03-10-1999 05:34									#1
	Tech Research Chart 2 Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I thought the other chart was getting rather large so I started this one. Here's a link to the old one http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum21/...html?date=17:00

Anyway on to the points i'd like made:

First off, the military tactics will be handled prob in their own small section (for now atleast) to make it easier on me.

As to Mark's reply on the technology drop...if you really think its better that way i'll go ahead and do it, just let me explain why I liked the other way.

First off, taking the example about microelectronics, it is true that it did make things smaller and wasn't implimented overnight (in fact we still use vaccuum tubes in many airports), but it did allow for a major rethinking in electronics as far as the engineering and compasity are concered. Before transitors and microchips were around, tell anyone we'd have computers the size and power of PCs today, or even 10 years ago, and you'd be laughed atm or at best they'd say maybe in several hundered years. Also i wasn't planning on starting the player off on square one once this technology was discovered since the basics of the technology apply, its simply the way in which it is implimented. And no our engineering and electronics usage didn't become worse, but our understanding of its new potential wasn't as good as the older vacuume tubes, and that is what basic technologies represents IMO, the potential beyond the basic understanding of the currently developed technology that a civilization has brought itself.

About the tech discovery out of order, i was planning on implimenting that mostly on the basis of using "more soft than hard" technologies for many of them. Though the added idea of attempting to learn a tech b4 u've reached the hard rq of a basic tech does have potential...i'll have to check this out when I do some "cleaning up."

The tactics i'm using is based on your current level of technology in using the weapons u have available. Therefore this would have very good reason to "decrease" as new technologies emerge to enhance your weapons. FE i saw a documentry on the LC about how the army is integrating the new advances in computer technology, choosing which ones work best and which ones aren't good, atleast currently.

Yea as far as its size i'm not planning on adding any much more techs cept basic and a military tactics section. Plan on getting rid of some i seen were kinda useless or could be combined.

Meturallagy in basic? That can be done.

Minor Point:

The reason i had copper working is that not all civs discovered copper....most did, but a few didn't, most noteably as i mentioned b4 in the former research discussion, the Japanese who had virutally no copper (unaware about tin, but with no tin, no bronze) but plenty of iron.

I can concintrate on the ancient techs if u want...that's not too hard. I'd ask though that u give me more input in that area as to what needs changing. Also, although i've not programmed much in java (beyond a little menu sys i got for my webpage which was mostly compiled anywayz) If someone shows/gives me a tutorial on how to program it, as long as its written descently and unconfusing I could prob learn in a couple of days how to program and could get atleast a basic source code out to u.

Anyway i hope this clears up some things...as for the others...well that's what this board is here for
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited October 02, 1999).]

	03-10-1999 07:39									#2
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Some quick responses to your responses...

I will try and look carefully at the ancient end of your tech tree as soon as I can. With luck that'll be tomorrow.

On military tactics, why don't we see how the notion of military tactics and organizational advances, etc. fit into the ancient part of the tree (I'll try to include thoughts on this in my comments) and take it from there?

I think if we can get the ancient part of the tree working sensibly when playtested then generating the semi-final version for the rest will be a lot easier. We'll already know what Sort of things work, or are too complicated etc. So I'm happy leaving the contentious parts of our discussions somewhat on hold, and mostly making progress on places where there's already substantial agreement.

I get the feeling we might be mis-communicating on the set-back in basic techs. Can you give a simple example, but using several techs, of what you envision. So, FE, pick a basic tech X, and several techs A-C that are related to it. First describe what happens when you discover A. Then when you discover B what effects the set-back in the basic tech X has upon A in terms of its effectiveness, etc. I think a simple example with made-up numbers Might show that I just don't understand exactly what you mean and vice versa. If nothing else it will serve as a useful base for further discussions.

Glad you thought my other ideas might be doable. We can discuss them in the light of firming up the ancient end of the tree and see if we want to try them in the first shot.

I understood your point about Japan and copper-working. But to accomodate that one little bit of history we'd need to add a whole new special to the game. Things are getting Very complicated, and I'm just trying to keep somewhat of a lid on it as much as possible. But we can see in playtesting whether my concerns are warranted.

On java tutorials... You can look around the web, there are a bunch available. Also, several old java books are available for free in electronic format on the web. I can't give you specifics right now, but you can probably find some info after a little web searching. If you find a really good source, please post it so others can skip that step...

