View source for Advanced Tech' Tree Design - Part Two

[[Category:Tips]]
[[Category:Blackclove]]
<big>'''A guide to designing advanced tech' trees, including side effects of various technologies, recursive trees, proper termination, and branch theory.'''</big>

'''by [[Blackclove]] (April 1999)'''


__TOC__

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== Advanced Tech Tree Design - Part Two ==
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Now that we have covered the basics of tech tree design, it is worthwhile to consider  all of the picky details that need to be taken care of when designing tech trees and all  of the neat special effects you can achieve using advances. I am indebted to Leon  Marrick for much of the material presented here, especially the list of special effects  for various technologies.

Throughout I will illustrate with the Invasion Earth Mini-Scenario. You will want to be  ready to open up the main files with Notepad and get into the nitty-gritty details -- for  this part even more than the previous one.


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=== "Invasion Earth" Example ===
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| Note: This is the same file as used in Part One.

For this tutorial, I've created a new mini-scenario called Invasion Earth. I've included a units file, a basic rules file, a people file, cities file, and the pedia.txt file. It is a total war scenario featuring aliens invading Earth. 

The mini-scenario has two main features that interest us:

* Some units that require the same advance to build are specific to particular civilizations. 
* There are advances that are available ONLY to the humans and some that are available ONLY to the aliens. 
| style="text-align: center;"|[[File:sl_ttree1_inverth.png|right]]
[[Media:invasion.zip| Download Invasion Earth]]
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== Partially Divergent Tech Trees? ==
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The examples I have given so far assume that your tech trees diverge totally. That is,  all of the technologies that are unique to a particular civilization are along a branch  derived directly from Once Removed. For example, we assumed that all alien  technologies are in a tree built on Destroy Mankind.

But what if you want many of your technologies to be shared by all civilizations? For  example, you might want a scenario about France and England in the 19th century that  involved most of the same technologies with just a few short branches where the tech  trees diverge. You might want the French to have more opportunities to develop their  army, for example, while the British have more nautical advances.


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== Short Divergent Trees ==
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Perhaps the simplest case is where you have a short branch that you want only a few  civilizations to have. In Invasion Earth, both humans and aliens can develop the Plasma  Weapons and Energy Harness advances. However, we want the Terminator advance to require Plasma Weapons, but we don't want the humans to be able to research it! 

So how to we restrict the Terminator advance, which is NOT in a separate tree for the  aliens? By now you have probably guessed the solution, which I have sketched below.


<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">[[File:sl_ttree2_treediag.png]]</div>


What I have done is simply to insert Terminators as depending on Plasma Weapons,  but also make it depend on an advance that only the aliens can get. You could even use  Destroy Mankind directly rather than tracing it through later technologies if you want.


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== Same Technology in Separate Trees ==
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Another possible problem  would be dealing with two totally separate trees that should lead to the same advance  at some point. For example, in Invasion Earth I wanted both the humans and the aliens  to be able to get Guerilla Warfare eventually. The reason was that at some point the  aliens should be able to convert people to their cause through bribery, mind control  and alien cults. What I did was leave Guerilla Warfare in the human-only tree, but I  included an event (see the Invasion Earth events.txt file) that gives Guerilla Warfare  to the aliens when they learn the Sympathizers technology. Technology #34 is Guerilla  Warfare (you can figure it out by counting down the list, or you can just use the  Fantastic Worlds Events editor and create a GiveTechnology event using the name of  the tech and it will convert it to the number for you).


<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">[[File:sl_ttree2_event.png]]</div>


To make sure that the aliens don't start researching Modern Weapons from Guerilla  Warfare, we simply use the trick from the previous section and make Modern Weapons  require both Guerilla Warfare and Kick Alien Butt to research, effectively making  Guerilla Warfare a dead-end tech that the aliens get as a bonus for researching  Sympathizers.


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== Same Technology in Separate Trees II: Recursive Trees ==
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This trick was first used in the Master of Magic, Jr., scenario. A recursive tree is one  that turns back on itself. It means that one civilization begins far down one of the  branches of the technology tree, but not necessarily far down all of them. For  example, in Master of Magic, you can eventually learn all of the types of magic, but to  do so requires extensive research. However, each tribe starts with ONE of the  branches of magic. This would be a recursive tree, because at some point you get the  technology to move down other cultures' tech trees.

It should be obvious how to set such a thing up by now, but if not, look again at Fusion  and Plasma Weapons [Plu and Whe, respectively]. The aliens begin with Fusion and  Plasma Weapons already researched. However, if you check, Fusion requires Military  Lasers [Hor] and Nuclear Subs [Pot] to research! Those are on the human-only tree.  What I did was give the technology to the aliens, assuming that those earlier advances  were too out of date for them to even care about. However, for the humans to get  Fusion, they need to make their way up their own tech tree.


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== Getting Closure: Future Tech ==
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The technology tree should be possible to trace all the way to Future Tech or you may  run out of advances to research (which creates some problems). However, if you have  multiple branches that could be a problem. The solution is simply to use GiveTechnology  to ensure that everyone can research future tech eventually.

