Kruos wrote:
It is an interesting proposal but I feel that it goes in the wrong way, or at least not the way the dev seem to have taken.



I think that the 'tech tree' is made to force the player to do some choices, not only to prioritize tech order as it is in others 4x games. It is why you can find military tech that allow the use of the ressources in each era : to create some potential choices. For example, an early military strategy could go for first era military tech to exploit titanium & glassteel, whereas a more balanced strategy could avoid these tech and take the economcal ones.



At least, this is the direction which seems to have been taken. The problem is that the dev have not gone enough in that direction, from my point of vue. I think that to be pleasant this system should go further and be more radical, such as forbid the research of era 1 tech once in era 2, for example. Or something like that that would more force the player to make choices and plan a long term strategy (remember the Master of Orion 2 system?).

Yeah I'm down with that change. Keep the 10 per ERA but lock out lower eras once a new one is unlocked.

No more research + build everything.

Great suggestion ower:



It will certainly improve the game, adding more options to pick from when researching.

Thanks for the update Meedoc.



Concerning the fixed treshold, there is some tuning possibilities, like by giving some favtions the capacity to ignore the limit via a specific trait ('creativity' for example), or like giving some gift (wonder unlock?) if a faction succed to unlock all the tech from an era (via trade for example), etc.. I am sure you have some ideas..

Thanks for the update. The 0.5.14 update and quicker tech pacing is nice and coupled with understanding of how the Science Victory works (# of techs vs. high-age or "Victory" tech) things are a bit more interesting.



It's important that the techs get better as the Ages increase as currently, it still feels like there not much left to explore half-way through Age 3. I'm looking forward to the balance changes coming with the next patch...

Hello,



As you may have noticed, we're currently experimenting on the research pace at the moment (that's why we lowered the limit to 8), and we find the idea of fixed threshold interesting. So, we'll try that solution and see if it works better.

Regarding the solution stated, in the OP, we'll keep the threshold concept (10 per era) but every technology will count as 1. Thus, we'll keep a certain freedom for the player, and open more diversity regarding the possible technology order. In addition, we'll update both the cost progression for all the technologies as well as lowering the difference of cost between each eras.



Cheers,

You are right, some tuning seems obviously needed here. But I still think it is a good thing to have it as a tech.

Kruos wrote:
I respectfully disagree. I think that it is very interesting to have it as a tech to research, it contributes to the number of difficult choices the player has to make. It is a very good thing I think. It could be even more interesting if more 'obvious gameplay concept' should be unlocked by researching a tech, such as the possibility to recruit a military unit, a settler, the design unit screen, etc etc.. (extreme examples here to illustrate what i mean)

When the choice is to completely ignore a game feature or not, it isn't an interesting choice. The problem with the Marketplace techs (Rookery, Mercenary Market, Imperial Coinage) is that in order for the Marketplace to work (as envisioned by AMPLITUDE) and be interesting, all (or at least most) of the players should be participating. When a social aspect (ex. Marketplace, Diplomacy, Trade Routes) of the game is ignorable, it does not function well. It doesn't help that many faction quests require Marketplace techs and the Roving Clans faction is designed around it.

qlhs wrote:
Rookery shouldn't even be a research. That should just be something you have access to from the get go.

I respectfully disagree. I think that it is very interesting to have it as a tech to research, it contributes to the number of difficult choices the player has to make. It is a very good thing I think. It could be even more interesting if more 'obvious gameplay concept' should be unlocked by researching a tech, such as the possibility to recruit a military unit, a settler, the design unit screen, etc etc.. (extreme examples here to illustrate what i mean)

Just an added notes here....



Since 0.5.14 introduced the tech victory (66 techs required) it would be impossible to lock out earlier age techs as you need more than 8 per Age to win. The only way this could work is with a large number (26) of Age 6 techs that you'd have to research all to achieve the victory.

Propbuddha wrote:
I'm in agreement that there needs to be interesting choices in the game, but this suggestion offers up new choices as well:

[LIST=1]

Rush up the tech tree for more powerful techs and a faster tech-related victory

Take more lower tier techs and have a little bit of everything to support other strategies

[/LIST]

Assuming that there is balancing to make the Era 2+ techs desirable compared to Era 1 techs, this would makes for some interesting choices. Note that nothing is changing in this proposal other than getting credit for researching more than X Era techs for advancement. The optimal strategy for Era advancement remains taking the minimum number of each tech in each Era.



Locking players out of lower techs because they didn't select them is not in the game today and should not be. Imagine if you skipped Rookery and found out that you needed to recruit a hero later in the game for a quest...

Rookery shouldn't even be a research. That should just be something you have access to from the get go.

It's always bugged me a bit that I feel obligated to leave technologies I want behind (or find out I want later) because researching more than the requisite number will slow down Era advancement and increase Science cost for future techs.