If you could get a start on coding up the tech model it'd be Great! My code so far already has a crude tech model in it. I'm not sure how much of it you'd want to use, but starting using it as a basis would probably get you going faster provided the general objects are the right ones (which I think they are). It would also mean you could learn java by modifying existing code, which I find to be generally easier than creating code from scratch when learning a new language. Just let me know if you want me to send you the source.

Must Go... Cya,

Mark

	03-10-1999 09:42									#3
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Okay here it is I'll use another example:

I'm using physics as the base technology.

The related techs:
a> Gunpowder
b> Flight
c> Theory of Quantumphysics

First we discover gunpowder. Physics would be at 35% needed and would prob not change since gunpowder doesn't really change the fundimentals of physics.
Then after a while of increasing our techs we dicover Flight. Flight has to have physics at say 60%, but lets say it was at 66%, well because flight doesn't change what we basically know about physics, it can remain the same.
Now its on to quantumphysics. We need, amongsth other things, a physics tech level at say 75%. Quantumphysics doesn't change our understanding of physics as Isaac Newton knew them, but allows for understanding of why atoms don't seem to react to his model. Thus because we had to reevaluate how physics works at such micorscopic levels our understanding as a whole on physics is lowered, say to 70%... If it were at 90% when i discovered this it would be down to prob 79% because I have to relearn more of how physics applies to science. Remember before this i didn't know how to explain why an atom works the way it does and so didn't compute it into my understanding of physics in general

Another example in case that didn't explain that is to use Biology.

a> ecology
b> theory of evolution
c> genetics

Ecology needs say 10% biology...after discovering it, it doesn't really change what you currently know about biology, just allows to understand why an animal lives here instead of there. The understanding of what its made of and how it came to be there is the same.
The Theory of Evolution is a radical change in the thinking of creation and biology. This really did turn the world upside down with its ideas once accepted. Lets say it needs 40% to be learned and u happen to have that...well because this is a radical revaluation of how organisms came to be, even if incomplete, it would require several years of rethinking fundimental thoughts on biology. Thus bilogy would be lowered about 50% or to 20.
Genetics doesn't really change anything like the theory of evolution does, but adds credince to it and other ideas. It does however allow a much more in depth look at how organisms work. Lets say biology rq is 70% and you have 90%. It would prob lower this, but not as much as evolution did....it would prob be lowered to 80%.

I hope this does clear things up and not make them worse.

	03-10-1999 11:21									#4
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Well, I think your examples neither helped nor hurt

What bothers me is when you use the base technology number (say physics for flight) to gauge the effectiveness for the related tech. At least as far as I know this is a major rationale for this system. And in fact I Really Like the general idea...

But, Taking your first example, let me describe what bothers me about your proposal and you can confirm or deny my take of how your system works. So we have:

Physics as the base technology, enabling:
a> Gunpowder
b> Flight
c> Theory of Quantumphysics

I assume you take physics as an enabler of Gunpowder in that knowledge of ballistics enhances the capabilities of gunpowder weapons, esp. cannon. So, looking at it from a modern perspective, the higher my Physics number, the more effective my artillery would be. So we have some relationship between Physics # and artillery firepower. So far so good. Its not necessarily rigorously true, but Clash is a Game .

Physics enables Flight and similarly you can make better planes the more you know about aerodynamics.

Now lets take your example that we are at Physics = 90% and are about to discover quantum physics. I will use made up effectiveness for gunpowder and airplanes to illustrate my problem with your model. I assume that for each tech there is a pre-determined connection between its enhancement in effectiveness and the base tech number. These enhancements will, at most get to the 2x better than usual level when the base tech gets extremely advanced. I think this basically agrees with what you've said about the issue before IIRC.

So lets look at two years in Clash, the one before I discover quantum physics, and the one immediately after.

Just Before Discovery of Quantum Physics

Physics = 90%

Any artillery I build has effectiveness 2x base # from my better ballistics knowledge. This is because if some other civ that has only Physics 35% captures plans for my artillery piece and copies them, they can only use it at half effectiveness since they don't understand ballistics well. Their effective firepower is diminished since their shells don't go where they want them to.

