If you designed the tech tree for the Stone Age... what would it be?

MonsterMan · February 17, 2002, 14:56

Let's say that in a month, a new patch is released and with it we can add Ages as well as control the year increment. So instead of starting work on the Stone Age in one month... why not start now?

As I see it the Stone Age can begin in 6000 BC and end approximately in 3000 BC, when the Ancient Age starts. The very first tech level of the Ancient Age -- Bronze Working through Ceremonial Burial -- can be made into the very last tech level of the Stone Age, and the preceeding techs lead up to that level. But that's just my opinion.

Here are my suggestions for the first techs of the Stone Age.
Flintmaking
Wood Working
Fire
Painting
Culture
Clay

2nd level:
Hunting (preq. Flintmaking & Wood Working)
Stone Working (preq. Flintmaking)
Pictographs (preq. Painting & Culture)
Religion (preq. Fire & Pictographs)

3rd level:
Hunting II (preq. Hunting & Fire)
--------------
Some ideas
Hunting will allow the Stickman unit. Stickmen have sharpened wood spears.
With Hunting II one can build "Stickmen (Adv.)". The spears are hardened by fire.
Stone Working and Hunting II allows advance that gives the Spearmen unit. They have sharp stone spears.
Wood Working allows Coracles to be built.

I'm not too happy about my own ideas, so I sincerely hope this thread will get plenty of posts. (Posts that aren't saying Bah Firaxis will never let us do this *wink wink*)

player1 · February 17, 2002, 15:00

If I would make stone age scenario then it won't have cities.
Settlers would be a nomad unit cabale of hunting or garthering food and giving one point of shileds for making warrior units.

Still, it's impossibile to do in civ, since it doesn't have any kind of scripting language.

MonsterMan · February 17, 2002, 15:06

Quote:

Originally posted by player1
If I would make stone age scenario then it won't have cities.
Settlers would be a nomad unit cabale of hunting or garthering food and giving one point of shileds for making warrior units.

Still, it's impossibile to do in civ, since it doesn't have any kind of scripting language.

Yeah, but that wasn't what I had in mind either ;-)

King of Rasslin · February 17, 2002, 15:46

Thats a great idea! Stickmen should be 1/2 like the spearmen but cost more shields. Warriors should always be available. You shouldn't be able to clear forests or jungle without fire. You should require fire to build anything in tundra.

You should discover culture before you can have it

A great idea, it should be in an expansion or mod.

MonsterMan · February 17, 2002, 16:07

Quote:

Originally posted by King of Rasslin
Thats a great idea! Stickmen should be 1/2 like the spearmen but cost more shields. Warriors should always be available. You shouldn't be able to clear forests or jungle without fire. You should require fire to build anything in tundra.

You should discover culture before you can have it ;)

A great idea, it should be in an expansion or mod.

I'm glad you like the idea : )
I had in mind to recalculate the units Attack and Defense values to make room at the bottom for the new units in the Stone age.

I have four units in mind that I didn't mention.
* Warriors would be the initial unit available to everyone; they'll fight with clubs.
* Axemen come later and is basically the same as the default warrior - fighting with stone axes.
* Hunters fight by throwing stones, Slingmen fight with a sling (like David in his fight with Goliath). They fill the role archers have in the Ancient era.

The problem with Fire is that mankind has had the knowledge to use it for over a hundred thousand years. I haven't done any research as to when humans discovered the techs I mentioned above.

I'll probably edit the Palace improvement so it doesn't generate culture at all, and have a Shrine improvement with Religion that generates one cp.

Kilroy_Alpha · February 17, 2002, 16:45

This is something I'd like to work on, but I hope you realize that you can't just stick those units in front of the ancient age. You'd have to rework all the unit stats. I suppose you COULD make the stone age units cost more, but IMO that's not very realistic. It's the easy way out.

I'd make warrior code, pottery, and ceremonial burial late stone age techs, and keep alphabet, masonry, wheel, and bronze working in the ancient age. I'm not sure about warrior code since I'm a little uncomfortable making the archer unit available in the stone age.

