Goodmorning all,

I just wanted to voice some thoughts on Infinte tech.


Firstly, I want to say i am in favour of infinte tech, in principle. Infinite tech trees are more interesting then artificially teminating ones.

But,  i would like to warn against a few traps that are easy to fall into.

Going nowhere 'fast or slow':
  The tech trees of Civ4 (and others), Masters of Orion, and most others are all . . . at least technically speaking, infinite. They have 'future tech' which you can get any number of. . . but the techs in questiion do nothing, or do nothing worth mentioning.  (there is only so much + 1 health +1 happyness you can use after all). 
an infinite tech tree must continue to provide meaningful bonuses, and still contain choices which effect the game.

Too little, too late: 
  It's a common temptation to have later techs cost exponentially more, each further tech costing 1.25 as much as the previous future tech.. but unless the payouts are HUGE it quickly becomes not worth the resourses to continue research. . . the tech tree goes on, but nobody follows it because troops are just worth so much more then the huge investment costs of techs.

The unending narrow road:
   GC 2 could easily have had a unending tech tree, at the end of each just have the comp pull a new name from a list, ad +1 attack over the previous tech, add + 2 to base size over previous tech, and have 3 or 4 upgrades reducing size by 5% for before getting a new name and tech.  (for attack defence techs, but all the other streams were the same) . . . .but it still would have been painfully dull.  Tech trees NEED TO BRANCH (and preferably weave)  Techs must have prerequisites other then 'the one just before this one'. A high level infinite tech should be have semi random prerequisits amoungst other infinite (and normal) techs. Swords ++++ might need farming +, why?  it keeps the tech tree interesting, and prevents someone from over focusing,  To get much past XYZ (6) the random prerequites should have required you research almost all the normal techs.  (XYZ (6) needs ABC (1) and FGH (4) which needs YUI (2) and QWE (2),  one of which needs XYZ (1) , for example.  End result you have to have at least all of ABC, FGH, YUI, and QWE and some more).

Suggestion Geometric Effect:

In General Infinite techs should contribute geometrically,  some techs this won't work for, but rather then  Farming + gives + X% * (Base farming), it should be X%*(total farming output including all other bonuses).  The end effect is that nomatter how far down the infinite tree you still have techs that matter (a 10% bonus to all sword damage is always a 10% bonus, a +2 to sword damage quickly becomes 40+2  each tech matters less and less).

Just some thoughts i thought i'd share, What do people think ?

Take care
 Robbie