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 3)

Frogboy

on Sep 19, 2007

The entire tech tree will be different for each civ. There will be common techs that will appear (trade for instance) but overall you'll mostly see different techs.

crow_t_robot

on Sep 19, 2007

This is neat, but there is a potential problem with an event. You say the Drengin have slave pits right? What if they get the event where they change to good. What will happen to their empire?

Starstriker1

on Sep 19, 2007

Or, to add on to JubJub's concern, what happens when a human player consciously steers the Drengin towards the good side of the fence? Will the alignments be locked or something?

catwhowalksbyhimself

on Sep 19, 2007

What I think would work pretty well, is if the results from ethical dilemmas depended on the natural alignment of the race.

So an evil race like the Drengin would get similar results to what we have now.

A good race would get bounuses from picking the good choices, basically the reverse of what things are now.

Neutral races would gain a less bonus from neutral choices, than the other two from their natural alignments, but would also have little or no penalty for the good or evil choices.

Thus, every race is encouraged to act according to their natural alignment.

drrider

on Sep 19, 2007

This is neat, but there is a potential problem with an event. You say the Drengin have slave pits right? What if they get the event where they change to good. What will happen to their empire?

There is an extensive discussion of this in another thread, but what it boils down to is this: No problem. For Drengin culture, keeping slaves in noble and caring fashion IS Good. After all they've been building it into their culture for over 100K years.

"What, would you have me turn the poor dears out in the wilderness?"

drrider

Chrominium

on Sep 20, 2007

I want to know how capturing other races' tech will be handled (ie getting a slave pit that exist on a planet that had been captured).

thehandofzarquon

on Sep 20, 2007

I want to know how capturing other races' tech will be handled (ie getting a slave pit that exist on a planet that had been captured).

I imagine it will be no different than it is currently... you can already capture a planet with alignment-based planet improvements on them of an alignment not of your own.

Some techs may be unstealable or untradable, but I imagine you can still always capture planets with improvements from them without a hitch. Of course... I imagine that could change too.

Ddraig

on Sep 20, 2007

This is a really neat idea. It always bothered me a bit that, playing as a race that would generally be considered "good," my citizens would take a huge moral hit because I FAILED to exterminate or enslave the sentient plants, etc. I mean, ok, there might be some historical precedent, but nowadays I imagine there would be some uproar.

A natural race alignment could be kinda cool.

As for the tech trading/stealing, I don't see why certain technologies can't correspond to each other. I mean, the tech that gives one race slave pits could be taken another direction by a different race. Thus trading for the slave pit tech could give you sports arenas or something (bad example, but you get the idea). Same technological requirements, different ideologies.

Edit: I guess what I'm saying is that, the techs could be named the same for all races, Extreme Entertainment for example, but that tech would give Drengin slave fighting rings, Humans sports arenas, another race holodecks or something, etc. They could even have different benefits, but it would still be tradable.

CaptainYar

on Sep 20, 2007

I just had a recent thread that asked about the AI creating its own custom opponets, so even their superability would be a mystery to the player. It seemed to well liked. But now i was wondering if something like that were done, could the AI also be able to choose the tech tree it wants to have?

Haoh

on Sep 20, 2007

If every race has a unique tech tree, what does this mean for tech trading? Will it be removed completely, limited to common technologies between races, or work some other way?

CaptainYar

on Sep 20, 2007

The same question holds for stealsing tech when invading. I guess maybe in that case you can just be granted an evquilelent amout of RP to use towards your own tech tree. So instaed of stealing a tech for a slave pit you may get all or a portion of a production tech on your own tech tree.

dystopic

on Sep 20, 2007

will we be able to write mods in order to create new tech trees, or only existing ones (or rather, the existing number of tech trees)?

FireBender

on Sep 20, 2007

Really gives more flavour to the game. Now if only the AI would genuinely behave "DIFFERENT". Not that they don't already, but not genuine enough. Not that I am dissatisfied.

TA certainly sounds like "All that" and a bag of chips.
I'll buy it for sure. If it comes to retail locally to me. Great job, stardock!

You beat Microsoft + EA +Strategy First+ some other company I can't think of now + I just remembered Firefly stuidios + something else I cant remember right now, combined hands down! Well maybe not combined(EA and microsoft you'd beat for sure) but you'd beat most of them. Especially some of the ones I can't remember right now.

But the fact I can't remember them says something, does it not?

-Fire

Voqar

on Sep 20, 2007

What do you do about tech trading and tech obtaining (via conquering a planet, for ex).

Will AIs be able to trade away (or lose via capture) their unique racial tech?

Vinraith

on Sep 20, 2007

If GalCiv were a multiplayer game, this kind of feature simply wouldn't be possible precisely because they won't be perfectly balanced.

This is why I worry a bit about GC3 having multiplayer, or the fantasy TBS for that matter...

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