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Twilight of the Arnor: Technology Tree Concepts

Draginol

Join Date 03/2001

+137

Twilight of the Arnor: Technology Tree Concepts

The expansion pack, GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor, will have unique technologies per civilization. This means full trees, not just a few special techs per civ.

Below are the general concepts for each.

Terran Alliance

The Terran Alliance will have more propulsion technologies than the other civilizations. Its weapons will be the most like the default tech tree. It will have a series of technologies called Stellar Defense which will enable it to be more effective in fighting within its own area. The Terran Alliance will also have additional diplomacy and economic technologies.

Drengin Empire

The Drengin will not have factory technologies. Its tech tree will be very different from the default one in that its technologies will tend to provide planetary improvements that have a significant drawback. For instance, the slave pit technologies will provide more production but will reduce the planet's influence.

Arcean Empire

The Arcean tech tree will tend to focus more on materials rather than industry and economics as we know it. Their technologies will tend to focus on making things cost less and be of higher quality.

Altarians

The Altarians will have a much smaller technology tree than the other civilizations but they will be much much more expensive.

Torians

The Torians will have technologies that tend to produce low quality but high quantity products. For instance, they will have military techs that are relatively easy to get and cost very little to manufacture but are not as effective.

Yor

The Yor won't have entertainment based technologies at all or any sort of farming technologies. Instead, the Yor will have energy production centers that increase the # of Yor units on a given world which can then be divided between production areas and research areas.

Korx

The Korx will have a lot more trade technologies than the other civilizations and gain a lot more benefit from them.

Drath

The Drath will, like the Altarians, have a much smaller technology tree that costs more but gives a lot more benefit. It will differ from the Altarians in that it will have more diplomacy and influence based technologies.

Korath

The Korath tree will be very similar to the Drengin except that they will have technologies that convert flesh into energy.

Thalan

The Thalan will have a very cool technology tree based on the concept of planetary improvements that do multiple things. Thalan buildings will cost more but they will be multi-functional. There won't be a specialized entertainment area or a specialized farm but instead be buildings that do both. Similarly, there won't be a research lab or a factory but instead be a "labor" area.

The Krynn

The Krynn will have the most alien of the technology trees (other than maybe the Yor). The Krynn are focused on the Jihad. As a result, their buildings are based on having maximum morale in order to always have maximum production levels and maximum taxation. They will have buildings and super projects that lower the cost of leasing units so that the Krynn buy things for the Jihad far more so than other civilizations and do so with relatively little penalty.

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Draginol

Join Date 03/2001

+137

Absolutely. In a way I'm glad this isn't a multiplayer game. Even balancing things like 3 or 4 different races is incredibly difficult. But balancing 12 different races...

If GalCiv were a multiplayer game, this kind of feature simply wouldn't be possible precisely because they won't be perfectly balanced.

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Draginol

Join Date 03/2001

+137

Like a few others, I'm most concerned about custom opponents (I like to try and design the meanest buggers possible). With the different trees, are you now going to have to choose the AI script that matches the tech tree script you choose? Or, could you for instance choose the Yor tech tree, but Thalan personality - and still have it be competitive?

You'd pick the tech tree seperately.

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And players scoffed at the unique tech tree idea (not many, just a few).

question: will this mean unique base hulls per race, to go along with different tech trees?

i remember reading that races would get unique ship components; i'd really love to see unique hulls (since you can mess with size, HP, base speed and base sensors), and i've thought about doing a mod for it (where basically there would be upgrade lines for different hull sizes with either more HP, more base speed or sensors, or various combos of the three). i swear, every time i start getting interested in a more ambitious mod, SD does something to the game that gives me a whole new dimension to mess with.

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What about planet selling/stealing or ship selling?

I believe that the techs for speed planetary production and moral should be interchangeable/trade able

Make engines smaller for the Terrans. (simple and makes it so the tech can be traded)

I believe the basics of engines weapons and defenses should stay the same abouts.. but differing weapon types for different races..
(this would allow trading still but each race would see different values )

Moral and farms.. since a race will have them combined this will need balancing for conquering

I like the idea of making the tech trees just blocked by a race that wont need them.. (this way a moder could change how he/she wanted)

What about colonization? how will this change? For all races but the YOR IMHO it should be the same but maybe expanded more (really hoping for a colony builder (like the miner) so you can claim planets but not have to use them (they still suck down taxes)

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Read this a couple times to try an understand for sure... It sounds like there will still be a basic tech tree but lots of unique tech branches per civ. Or am I wrong and the entire tree will be different for each civ?

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2420

The entire tech tree will be different for each civ. There will be common techs that will appear (trade for instance) but overall you'll mostly see different techs.

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This is neat, but there is a potential problem with an event. You say the Drengin have slave pits right? What if they get the event where they change to good. What will happen to their empire?

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Or, to add on to JubJub's concern, what happens when a human player consciously steers the Drengin towards the good side of the fence? Will the alignments be locked or something?

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What I think would work pretty well, is if the results from ethical dilemmas depended on the natural alignment of the race.

So an evil race like the Drengin would get similar results to what we have now.

A good race would get bounuses from picking the good choices, basically the reverse of what things are now.

Neutral races would gain a less bonus from neutral choices, than the other two from their natural alignments, but would also have little or no penalty for the good or evil choices.

