hey guys.



I tried moving luxury and strategic resource techs one era earlier, so for example adamantium/grassilk is now researched on era 2 and mithrite/dustwater is era 3. however, I still haven't found the files to move the discovery back one era. so in the playtest, the techs canalready be researched earlier (I modded Simulation/DepartementOfScience+constructibles[Era2Technology] and also Era3 and Era4) but I still have to get to era 3 before any adamantium or grassilk is revealed.



anyone already know which files to modify for this? thanks before!

Hi Zukenft,



I've searched through the XMLs and I found the following tags in PointOfInterestTemplates.xml

ResourceDeposit

Strategic2

Strategic

ResourceDeposit_Strategic

PointOfInterestBonusStrategic

TechnologyEraDefinition1

Tier1

12

LeachByConversionStrategic2

Looking at this I would guess that it is VisibilityTechnology that determines when resources are "discovered".



Let me test that... aaaaand yup. Changing VisibilityTechnology for Strategic4 (Palladin) from TechnologyEraDefinition3 to TechnologyEraDefinition1, has unlocked Palladin from the start.



I hope that answers your question. If you need any more help do not hesitate to ask

ah, of course it would be in a file that have no 'technology' or 'era' written on it. it worked, thanks.



so now let's talk about balance. will moving these techs make the late game too boring? (because the resources are already discovered an era before)

or would you skip the techs until later anyway because other techs in era 2 and 3 are more important?

If you were to move the techs and resources and era earlier, what would be the player's incentive to have them? Unless you move the Item techs and City Improvement techs along with them, the only reason is to accumulate the resource ahead of time (or use it as Holy Resource, if playing as Vaulters).



If I were doing this, I would also add some technologies which utilize these strategic resources. I would move Adamantian and Palladian from E3 to E2/E1, but leave the Uncommon Armor and Uncommon Alloys at E3 where they are originally. Additionally I would add a small City Improvement in E2/E1 which would require small amount of these resources in order to be built.



Another approach, which would require more work (Though I think I have a good idea how it could be achieved) would be something like this:

-Move all resources and mining research to E1/E2

-On each era add Items and Improvements which each utilize different Strategic resource (just one strategic resource).

-Make mining research mutually exclusive, i.e. if you research Adamantian Mining, you cannot research Palladian Mining



This way you create a situation where choosing mining technologies is a strategic decision for the player. If he researches Palladian, all teritiories with Adamantian will be of lesser value to him.



In terms of making things mutually exclusive, I believe you can achieve it in the following way:

$Property(EmpireTypeMajor/ClassResearch:TechnologyCost) * $Property(EmpireTypeMajor/ClassResearch:Era1CostMultiplier)

EmpireTypeMajor/ClassResearch,TechnologyEra1

[Theotherminingtechreference]

The last line set as Flags="Prerequisite,Discard" Inverted="true" means that the prerequisite for the technology is the lack of the one referenced. I am unsure whether this works on technologies, but I can confirm it works with Faction Traits (so you can hide research from factions). Also I am unsure what the reference to the other mining tech would be. I guess it would be in this format EmpireTypeMajor/ClassResearch,[TechnologyReference]

unfortunately, it doesn't work. I could still research the excluded tech after researching the other one.



tech exclusion opens up a lot of possibilities, though. it could make a specialization choice for your faction. for example, dust economy vs industry, or tall vs wide, or defensive vs offensive...

There might be some other way to do it or a different path is required, since it works perfectly fine for Faction Traits.



I think a good idea would be to look at quests. Quests have the ability to unlock technology (or unhide it) so they may contain hints on how to reverse that process.



Yes, the concept of specialization is a very interesting one. Right now I am working on a mod which would promote specializing and create greater asymmetry between factions as I feel the game is not asymmetric enough, with factions sharing majority of their researches, and each play-through being very similar. There's not enough variety between them. What I am trying to achieve is to make Necrophages really feel like they're a swarm, vaulter like they really have technological advantages or Broken Lords like they are much more powerful than others, but at a great price.