In Invasion Earth, the humans can take the direct path to Future Tech, as it depends  on Energy Harness [Cst] and Edge of Tomorrow [Chi]. The aliens, on the other hand,  can't ever reach Edge of Tomorrow. So what I did was include a GiveTechnology event  that gives them the Edge of Tomorrow advance when they discover Adv. Alien Tech [Che]. Viola! They can now get Future Technology.


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== Special Effects ==
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Many technologies have game effects that are not obvious or not clearly documented,  so you need to be careful about what advance you use for what purpose. I usually  mark off a few of them with *'s right from the start to ensure that I don't mistakenly  use one for one of my technologies by mistake. Here is a list of the special effects for  various technologies, quoted directly from Leon Marrick's paper:

* <font color="#008080">Automobile</font> works with <font color="#008080">Electronics</font> to change city pictures to the  modern style. 
* <font color="#008080">Bridge Building</font> allows settlers/engineers to construct roads in river 
squares. 
* <font color="#008080">Ceremonial Burial</font> allows temples to make one person content.  Without this advance, temples have no effect. 
* <font color="#008080">Construction</font> allows the building of Fortresses. 
* <font color="#008080">Communism</font> reduces the effectiveness of Cathedrals, makes more  partisans appear. [Ed. Note: Also the only advance that allows the  Communist government.] 
* <font color="#008080">Democracy</font> allows Courthouses to make one content citizen happy.  [Ed. Note: Also the only advance that allows the Democracy  government.] 
* <font color="#008080">Electronics</font> improves the effectiveness of Coliseums, and works with  Automobile to change city pictures to the modern style. 
* <font color="#008080">Fusion Power</font> makes Nuclear Plants entirely safe and adds 25% to spaceship  thrust 
* <font color="#008080">Guerrilla Warfare</font> makes a civilization much more difficult to conquer,  since all captured cities henceforth produce many more partisans (note  that other techs allow a few partisans to appear). Allocate with care; a  civilization representing a state with no popular support should likely not  have this advance. 
* <font color="#008080">Gunpowder</font> sells all barracks, and increases their maintenance cost by  one. [Ed. Note: Also, all units in the slots to the left of Musketeers go  obsolete, except settlers and engineers. They cannot be built anymore  even if nothing explicitly made them obsolete!] 
* The <font color="#008080">Industrialization</font> advance changes city pictures to the industrial  style. 
* Give a civilization <font color="#008080">Invention</font>, and they will not gain advances from  goody boxes. 
* <font color="#008080">Map Making</font> allows you to exchange maps with computer players if  they also have this advance. 
* <font color="#008080">Mobile Warfare</font> sells all barracks, and increases their maintenance  cost by one (this adds to Gunpowder's effect, not replaces it). 
* <font color="#008080">Monotheism</font> allows Cathedrals to make three people content. Without  Monotheism, cathedrals have no effect. 
* <font color="#008080">Mysticism</font> improves the effectiveness of temples. 
* The <font color="#008080">Nuclear Power</font> tech allows ships to move one extra square. 
* Both <font color="#008080">Navigation</font> and <font color="#008080">Seafaring</font> reduce the chances of triremes  floundering. 
* <font color="#008080">Philosophy</font> grants a free advance to the first civ that discovers it. 
* <font color="#008080">Radio</font> allows settlers/engineers to construct airbases. 
* <font color="#008080">Railroad</font> allows settlers/engineers to build railroads. All city squares  are upgraded to railroad. 
* The <font color="#008080">Refrigeration</font> advance instantly improves all city squares to  farmland, and makes it possible to double-irrigate land. 
* <font color="#008080">Theology</font> improves the effectiveness of Cathedrals. 
* <font color="#008080">Trade</font> makes it possible to discover what cities want what trade goods.  

[Ed Note: Fundamentalism, The Republic, Monarchy likewise allow their respective government forms. See the page on [[Fantastic Worlds Advance Slot Properties]]]


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== Tricks with People and Cities ==
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Notice that the Industrial cities and people appear only once you discover  Industrialization, and Modern cities and people appear once you discover Electronics  and Automobile. So, if you give players these technologies you can control what their cities and people look like. I did this with Invasion Earth. The humans have Automobile  and Electronics (though under another name) and so their cities use the modern style  and you see the modern human faces I put in to people.gif. The aliens don't have  either of these techs or Industrialization, so they appear as aliens with alien cities. You may want to look at both of these art files to see what I did.

People / citizen images may also be amended by providing 'Philosophy' and 'Invention' (or the advances in these two slots), in order to change from the Ancient to the Renaissance styles <font color="gray">[Ed: Thanks to Ithil for highlighting this]</font>.


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== Concluding Remarks: Part II of the Tutorial ==
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This part of the tutorial covers tricks with the tech tree and has some thoughts on tech  trees that are partially interconnected. It finishes the main part of the Advanced Tech  Tree Tutorial. I may have a Part III at some point covering branchiness theory, but it  will likely appear both here and on the upcoming Call to Power SLeague area as it  applies generally to any Civ-like game that uses technology trees.

If you have any questions or find errors in this guide, please email me. This is a long  guide and there are bound to be typos and small glitches that need to be fixed.

Thanks  and keep on Civin'!

<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">[[File:sl_ttree2_backto1.png|link=Advanced Tech' Tree Design - Part One|Advanced Tech' Tree Design - Part One]]</div>