BucksRock · February 17, 2002, 18:09

Cool thread. Let's not forget these advances:

Agriculture (allows irrigation, shows wheat squares)
Mining (allows mines)
Roadbuilding (allows roads)

Also maybe:

Animal Husbandry (shows cattle squares)
Raftmaking (allows extra trade from rivers)
Jewelry (shows gold and gem squares)
Dyemaking (shows dye squares)
Weaving (shows silk squares)
Sculpture (shows ivory squares)
Tanning (shows fur squares)
Police force (allows units "martial law" abilities)

Edit: Um - these wouldn't be possible unless the code was rewritten, but maybe in a CIV 4 they would be cool. Next time I should read the thread more closely

MonsterMan · February 17, 2002, 19:02

Quote:

Originally posted by BucksRock
Cool thread. Let's not forget these advances:

Agriculture (allows irrigation, shows wheat squares)
Mining (allows mines)
Roadbuilding (allows roads)

Also maybe:

Animal Husbandry (shows cattle squares)
Raftmaking (allows extra trade from rivers)
Jewelry (shows gold and gem squares)
Dyemaking (shows dye squares)
Weaving (shows silk squares)
Sculpture (shows ivory squares)
Tanning (shows fur squares)
Police force (allows units "martial law" abilities)

Edit: Um - these wouldn't be possible unless the code was rewritten, but maybe in a CIV 4 they would be cool. Next time I should read the thread more closely :o

Nice ideas, but I think Jewelry, Sculpture and Police force are too modern to fit into the Stone age.

It's true that the editor is limited, but it's open enough for us to be inventive. Let's take the Nomad unit as an example -- Nomads are primitive workers. 'Nomad I' becomes available with the Roadbuilding advance, so we tick the worker action Build Road. 'Nomad II' can be built with the Agriculture advance, so we tick Build Road and Irrigate. And so on.

I haven't tested if it's true, but if these units have the exact same shield cost, the player might be able to upgrade them for free. Needless to say the Nomad I upgrades to Nomad II and so on until the last Nomad upgrades to a standard Worker unit somewhere close to the Ancient age.

About being inventive... there is an ability on the City Improvement screen that says Increases Food in Water. So we could give Coast and Sea tiles 0 food bonus, and have a city improvement (a fishery perhaps) with that ability. The result is that Coast and Sea produce as much food as they do from the start in the default game. That lets the game progress longer by starting earlier, so to speak.

What about a variation on the Catapult unit that has zero movement, and so can only be used from the city that built it? That would create a progression in the game with the ordinary catapult.

I'm sure there are many other inventful ways to create a fun Stone age from all you guys, let's hear them! : )

Purple · February 17, 2002, 20:42

I think Speech should be in the first tier of discoveries.

Nice thread, MM.

nato · February 17, 2002, 21:11

I have this cool history book here, with some nice lists about the early development and tools of man. Here is what it says:

Paleolithic

Lower - Neanderthal Man:

Fire by lightning
Awl
Fist Hatchet
Borer
Saw
Scraper

Upper - Cro-Magnon Man:

Fire by friction
Sewing
Religion
Art
Stone spear head
Flint awl

Neolithic

Lower:

Pottery
Bow and arrow
Hewn stone ax
Domestication of dog

Upper:

Domestication of plants and animals
Weaving
Lake dwellings
Boat

This also reminds me of John Keegan's book History of Warfare, where he talks about some stone age things. Militarily, he said that four powerful weapons were invented near the same time: dagger, mace, sling, and bow. The bow was super important, because it really seperated man from other animals and allowed hunting at range, rather than hand to hand (claw I guess) combat.

He also mentioned that two important developments were babies no longer being able to cling to mothers, and the unique (in mammals) change in females being able to give birth all year round, instead of going in heat. These both tended to make females need to stay at home, and thus tended to make humans more settled and less wandering.

Which leads right up to the agricultural revolution, which is the most important thing to happen to us humans by far. I would definitely make that the end point of the stone age, and the beginning of real civilization.

I guess I don't have an exact tech tree, but I hope some of these ideas are helpful or at least interesting.

Encomium · February 17, 2002, 21:37

You all seem to be forgettng the atlatl - spear thrower. It gave hunters (and warriors) a nice range advantage over guys just chucking spears with brute force.

nato · February 17, 2002, 21:46

Oh yeah ... I think Keegan mentioned that the atlatl and the sling might have been related, since they kind of worked on the same principle.

notyoueither · February 17, 2002, 22:14

I can see it now.

That G*d-D*mned Stone Thrower just killed my Tank! This bites!

