A possible implementation of technology

[Nath]

Based on Design Doc 3.0, I've written a tiny draft of a possible tech system:

History can be considered the account of a series of innovations and their results. As long as there is the need for new ways of doing things, people will always hunt for new technology. The gradual and complicated process of human learning and advancement cannot be summarised into a 100 unrelated milestones, as has been done in the Civ series. The player is unrealistically limited to doing one thing at a time.

In GGS, there'll be three sets of quantities to keep track of -- Science (theoretical knowledge), Technology (practical knowledge) and one-time-only innovations, or Milestones. Examples of Sciences would be Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy. Technology would include fields such as Construction, Shipbuilding and Metallurgy. Milestones are inventions such as the Wheel, Shortbow, Rope etc.

Milestones would be one-time packages, but scientific and technological fields would have many levels of knowledge or skill. The higher the level, the better the people excel at that field. This is to prevent the ridiculous idea of researching a complete package like Mathematics in one blow.

The interaction between Sciences, Technology and Milestones could be as follows:
Based on user input, a percentage of the total research points will be used on each science. Any research done in a particular science has a certain preset probability of being used for each technology field. For example, Astronomy is far more likely to produce advances in Navigation than in Woodworking.
Milestones' requirements are pre-defined in terms of what level of sophistication is required in each tech field to make that discovery. Milestones are the only things likely to affect the player himself.

The research points will be influenced be social conditions, technology infrastructure etc. It is also could be possible that some milestones would become randomly available, or seen in a different civilization and adopted. Technology could also be spread by trade and espionage.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Nath:

Your formulation is very similar to what we're doing in Clash. Since we've had extensive discussions about our model, they might be of use to you in developing yours. The tech coding thread has a synopsis of the model. For the older discussions you can check out the technology link off the web page.

If you check it out, and have any suggestions regarding our approach, we'd love to hear them. Also, the general idea should be functional in Demo 5.2, which should be out sometime around year-end.

Good Luck,

Mark

[Nath]

Thanks.

[S. Kroeze]

Bravo Nath! Excellent work!

Because I completely agree with this, I cannot invent any critical comment.

Thank you!

[Maniac]

Based on user input

This comment worries me. I hope that the player won't be some totalitarian communist leader who can completely determine what his minions discover. Most discoveries should be done by the private sector. You should only have the ability to influence the flow of scientific progress. Unlike all civ games, where, as said above, you always had complete control over people's production capacities and their creative juices, even if you were a democratic free market.

[Nath]

Thanks, S. Kroeze.

I hope that the player won't be some totalitarian communist leader who can completely determine what his minions discover. Most discoveries should be done by the private sector. You should only have the ability to influence the flow of scientific progress. Unlike all civ games, where, as said above, you always had complete control over people's production capacities and their creative juices, even if you were a democratic free market.

That's partly what the randomness is for. It reduces the impact of what the user chooses.

[VetLegion]

Ok, few practical questions

- how should techs be traded? what of those three things that consist a tech are tradeable and what are not?

- should some civs/nations perhaps specialise in some areas? would it be good for gameplay if some were good shipbuilders and some good roadbuilders? If we limit it somehow perhaps we can create uniqueness for civs, without limiting them too much.

And a side point, tech tree is a backbone of all civ games. we just have to make it interesting, so the player has cool stuff he gets with new techs. things like "agriculture level 18, your farms now produce 1.7% more grain!" wont be enough

This is because of my expirience with Europa Universalis, there are basic techs that get you buildings and some military, like in civ, but it does not have any of that "wait till I get tanks you phalanx idiots" feeling to it. it is very sterile.

what we, and clash, are trying will hopefully be some hybrid of the two extremes, fun and realism.

so, if we can get the specifics down, or steal them from clash all we need is someone to code it.

any takers

[Nath]

- how should techs be traded? what of those three things that consist a tech are tradeable and what are not?

All three should be tradable to some extent, I think, but mainly milestones.

- should some civs/nations perhaps specialise in some areas? would it be good for gameplay if some were good shipbuilders and some good roadbuilders? If we limit it somehow perhaps we can create uniqueness for civs, without limiting them too much.

I think so.

[chrispie]

I love this system! It works perfectly as far as I can see, it's not obviously simple but at the same time it's nothing overly complex, great!

Here's how it looks to me, have I got it right?

Each Civ in the game has skills in science, like maths, physics, chemistry etc. S/he applied these skills in the sciences to actual ideas, like ship building, construction and produces milestones, like new ships, new ways of building.

In real game terms, I'm really good at maths (well my civ is), so I produce 50 "units" of that per turn, I then decide where to spend these 50 units, so I could say 25 into construction, 10 into ship building and um the rest somewhere else (can't think of anything new tonight!). The amount of science I can spend on any technology would be dependant on how well the two go together, obviously astronomy as a science doesn't do much good for construction, so the connection there is probably non-existant. The effect of applying science to a technology would then have the effect of making me increasingly good at that technology, thus making a breakthru in that area more and more likely.

I get the rating for maths based on what funding I've put into that science throughout the game, whether I've got special buildings for it (acadamy of mathemathics for example), and various other factors such as individual civ traits.

Obviously, I can teach other civs to be as good as me, or better than they are in a science, and also a technology and I can give them my breakthroughs (milestones). But maybe that's dependant on whether they can understand it based on their science and technology skills.

The trick here is to decide what's what, what is science and what is technology, for example iron working? I guess that's a technology, but being influenced by what sciences?

Hey I make this sound even better that I thought it was

[Nath]

I then decide where to spend these 50 units, so I could say 25 into construction, 10 into ship building and um the rest somewhere else (can't think of anything new tonight!). The amount of science I can spend on any technology would be dependant on how well the two go together, obviously astronomy as a science doesn't do much good for construction, so the connection there is probably non-existant.