Similarly my airplanes are at x1.5 base effectiveness due to knowledge of aerodynamics.

Just After I Discover Quantum Physics

Physics = 79% due to your desired drop in base tech when a 'revolutionary' tech is discovered.

Now any artillery I build has effectiveness 1.9x base # from my ballistics knowledge. My Artillery is Less Effective because my scientists are concerned about wave-particle duality!

Similarly my airplanes are Now at x1.4 of base effectiveness.

It is the Loss of Effectiveness of all the other Enabled Technologies that leads me to believe that, in the model, you Shouldn't Lower basic tech levels upon the discovery of a new and revolutionary technique. So IMO either you need to ditch the whole machinery connecting effectiveness to basic techs (which I rather like) or you have to give up the idea that the basic tech should decrease upon discovering a revolutionary tech.

I think the problem is we're using Physics as an umbrella for a lot of different areas of knowledge. The fact that things are in turmoil in the atomic and particle physics community in my civ has No Effect on the knowledge of military ballistics experts or aviation physicists in the society. But you are making it have one with your model as I understand it.

I know that as a player I would find it Maddening to have the discovery of quantum physics Screw Up my fighter-bombers while I'm fighting a war!

Now you can tell me if I have the idea right or wrong... and if wrong where my error lies.

Cya,

Mark

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited October 03, 1999).]

	03-10-1999 13:24									#5
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Prehaps instead of lowering the basic tecnology level, it should increase the level required before you can get certain other technologys.

e.g. before quantum mechanics.
Space flight would require 60% electronics.
After quantum mechanics
Space flight would require 75% electronics.

How does that sound ?

	03-10-1999 17:12									#6
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Hi Kanzid:

Welcome back! (At least in a visible presence, you may have been lurking for all I know )

On your idea... at least its much less objectionable from the player's perspective IMO . I just don't see why having one sub-set of the scientific establishment being occupied in radical re-thinking of their world view should affect completely different parts of the community's projects. Now for Similar projects maybe something should be done.

How about some kind of random-length 'blackout period' after getting a revolutionary tech before you can do a related one. So, after getting quantum physics you'd need to wait at least 20 turns before trying to get the tech for the Manhattan Project.

	03-10-1999 22:30									#7
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Hehe...i see what u mean. Anyway there still should be some kind of slowdown do to fundimental rethinking when several techs are learned. The blackout period may be a good idea or maybe simply a 1/2 rate of RP if devoted to a tech that requires that particular base tech during that time period of 20 years.

	03-10-1999 23:08									#8
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Wooohoo we've achieved understanding!

I'm not sure we even need a special rule for this type of thing... Why don't we wait until there are concrete instances of this in the tech tree in the parts of Clash that get into playtesting first, and see what works best. It may be that the structure of the tech tree means that tweaks are generally not needed anyway. I really dislike putting in special rules to make things just a little more realistic when our models are getting Very complicated in general... For one thing the more special rules the tougher it is to write the AI. And that's a daunting task already!

I'll try to get back to you on the ancient ends of the tech tree later today. I want to wrap up part of the coding first. Do you have a tree-like diagram available, or do I have to look through the whole alphabetized chart to pick out what I need to look at?

	04-10-1999 01:48									#9
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sorry bot that...i was trying to get away from a "true" treelike stucture. I've also been busy trying to learn java so that cuts in timewise. Anyway atleast it is alphebetized.

	04-10-1999 07:46									#10
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Well I just scanned through this but there is somthing I want to add about scientific developement. I t does concern physics, I would like to give a little histroy concerning physics.....

a Mathametician named Maxwell over a 100 years ago made a unified field theory that actually works, why, the scientist Tesla creditied all his inventions from that theory.
Then another professor translated Maxwells theory and 'simplified' it that made it our now 3d model of the atom, chich through that thinking split natures forces of gravity, magnetics, and electricity. In Maxwell's theory there were 4 dimensions(minus time). And because Einstein was taught the simplified version of Maxwells theory it split gravity and electricity even more, and at the end of his life someone told him about Maxwells actuall unified field theory, but Einstein was less than a year from dieing when he found out about that. Quantom Mechanics is just starting to barely touch what Maxwell disovered 100 years ago, the reason this theory isn't used? Because that one professor 'simplified' Maxwells theory and then said that was the theory, and the simplified version is what is taught anywhere.