Here's an alternative Era advancement idea:



Rather than requiring exactly 10 techs to advance, change the mechanic to a point based system:

• Each Tech is worth a number of "points" based on the Era it is in (Era 1 tech = 1 point, Era 2 = two points, Era 3 = 3 points, etc.)
• Once the number of points is reached the next Era unlocks. (Using today's pacing Era 2 requires 10 points, Era 3 requires 30 points, Era 4 requires 60 points)
  
  

This way you can take earlier techs and still get credit for advancement. The optimal way to advance remains getting 10 techs from each Era however....



Your feedback is appreciated.

I'm in agreement that there needs to be interesting choices in the game, but this suggestion offers up new choices as well:

[LIST=1]

Rush up the tech tree for more powerful techs and a faster tech-related victory

Take more lower tier techs and have a little bit of everything to support other strategies

[/LIST]

Assuming that there is balancing to make the Era 2+ techs desirable compared to Era 1 techs, this would makes for some interesting choices. Note that nothing is changing in this proposal other than getting credit for researching more than X Era techs for advancement. The optimal strategy for Era advancement remains taking the minimum number of each tech in each Era.



Locking players out of lower techs because they didn't select them is not in the game today and should not be. Imagine if you skipped Rookery and found out that you needed to recruit a hero later in the game for a quest...

Kruos wrote:
It is an interesting proposal but I feel that it goes in the wrong way, or at least not the way the dev seem to have taken.



I think that the 'tech tree' is made to force the player to do some choices, not only to prioritize tech order as it is in others 4x games. It is why you can find military tech that allow the use of the ressources in each era : to create some potential choices. For example, an early military strategy could go for first era military tech to exploit titanium & glassteel, whereas a more balanced strategy could avoid these tech and take the economcal ones.



At least, this is the direction which seems to have been taken. The problem is that the dev have not gone enough in that direction, from my point of vue. I think that to be pleasant this system should go further and be more radical, such as forbid the research of era 1 tech once in era 2, for example. Or something like that that would more force the player to make choices and plan a long term strategy (remember the Master of Orion 2 system?).

+1 to this too. Until they release era 5 and 6, it won't be obvious, but yea... The one path can not and should not be the only path to success.

Yea thats a very interresting idea ! Well I think we can improve it in some ways. I hope this idea will be noticed by the Dev Team !

I'm not terribly fond of hard caps like that. The reason that we don't feel forced to make a choice right now is, in my opinion, mainly a balance issue. Many of the early technologies are too good not to get, while others seem completely worthless (Siege Architecture, for example.) Furthermore, the low number of technologies probably does not help. The devs have repeatedly claimed they would rather add more technologies than change the threshold to reach a new era, but we're stuck with what we have.

Kruos wrote:
It is an interesting proposal but I feel that it goes in the wrong way, or at least not the way the dev seem to have taken.



I think that the 'tech tree' is made to force the player to do some choices, not only to prioritize tech order as it is in others 4x games. It is why you can find military tech that allow the use of the ressources in each era : to create some potential choices. For example, an early military strategy could go for first era military tech to exploit titanium & glassteel, whereas a more balanced strategy could avoid these tech and take the economcal ones.



At least, this is the direction which seems to have been taken. The problem is that the dev have not gone enough in that direction, from my point of vue. I think that to be pleasant this system should go further and be more radical, such as forbid the research of era 1 tech once in era 2, for example. Or something like that that would more force the player to make choices and plan a long term strategy (remember the Master of Orion 2 system?).

+1

It creates hard, meaningful choices. And the games hasn't enough of them, so why would you get rid of them ?

Locking lesser techs would be a bit too hard as the increase in price is already something limiting as you won't get era advancement.

It is an interesting proposal but I feel that it goes in the wrong way, or at least not the way the dev seem to have taken.



I think that the 'tech tree' is made to force the player to do some choices, not only to prioritize tech order as it is in others 4x games. It is why you can find military tech that allow the use of the ressources in each era : to create some potential choices. For example, an early military strategy could go for first era military tech to exploit titanium & glassteel, whereas a more balanced strategy could avoid these tech and take the economcal ones.



At least, this is the direction which seems to have been taken. The problem is that the dev have not gone enough in that direction, from my point of vue. I think that to be pleasant this system should go further and be more radical, such as forbid the research of era 1 tech once in era 2, for example. Or something like that that would more force the player to make choices and plan a long term strategy (remember the Master of Orion 2 system?).

This is indeed an improvement over the current system, I'm for.

Great suggestion. I think this would benefit the game, as it would give you more options to pick from when researching without feeling like you're punishing and intentionally delaying yourself. Not to mention that the Broken Lords main quest will also feel less like a slap in the face.

Getting some techs of the appropriate era would still be virtually guaranteed in this system, in my opinion, as the lower era techs just would not provide enough advancement to be viable. And if they really want to make higher era techs more appealing for quick advancement through the eras, they could increase the numbers provided and required, though that may lead to rather steep increases in the later eras.