Ditch the Tech Trees

from Elemental Forums

Frogboy mentioned yesterday that tech trees are a bit of an issue that needs some focus. I'm thinking that the game simply doesn't need them at all.

Tech is really good if you are playing a SciFi game or a Civilisation-type game where you progress through different eras. But for a fantasy game it just gets in the way.

Consider the following:

 

The Civilisation, Warfare, and Diplomacy trees could all be moved to buildings that are unlocked at different city levels. Or are unlocked on events.

As an example, Town Halls unlock at level 3. Schools unlock at level 4. Want to build chain-armour troops? At level 4 you can build a blacksmith that will allow you to build chain-mail at that city. Want plate? After you have built a blacksmith you can then build an Armourer in the same city. And so on. Caravans could be built once you build a Merchant in a city. And treaties could be actioned once you have an Embassy.

Basically the city building takes the focus for these tech trees rather than specific research. This would make the game much more focussed on the game-world and provide a nice RPG feel to the development of your cities.

 

The Adventure tree could be handled through a mixture of counters and buildings. Kael mentioned that there is currently a spawn counter for monsters that is tied to the collective research in the Adventure tree. This could be tied to the collective size of cities instead. Notable locations and allowable quests could be tied to Adventurers Guild buildings. The level of heroes could dictate what level of quest or location they can enter.

As an example, You have a stack of heroes and units enter a level 3 notable location where you must fight a pack of wolves to get the reward. Only two of your heroes are level 3 or above so they are the only two that enter the tactical battle.

Once again, this would make the RPG element for specific heroes much more interesting.

 

This leaves the Magic tree. Magic and Science are not a good mix for a fantasy game and seem to be at odds with each other. Magic should be completely removed from the tech tree no matter what happens with the game.

Instead, each spell should have a percentage chance of appearing when it is time to research a spell - based on its level. As you research spells from a book you increase the percentage chance of having higher level spells appear. The cost to research high level spells is still expensive so even if you do get the option to research a powerful spell on the first turn you need to weigh up the amount of time it would take to research it. It may completely change the way you play the game because you may decide to research this particular spell and spam archivists rather than focussing on improving your troops.

New books could be unlocked via buildings or events.

As an example, you could build a Temple of Earth at a city you have an Earth shard which unlocks the Earth spell book. Building this also gives you a mana boost and you can build special Rock Golem units at this city because of it. The more temples of this Earth element you control, the higher the likelihood of accessing the higher level Earth spells.

This does three very important things for the game:

1. It makes the shards more important.

2. It makes the game-world more involving.

3. It adds a powerful incentive to play differently based on the spells that appear ready for research

 

So what becomes of Lost Libraries and Studies?

Technology can still play a role in the game - but a limited role. Science in a fantasy game should be more about discovering methods to make sharper weapons (a boost to attack values) or making stronger armour (boosting defence). It may unlock some weapons such as muskets or cross-bows but the standard weapons should come from the buildings in the cities.

As an example, your librarians could be focussed on 'Reinforced Skull Caps' which adds +1 armour to leather helms. The leather helms themselves are available once a city reaches level 2.

Science could also be about creating items for heroes.

 

Please feel free to comment. :)

23,055 views 25 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

 No-I like my Elemental being Elemental. Cities are able to be modular already depending on what you want them to produce and where they are situated. Technology becomes a global thing amongst your people, it doesn't make sense for one city to be living in mud-huts if your capital houses grandiose engineers. Technology and ideas spread amongst a unified cultural population...

Furthermore you say that science and magic are at ends with eachother-I whole heartedly disagree here. Elemental IMO has done a wonderful job integrating magic and technology to give it a sense of realism. Any game where I can pride myself on research makes me very happy, for example I may be smaller then my enemy-But my organized platoon of fullplate warriors can take down hordes of slovenly barbarians any day. However-The scholars of my enemy have informed him of a new method to utilizing his powers as a chaneller and he promptly whipes out my platoon in a rain of death.