Some of the benefits this theory would give if we perfected it and engineered with it...
1. A type of energy recourse that makes thousands more energy than fusion in one cubic centimeter.
2. Gravity Control, i.e. anti-gravity.
3. Hyperdimensional travel.

If you are interested in looking at this further just E-mail me, I was rather shocked when I first came across a report on it too.

In conclusion, there can be anti-developement because of dumb scientists or the 'main stream', or a 'lost theory' that could bring enormous discoverys if rediscovered.
[This message has been edited by Osiris (edited October 03, 1999).]

	04-10-1999 17:13									#11
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Uhhh... I'm a physicist by training and I'm sorry to say, but this sounds like some whacko's rantings to me... Maxwell's equations that I know of have not much to do directly with quantum mechanics, although they're Very important. I'd like to have incredibly cheap energy and anti-gravity as much as the next guy... But I'll bet you dollars to donuts there's nothing in that alleged theory that'll really get us there.

I think the General point about people sometimes following 'bad' tracks in science is clearly legitimate. Lysenko's (sp?) bizarre version of Lamarkian inheritance in early Soviet genetic science is one that comes to mind. However I don't think this sort of thing is so all-pervasive that it belongs in a Game that models the real world fairly sketchily.

	07-10-1999 09:19									#12
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I just saw a post by Diodorus Sicilus in the Civ3 List technology thread that had a really good idea. He mentioned that a model that includes tech diffusion between civs needs to include how easy it is for each tech to diffuse. Really easy ones are like the stirrup or the wheel, in that all it takes is someone to see it (and needed precursor techs if any) and it is pretty easy to duplicate. At the other extreme are things like Philosophy or Physics that take intense study and the Direct cooperation of groups of teachers to really transmit the tech.

IMO we should include this. Whatcha think?

Matter of fact, there's A Lot of good stuff in the Tech summary and thread. If you haven't seen it, check it out!

Cool new idea
Instead of having hard and soft prerequisites for techs, why not just have a weighting put on all tech prereqs. Then we can tune them to be as hard or soft as we want. The weighting factor would affect the cost to put one point into getting the tech. For purposes of demonstration just assume each prereq has a weight which divides the points put into the tech if you don't have that prereq, and that all the modifiers are multiplied together.

Suppose we have the tech Navigation with the pre-requisites Astronomy (formerly hard), Compass (formerly soft) and Seafaring (formerly soft). In my proposed method it might look like this (don't worry about the specific numbers, this is just for demo):

Navigation (100points)
Astronomy (5)
Compass (2)
Seafaring(3)

So if you have none of the pre-reqs each point of Navigation would cost 5x2x3 = 30points. So all of Navigation would cost the Enormous amount of 3000 idea points. If you have Astronomy and Seafaring it would cost 200. Of course with all three pre-reqs the cost would be the base cost of 100.

What this does is mean that:
1) there aren't just two flavors of pre-requisites and things can be more fine-tuned
2) civilizations can use novel approaches to get around any pre-reqs if they're enough of an innovative society, but of course it will be slower than what they'd do with the pre-reqs
3) the transition when you get a pre-req isn't abrupt, just the progress in the area will pick up speed

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited October 07, 1999).]

	08-10-1999 16:25									#13
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That is an wonderful idea for prereqs and I'd offer that dollars-to-doughnuts bet that Firaxas will never attempt anything like it.

About the problem you brought up earlier, it might be better to have a finite incremental scale instead of a percentage scale. Then your Physics knowledge can be 0.9 out of 1.0 just before discovery of universal gravitation, and afterwards 0.9 out of 2.0. Then later on you're at 1.9 out of 2.0 and you discover QM. Now you're at 1.9 out of 3.0. Then you could also use the actual Physics number for your base effectiveness for artillery. You still have the problem of how QM makes it possible to arbitrarily improve you artillery proficiency above what had been a maximum level of 2.0… That might be cleaned up with the fact that after QM significant discoveries may be greatly stretched out in time (I don't think we'll see superconductivity in military hardware or consumer goods for many years).

	09-10-1999 07:12									#14
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That sounds like a much better idea mark!!! It'll also make it much easier to impliment the basic technologies also.

BTW I'll redo this for the next tech chart update...

