{The List} - Technology

[grap1705]

Jaguar: your previous look was more appealling...

Snoopy 369:
- thanks for the IMO explanation.
- research as you describe it only corresponds to the American model, which I did mention. But by no means is research conducted everywhere in the world in the same way. The European way is different, and within Europe, English and French or German ways are rather different also. Russia also has its own state centered organization, not to speak of the way it is done in China or Zimbabwe...
- democracy that appeared in Greek Cities in the Antiquity was only city centered and not expandable to a country, because when they where doing it, democracy, with the agora meetings to discuss public issues, was alive only in the head city, other ones being mostly conquered and servant cities. This greek model and the roman development later gave the Republic, which is quite different from a democracy. Still today, we have mostly republics, not real democracies. Republic is "power in name of the people", while Democracy is "power to the people". Which is indeed quite different, and electing representatives makes for a republic. Real democracy is hardly applicable to anything bigger than a village because you can hardly involve people to meet and debate and decide collectively when you go over a given size.
Politicians don't like to bother with such details and like the word Democracy better, because they find it more appealing to the masses, so they biassed it a little over time and history, which gave way to calling democracies anything with elected representatives. Which was, from what I know mostly the case first in UK with the Cromwell take over.
Hence it might be a good thing, just as you suggested to have ancient and modern medicine (and eventhough I don't abide by your allegations of the modern one pretending to cure causes, given the fact that I believe it still doesn't understand life and is still focussed on a mere chemical process, but that is a dogmatic debate), to have ancient and modern democracy. Ancient democracy would be in fact the city state, and would give at a one city level big advantages compared to despotism. This would enable you to develop a single city strategy in the beginning of the game without falling behind...

[okblacke]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Only thing about your comment about governments versus private industry is that the government does both 'fundamental' and 'practical' research, while private industry does *less* but not no theoretical research.

IBM has spent billions over the years. Yes, they're chasing better widgets, but from what I've heard, it's often been with a very loose leash.

I'd say the difference is twofold: ancient medicine was primarily "trial and error" rather than understanding the physical effects of the medicine,

And today we have a blood pressure medicine used for growing hair and a heart medicine (?) used for getting erections.

and it was primarily symptomatic (sort of a corrolary to the first really). Modern medicine attempts to cure *both* symptoms and root causes,

I wanna live in your world. In my world, doctors treat only symptoms--they give sets of symptoms names ending with "syndrome". They work on the basis that the human body is faulty, that it produces too much of this or too little of that, and use drugs and other chemicals to mask the symptoms. The only problem is, after they've (eg) pumped the nation's women full of estrogen, they find out it causes cancer.

In my world, the research money goes into drugs; all other solutions are fined, punished, ridiculed--anything to quash them--and the same doctor would warn against the use of melatonin would have happly prescribed thalidomide; and a doctor who goes to school for years presumably to learn important things can be trumped by a 30 second TV commercial showing people enjoying life due to some wonder pill that doesn't even bother to explain what the pill is supposed to treat.

Of course, none of this is relevant to Civ. Civ doesn't exist without progress. But, as Will Durant said, progress is a theory.

[snoopy369]

Modern medicine as I stated treats both symptoms and root causes. Certianly, if I have a headache, I would like the doctor to make my headache go away, as well as make the cause of the headache go away. Much of our current medical research is oriented towards curing root causes of major diseases, such as AIDS and Cancer. Immunology -- one of the hotter subjects in research these days -- is precisely the study of how our body defends itself from diseases, ie the root causes, and earns the far majority of governmental funds (admittedly in the US). Symptomatic cures are generally a private institution's work, although like I said they're just as important as 'root cause' cures, since often symptoms are as bad or worse than the ultimate disease.
The argument you make about medicines causing cancer or whatnot, at least in the US, is totally faulty -- the problem if anything is that the FDA is *too* cautious about allowing medicines to come out, especially after the thallidomide crisis that you mentioned. In the case of Estrogen therapy for post menopausal women, not only is estrogen deficiency the *root cause* in this case, but the link between estrogen and cancer is highly tenuous and highly debated, and a lot of doctors won't prescribe it for that very reason.
Money in the US goes into theoretical and practical research. Company money tends to go into drugs or other therapies that have immediate practical gain, while university or government sponsored research (NIH and whatnot) often goes into studies of how systems work. Admittedly doctors will sometimes be hesitant to prescribe new treatments; in that case you find another doctor, who will happily do so (as my girlfriend's father did).
FYI, the reason commercials don't say what their medicines treat is so they don't have to list the side effects and whatnot in them, as FDA rules require them to if they say what the medicine does.

