Twilight of the Arnor: Technology Tree Concepts

Published on September 17, 2007 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

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.

Comments (Page 2)

Chrominium

on Sep 18, 2007

Looks great! Adds more favour, although I can imagine it being more difficult to balance, although I have never one to care about balance too much.

What happens when you overtake a planet with a certain building/resource you don't normally get? ie Slave Pit.

JamesACG

on Sep 18, 2007

Sounds like an awful lot to balance in time for the release!

Raknor

on Sep 18, 2007

Sounds like an awful lot to balance in time for the release!

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...

Anyhow, let's wait and see. Who cares about perfect balance as long as it's fun to play

dthif1980

on Sep 18, 2007

Certain tech trees will prohibit certain techs from being able to be traded. The diplomacy screen will be updated to make it a lot easier to know what different techs do.

Thanks for the answer! Looking forward to try that!

One-Eye

on Sep 18, 2007

This idea may complicate things for custom races, but . . .

What if "branches" of the tech trees were available for personality choices or ability enhancements? Then, someone designing a custom race would end up with a custom tech tree rather than a "forced" tree from a competitor race. A warrior race would have more weapon techs; A diplomat race would have more influence techs. A player choosing economic and social enhancements would gain branches that follow that line; a player choosing exploration and colonization enhancements would gain those branches.

This may be too much to ask, but it would seem truly to customize the race fully rather than copy an AI tree and be tracked in that race's footsteps, so to speak!

tickhromeroi

on Sep 18, 2007

Looks really interesting. Espionage and Trading ought to produce some neat tricks from this. Game balance must have been tough to maintain.

Morberis

on Sep 18, 2007

I love it! If I hadn't pre-ordered already I'd be sorely tempted to do so now.

MarvinKosh

on Sep 18, 2007

I love it! This puts into practise the idea that alien races do things differently, like in most sci-fi. I just hope that this extends to ship/fleet combat too, because as you noted above these changes affect the type of ships that civs are going to make. For example when the Torians make cheap ships, those ships are going to have to create a lot of bang for buck or they're not cheap

Wyndstar

on Sep 18, 2007

Wow, this is a great change. Seems those all lab/stock market with no morale building strategies are going to be a little less optimized under the new system. Which is a good thing. Nothing is more fun than having to develop new strategies.

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?

Thanks for the info!

- Wyndstar

thehandofzarquon

on Sep 18, 2007

Wow, when I read that you were adding in race-specific tech trees, I thought it would just be an extra branch or two on the normal tech tree.... but it looks like each race's entire tech tree is going to be very different from every other race's. And it also looks like many of these new techs are also going to be truly unique things, not just XML numbers... which is quite excellent, I must say.

That said, there are some questions I have:

1. How are the government techs going to be handled? Since the new tech trees look to be modifying the tech tree based on the race's culture and overall personality... does that mean that each race in turn is going to have at least differently named government techs?

2. Since it looks like you are changing the Yor heavily towards being completely machine-like... does that mean they will have an easier time researching the colonization techs? Similarly, what about the rest of the Xeno Biology tree? Same effects, just different names or just entirely the same?

3. The biggest problem I see with the new tech trees is the problem of how different races interact on one world... with the old GalCiv 2 tree, it was easily waived since the techs were focused on accommodating all xeno-lifeforms rather than an individual race. This seems like it should only be a problem with the Yor, although the Kyrnn and Thalans could have this issue (and Drengin/Korath, but hey, they just enslave/exterminate (respectively) other races anyway, so it's not as much of an issue there

)...

More of a conceptual/suspension of belief issue, than a gameplay one, although, it could easily become a gameplay issue at some point later down the line...

4. Not a unique question, to be sure, but how are custom races going to be handled? Given the way these new trees are being designed, it seems like people are going to have a hard time matching a tech tree to a custom race, if we even can... are we going to be able to design custom tech trees for races? I imagine we can (since we technically already could), but I might as well get a clarification on that issue... maybe we could be able to pick and choose appropriate individual techs from the other races, given the fact that many may have effects the XML just can't specify...

5. Is cloaking, orbital bombardment, carriers or other similar game mechanics going to show up in any of these unique tech trees?

Draginol

on Sep 18, 2007

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.

Draginol

on Sep 18, 2007

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.

dystopic

on Sep 18, 2007

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.

mementh

on Sep 19, 2007

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)

Ddraig

on Sep 19, 2007

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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