I was not sure about the new tech tree with eras, and how it will fit ES2 like it did in EL. I liked it for EL, but not sure about other backgrounds.

Iv'e ween (like most of you..) in this two videos (they're also in link collection):

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1y7fwbFaBs, around minute 02:13
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhYNUmj1oKQ, around minute 13:24

I take two screenshots to make it easy to you, one from Era I and one from Era II (sorry, couldn't get rid of youtube bar):

Seeing this fragments in videos, it looks and seems to match with ES2 better than I expected. Few thoughts:

• Shophons affinity looks very cool,and challenging a science race. Hope it is reflected forcing you to change your play style with them.
• Awesome art, background, and very intuitive and clear UI (as in all other Amplitude games)
• Techs which are not in any of areas (econ - military - sci/ind - pop/inf). 3 for spaceship hulls, which is good imo in a lore point of view, as you'll have to unlock them regarding your faction background and your play style. nt sure what the other is, maybe faction specific?
• Haven't found any clue of techs accelerating others, two mutually exclusive techs, or prerequisites. All of this was mentioned in GDD, so I found two explanations:
  • Not implemented yet. Understand still in EA.
  • Some of them are hidden and player will have to find (which I see less probable, but cooler)

I'll left to you other speculations, I'll follow later.

Also be glad to receive any clue from devs.

Visually looks a little too bland in my view.

I think I'm going to need a compelling reason to believe space age research would be tiered like that though. Unless you can unlock "Era's" for every type of research individually, that would work more easily for me I think.

Did they show the lore descriptions for technologies? I'm hoping for less technobable and that the descriptions are more in the style of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

Triffids wrote:

uriak wrote:
I still feel the "era pools" while freeing some constraints, removes something I've taken a liking to in other 4X : making teching in a direction quite a long term decision. It revolves around having long branches in the trees but is good for self "story telling". Pools offer a kind of "grab whetever you feel a need for" approach.

porque no los dos

Stick with era pools, but grant a stacking research cost discount for every researched technology in a given field (the four quadrants in each era). Researched combat technologies makes further research in combat technologies cheaper without requiring specific prerequisite technologies to be completed first. You're free to pick and choose specific technologies to research, but it will be more costly.

Maybe not a good fit for ES2 with the way the Sophon affinity ability works though.

This is interesting. Though I guess what I think of a "good" tree is one whose branches are not tied to only one domain but several. For instance in terrestrial settings you would have navigation branch with navy, commerce, science (optics etc) the metallurgy branch with armore/weapons, industry, the law branch with administrive bonus, diplomacy, knowlege, etc

I can't tell if it would be easy to tie to future technology but still. 

Of course in ES1 to field a fleet you'd have to get the hull in explorations, the materials in science, fleet commands in development and moduls in military. The whole thing felt very intertwined. With ear pools you can fish more easily for what you want. but I still hope you can eally pick a longer term strategy. 

I also hope the prince increase won't make skipping early tech too costly to fill afterward.

Falkner wrote:

Did they show the lore descriptions for technologies? I'm hoping for less technobable and that the descriptions are more in the style of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

If you look at the videos, some descriptions appear in left inferior corner, with Amplitude-stile tooltips, when player moves cursor over a tech or the things it unlocks.

Can't say much, cause I didn't stop to read it as the casters didn't spent much time showing it, and didn't read them at all.

Falkner wrote:

Did they show the lore descriptions for technologies? I'm hoping for less technobable and that the descriptions are more in the style of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

        Well i like the technobable , but also the way how Alpha Centauri has descriped Techs .I think its just very important that the Text fits what you have ingame , i hope it is understandable what i want to say .

pixelfreak wrote:

Falkner wrote:

Did they show the lore descriptions for technologies? I'm hoping for less technobable and that the descriptions are more in the style of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

        Well i like the technobable , but also the way how Alpha Centauri has descriped Techs .I think its just very important that the Text fits what you have ingame , i hope it is understandable what i want to say .

Oddly enough, the lack of a description of techs and "technobable" was one of the biggest gripes (Ok, one of many gripes) I had with Civilization: Beyond Earth. It was an easy way to add immersion and story telling to the game and they totally dropped the ball on that one, especially for something so easy...