Thus, every race is encouraged to act according to their natural alignment.

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This is neat, but there is a potential problem with an event. You say the Drengin have slave pits right? What if they get the event where they change to good. What will happen to their empire?

There is an extensive discussion of this in another thread, but what it boils down to is this: No problem. For Drengin culture, keeping slaves in noble and caring fashion IS Good. After all they've been building it into their culture for over 100K years.

"What, would you have me turn the poor dears out in the wilderness?"

drrider

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I want to know how capturing other races' tech will be handled (ie getting a slave pit that exist on a planet that had been captured).

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I want to know how capturing other races' tech will be handled (ie getting a slave pit that exist on a planet that had been captured).

I imagine it will be no different than it is currently... you can already capture a planet with alignment-based planet improvements on them of an alignment not of your own.

Some techs may be unstealable or untradable, but I imagine you can still always capture planets with improvements from them without a hitch. Of course... I imagine that could change too.

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This is a really neat idea. It always bothered me a bit that, playing as a race that would generally be considered "good," my citizens would take a huge moral hit because I FAILED to exterminate or enslave the sentient plants, etc. I mean, ok, there might be some historical precedent, but nowadays I imagine there would be some uproar.

A natural race alignment could be kinda cool.

As for the tech trading/stealing, I don't see why certain technologies can't correspond to each other. I mean, the tech that gives one race slave pits could be taken another direction by a different race. Thus trading for the slave pit tech could give you sports arenas or something (bad example, but you get the idea). Same technological requirements, different ideologies.

Edit: I guess what I'm saying is that, the techs could be named the same for all races, Extreme Entertainment for example, but that tech would give Drengin slave fighting rings, Humans sports arenas, another race holodecks or something, etc. They could even have different benefits, but it would still be tradable.

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I just had a recent thread that asked about the AI creating its own custom opponets, so even their superability would be a mystery to the player. It seemed to well liked. But now i was wondering if something like that were done, could the AI also be able to choose the tech tree it wants to have?

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If every race has a unique tech tree, what does this mean for tech trading? Will it be removed completely, limited to common technologies between races, or work some other way?

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The same question holds for stealsing tech when invading. I guess maybe in that case you can just be granted an evquilelent amout of RP to use towards your own tech tree. So instaed of stealing a tech for a slave pit you may get all or a portion of a production tech on your own tech tree.

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will we be able to write mods in order to create new tech trees, or only existing ones (or rather, the existing number of tech trees)?

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Really gives more flavour to the game. Now if only the AI would genuinely behave "DIFFERENT". Not that they don't already, but not genuine enough. Not that I am dissatisfied.

TA certainly sounds like "All that" and a bag of chips.
I'll buy it for sure. If it comes to retail locally to me. Great job, stardock!

You beat Microsoft + EA +Strategy First+ some other company I can't think of now + I just remembered Firefly stuidios + something else I cant remember right now, combined hands down! Well maybe not combined(EA and microsoft you'd beat for sure) but you'd beat most of them. Especially some of the ones I can't remember right now.

But the fact I can't remember them says something, does it not?

-Fire

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Voqar

Join Date 03/2003

+21

What do you do about tech trading and tech obtaining (via conquering a planet, for ex).

Will AIs be able to trade away (or lose via capture) their unique racial tech?

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If GalCiv were a multiplayer game, this kind of feature simply wouldn't be possible precisely because they won't be perfectly balanced.

This is why I worry a bit about GC3 having multiplayer, or the fantasy TBS for that matter...

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If GalCiv were a multiplayer game, this kind of feature simply wouldn't be possible precisely because they won't be perfectly balanced.

This is why I worry a bit about GC3 having multiplayer, or the fantasy TBS for that matter...

well, StarCraft is a decent model of how you can have some differences between factions that can work out with decent MP - but it took a lot of play balancing and there were still exploits in the MP games on battle.net. i think it only becomes an issue for MP players with a strong competative edge; those who just enjoy a game against a natural intelligence (human player) may enjoy the game for what it is.

i'd say perhaps the best way to deal with such issues is to have a number of setup options for MP games. the first and perhaps most important would be whether the game's outcome would be ranked/scored. in situations where people were playing one another for fun, no score need be recorded (or contribute to their MV rankings) and the players (or player who sets up the initial game) could have free range of game options, including varied tech trees and even mods.

for competative games, it might be better to use a more tightly controlled set of options to standardize the scores - perhaps not a single set of rankings, either, so that competative MP players needn't be restricted to a single generic game setup.

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Firstly, this is amzing my only worry would be balencing. But as new as I am to the game I know one thing, this is Stardock, patches are one thing I will not have to worry about.

Secondly, will this make tech trading rarer. I personly think this would be a good thing, but I am only asking how much it will affect tech tradeing.

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Well from what i understand alot of the techs will stay the same but be dual use (like hyperwarp will be hyperwarp just used diffrent?)

Some techs will not be usefully at all.. like the slave centers which are useless for non evil ones now...

So some techs will be tradeable still but not all

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What about minor races? Do they just have normal tech trees?

And how will T.T. be adjusted? In my opinion, you should be able to trade any tech to anyone still, so the Drengin can trade Slave pit technology to the Terrans if they want. Because in theory they can still learn the technology.

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mementh
Well from what i understand alot of the techs will stay the same but be dual use

that's not what i understood at all.

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