The Design Doc doesn't actually specify how science is converted into technology (I think). In the little program-thingy I wrote science is randomly distributed to tech fields based on preset probabilities, but the way chrispie described above sounds better.

[Leland]

I just hopped on to this thread and I'm not quite sure if I understand the model... so it's basically a tree, except that each node (sciences and technologies) has a quantity, maybe a percentage of how much of that field is studied? The player can give direct support to sciences, but not to technologies, but are they still in the same tree (for example, construction helps develop mathematics)? What is the concrete effect of milestones?

Hmm. I'd like to see a visualization of the tech tree, just to get a better hang of it. Also, I think that technology should be affect by what the player does in the sense that if he builds a lot of ships, his shipbuilding technology should go up, and if he stops making ships the technology deteriorates. Maybe technology level could be a property of a population (meaning, those sailors in the coast have better shipbuilding tech and the inland farmers excel at... uhm... plowing), whereas scientific knowledge is the property of the whole civilization?

Good work anyway. I'll have to check that program of yours someday.

[Nath]

so it's basically a tree, except that each node (sciences and technologies) has a quantity, maybe a percentage of how much of that field is studied? The player can give direct support to sciences, but not to technologies, but are they still in the same tree (for example, construction helps develop mathematics)?

Sort of a tree, except that science can affect technology, but not usually the other way around.

What is the concrete effect of milestones?

Milestones are the only things with concrete effects - they're the equivalent of techs in other Civ games.

[Leland]

Okay, so let me get this straight once more...

1. Player is presented with a list of sciences to support (e.g. Construction, Numbers, Alphabet?), he gives each one a percentage of all the research funds.
2. Eventually, the scientific research yields technologies (e.g. Stone Building, Book Keeping, Measuring?) as practical results. Each science has a certain probability to affect a specific technology (e.g. Construction 50% chance of increasing Stone Building, 20% chance of increasing Measuring and 0% chance to increase Particle Physics?).
3. Once a particular combination of technologies (does this apply to sciences?) is reached there's a milestone; this amounts to actually something happening in the game. Player gets bonuses, access to new sciences, new units and whatnot (e.g. level 20 Measuring and level 30 Stone Building give rise to Brick House?).
4. Repeat steps 1-3. Technologies and Sciences can be fully understood, and then they are removed from the list of possible research areas.

Now, I am not sure if my understanding of the situation is still very good. I tried to think of examples in the early game, but it seems that the distinction between science and technology is blurred when you go back in time. Also, it would make sense if technologies would somehow affect the game in a quantative way, for example if you have a high-level Ship Building tech then you can build better ships than your neighbours (even though there's no qualitative difference).

Any chance you could get the source of your program in the mailing list (or at sourceforge FTP... if you're registered there I could add you to the project, just contact me in the mailing list)? I think we have a fine starting point for the tech model here, and due to some recent comments about the lack of prototypes/demos I think it would be appropriate to develop the demo program side by side with the model.

[Leland]

Hmm... I'm also not sure what should be the baseline technologies/sciences/milestones? I mean the stuff where the player starts his research. Pointed sticks? Pottery? Domestication?

[Leland]

Having discussed with Nath about the model, I think we were able to make some noteworthy remarks about the proposed system:

• At some point, the technologies will "max out" in the sense that they reach a point when they no longer have any effect on the game. Hence, I think it's possible to balance all the techs so that they can be represented by a percentage from 0-100.
  
• Our first estimate of the number of sciences, technologies and milestones were respectively ca. 30, 50 and 300. This is by no means final (after all we haven't really started listing the advances!), we were just trying to figure out something to get the big picture clarified. Opinions?
  
• Proposed baseline sciences could be something like:
  Agriculture
  Domestication
  Construction
  Religion
  Writing (my original suggestion was "Numbers", but it seems silly)
  
• Sciences could become obsolete and new ones introduced, but basically at any given time there should be only about 5-9 different ones to support.
  
• One problem that was brought forth was, how does one end up with Medicine in the game? What are the prerequisities and such? This illustrates that there are plenty of things that are still rather obscure, but we're progressing.

We also need to figure out a way to model the diffusion of ideas and technologies, but for this purpose we'll need to get the population model in a more decent order. And I really would like to include the feature that you "learn by doing", i.e. when you build a lot of ships, you gain a better Ship Building technology.

Other than that, feel free to suggest new sciences (maybe these should be called "research areas"... because that's what they are?), technologies and milestones. We'll have to figure out a tree of some sort sooner or later, and I see no reason why not to at least make an educated guess at this point (though it's probably going to take a while before you see any implementation...).

[chrispie]

I agree with all said here, though I won't be the one coming up with 30 sciences lol

I'm not sure how we'd introduce new sciences though, guess we need to look into real examples throughout history for each one - medicine for example, that seems to have been around forever, just in different forms from the one that actually works today (witch doctors etc).

As for baselines, I guess we just pick a start date for the game, and try to work out from that what was around, obviously the basic stuff would have been there, like wood working.

I think the cost of technologies (that is the cost of applying a science to a tech) should increase with the amount you've already got, and the actual tech. For example, Space flight at a percent of 95 would cost a lot more than construction at the same level, if that makes sense. This would serve to stretch the use of science to a max. Making it take a looooong time for some techs to 'max'.

I suppose some techs (maybe even all of them) would have a constant effect, as well as giving milestones. 95% construction for example, would allow better/faster building than 90% construction.

Milestones, I guess just appear randomly (but obviously in order) based on your tech level, and maybe in connection with your populations intelligence.

Anyway, that's all just waffle I think, don't think I'm making much sense today