No offense to stardock but I have a feeling there's going to be alot of mods out there that end up with far more interesting systems than the original game. And if I understand frogboy correctly I think that's part of the dream he's working for.
I don't see how removing the options would make the game more fun OR more realistic.
The penalty is that you didn't get those techs earlier when they would have done you alot more good.
I'm not sure I totally like the exponential increase and all techs in a field come at equal cost part of this plan but I'm willing to see how it comes out.
Fundamentally Stardock would rather make a game that's fun than one that is realistic. You look at a game like Sins of a solar empire and there's little realism in having military and economic concerns be entirely separate fields of research. Nor to I understand why more labs increases how far you can research but how fast. Nonetheless it forms an interesting and fun game mechanic and I believe the game is better for it.
From how I understand it you make a "breakthru" every time you level up a specific tech field.
Games can be strategically deep without complex mechanics. Consider a game like go. The key is to make the choices a player has to make strategically relevant and make sure that players don't have to make a multitude of choices that are NOT strategically relevant.
Yeah I think people aren't getting what frogboy meant about red techs. It's not permanently red. Only red at the level you're at.
I don't see why old tech should fade out eventually. Is there any country today that's incapable of making spears?
Rather than making techs that turn 'grey' research automatically why not have them selectable as specific projects for a small research cost. Say equivalent to the level that it first appeared if you want it to be easy. Or the level it first turned 'grey' if you want it to be hard. This would be similar to my proposal because cutting edge breakthroughs would be somewhat unpredictable whereas the technologies in the 'grey' area are those technologies that are well within your realm of knowledg
There are already more than sufficient random elements to break the symmetry of this game. Random starting locations. Random resource distribution. Random events. Random encounters in dungeons. Random rewards from said dungeouns. Combat has random modifiers. The more elements you hand off to an AI or an RNG the less the player feels like they are really in control of their empire and game. And the less invested they are in it's outcome. Thus leading to a loss of interest. I believe it is vita
THe thing that bothers me about this idea is that production equals science progress. There's no trade off of investing into early tech or early expansion because they're one and the same.
You need to have at least a 386 to run it...
I have never seen a blind or truly random tech tree in a game that I liked.
I'm glad people like my idea. I like the situational tech thing too based on starting area and your ingame actions. That could influence what projects your researchers come up with for you to pursue. I think it would be ok if there was some randomness. Like you wanted to research archery and your researchers came up with 3 possible paths say long bows, fire arrows, and barbed heads but they didn't see the path of recurve bows. But it's not ok to me if I say ok pursue the long bow project that
I really don't like the idea of taking away the players ability to select research. I know there's some realism but playing a game like this is about selecting your own path not having it selected for you. Selecting the research paths you take is surely no less realistic then selecting your culture or the traits you (the sovereign) were born with.
I have alot of innovative ideas. Although I can't speak to how well all of them would work, personally I think they're pretty awesome. I also would like to see a change to how elemental handles cities. I really don't like it at all. I think my dream is some way to make a hybrid comprimise between the province model used in something like dominions and the traditional civ city model.
Ok tech idea. What if Techs were divided up into two major categories: 1. Tech Fields - The theory - Tech Fields don't actually unlock specific technologies (except maybe accidentally but I don't know if I'd like that entirely. Research into tech fields is more or general knowledge. It represents your scientists/philosophers/smart guys gathering and recording information, having philosophical discussions, analyzing recorded data on a certain subject, possibly even just teaching people
It's very true. Like how do we judge unit design before tactical battles?
Are resources going to have a quantity in game then? So you can have stockpiles and stuff? I hope so. And read my thread if you guys haven't already firmly decided on a system.
You can also guide a factions path with what resources it has availible. Give Rohan horses (maybe high quality horses). Maybe have special resources to represent cities that train a sort of legendary warrior unit.
My big question (and my general worry for strongly thematic mods) is how will you handle unit design? The ability to design your own units makes it seem like it would be very difficult to get players to use the kind of units they're supposed to use. What prevents the Rohirrim from forming a primarily infantry based army?
From frogboy's last journal though it looks like they already have a pretty good idea of how the economic system is going to work.
[quote who="Demiansky" reply="110" id="2425963"] Lol, sorry I missed it, the way it was worded led me to think you meant something else. Yes, the modding potentials of this method are very large indeed. And as pidgeon mentioned, magic resistances can be made to work with spells and spell resistance too. A spell might have a "fire damage" "box trait" that specifies what kind of damage the spell is doing. Conversely, a unit might have the "fire resistance
[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="108" id="2425810"]That seems like a pretty good solution, Demiansky, I like it. Edit: credit where credit is due. I just noticed that Sarudak had a very similar idea earlier in the thread that I somehow missed.[/quote] Lol thank you... No one took notice of my idea. The key point is I want these abilities to be customizable with scripts. Something similar to like what you can do in Battle For Wesnoth. Because there's no way