Anyway my java programming isn't going to great...In fact all i've been able to do is figure out that the current tech tree model won't work the way my techs are done.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited October 08, 1999).]

	09-10-1999 08:39									#15
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don Don:

Welcome Back. It occurs to me I may have to rework my figures of speach because with the slow advance of inflation the dollar:donut ratio ain't what it used to be

On the incremental scale you brought up...
I'm still trying to get my mind around whether it'd give us a real advantage in modeling things to do it as you suggest. The previous discussion about artillery vs. physics doesn't worry me all that much because as I see it good physics Would be a big bonus for say up to Napoleonic artillery, somewhat of a bonus up to WWI type pieces, but by the time you get to WWII, physics at the level of decent ballistics knowledge is more of a pre-req than a bonus enabler if you get my drift. However I certainly can't say that would be so for all basic techs and related techs. I'll have to get back to you on my take on it after i've thought a bit.

Lord God Jinnai:

Glad you like the idea... It does seem to take care of several issues. I Think it could even be used for the basic techs in a way... I'm still trying to work something out, but the basic path is that you'd pile all the various pre-reqs at the start of say agriculture. So chemistry 50% (2) for fertilizers might be there. If you just make the points to get the early parts of agriculture somewhat easier than 'before' (because now everything early costs 2x as much because you don't have chem 50%) then everything flows smoothly, and chemistry 50% or whatever just kicks in to boost things whenever you get it. So it might end up that chem 50% gives you a bonus before explorers to the new world bring back potatoes, or maybe the other way around. I'm not quite happy with my solution yet but I thought I'd throw it out for everyone else to think about and maybe we'd get somewhere!

What is the big problem with taking parts of the old tech tree model? Some parts are clearly not appropriate, and obviously I don't have some things like the new tags in there... I just want to make sure we don't put you to more work than necessary

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited October 08, 1999).]

	09-10-1999 18:53									#16
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Iwas referring to the tech tree model itself...the way the techs advance and are grouped such as agriucluture 0-12...

Also Mark the combining of many of the sciences into "hard sciences" that u listed i think is going too far in the way of simplicity...I believe you loose too much reality that way to make up for the simplicity of just one group.

Anyway I'm thinking of a better way to impliment the increasing cost of basic techs than by era...i was planning on using a diminishing returns formula, though i can't think of the basic formula for it right now...I know it cuz it was used in my economics class, but that was over a year ago...

Anyway that would settle the problem of increased cost better because it would allow a civ that's behind to catch up faster while still allowing another civ to develope a basic tech more early on but still costing a lot to do a lot of research in it.

Finnaly a thought on the new sys you proposed...How'd we do the few techs that have more than one way of gaining them such as metallurgy and off-shore agriculture?
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited October 09, 1999).]

	09-10-1999 20:57									#17
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>
Iwas referring to the tech tree model itself...the way the techs advance and are grouped such as agriucluture 0-12...
>
Oh yeah... No, I didn't think you could use that, except possibly using that general structure for the basic techs. As in a basic tech Could be a string of specific techs or at least specific levels.

>
Also Mark the combining of many of the sciences into "hard sciences" that u listed i think is going too far in the way of simplicity...I believe you loose too much reality that way to make up for the simplicity of just one group.
>
I hear you. But there's also a danger in having Too Many things for people to keep track of... If you're going to distinguish at the level of chemistry & physics then at a guess you are going to need at least 30 basic techs or social advaces to cover realms of knowledge. Maybe you can make it understandable with 30 and about 1-200 other ones, but I'm sceptical.

>
Finnaly a thought on the new sys you proposed...How'd we do the few techs that have more than one way of gaining them such as metallurgy and off-shore agriculture?
>
I dunno, we could make and/or/not relations between the pre-reqs possible. That would solve the problem at the cost of a little added complexity.

	09-10-1999 23:12									#18
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

>>
Also Mark the combining of many of the sciences into "hard sciences" that u listed i think is going too far in the way of simplicity...I believe you loose too much reality that way to make up for the simplicity of just one group.
>>
>
I hear you. But there's also a danger in having Too Many things for people to keep track of... If you're going to distinguish at the level of chemistry & physics then at a guess you are going to need at least 30 basic techs or social advaces to cover realms of knowledge. Maybe you can make it understandable with 30 and about 1-200 other ones, but I'm sceptical.
>
I hear you too, and maybe for the alpha ver its okay, but I really think we'd be giving up too much for the sake of simplicity...I'm only using the 8 basic tech groups, and not even that since I'm not including meteorology, geology (cept as tech) and a few others.