You are entitled to your opinion-But I feel you would be changing the game way too much for this new system. Just because a city has more people doesn't make it more technologically advanced, it depends on the effort you put into new discovery.
 
Anyways, there is my comment! I meant no harm ^_^ See ya' later.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Basing what spells you get on chance is bad as it removes the ability of a player to control their casting. Spells are already bad enough with the only ones getting regular use are heal, teleport, and overpowered attack spell of the moment. We don't need to lose even more spell options.

Honestly, it looks like all you have done is shift the tech tree from a separate thing to the cites. You still have the tech tree, but now the tree is crowding up my city and preventing me from buildings other things, limiting my options even more. Its an interesting idea, but im not feeling it.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I'd actually enjoy it if spell research was changed to be more like tech research. Instead of researching spells and levels, you research a book and get to select from a list of spells from it -- with a percentage chance for any given spell to appear in that book based on the number of shards you have for it and the number of spells you've researched from it.

 

In short, spell research uses the boring Civ style. Go with the Elemental one, it's better!

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I like the idea of more building options in cities... and yes the tech tree needs work so good post in my opinion.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Your idea is based on "Gather people, unlock stuff". Gather a specific number of people to magically get access to building prints not contructed for a century? War of Magic indeed.

The Adventure part has some meat though.

And the magic one not against not in favour. Getting new spells to research based on getting them in quests ("Oh! New magic scrolls to decipher!"), traditional research in a laboratory*, events or defeating special monsters would be (maybe) best (imho).

By the way, buildings are based on technology. As clothes are. As most of the things that non mages/wizards (aka most of the population) use. Fantasy setting or not. For societies where magic is restricted in access/use (like Elemental), traditional science/technology cannot have a minor role. Unless we now get a faction that uses magic widely and to emulate mundane technologies (kinda cool actually) or we get a "tree" that finally allows the Sovereign to build "Magical Kingdom/Empire of Magic" and free his people from mundania stuff.

 

Er.. just my point of view. Sorry it's not favourable.

 

* which is not so much different from a scientist working on a scientific project (as anathema as it may seem to some)

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

 

Thanks for the replies. :)

Quoting chanter45, reply 1
... Technology becomes a global thing amongst your people, it doesn't make sense for one city to be living in mud-huts if your capital houses grandiose engineers. Technology and ideas spread amongst a unified cultural population...

Furthermore you say that science and magic are at ends with eachother-I whole heartedly disagree here. Elemental IMO has done a wonderful job integrating magic and technology to give it a sense of realism. Any game where I can pride myself on research makes me very happy, for example I may be smaller then my enemy-But my organized platoon of fullplate warriors can take down hordes of slovenly barbarians any day.

This could just as easily be achieved through empire-wide effects of buildings along with city-specific buildings. Having a 'one-per-empire' building such as 'Master Builder' could release the housing tech throughout the empire, as an example.

And building specialised full-plate troops would be a combination of city specialisation and empire-wide available resources. You would have more important choices to make for each city which means you would need to strategise more rather than following the same formula game after game.

Quoting Cerevox, reply 2
Basing what spells you get on chance is bad as it removes the ability of a player to control their casting. Spells are already bad enough with the only ones getting regular use are heal, teleport, and overpowered attack spell of the moment. We don't need to lose even more spell options.

The choice of spells would be both limiting AND opportunistic. For example, when playing currently and you see Advanced Archery but you wanted Logistics you need to weigh up your options. The game needs more of this sort of decision-making and less auto processing. True, you may be unlucky and have crap spells to choose from but the more of a book you research the higher the likely-hood of higher level spells showing up. So that also solves the problem of the useless spells. Now they help you reach your real goals.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Wintersong, reply 5
Your idea is based on "Gather people, unlock stuff". Gather a specific number of people to magically get access to building prints not contructed for a century? War of Magic indeed.

The Adventure part has some meat though.

