A Complaint Against Tech Trees

[Rex Germanius]

Since Empire: TW, the ghastly, if not highly unrepresentative, spectre of tech trees has plagued the Total War series, resulting in pre-determined, unimaginative and thoroughly unrealistic research methods. Just click on the next slot in a tech queue and in a few turns, abracadabra, a new ability or bonus magically opens up! The abstract nature of tech trees ignores the influence of real-world discoveries on R&D yet fails to do justice to the theoretical work of scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Pure research doesn't conform easily to a time-table and certainly not one as uniform as a tech tree. Basically, despite game designers blustering to the opposite, tech trees increase the gamey-ness of a title.

Superior methods, naturally, exist. I propose that technological development actually be impacted by diffusion of knowledge across factions, repetitive actions by characters, or Legions, given the new trait focus, and even some academic research. Adoption of a technology can be represented using the trait system.

Information disseminated by contact, through trade or war. New ideas flowed across cultural and political boundaries. In a campaign, continued contact with a faction, namely fighting them, obtaining trade rights or allying with them, allows the swap of technologies. Consistently completing a task gradually improves efficiency and efficacy: practice makes perfect, after all. Routinely besiege cities and siege ability should increase. Finally, establishing a school or academy concentrates the brightest minds of the ancient world, thus expediting technological development. Possibly, allowing the player to pick a focus, ie siege, naval, land warfare, to guide the academy is admissible.

The trends are against this idea but hopefully Rome II will actually be the groundbreaking, revolutionary game advertised online.

[Ichon]

Yes, I understand some difference of opinions can exist where some people want 'tech' gains to have an investment cost and not just arrive for free or at least some tension where player chooses to get some part of the tree but loses another part. ETW made choice of econ buildings or universities while Shogun 2 also offers that choice in even more factors with castles, temples, libraries, agents, etc contributing to research.

Personally I prefer more holistic approach where tech advances are relatively random with different civilizations having higher chances in certain specialties, however the advances can then be spread by trade contact but to implement the advance has a cost. Sure Romans might learn better naval tech from captured Carthaginian ships but if they want to make such advances into their own fleet they either have to rebuild their fleet or pay a very large 1 time cost to change current ships into new type (refit). Romans might find Hispanic infantry techs useful but have to pay to refit their legions to carry gladius. To me this would fit into idea of different factions having a specialty- not so much obvious as in Shogun 2 where some factions start with special buildings that gives advantages but just in a proclivity to acquire certain techs first.

If you as a player want to have Germans advancing with siege artillery instead of researching a couple techs you would have to make sure to have trade contacts with those factions most likely to develop those techs first and then pay to implement them(siege buildings, etc). To ensure early as possible trade contacts then German player might have to unite German tribes very quickly and advance into Illyria to get contact with Mediterranean/Greek factions whose specialty is siege techs.

[Lord Baal]

I'm too against tech trees, I find them boring, repetitive, unnatural, uncreative, unrealistic, in the case of TW games ahistorical, illogical... and I'm sure I could find 100 faults more about them. But what else do we have? Sure, we could tie the technologies to creation dates in the game, or in the case of the ones we don't know about its creation the first historical record of it. That would be the most realistic thing to do, but it would be too inflexible and would be equally repetitive and boring after a few turns, unless is a modeable characteristic.

I have developed an idea for technology progression that goes a bit far beyond tying the tech to dates, and here it is:

I tend to feel tech development in the way it is now, using "trees", is to rigid and false. If it depended upon my choice, the tech tree and the X amount of turns to develop X tech will be gone forever, for all games. I think that as in real life, the "tech tree" should be more organic, along the lines of what you do on regular basis. You siege a lot? You get better at it, by let's say accumulating points after each siege (successful or not), once a certain amount of points are reached you get a upgrade regarding siege warfare. And so on. On the other hand building a lot of ports for example could increase your naval tech, as well as naval battles and do trade by sea.

Other way of acquiring tech would be by trade. But not in screen trade of tech. That was never part of a real diplomacy reunion, but by civil commerce. You know those guys over there have really nice agricultural tools, if you open trading with them then your people will eventually buy those tools and eventually start to copy them and produce them by their own.

And finally by conquest, if you conquer X city or nation you can get some or all the techs that this culture had and you don't (that's how Romans roll anyway). Other more specific "techs" like the Marian Reform could be combination of your actions and dates or places on the map. An example as Rome could be that you should get the gladius after fighting against Iberian troops (or anyone that have that sword) for the first time.

In this way tech would be developed according to your real needs, as perceived by the game. Just as in real life tech was improved upon the needs of a nation/army/group of people/profession/whatever. For those that wonder what use would have "research buildings" then? I think that given certain amount of progress you could build academies, schools or whatever for scholars/scientists to increase the rhythm at which you develop new tech and even to pop up some random tech unrelated to what you are doing from time to time to reflect independent researches.

[Lockcaps]

In one of the first interviews CA said they were considering changing the way techs work abit - you'd be able to "aquire" tech from, for example, being exposed to certain nations. The example in the article was that if you play as the Romans and invade Germany, you'd get the Gladius before it was invented historically.

[Ticklestick]

I think it was spain, not germany, but I remember it as well. Who do we invade for flaming pigs though?

[emperor77]

+1
I am also against tech trees as they are represented in Warscape games thus far.

[MonkeyD]

I grew up playing the civilization series so I was rather happy when total war got tech tree. I really enjoyed Shogun 2 and especially FOTS because of the bonuses that add up and the feeling of having an edge against your rivals.