[okblacke]

You and I aren't going to agree on this, and it's off-topic, anyway. Suffice to say the illusion of medical progress is just one of many we can embrace to play Civ III.

But you are wrong about ancient medicine not caring about causes. They didn't have the technology or understand about physical causes, but they were far more deeply concerned about why than we are. We want quick fixes.

[KenderBane]

Pull a page out of the Master of Orion 2 playbook.

Have an option at the beginning of the game that allows players to select a beginning tech level for the game. Every Civ would still start off at the same 'starting' line ... but the starting line would be ar different places on the tech chart.



Example of possible starting places are

Pre-historics (like the Mesopotamia Conquest)
Ancient Tech (like where the Standard Civ3 starts)
Middle Age
Industrial Age
Modern Age
Future tech (Where all techs are researched by every civ.

[DarkCloud]

parts of this thread are applicable: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=109759 What high-tech features should be in Civ 4? ... optimizer

[snoopy369]

Kender, you can do that in civ3, if you start a scenario, easily.

[KenderBane]

Snoopy369,

There is a difference between starting a scenario with certain properties, and playing a 'standard' game with certain properties.

[snoopy369]

Not if you start the scenario with no changes other than starting age, which is easy enough. At least for me ... Admittedly it should be built into the "New Game" menu rather than being only a feature of the scenario editor, but it's really not difficult to do this yourself in Civ3, if you're interested in it -- just make a bunch of scenarios, take you fifteen minutes, and you have your 4 or 6 or 8 games with different starting points.

[DarkCloud]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=115659

more research/tech info

[DarkCloud]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=115659 Slow Down Research Rate... Tripledoc

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=116043 New Tech Ideas.... orrery

[shmily_dana]

I've always felt that if your opponant sees your better weapon, he is likely to imitate or create a counter. If I fly my planes over a enemy and he is close to the technology he should get a bonus to get to "flight" sooner. Or AA technology.

My other idea is that when I upgrade my units to better tech, the old weapons should be available to be bought my an enemy. This way someone who does not have the "gunpower" tech or saltpeter could have muskettes.

For certain governments, the sale of technology and good should be out of the governments hands. My democratic government might not want to sell "sanitation" to the backwards Zulu for their price. But some kindly missionary might open a hospital. (This would be sort of like the senate in CIVII that makes peace treatys when you don't want them...)

[MORON]

I just want blind research........

[Kuciwalker]

... as an option.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
... as an option.

Yea it won't fly for being manditory.

Aside from ending with modern tech, ie no option to even have any applicable future in any type of scenerio, one of my biggest complaints is that you can only reasearch 1 thing at a time and lose all research previously done if you switch to a new tech. Yes that research shouldn't carry over, but it shouldn't be lost so easily either.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hang on, though, it flew fine for SMAC-and I found that system of blind research TOO harsh, but I still bought the game!! My system of research, though, is semi-blind, in that WHAT you discover, and how quickly, is connected to how much of your 'resources' you invest into each broad category, your civ characteristics, and access to appropriate resources (like iron for iron working, oil for refining, combustion etc)!

Of course, if they did have a choice between the two systems, then it wouldn't bother me !

[MORON]

SMAC blind research harsh????

Try playing moo2 with uncreative.....now thats harsh.

[Kuciwalker]

SMAC blind research wouldn't work in C3; you can't divide real techs into such broad and overlapping categories.

[Max Sinister]

You can't? Would you (if you were a ruler IRL) tell your scientists "I want you to research television" or "I want you to research a new kind of entertainment, my people are unhappy"? Right. Divide it in "weapons / strategic", "traffic / communication", "pure science", "culture / religion / entertainment" and a few other categories, and you have it.

[snoopy369]

At least in the modern day -- and undoubtedly in the ancient times as well -- the ruler, or more likely the rulers' advisors -- would have an inclination of what was being researched. It's inefficient to just research in a broad category; individual scientists research in very specific features, and test their hypotheses etc. by first making a hypothesis -- ie, a thought of how things might be.

I think you underestimate researchers, both ancient and modern, if you think they don't have a solid idea of what they're researching before they actually discover how to do it. But, *for gameplay purposes*, perhaps it would be interesting to throw something like this in...

Perhaps pre-scientific method you research semi-randomly and post-scientific method you get to choose specific technologies. IE, until you develop scientific method you choose an area like SMAC, but once you're in the 3rd era you have the option of researching Scientific Method (either by choosing one branch of the tree that has it in it, or it specifically) and after that you can choose specific techs.

