In my opinion, the biggest issue in War of Magic is game pace. Some things we can improve. We can speed up the early game, we can even out the progression of spells, armor and weapons so it doesn’t feel like they obsolete older versions too quickly, but are still worthwhile upgrades. But the tech system is a giant pace imposing beast that cannot be avoided.
Which is unfortunate, because conceptually I like the tech system in War of Magic. It fits with the rule of 5, and I’ve been using the “breakthrough provides random options” in other parts of the game to provide some design consistency and make the systems feel like they all belong to the same game.
The big problem with the system is that there are 5 tech categories and the research cost of a tech is determined by how many techs you know in that category. The more Military techs you know, the more the next Military tech you are about to learn will cost. The reason for this is that since the player picks the tech after research is done, the game doesn’t know what they are going to research until it’s over. So it can’t have tech specific research costs.
We thought about a lot of ways to improve this and keep the current system. What if we have the tech’s research cost go toward the next tech? What if we have the tech cost be the highest amount and then allow the player to recover research they don’t spend? What if we give an option when the player has enough research to discovered one tech but he can choose to continue researching to get to others?
But in the end they were all flawed and too confusing. So we got out the torch, some kindling and marshmellows and said goodbye.
Then we made the Fallen Enchantress tech tree which includes the following.
1. Tech screen- A tech tree screen where players can plan out their research goals. Distant techs can be selected and the game will automatically queue up the research path to get there.
2. Tech based research costs- Now we can have the best armor tech in the game cost much more than the first weapon tech (previously if they were both the 6th military tech you picked they would cost the same amount).
3. Allegiance prereqs- Techs that are only available for certain allegiances, so even though there is only one tech tree in Fallen Enchantress the Empire and Fallen have different branches to follow. In general kingdoms have extra defensive military techs and empires have extra sorcery techs. There are civilization techs that are unique to each, the kingdoms get cooperation which leads to resources that improve their population growth and the empire get Domination which allows them to work their people to death. (we may update this to allow race specific techs for modders)
4. Random techs- Some techs have a percentage chance of showing up for a player in a game. Every time you start a game your tech tree will be slightly different. You may start a game and have masterwork armor as a tech in your tech tree (25% per game) that you can research at some point to be able to craft better armor for your armies. You may have a tech that allows you to recruit some unusual creatures. Some that grant access to spells that aren’t normally available, etc. This is one of my favorite features because I enjoy looking at my tech tree at the beginning of my game to find out what options are out there. It may change my research plans, it’s like dynamic faction strengths. You may play the Ironeers over again, but in one game they have 3 extra military techs, in another they have an extra adventuring and sorcery tech, etc.
5. Autolayout- The tech tree draws itself and its lines automatically. This was needed because the tech tree will be different every time, so it must be able to lay itself out programmatically. The good news for modders is that they can add techs to their hearts content and they will be automatically added to the tree right where they belong.
6. Cross category prereqs- Techs that require techs in other categories. You can’t rush to big weapons in Fallen Enchantress like you can in War of Magic. You need some civilization techs (blacksmithing) before you will be able to produce metal weapons and armor. You need Literacy in the civilization category before you can learn the adventure tech Ereog’s Journals.
Won’t don’t techs do now? They don’t spawn resources, monsters (monster get tougher over time, but it doesn’t matter what techs you research) or champions (though it takes techs to recruit them). In general everything is on the map at the beginning of the game.
We will talk about the world later, but this is a part of the new design. Explore the world, because you have to find out what’s out there, it isn’t going to be given to you as you research techs. If you don’t have metal near your starting location you may need to find someone to kill to take it (or look into the other 4 ways to control the world). You can’t always come into the game with a plan, you have to adapt a plan based on your starting condition. Techs are a big part of that.
Only from the prespective of comptitive MP players, who are a very small minority of less than 1%. Most MP players here want to play something that is fun as a SP game.
And in that situation Cracker COL would be worth a shot with AM Mines or Leap Mines, and Hivers and Humans have good chances for those techs. And you could go for their planets with Siege Drivers or Node Missles. The chance of having nothing exists, but is very low.
It is researching up a branch and finding it is a dead end that is more of a problem, which is why I suggested the ability to launch a special progect to find out what will be possible later on. Ultimately the main thing is a tree that is 'fixed' from turn 1 onwards is not intersting, therefore it should be possible to have some suprises either by hiding random techs or by having in game events that can make additional techs availible (such as quests and adventure locations).
This. Even of those of us who want workable MP want something closer to SP and not a mirrored/nerfed game to suit competitive random MP. There's several issues to look at when it comes to fully randomized tech, but MP isn't one of them.
The surrender machanic is not in yet.