On another note, I moved the Copper Working up to initial techs with the only prereq as access to copper. This should satisfy my concern (the japan prob) and yours (the fact that it is widely used).

	09-10-1999 23:44									#19
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I guess my point is that your 8 basic techs are Waaaay too few if you want to cover things at the level of detail of physics vs chemistry. If so IMO then you need Many more things than you have. Among which would be (some you already have, but just to be complete):

Agriculture
Resource Extraction
Land Transportation
Sea Transportation
Economics
Medicine
Biology
Mathematics
Civil Engineering
General Eng.
Communication
At Least a general Social Science category for the things missing from this list (tho it might be broken down much finer)
Law
Government
Philosophy
Chemistry
Physics
Not to mention any miltary or artistic categories... and i'm sure I'm missing some others.

I understand that in the modern world hard science tech is about as important a thing to get right as there is. But there are a Lot of other important things too.

I guess you'll do a detailed version, and we can always trim it back later if necessary. And to the extent that a basic tech can replace 5 or more regular techs its probably worth doing. I just want to make sure we think about the Scope of the system before too much detail work goes into it. And I think that tech is one of the models that most players will want to handle themselves, so it Needs to be fairly understandable.

	10-10-1999 20:04									#20
	Inflate your Upload Space

Well we don't need quite that many...a few can be combined...

Law and government go hand in hand since government enforces and sets up laws and laws develope as gov changes so the evolving of one evolves the other so I think a basic tech called "Governing" is enough.

If you want to devide transportation up you also need air transportation.

Resorce extraction i was going to leave with geology since that's the major need for extracting anything is to geologically where it is.

Finnally Social Sciences could be changes to Psychology and with Philosophy that should be enough for all the techs we have.

The 5 military techs i have should be enough unless u or someone else has reason for more.

The artistic ones are a good idea, however I will do there later since I need to be done mostly with very few prereqs each, some might have high ones, some might not but i don't want this to be based on the chronology of art as its progressed since most tend to view this with a western style slant.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited October 10, 1999).]

	10-10-1999 20:57									#21
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>
Law and government go hand in hand since government enforces and sets up laws and laws develope as gov changes so the evolving of one evolves the other so I think a basic tech called "Governing" is enough.
>
Physics and Chemistry have At Least as much in common as Law and Government I just think you are inflating the importance of things you know well, at the expense of things you know less well. I don't know Law and Governmental issues well either... but that doesn't mean they're not important.

>
If you want to devide transportation up you also need air transportation.
>
Air transport shows up so recently I think just a few techs should cover it.

>
Resorce extraction i was going to leave with geology since that's the major need for extracting anything is to geologically where it is.
>
There's logging, and growing flax, and raising sheep for wool... Everything ain't just minerals. Esp in the ancient world. So I think geology only gets at one important aspect of it. But I'd have to see your final chart on this issue, you may be right.

>
The 5 military techs i have should be enough unless u or someone else has reason for more.
>
Five! For All of History? Or do you mean five basic techs, which might be getting at least somewhat closer. Until about 1500 military advances were of Ultimate Importance. IMO at a Minimum 10% of the techs should relate to weapons, military organization, etc. For a lot of players, the military will be the one aspect in the game they really care about.

It may just be that you should do your bit, and then hand it over to someone else to add the mil stuff since, as you'd mentioned before, you're really not into that part.

So what's your current list of basic techs? If you can easily post it here maybe people would get a better idea of where you're going.

Cya,

Mark

	10-10-1999 22:31									#22
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I agree wholeheartedly about the your comments on military techs, Mark. IMHO five BASIC techs is still greatly underestimating and/or simplifying the military end of things in a general model. I could list at least a dozen basic techs that are the foundation of any military throughout history. The ways in which they are implemented over time (tactics - which certainly is different from technology) changes, but their basic necessity remains constant. Examples include logistics and leadership. The level at which we distinguish between these techs can range from very general to very specific, depending on how much micromanagement vs. realism that we are shooting for. That still needs to be determined, but in any case, I think we will need more than five! Your idea of having someone more knowledgeable in military history/tactics taking care of this aspect is a good idea, Mark, since anyone not really informed about the topic cannot really do it justice (the reason I keep my mouth shut on things economic!). LGJ is doing a great job on the other side of the tech stuff, however.