I hope for Rome 2 they bring it back, FOR SCIENCE!

[Humble Warrior]

I`ve played Civ 1 and upwards plus other games with tech trees and while I`ve just accepted it, i always found them somewhat strange, I won`t even use the term unrealistic, although it`s that too. what concerned me...

1. How do we know exactly where we`re going to end up with? Especially way down several techs? We wouldn`t.

2. How did we even know about this tech that we haven`t actually invented yet?

It just seems to me that unless we stole the idea for an already invented tech, we should only know generally what that Tech\ability MIGHT do. That armor might protect better than ever before, that machine might throw missiles further and even use fire. But we won`t know until we see if it can be built and work.

There should not be future Tech trees, just starting `Ideas` and `Present` tech trees that are being worked on, leading to... something hopefully what we want.

So, if I want to learn the Testudo for my troops. I should start on an `Idea` which would be `discipline` and `shield` combo maybe, then focus on them until something like the Testudo pops up. But I would never see the Testudo as an ability until it was actually near completion, like 80% complete. So at 80% it would appear in the Tech tree. This would represent the idea becoming reality. this could also slightly reveal other possible tech `ideas` that could to something else, but you would have to get your `scientist` to start researching it to find out what it might lead to.

I suppose the downside for many would be, they wouldn`t really know what they were making and every `Idea` might lead to a tech they didn`t want (or even nothing at all, back to the drawing board), but perhaps this could be supported by ideas traded or captured from rival cities?

[MonkeyD]

I`ve played Civ 1 and upwards plus other games with tech trees and while I`ve just accepted it, i always found them somewhat strange, I won`t even use the term unrealistic, although it`s that too. what concerned me...

1. How do we know exactly where we`re going to end up with? Especially way down several techs? We wouldn`t.

2. How did we even know about this tech that we haven`t actually invented yet?

It just seems to me that unless we stole the idea for an already invented tech, we should only know generally what that Tech\ability MIGHT do. That armor might protect better than ever before, that machine might throw missiles further and even use fire. But we won`t know until we see if it can be built and work.

Yea I absolutely agree it's unrealistic, but I see it more for the players benefit to be able to choose which tech to research. I'm all for more realism but I certainly would be upset if an army is about march on my settlement and I'm really banking on that new wall defense tech and instead get a message saying we now figured out crop rotation. Players should be able to research tech to fit their play style.

Since it's still early in development I'm confident we can let CA know how they can make research and tech more interesting, but I don't think we should can the idea.

[Lord Baal]

The fact is that a lot of things, like tactics (testudo and anti-pachyderm torched bacon units) didn't came about from a development process involving anything like we would recognize as researching. Instead they where born out of ingenuity on the battlefield.

For example, imagine the Romans never where defeated by elephants a single time. I don't know, imagine they used a lot of archers or dug traps or something else effectively against them, maybe they would never see the need to set pigs on fire against elephants in the first place. So such units only should become available after you actually encountered enemies fielding elephants and perhaps only you are not able to defeat them after a few skirmishes.

As far as Shogun, a lot of those "tech" actually felt like simply government decisions instead of new developments, more fit for a check box screen like the one of the bylaws of Sim City than actually academic or field development process.

Also, tech trees generally chain you to a single field at the time, which honestly is pretty lame.

The only tech tree I have enjoyed as a player is the one from Space Empires V, that if that could be called tech tree in the first time. It was simple and effective. You had research points, gained each turn depending on how many academic installations you had. Then there where fields, a lot of fields ranging from basic ones like Maths, Physics and Biology to specific things like Shields, Armor and Engines development. You could assign any percentage of research to any field you wanted to, as little as 1% for 100 fields if you wanted. And then some fields where opened as you progressed, for example the fighters field were opened once you where at certain level in the ship engineering one. And from there specific components, ships, buildings and such where available. For example, in order to have X super advanced engine you needed level 50 on physics, level 25 on propulsion, level 46 on energy and so on. It was rather organic, if a little convoluted once you opened sufficient fields, but the possibility divide your efforts up to 100 individual fields compensated that.

Also, unless you look upon the rather large manual about what was needed for what you'll never new what you needed for a component, or better said, you never new where a field will take you, or what technologies will come from it, at least the first time you played the game. However it still followed the X turns remaining to get to level Y on the field Z. But there was a mod that somewhat eliminated this by randomly changing the amount of turns remaining, each turn, sometimes making a brilliant breakthrough that would up you several levels on the field at once, or simply delaying the research, a lot.

[Lockcaps]

I'd like to see more "military" dilemmas, that allows you to pick one out of two random techs - and the one you don't pick won't ever become available again. So it should be an important decision - and the techs should be very powerful.

Example:
Rome : Infantry Wedge formation(massively increases attack against enemies from the front but reduces defense) OR Advanced flaming ammunition(Catapult "fireballs" set an area on fire making it impassable)
Something like that.

[Sir. Cunningham]

Technological development depends on great minds and money, simple as that. So obviously pouring money into educational & scientific institutions (if you even have such institutions) is the way forward if you want is a nation which is ahead technologically. And the Romans certainly were ahead of the rest in this derpartment, from around 150 BC onwards, taking over from the Greeks.

[Lockcaps]

Well, atleast factions will have different techtrees now. That's a start atleast.

[Lord Baal]

Monkey, if an army is marching towards your town and you haven't still figured out how to build a wall/better wall then you are toasted!
But I get what you say. And exactly that's why you should gain tech as you progress in game. You defend a lot and survive to tell the tale, then you get better defenses faster than other factions that are not costumed to defend.