And with how XP works, larger armies means more elite troops faster. And more armies also helps get XP faster as long as there are plenty of enemies to fight. And the so-called 'healing' in the game is so slow large quanities of lesser troops will win out in the long run as they will wear your troops down (last I checked high level troops just had more HP which only makes it harder to kill your troops off).
They might be made into equalizers, but for now they are not worth mentioning as such.
Yes, I completely agreed with that post, so I should give it a too.
Best regards,Steven.
Can we PLEASE get an option to turn random techs off so their ALWAYS there, I hate this in Sword of the Stars and I really don't want to see it without the OPTION to turn it off.
If they put in the time to do random techs right (as in, it is actually worth mentioning that there are random techs), then it should not be possible to turn it off (in the unmodded game). If they can be turned off in vanilla, then it was not worth spending time on them.
You seem to be talking about some kind of SotS style random tree, which is not what we're getting. We're getting a fixed tech tree with some random stuff tossed in, and since the tree can auto-connect things as added making a "no random" option is actually really easy. Either use a fixed seed so you get the same "random" tree every time (which winds up being not random by definition) or in the not-random version just enable everything.
You could still do it even in a more heavily randomized system by simply hard coding what you want it to generate with "random" off.
I do not believe in 'sort of' doing things, and I would think after E:WoM they would not either.
I have the strong suspicion that each tech will have a moddable XML tag that defines the liklihood that it shows up. Therefore, with a minimal amount of work, we will be able to have it both ways. IMO, this is a nonissue.
Paradox games: Europa Universalis, Victoria, Crusader King, HoI, etc. In them, being bigger is better very often too, but it's not the sure death sentence like in most civ-alikes.
There is a very neat mechanic for that in Europa Universalis. You have a stability number (from -3 to +3, giving significant bonus and malus to all aspects of ones Empire plus it heavily influences the revolt risk).
Declaring war against a friendly neighbour then gives you -1 stability for no casus belli, -2 for attacking a friendly state. Such a hit to your stability then can easily mean empire wide revolts, large money losses (iirc +3 gives 30% bonus production, -3 gives -30% production penalty), lower fighting efficiency of ones troops, etc. If you repeat that then and land on -3, it can easily mean, that you'll spend the next ingame years trying to recover from that, or even lose parts of your Empire to revolutions. Increasing one's stability takes time and lots of money.
In other words, stability describes the internal stability of an Empire, which is a very good mechanism to simulate populations. For example, making harsh changes in one's politics can mean a hit to stability. Declaring wars against friends harms it. Losing a war? Big hit to stability. Espionage can lead to a stability hit as can diplomatic blunders. On the other hand, wise decisions, good economic sucess, etc. can lead to an increase. Ie. you do unpopular stuff, you lose, you do popular stuff, you gain.
Another idea from another Paradox game, Victoria. In that game, you have a literacy rate. Depending on that percentage, you got a big bonus to research or a lower one or none (it's granular). As a small state, you could easily increase your literacy rate to the high nineties. As a big, expanding empire though, conquering illiterate indigenous people your literacy always stayed low and increasing it to high numbers would have cost twice or thrice your yearly income per year. Thus, as a small state, you could focus on literacy and research almost as fast as some bigger, but illiterate, empires.
I always liked those two solutions to easy war and easy research, since they give an easy metric to gauge why and how one can improve, instead of diminishing returns as seen in the older civ titles with corruption or the prestige penalty in WoM.
B-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l!
Oh how I'd love research with imaginitive and intricate details, descriptions and flavour. You research large smelters or use fire magic for steel production. Illusion not only gives spells but helps with diplomacy. Water mills? We have wind mills and wind magic! Who builds walls when one can grow one through earth magic. My Empire's sorcerers have researched five old languages (bonus to magic research) but also invented a new way to cast magic through song, which coincidentally also boosted singing to a high art form, pleasing the bored nobility. Or whatever, I'm not good at it, but LightofAbraxas is.
Kaleb, hire that guy to develop the individual techs!
Great info Vandenburg, and some good solutions.
I agree, that's a fantastic idea. It's simple and would fit very well with the Elemental world.
I disagree with only one of these things, and that is that I think that all of those ideas are great. Especially the forgotten languages. You could even tie these into the old empires and give bonuses/unlock techs based on the game-world lore. Not that I have any idea what these would be specifically... maybe someone who's read the book would have some idea.
Regardless, now that we have an actual tech 'tree' (or trees, I guess), I hope that the developers will consider taking a look at this. Don't make me beg!
I like the idea of researching old languages and having them unlock technology and magic paths that date from an age long past. Perhaps, you recover an ancient tome of magic and can't use it until the ancient language can be translated.