I'm not volunteering for the job at this point (I'm moving in 2-3 weeks) but I might be able to tackle it in about a month or 2 if noone else steps forward...I'll go back to lurking now The classic Chinese book "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu is excellent reading for anyone interested in basic military theory - it was required reading at West Point (and may still be!)
[This message has been edited by Paul Crocker (edited October 10, 1999).]

	10-10-1999 22:39									#23
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Here's a link to a summary of 36 of Sun Tzu's most famous "quotes": http://www.ccnet.com/~suntzu75/36strat.htm

While they were written 2500 years ago, most (if not all) are directly applicable to modern warfare and have been echoed by other generals (eastern and western) throughout the ages - many times with the discoverer not even realizing that they were merely REdiscovering them!

	11-10-1999 03:41									#24
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Well Here's the current list:

Agriculture
Architecture
Astronomy *
Biology
Chemistry *
Civil Engineering *
Economics
Electronics
Engineering
Geology
Governing
Mathematics
Mechanics
Medical *
Metallurgy
Philosophy
Physics
Social Sciences
Transportation

The ones with stars next to them are ones i may decide to get rid of since there are somewhat related basic techs already up there.

Yea, i was refering to basic techs for military and yes that aspect as i mentioned b4 and in my tech model i'm not the best expert on, although preindustial eastern miliatary i'm somewhat more familar with than most people. As far as governments go, I'm much better at, although i'm no politcal scientist. This is one of the major aspects of a culture and as i'm very interested in the evolution of culutres I've taken many courses on politics and government.

Physics and chemistry both similar...I was thinking this at first, but then i remembered there meanings...Physics dealing more with Physical nature, although this has much to do with chemistry, while chemistty deals with chemicals.

--------------

Finally on that new tech model you posted...I've noticed a major flaw that needs to be addressed. I'm not saying I don't like it, but the other model did have a way of addressing this:
say for example you wanted to develope the animaldrawn cart and the animaldrawn plow. Both need domestication and one needs the wheel while one needs the plow, however if you know one, developing the other is easier. This is also a similar case with Knighthood and Way of the Samari which are helped by code of honor.

With this current system there's no way to have optional modifiers to lower or raise the base cost RP technologywise.

	11-10-1999 04:43									#25
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Thats a good solid list...

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Chemistry and Physics being separate. They're Both very important. It was just that when the list had 8 things I thought it was overkill. I think the longer list, simliar to what you have now and adding military ones is the way to go. The idea being, as has been said before that each will take the place of at least 5 individual techs. I am assuming they all start Very early, excepting a few like electronics.

Now my thoughts on the details... Assume I like everything I don't mention.

I'd ditch Astronomy and subsume it into Physics, or call it Physics and Astronomy. the match is good IMO since there is a Lot of important astronomical stuff early, and not that much in Physics.

IMO Biology and Medicine could go together. The early medical stuff like hygiene gives it something to do early.

I like Civil Eng and would keep it.

I'd rather have Resource extraction than Geology, but can live with it...

Mechanics??? Do you mean the sub-field of Physics? (in which case I'd ditch it) or Do you mean Mechanisms? (In which case I'd put it in Engineering) Or what?

On Philosophy and Social Science... I'm not sure about that breakdown, but don't have a good counter-suggestion. IMO, and I could get flamed for it Philosophy is Very important in Early and Medieval, and early modern Periods, but recently it hasn't done that much for us since Utilitarianism.

Finally I think Land and Water Transportation are Just So Fundamentally Different that you can't go down the middle on it. Also both transportations will tie into the military arms for the respective media.

Communication and Education are neither there, and both Very Important IMO.

So that's my list of suggested changes. I don't think we should get too hung up on this since ones to add or drop will probably be apparent as the tech chart gets more refined anyway. Whatcha think on my suggested mods?

On the flaw in my approach...
OK you sold me. We'll sometimes need and/or/ not type modifiers in the prereqs. So long as there's not too many I don't think its a big problem.

Great Work!