And the magic one not against not in favour. Getting new spells to research based on getting them in quests ("Oh! New magic scrolls to decipher!"), traditional research in a laboratory*, events or defeating special monsters would be (maybe) best (imho).

By the way, buildings are based on technology. As clothes are. As most of the things that non mages/wizards (aka most of the population) use. Fantasy setting or not. For societies where magic is restricted in access/use (like Elemental), traditional science/technology cannot have a minor role. Unless we now get a faction that uses magic widely and to emulate mundane technologies (kinda cool actually) or we get a "tree" that finally allows the Sovereign to build "Magical Kingdom/Empire of Magic" and free his people from mundania stuff.

I apologise in advance if I misinterpret your meaning. I think you are saying that basically shifting from tech trees to buildings would encourage city spam where high populations would dictate your advancements. I don't think this would really be the case. It would really mean you need to specialise one or two large cities to get the benefits while you build smaller towns to gain areas. I like the idea of that. Towns and villages could still build garrisons of weaker troops but your armies would come from your large cities.

Magic would come from specialising archivist cities and from the shard cities.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Your idea has some interesting points.  I'm thinking this might be within the realm/reach of modders, based on what I've seen in the modfiles so far...

Since you'd be significantly reducing the number of techs, bumping the 'baseline' research costs is easy to do (there's an entry in the .xml that sets the research value).

I'm not your man though.  I have my own mod project at the moment!

Edit:  Looks like Frogboy agrees with you.  From another thread:

Quoting Frogboy, from This Thread

Elemental has demons, dragons, drath, etc. that one can research up to.

That said, I think there's a real pacing issue that needs to be addressed in the future.

I am not convinced that we need 5 different tech trees.

I could almost imagine it broken down to 3 like:

Civilization

Lore

Magic

where Warfare, Diplomacy, Adventure and Magic get split into these areas.

Or put another way, the 3 basic means to victory should be the paths like Mundane, Magic, Adventure.  Win via Lord hammers, win through devastating spells, win through powerful creatures and allies or some combination.

Right now, you have a pretty solid civilization and warfare tree while the other 3 are kind of meh.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

It was that post from Frogboy that got me thinking. :)

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Just did a quick rough count (may be off a tech or two).

Rough count on the Amarian Tree

28 Civilization

37 Warfare

23 Magic

16 Lore

16 Diplomacy

So, if you were to merge the 5 trees into 3...

Merging Lore and Diplomacy adds to 32.  Warfare would thus have to be split pretty evenly between Lore and Civilization to maintain balance, with a few techs thrown in Magic's direction (not necessarily from Warfare).

Magic has room to grow though.  Lots of new ideas/spell lists/etc. can be added there.

This looks doable to me, especially if some rethinking/consolidation of techs occurs to promote a balanced number of techs between the three trees.

 

I'm really, really, really liking the idea of only three tech trees (Civilization, Lore, Magic)!  And that Frogboy isn't just another pretty face around here...

That being said, a four tree approach (essentially just merging Diplomacy and Lore) would be much simpler. 

Also, then you could have four victory conditions:

Civilization (I have the best cities)

Warfare (I now own all your cities)

Magic (The Spell of Making is mine, bow to the power...)

Diplomatic (Most everyone loves me, and has united behind me as head Sovereign)

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

I believe the tech trees are a useful part of EWOM.   They add choices that have to be made about the direction of your civilization.    That makes the game more immersive.

This is just my opinion, of course, I recognize that what each person enjoys in the game may be different.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't think they need to limit tech trees down, they need to add more skills and make them interconnecting.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top


The Civilisation, Warfare, and Diplomacy trees could all be moved to buildings that are unlocked at different city levels. Or are unlocked on events.

As an example, Town Halls unlock at level 3. Schools unlock at level 4. Want to build chain-armour troops? At level 4 you can build a blacksmith that will allow you to build chain-mail at that city. Want plate? After you have built a blacksmith you can then build an Armourer in the same city. And so on. Caravans could be built once you build a Merchant in a city. And treaties could be actioned once you have an Embassy.

