advance no more than 4 times, or strange things happen to the game. Also beware of the logical preq problem. If advance A is a preq to Advance B and C, but C is also a preq to B, than really only C is the preq to B. If the advance.txt file has both A and C as preq to B, than strange things happen to the game.

Now back to the 128 limit. I am told that this number is for indexed advances with references to the Great Library. If you put NO INDEX in the advance.txt file than the speed increases, of course all the GL files I worked hard on (to polish the game) are then disabled. I tried this and saw a noticeable increase in speed, but still not as fast as having only 128 non future techs. I think something was done to the code for future techs in addition to the NO INDEX flag that speeds up the game.

I even optimized the Advance.txt file in order of advances (instead of just adding new ones to the end) to see if that would help (it only caused me to rewrite every preq).

My understanding is that these same limitations are in CTP 2, so adding techs to flush out and correct the tech tree still has the same problems/constraints/limitations.

If my understanding on these limitations is wrong, or someone knows additional information, I will be glad to discuss my observations.

[jbs]

Also no more than 64 buildings/wonders and no more that 200 units. I never found these to be major constraints especially the units. Maybe increasing the improvements/wonders would be good. I am sure Wes would like an increase in the amount of wonders.

well the number of possible advances is not the only thing that matter in mod development....

btw, how many advances do you need for a "correct" tech tree? how many turns would it take you to discover an advance with this total? would it really be more fun?

[jbs]

The tech tree should be consistent, should be somewhat historically accurate and make logical sense. CTP1 covered from ancient to space, thus covering more ground than Civ2 and thus requiring more techs than Civ2. CTP1 tried to cover more ground with the same amount of techs resulting in large gaps. I thought getting advances in CTP1 was too easy and too fast. City Walls came almost immediately and then the rush to pikeman meaning all the ancient units except for the phalanx were only good for killing barbarians. I wanted to make each age distinct so that you could fight a protracted ancient war and feel the constraints of the original city gov size. I wanted to feel like I built the Greek/Roman Empire from scratch and then took it into the modern and future ages. Civ2 gave me that feeling while CTP1 did not. Yes I slowed down the game and increased the number of turns. Instead of now being how quickly I can get to Pikeman or the modern age it is how quickly I can get to city walls. Civilization is not a game that you should be able to finish in a weekend. I want to spend the time to build it and then experience the fruits of my labor. To me Civilization is a game you play over multiple weekends. I more than doubled the amount of non future original techs ending up with a total of 200 non future techs - added some improvements bringing the total to 64 and added some more units like the Caravel and the Ion Cannon. I will send it to you within the next two weeks (pending any bugs) so you can post it if you want to or delete the e-mail if you desire.