Mark

	11-10-1999 05:29									#26
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About the new system...how are u going to impliment the basic techs into there for lowering the cost?

Also education i don't know about...it is important, but that should be more to judge whether or not a civ gains or looses tech...which also reminds once we got the system set up relatively sound we haveto figure out how to impliment the loss of tech do to low edu levels...
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited October 11, 1999).]

	12-10-1999 01:37									#27
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Hi there,

First of all, congratulations on your new tech system, it's working really well at first glance. Just a few points that crossed my mind while I read through the posts:

- I wholeheartely agree that increasing the ceiling of a category is better than using percentage numbers.

- Have you thought about how to relate each project to the game situation? I think I read it here somewhere, but kinda lost it...
Also, have you thought about how players 'exchange' tech?

- The new groups seem ok, few comments, why put Architecture into seperate group? IMO it could fit in with Civil Engineering, or Mathematics, for that matter.
The same applies f.e. for Chemistry and Metallurgy, although both fields are broad enough to warrant a seperate category I think.
I agree with Mark that Law and Government are pretty wide fields, but I´m not sure that they have enough projects to be seperate, I think it's ok for now to keep them together.
Maybe Philosophy and Social Siences can be spliced together, I'm not sure what to call this group, neither Philosophy or So.Siences are good enough IMO, Philosophy is too 'arcane' today and Social Sciences are too easily confused with the academy study Social Science which in IMHO is a very silly science, to put it mildly. This group (if united into one that is) would deal with all society based thoughts and ideas, philosphy will dominate early on, but later other ideas such as Youth Culture (a very important phenomenon in modern society), Humanitarianism, Social Welfare, and even some political thoughts as well, such as Liberalism and Individualism.

Enough for now,

Keli.

	12-10-1999 17:18									#28
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LGJ:
> About the new system...how are u going to
> impliment the basic techs into there for
> lowering the cost?

Do you mean like lowering the cost for items you build? Or making techs themselves cheaper?

On Education, I meant the technology of education and how to educate people. Clearly the type of stuff you were talking about will be handled by the infrastructure category education. The education on talking about would include technologies like "libraries", schools, the University, public education (as in universal) etc. Whether it's important enough to have its own category is clearly subject to debate.

Keli:

Great to have you back!

We've been mostly discussing the basic structure, and had not yet come back to the key points that you raise.

In terms of "relating to the game situation" do you mean as in tags? Those are pretty much the same as you had in your model. On trading techs, we haven't had any further thoughts that I'm aware of. I think two big things that we need in the Tech trading area, are the necessity of prerequisites being achieved, and some amount of grow-in time for "advanced" techs to become active. On prerequisites, I think you need to have the same prerequisites as whoever you get the Tech from. I think that each prerequisite you get in trade should have some kind of latency time associated with it. For instance if my technology equals that of Elizabethan England, and I am given all the technologies and prerequisites up to flight I can't start building a fighter the next turn. It should take awhile, TBD, for each level of technology to kick in. At least that's my take on these topics.

On the specifics, oops, somehow I missed Architecture. I agree it and civil engineering should be combined. On the other stuff, I'd propose tabling it until the model gets further along and we can see the detailed interactions between different things. At that point Recognizing what is too thin should be easy.

	13-10-1999 07:09									#29
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Hi All:

Lord God Jinnai is officially now the Duke of Tech. Congrats LGJ, and thanks for all your hard work.

Mark

	13-10-1999 08:59									#30
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On the way to school tonight I came up with a great idea, actually two, well not really.
First off i'm taking tags out until I see what the basic "categories" that civ culture is...I know these aren't actual setting but generalizations, but right now they serve ni purpose since I don't know all the categories that make up the culture...

On to my ideas. First, i've decided how to impliment the basic techs for the increasing/decreasing of cost in the various related techs...buy having a base number and for every percentage above that (max 5) the production increases by 10% On the other side for every % below (up to 5) is decreases by 20%. This is because knowing more doesn't help as much as knowing less hurts and after a certain level, knowing more doesn't do any good and knowning not enough, well its self explanitoy or should be. I chose it to modify production rather than cost because i think it will be easier to impliment.

Second is, I will be adding some items and effects that these techs do...and this (along with the basic techs) allows me to delete many techs.

[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited October 13, 1999).]