Basically the city building takes the focus for these tech trees rather than specific research. This would make the game much more focussed on the game-world and provide a nice RPG feel to the development of your cities.

I really like this idea. Merging the civilization, warfare, and diplomacy trees and moving them to buildings would give some much needed depth to city building. I especially like this idea because it knocks out two very important birds with one stone:


1) It gives meaning and purpose to city building, unlike what we have now where you just spam the same buildings everywhere.

2) The player's decisions are much more integrated in the game world. Buildings cost gildar, population, materials, space and time...whereas simply researching a tech only costs time. This means that if you made a sub-optimal decision (like building a blacksmith when you really should have built a school) then you lose so much more because of your poor decision-making. This makes players think a lot more carefully about what kind of things they want to build.


The Adventure tree could be handled through a mixture of counters and buildings. Kael mentioned that there is currently a spawn counter for monsters that is tied to the collective research in the Adventure tree. This could be tied to the collective size of cities instead. Notable locations and allowable quests could be tied to Adventurers Guild buildings. The level of heroes could dictate what level of quest or location they can enter.

As an example, You have a stack of heroes and units enter a level 3 notable location where you must fight a pack of wolves to get the reward. Only two of your heroes are level 3 or above so they are the only two that enter the tactical battle.

Once again, this would make the RPG element for specific heroes much more interesting.

I like this idea too. The bigger your cities become, the more they attract powerful baddies. Also I like the idea of guild buildings for reasons mentioned above.



This leaves the Magic tree. Magic and Science are not a good mix for a fantasy game and seem to be at odds with each other. Magic should be completely removed from the tech tree no matter what happens with the game.

Instead, each spell should have a percentage chance of appearing when it is time to research a spell - based on its level. As you research spells from a book you increase the percentage chance of having higher level spells appear. The cost to research high level spells is still expensive so even if you do get the option to research a powerful spell on the first turn you need to weigh up the amount of time it would take to research it. It may completely change the way you play the game because you may decide to research this particular spell and spam archivists rather than focussing on improving your troops.

New books could be unlocked via buildings or events.

I am not very fond of chance mechanics especially for something as important as magic and spells. I dislike this implementation for two reasons:

1) It is hard for the player to tell whether they have improved as they play more games. How am I supposed to know if I actually got better at Elemental or if I was just lucky and got the "right" spells?

2) Why would you base spells and magic on chance when you could base it on the decision making ability of the player? Why not have a talent system where a sovereign gets talent points through buildings, leveling up etc... and uses them on spells. This way a player can be rewarded by choosing the right spells for the right situation and vice versa.

As an example, you could build a Temple of Earth at a city you have an Earth shard which unlocks the Earth spell book. Building this also gives you a mana boost and you can build special Rock Golem units at this city because of it. The more temples of this Earth element you control, the higher the likelihood of accessing the higher level Earth spells.

This does three very important things for the game:

1. It makes the shards more important.

2. It makes the game-world more involving.

3. It adds a powerful incentive to play differently based on the spells that appear ready for research

 

So what becomes of Lost Libraries and Studies?

Technology can still play a role in the game - but a limited role. Science in a fantasy game should be more about discovering methods to make sharper weapons (a boost to attack values) or making stronger armour (boosting defence). It may unlock some weapons such as muskets or cross-bows but the standard weapons should come from the buildings in the cities.

As an example, your librarians could be focussed on 'Reinforced Skull Caps' which adds +1 armour to leather helms. The leather helms themselves are available once a city reaches level 2.

Science could also be about creating items for heroes.

 

Please feel free to comment.

I like this idea too: You are giving meaning to game assets and introducing more decision making.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

I love tech trees!  I have no opus to write, but I, as an older gamer, I love them.

It means I can focus on a tech, a troop, quit forget what I am doing for a few days, and poof, a quick review and I am back in the game.  This is very important for me, because sometimes I can play for an hour or two a week, other times I need to skip a week.  Techs remind me what I was doing, where I was going and generally, give the game better pacing (personal opinion).  I personally like that mechanical tick of a game.

