So I was reading Frogboy's tech thread and was excited about the prospect of "hidden techs," so I've detailed an idea for the emmergence of hiddens techs.
I think the likelihood of a player getting a hidden tech should be contingent on the the player taking part in the activity of which the tech would be found. In other words, you are more likely to get more hidden techs related to woodworking if you are an empire that employs a lot of wood working, more likely to get more hidden techs related to alchemy if you use a lot of alchemy, etc. Besides, it would be silly to gain the "Alchemist's Fire" hidden tech if you don't have an Alchemy infrastructer. First, because it makes logical sense that a civilization that uses something a lot will innovate more with it too and; second, you wouldn't have the infrastructure to put it to good use otherwise.
I think that hidden techs should have certain triggers that raise the probability of them being visible and researchable by the player. These triggers could be almost anything. Hidden triggers could be anything from certain buildings that you own, to soldier types that you employ, to dungeons that you've romped, or the number of times you've cast spells from a certain school. Modders could create thousands of hidden techs which could have any kind of effect on the game with virtually any trigger.
For instance, there might be a hidden tech called "Iron Wood Spears" which has a 1 percent chance of appearing at a specified point on the research tree for every lumber mill that you control. In the above case, there might be a total X number of hidden techs in the game, some of which might be discovered by two or three or four different sovereigns and some never at all during the span of the game (if not many people build Scholar's Guilds--- which is the trigger for "Dancing Quills"--- it's unlikely anyone will discover the hidden techs that uses a Scholar's Guild as a trigger.)
And while you may have gotten 1 hidden tech opened to you at that specific junction of the tech tree, you might have missed 10 others.
Another twist might be that only 1 sovereign might be able to get a specific special tech. It would work by counting up the total number of triggers currently in the game from all opponents, (let's say in this case lumber mills) calculate the percentage that each sovereign has and then distribute the tech to one of those sovereigns, with higher percentages attracting higher odds of being the recipient.
Hmmm. I like the general idea, but again the chance element needs some tweaking.
Hearts of Iron 2 did something along those lines, unlocking further research at random after you'd completed a certain amount of prerequisite research.
I like the idea... one way of implimenting that would be a seperate infrastructure tech for each building, the more buildings the more advanced that particular infrastructure tech is... with lv 1,2,3,4 all giving you a slightly larger % chance to gain the techs dependant on it. As well as that at key landmarks like 5 mines, 10 farms those could unlock a tech for the first person to gain them (free for the first person, researched for others)
So maybe you could gain "Iron Wood Spears" either free after being the first person to have 5 lumbermills, have a % chance per turn of unlocking (maybe a passive increase of RP per turn to lumber tech?) it or only be able to research it after you have at least one lumbermill. or the number of lumbermills in your control could be a cost modifier to the research.
Perhaps the building requirements could go further, if you lose your lumbermills you can't research any tech linked to lumbermills (or the % modifier is set to 200% cost) and some more advanced building options are lost, no archers or tier 3 buildings - some way to stop someone spamming first farms, then lumbermills then mines just for the free techs/bonus to hidden tech discovery.
I think however it's done it would be best if the mundane techs made sense, in civ 4 researching fishing when you're deep inland with no water around or alpha centauri when you could research fungus techs on a map with no fungus... I did like the tech system in alpha centauri though, really well done with the voiceovers and quotes as well as colour coded topics with only a little confusing requirements for certain techs. It did have the blind research option which I think would be a nice thing to include.
Yes, I agree that if you focus on a particular avenue of strategy (and im not talking about "we build only the best" kind of strategy, but a specific decision to focus economy/tactics upon a certain terrain or behaviour) then you should get rewarded for speicalizing, instead of penalized for not considering a more broad focus.
For instance, you can gain acess to extra specials if you focus on a certain avenue (mountaineering, Desert Warfare, Ski-Troops, Jungle Medicines, Horsebackriding) although you cannot simply gain different specials for switching emphasis throughout the game.
Your entire empire really needs to center around a certain way of life to get access to any of the good specials (or simply any specials at all) ...
This is why I think starting location should have alot of influencing power. You get a basic tech, like Bare-back riding, Mountaneering, Jungle Lore, Winterborne, Desert Nomad ... or some such ... a basic starting tech that you can only get by starting near the relevant resource or in the relavant terrain, and the more extreme your starting position the better your chances of getting the techs. Meanwhile, others without said essential tech can try to delve laterally into the "specialty" tech-tree in order to get a select few, limited techs to try and combat your specialty, but they will be looking at at least 3x the expense (if at all, for instance it might switch to that after a few defeats by your desert bandits, or they might organically switch to some "other" counter if it even exists, say vs horses, although desert is a hard thing to combat against)
Meanwhile, you have a whole tree of specials and randoms, which may or may not be in that particular game, and then you deal with the cards you are dealt with within your specialty.
Upon researching such a key "situational" tech, it opens up its own slot in the tech interface ... its own section, at least if its terrain based. If its simply better archers or horses, it will simply make those techs more likely to appear. Its key though that the player at no time knows the name of the tech they are researching (until the end when they get a title and a description below - perhaps vaguely telling what this could lead to potentially) and also that the User not simply "train three at once" but assign various percentages to each of the 5 or so "specialty" classes. I would say 5 basic, and then a 6th open slot in-case you gain a Terrain Specialty, or some other Key Situational Tech (perhaps based upon Starting Location).
At first you have to divide from a total of 100%, but perhaps with innovations in Education, instead of the old system, you will get more % points to distribute along the tech tree. I don't think Education should be infinite though ... I think maybe 100%->110%->125%->145%->170%->200% ... and for 200% to be the maximum for distribution. Also, you can invest no more than 100% in a single specialty, OR any % points past 100 are used up at only 50% efficiency ... so if you maxed out your education, and spend 200 points on military, it will only be 150 points per turn.
And these % points are all percentages of your total research value. So one faction could be specializing in Acadamies and Schools (Education) in order to maximize the percentage of research (to get "double" efficiency), and others could invest in Labratories, Experimentation, Field Expeditions, Research (like the rainforest bonus) ... to boost raw research capabilities. Of course most nations will probably want to increase their percentage AND their raw research mining, although I would like to see research separate from Economy, unlike Civ 4 ... so that you can have a booming economy, able to by SOOO much equipment ... and yet you did not try to boost percentage usage (teaching the young), or boost raw research mining (enable the Intellectuals to experiment with Nature ... and possibly unsuspecting Citizenns, or rare tropical medicines) ... then you will not gain new technologies at much speed, but you can pay off bandits, Mercenaries ... and Great Works to help your building projects and recruitment projects, or what-not (but they will most likely be "inferior" troops)
I really like all these ideas. It seems like this method of research will allow each empire to have a really unique feel, something that 4X games have usually missed the mark on.
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