Yeah, I do have to say, though, that I have the sinking feeling that Stardock is past the design phase, where something like this is open to change, and into the implementation phase. So... I'm really not holding my breath that we'll see anything like a re-imagined tech tree.
All I really hope for at this point is a flexible enough end-user modding system so that I can take a stab at this, myself.
Or also, you can make it a way to differentiate factions / sovereigns. When creating a faction / sovereign, the ability to know the tech tree (or at least several levels of it) could be one of the items the player could pick. And for players who choose to be "blind researchers" there could be special buildings/researches/spells that enhance their visibility of the tech tree.
Hmm thoughts
1. Random techs have worked fine.. As far back as Moo, so dont quite understand those who are arguing random techs will be a disaster.
2. That said I agree random can be in degrees.. from super random where every game you can mostly diff techs , or where most games you have the same majority of techs with some minor changes.. again if tech, chances of appearing can be modded, feel free to set it from 0-100% for it.
3. Modding means you can mod in serious game changing tech if you like
4. This whole view everything at the beginning vs limited vision.....
Limited vision is more complicated and perhaps more fun? Plus if is built-in, modders can have a field day with it.
But FE has a lot of depth now (can't be said of EWOM), so I am okay if it is random but view everything at start.
Very silly thoughts.
I like random. Anything to make a new play interesting and different from the last tim eI played is good.
WRT balancing random techs and restarting to get "good" techs:
Instead of only having the option to assign a prerequisite tech A to get tech B,how about a "mutually exclusive prerequisite"?
When you have Cool_Weapon_3 tech, Cool_Armour_2 tech is never ever in the mix.
That gives you considerably more freedon to balance random tech trees because you can design 2 equally desireable "branches" which are then mutually exclusive.
With standalone techs only, it's a simple decision for the player. Have Cool_Tech_7 on the list? Yes / no?
An (small) branch spawned by a random tech could make up for the undesireable bit by including a yummy civilisation tech...
To avoid stacking certain boni / techs to high hells, mutually exclusive techs (and branches) would allow techs that achieved the same thing with a different method.You wouldn't want the player to have both methods available so only one of them is possible.
Or even just have a +/- to the chance of other techs being available
if you research nature magic you get a - chance to research fire magic, but a + chance to more nature magic (cumulative based on certain techs - perhaps even discount to research costs)
That combined with multiple tech requirements could lead to a very interesting tech experience
e.g. Walls need either Basic construction OR Earth magic
Forge steel weapons need either Blacksmith OR Fire Magic
Yes, please put mutual exclusivity into the mix, or RFHolloway's suggestion, certainly for techs and for many other parts of the game would be fantastic! It has been missing a lot in WoM, and having it at least in FE would make such a big difference to modding too.
I don't know how the tree is structured (or automatically generated) internally so the "mutually exclusive" is more an intention.
Could also be 2 techs of which one is always "in", the other is not.These could then open into completely alternative branches.
Lonely random techs sprinkled into the tree are a neat gimmick but don't really allow for change.They only allow for additional tech, not alternative tech.
With alternative tech, you can balance them easier because you know that the player will get "a" tech at this place in the tree.They, plus eventual additional tech that spawns off them, could then be comparable in overall power but with different angles.
Complete randomnes is nice - in principle - but pre-programmed pathing alternatives offer far more room for creative solutions.
I agree.
As far as a tech tree. I did like your Galactic Civilization 2 game. And how you color coded the different types of tech. I found it easy to read.
Haha little mob of sycophants at thread start (ups, sorry, ah, "respected customers") and to the end of thread it gradually improves - ppl from civfanatics came, i guess
Yes, very reasonable approach - loot tree from Civ and do not bother further. Then loot unstable techs from SotS. Also quite reasonable. So why not take this approach further and also rip something from DS? Namely, activity-based progression. If you draft lots of settlers ("here's a backpack and a shovel, now gtfo Capitol, taxation in two weeks") - it contributes towards expansion tree, if hex and curse left and right - High School of Control&Manipulation Magicks gets a boost, and so on.
Small vs large - historically, there are areas of research ir- and relevant towards size of dominion. Mass production of nuclear cruisers and wizard ...ing in his tower. In "Atlantis" PbEM game there is a concept of "wizard faction" - bunch of 'beings' who wanders around, researches some uber tricks and cares not about widespread "land, moar land!!!" obsession. Who bothers, gets Word of Power: STFU. So small territorially holdings may still have uber Sovereign of Sheogh the Lesser - or not. And be simply the yet-not-absorbed plots of timid weaklings. Yes, concept of "wandering mage" should be playable i suppose.
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