I also bought the game because I could build cities.  Clearly this is no Sim City, rather Age of Wonders meets Sim City - And I love it.  I think city planning is a long, enduring process.

 

 

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

AAAARG - I also wanted to state that 1.1 is too hard for old guys like me.  HOW DO I EVEN POST?  I've spent 30 minutes trying to figure this out, and meanwhile assholes are calling me a noob and declaring I am deleted.  I just want to make a comment on 1.1 which hasn't been made....

 

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

The tech trees need to be expanded, balanced and polished - not removed (except the adventure techs which are silly).

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't want a warcraft slash clone by having buildings I can build and get access to different things...it's just silly.

 

Adventure tech I think should be moded for whenever they decide to put in dungeons again.

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

If tech just focussed on enhancement rather than such large structural changes it would simplify the game in one area yet make it heaps more strategic in other areas. A game that did this very well was Kohan. You would build buildings once your cities reached certain levels that would unlock various troops. But then you could research enhancements to these troops. It was so elegant and such a simple concept yet added so much strategically.

Bt1295 mentioned Age of Wonders, but this game also used buildings that could be built once cities reached certain sizes and the only research was spell research.

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

My suggestion is a compromise: ditch one of the trees: diplomacy

 

The diplomatic options shouldn't really be techs period.

 

Trading should be moved to civilization

 

The Unlikely Friends-type techs should be moved to Adventure.

 

As for the other tech trees.

 

The civilization branch is fine to me.  It could probably be helped by a few more options, but it's in the best shape.

 

The Warfare branch- I think it needs more vertical expansion.  It's a little too easy to tech up.  Also I'd like to see more tactics tech, not just better weapons and armor.  The concept is right, I just thinks it needs more.

 

The Magic branch- Spell of Making/Mastery needs to be harder to do.  I think there needs to be more spellbooks to make teching up in magic harder- and you should need a few advanced spell books before you can research the high level stuff.  I'd say the magic tech tree needs the most work.  Right now you can just research magic tech 6 or 7, pump out magical research buildings, and rush out a win while using mundane to keep your enemies in check.

 

Adventure tech- the tech tree would be fine with the addition of the monster recruiting techs.  It's the huts/quests/heroes/resource generation themselves that would need the improvement.

 

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

First let me say that this is a great post and I really mean that (in spite of what I am about to say).  When something is up for debate people tend to tinker around the edges, rather than pushing the envelope.  This post really questions the need for the use of techs in each area.  That is a good service.

However I like the techs as they are for Civilisation and Warfare - its a CIV vs Age of Empires design choice and I like the Civ style.  They need a lot of work but they should be in.

Diplomacy - Not sure that there are enough ideas for them to warrent their own tree - so either get rid of those that shouldn't be in in the first place, or transfer them to civilisation techs.

Magic - There may be an option to transfer those into the spell research (i.e. research theory or application of spells, using a different type

  

The Adventure tree could be handled through a mixture of counters and buildings. Kael mentioned that there is currently a spawn counter for monsters that is tied to the collective research in the Adventure tree. This could be tied to the collective size of cities instead. Notable locations and allowable quests could be tied to Adventurers Guild buildings. The level of heroes could dictate what level of quest or location they can enter.

As an example, You have a stack of heroes and units enter a level 3 notable location where you must fight a pack of wolves to get the reward. Only two of your heroes are level 3 or above so they are the only two that enter the tactical battle.

Once again, this would make the RPG element for specific heroes much more interesting.

Here I really think you have something - some details I would change - (leader only needs to have the required adventure level, other characters gain adventure XP, which means that they could then lead other parties).  It would enable more sophisticated quest models (you need both level 3 and to be royalty to unlock this quest, level 4 and a thief will get you this entirely different one).  Also you could have some persistent quest locations which might spawn a series of quests (Mines of Moria - goblin hunting quest 4 times, followed by something a little more challenging)

You might also look at the Star Trek CCG method - you need to bring a party which has a particular combination of skills to attempt this task. You might get a clue as to one requirement that you are missing ("There is a locked door ahead that you can't get through" "the goblin king won't talk to commoners") but this is straying more onto the questing system than the tech tree.