Great thread.

Salve

MrWhereItsAt · February 18, 2002, 06:54

How about instead of a technology prereq for the next Age there is a population requirement? Say this Age is geared towards building what is, in effect, a city, which needs as prereqs food gathering techs and food areas to harvest, raw materials for the building of dwellings and enough social advances for a society of lots of people viable. Once this is reached, you can build cities and continue with Civ3.

On second thought, this is perhaps adding too much to the game (unless the editor is eventually imbued with heinously powerful tools!). Maybe instead of not being able to build cities to begin with, you CAN, but there is a strict pop limit until the city prereqs are met. The focus of the game could be about linking "local tribes" or bands of ppl together, taking the ideas and getting "advances" out of them. Kind of a goody-hunting exercise, but fleshed out a bit.

Anyone have a way this could be made more realistic while still adding something?

player1 · February 18, 2002, 08:13

Quote:

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
How about instead of a technology prereq for the next Age there is a population requirement? Say this Age is geared towards building what is, in effect, a city, which needs as prereqs food gathering techs and food areas to harvest, raw materials for the building of dwellings and enough social advances for a society of lots of people viable. Once this is reached, you can build cities and continue with Civ3.

On second thought, this is perhaps adding too much to the game (unless the editor is eventually imbued with heinously powerful tools!). Maybe instead of not being able to build cities to begin with, you CAN, but there is a strict pop limit until the city prereqs are met. The focus of the game could be about linking "local tribes" or bands of ppl together, taking the ideas and getting "advances" out of them. Kind of a goody-hunting exercise, but fleshed out a bit.

Anyone have a way this could be made more realistic while still adding something?

You should need some building to move from 2 pop cap.
That way you won't be able to build settlers, expect if wanting to move on other "hunting ground"
Building should be called...

I don't know for sure.

steelehc · February 18, 2002, 16:34

Since said building will allow you to move on, to build more settlers, what about "Town Center?" I think something like that, where it shows your city has settled down, and isn't going anywhere.

Steele

Spec · February 18, 2002, 16:51

All these ideas aren't for Stone age but I think they really be cool if added in someway on Civ3 or in Civ4 for that matter.
You can refer to the link below to see for your selfs. If anyone wants to copy and paste it here, be my guest! I ain't doing it cuz it's such a long list....

http://www.civgame.com/Forum/?board=...199123&start=0
And you have that thread to here, I think the names is: "Help Firaxis" or something like that.

Spec.

BTW, dont anyone call that SPAMMING cuz it ain't! Ok Lib!!!

MonsterMan · February 21, 2002, 06:25

Interesting idea

shameless bump to the top

candidgamera · February 22, 2002, 00:06

Interesting thread.

BucksRocks got the ones that enable organized civilization in the first place:

*Agriculture is the big one - growing and storing food the bottom line to able to support/feed "specialists" that get the ball rolling.

*Animal Husbandry - begins the process of making diseases that kill people that don't have animals - smallpox, ect. beast of burden to do work, ect.

Anybody here ever read "Guns, Germs, and Steel"? Interested in other opinion if anyone has - - basis of above - read it and you'll never take a bowl of cornflakes for granted again.

Very topical to all Civ games - hope somebody at Fireaxis has read it.

Book places "plant domestication" as starting about 6-8500 BC in very specific areas: China, Indus, Eypt, Fertile Crescent, New Guinea, and some W. Europe. Portrays a very blurry choice process - just depended on what was available in the surroundings, and what made sense. Americas didn't do it until 2500-3500 BC.

In a GGS Civ world grown food sources would be typed by ability to grow in a certain latitude bands, and you'd have to grow them first let alone irrigation. Horses might occur only 2-3 places in whole world - might have to allow trading from a single source and then "breeding" from that as a project before you could get horse units.

Key point of book was importance of E-W verses N-S continents in terms of spreading ideas, agricultural plants, and domesticated animal types. Large part of explanation of why Eurasians have dominated in history and not Americans or Africans. And that means also it had nothing to do with race or culture.

Fertile Crescent had a huge advantage in varieties of good grass types for getting to grains, and good candidates for animals that could be domesticated.

("a grizzly bear would make a fabulous farm animal if it would just behave")

Other:
"basic government" would allow taxes and roads.

Speech comes way back 10's of thousands of years back.