[Max Sinister]

The researchers may know (at least when they're working on it), but the leader who is neither a scientist nor a technician doesn't...

[Az]

My only request for technologies is:

Make information technologies in the tree. Those would affect corruption and waste, just as the governments do.

[trolluscaius]

stop era
i don't want to spend my time in ROYALITY OR FEODALISM by example

[trolluscaius]

minor and major tech should be Assimilated by civilization Inhabitant of the border zone (minor tech more quickly of course)
and of course if civilization are tech' equivalent.
if one civilzation is more advanced then the other civilization can aquire a older tech

[Zoetstofzoetje]

I'd like to see religion to be of more effect on technological advance. In many a society where religion was strongly integrated into a culture, several rules and tales were established. Everytime an insight threatened to make a rule or tale ridiculous or not specific enough, the religion was sure to deny it, which withheld or at least slowed technological progress. For example, the theory of evolution, but also medicine, etc. I propose: the amount of cathedrals, temples and other religious buildings amount to a certain religious level. The higher this gets, the happier people are overall, but this also slows progress. Thus, there should be more kinds of "contents-making" buildings, perhaps more expensive then the religious type.

Also, perhaps scientists could be made more permanent. That's to say, you can't take a farmer off the land and put him in a laboratory. Any system taking care of this problem though, would make micro-management probably very necessary and I therefore doubt that it would ever be incorporated.

[Quezacotl06]

Eras I like, but you should be able to be in between eras, like you still need to research construction, but you can start on monotheism because you have polytheism and philosophy.

Every tech should get a number (like they did in cit) to tell which era it belongs to (1 for ancient, 2 for middle, 3 for industrial, etc), and once the average number of available techs goes up (ie the amount of techs you can research are mostly at level 2, you upgrade to middle ages).

I think a lot of the AI problems with having an open-end tech tree could go away if you coloured the techs like they did in SMAC or Galactic Civilizations.

In SMAC they techs were classified as either explore, discover, build, or conquer. 'explore' gave u techs that helped with culture/expansion, while 'build' gave u techs dealing with industry, economics, metallurgy advancements, etc.

Techs could just be 'coloured' according to what civ trait they have (militaristic, industrial, commercial, etc), just like wonders are. And civs with the trait are more likely to research that technology.

[dexters]

The AI shouldn't have preferred Tech researches as it would make certain Civs very weak and have the AI overly predictable.

AI research needs to be finetuned, but it needs to emulate how the human play. That is, have a fully formed decision making capacity to weigh and decide what to research next. Actually, it already has this capability in Civ3, but there is so much to research and the valuation on some of the techs are a little off making it easy for humans to exploit the AI in this regard.

One thing I do like from the above suggestion is to classify techs into general categories. This classification may make it easier for the AI to figure out and prioritize what to research. The caveat being the AI should do so with a full set of decision making criteries.

[Trifna]

There are tons of techs that have an extreme effect on economy, trade, unrest, education level... For example, transport: this is an extreme case, since charriots or steam boats changed everything. Technology has the broadest effects on a society, espescially when Civ techs include ideologies and anything "new".

[The Rusty Gamer]

Hopefully, in the editor, we will be able to define any kind of prerequsites for a tech (or anything else for that matter) that we like.

An example of a tech prerequsite might be: You must have at least 7 cities, have a horse resource, have built 5 barracks, and know at least 2 other civilizations.

With this kind of flexiblity, anything's possible.

I think also that a tech should not necessarily be a specific cost or be able to be calculated in advance just exactly when it's going to be discovered. I think discovery should be more along the lines of the original MOO where the percentage possiblity of discovery went up each turn with more research.

[Maniac]

I haven't read this whole thread, so forgive me if someone already suggested this:

An idea I had was that some technologies would have several 'applications' attached to me, of which you would only be able to select one.

For example if you invented Chivalry, you could have the choice between 'Light Cavalry' or 'Heavy Cavalry/Knights'. The light version could give an extra movement point, while the Heavy version could give one extra attack and defence point.

Likewise if you discovered some tech giving you a medieval archer unit, you could be given the choice between 'Longbowmen' or 'Crossbowmen'. The former could give an extra attack point or a larger fire range (eg you can bombard two tiles far). The latter could make the archer unit cheaper to produce (IIRC learning to shoot with a crossbow was easier than with a standard bow).

I'm sure other stuff like this could be invented, and not only regarding military units. I think such applications could make the game more fun, more interactive-with-each-game, and give more choices and strategy than preset civilization advantages (such as commercial, industrial etc...) in 4000 BC could ever give.