 

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

Just for the record.  I've successfully eliminated one tech tree via modding (Diplomacy).  In the interest of keeping the trees balanced, I simply dumped Diplomacy and Adventure together, and per Mr Frogboy's suggestion renamed it Lore.

What has to be kept in mind is how Elemental handles the cost of techs currently.  Essentially, your cost goes up with each tech you learn, regardless of how useful that tech may be.  So, for example, if you put off Seafaring until the late game, the cost to research it is much greater than if you researched it earlier.  The specific tech itself has no set cost associated with it, it's the total number of techs you've already learned that determine the cost.

And, it doesn't matter which tree is which, all have this same progression.  the only difference is some trees have more techs than others.  So, in the interest of keeping the various tech trees 'balanced' you want to shoot for roughly the same number in each tree.  If Warfare has twice as many techs as Lore, for example, well researching all the warfare techs is going to cost a LOT more than the Lore techs.

I still think each tech should have a base cost (a la how GalCivII works), based on it's usefulness ingame, but that's something which will require significant changes to the Elemental code (i.e. maybe in an expansion).  In the meantime, I think the balanced approach is best.

 

BTW, if you eliminate one tech category, what about that 'fifth' category?  What could it be used for?  After all, some Stardock interface designer put a lot of work into providing that Fifth circle in the window!

What if, under that category, you could choose two (or more) 'unlimited research' techs: Gildar focus and Arcane focus?  Essentially you put your researchers to work in the 'private sector' generating additional gold for your coffers, or your Tech guys help out the Spell guys for a bit.  Note that the 'costs' of doing this would go up as you attain new levels, reflecting the 'diminishing returns' of 'leaving no stone unturned'.

Example:

Boosting Economy: Adds 50 Gildar to your coffers, or increases production by 20% for one turn.  In the early game, this might be a godsend.  In the lategame, well it'll cost more tech wise, and the 'gain' won't be as significant.

Boosting Tech: Adds 25 to your accumulated spell research, or increases Arcane Knowledge points for one turn by 20%.  In the early game, this means one (or more) additional spells.  In the lategame, it'll still help but you've again diverted your attention from tech...

Incidentally, this can be done as of now (Move Diplomacy to Adventure, make two new Techs for the now empty category, voila you're done!).  The 20% thing (or whatever number is deemed 'balanced') is the only one I'd have to figure out, and I'm sure at least one modder knows how to do this already...

 

The question is, is this a good idea?

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

That whole costs increasing yet things staying the same is a problem.  I just don't know how to get rid of it, without killing the idea, and I do kinda like the idea.

 

Taking from a previous idea- why not have bonus buildings like the libraries and arcane temples- give the GalCiv II creativity trait, and allow them to give you a chance of a random tech, weighted towards techs that have not been researched yet by anyone?

 

 

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

Muhahahahahahahahahahahahah...HAH!

New Tech Window

And...

New Lore Window

Now the hard part commences (that Tech Tree reorganization I've been pondering for my other mod)...

Reply #24 from Elemental Forums Top

That looks cool, Tjashen. :) I'll be interested to see where you take your mod.

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Das123, reply 24
That looks cool, Tjashen. I'll be interested to see where you take your mod.

 

It's close.  I'm having an issue trying to rename the last tech for Empire (have already renamed Domination as Exploitation successfully).  It's a variable issue, or an accidentally deleted > thing I'm thinking.  Going over the code now.

Kingdom is working fine.  I won't release it until Empire is also working flawlessly on my system, though, so soon.

Edit: Found the problem.  Empire now working as advertised.  Just doing some double checking on the new Tech Tree structure before I zip and release.  Probably by tonight.