The technology tree in Galactic Civilizations II is one of the most controversal parts of the game.
For some people, the descriptions of technologies have too much humor which they find off putting. Others find the descriptions, particularly the early ones, too light on details and phoned in.
For the expansion pack, Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor, we have the opportunity to go back and redo the technology tree. Most technology descriptions will be rewritten. Some techs will be removed entirely. And a lot of new technologies will be added.
Below are some examples of new technologies that are being added for players playing as the Drengin Empire. The difference in writing style is pretty noticable -- they are being written in third person rather than first and written in past tense instead of present.
The idea is to allow the player who chooses to read these to gain a better understanding of these civilizations. Since the technology trees are no longer generic as they were in GalCiv II, we can give a lot more insight into these civilizations, their histories, and flesh them out more.
We hope you enjoy the changes:
Hyper Fusion Reactors
Hyper Fusion Reactors were the keystone of true interstellar travel. Fusion power provided enough energy to allow physicists and engineers to begin contemplating concepts and applications that required immense amounts of energy.
From fusion reactors a myriad of new technologies become possible or at least, theoretical. Artificial gravity, teleportation, folding space, and so forth.
It was the youthful humans on Sol 3 that managed to truly master fusion reactors. And one of their first applications of fusion reactors was the creation of portable star gates that became known as Hyper Drive.
Fusion reactors rely on Deuterium which is found across the galaxy in water. The other key ingredient is lithium which is common on most inner planets in star systems.
In a fusion reaction, energy is produced when two atoms join together to form one. Hydrogen atoms come together to form helium atoms, neutrons and vast amounts of energy.
The ancient empires of the galaxy, notably the Drengin Empire and Arcean Empires both have had fusion reaction for eons. They believed that they had mastered it as far as it could go. Their fusion reactions made use of magnetic confinement which uses magnetic fields to heat and compress hydrogen plasma. While this method works and has been in used for thousands of years in both the Drengin Empire and Arcean Empires, it requires a great deal of physical space to work.
The Star gates use fusion provided through magnetic confinement which is one of the reasons they are so large.
The humans, by contrast, took both approaches but eventually chose Inertial confinement, a different method and one completely unexplored by the other civilizations. Inertial confinement uses laser beams or ion beams to compress and heat the hydrogen plasma.
The advantage of this is that laser beams and ion beams benefit from military technology. That is, the fragmented nation states on the human home world of Earth led to constant improvements in these kinds of technologies which in turn improved the fusion reactions.
The concept of Hyperfusion reactions is more of an evolution or marketing term to conventional fusion reactions. Instead of the reactor having to be the size of a small city, the reactor can fit into a 2500 cube-meter volume.
Artificial Gravity
Artificial Gravity is a technology that is the direct result of having immense amounts of energy at hand. The applications of artificial gravity are both obvious and subtle.
The obvious application is that ships can now travel for extended periods through space with native gravity levels without compromising the ship design with fragile and unreliable physical motion devices (i.e. ships do not have to spin their hulls to maintain gravity).
The historical fleets of the Drengin Empire and the Arcean Empire in the pre-artificial gravity era are very obvious. Their hulls spin on a super conducting pivot powered by regulated micro bursts of thrust to keep the spinning constituent. Needless to say, these ships would not be reliable in battle.
The Drengin fleet that conquered the Torian homeworld in the pre-hyperdrive era were all without artificial gravity and relied on a stargate that still resulted in a travel time of nearly a year. Two of the troop carriers in that journey had a malfunction in their rotational axis control during the journey resulting in having over 25,000 Drengin shock troops having to live out their remaining lives in space.
Fortunately, the lives of those Drengin shock troops was short since they were soon converted into fuel.
Death Furnaces
Death furnaces are a technology uniquely Drengin in nature. How they work remains a mystery to most of the galaxy.
According to Drengin scientists, Death furnaces work by harvesting what the Drengin call the Aul. They claim the concept was originally from the Precursors (most likely the faction of Precursors called Dread Lords) who believed that Aul (what humans might call a “soul”) can be harvested and turned into a form of powerful energy.
According to legend, the Precursors had immense amounts of this type of energy which, for lack of a better term, is called “dark energy”. This energy was native to their existence and is the basis of their power.
Apparently, the “younger races” such as Drengin, human, Arcean, and so forth possess small amounts of this dark energy that can be extracted from the Aul through these death furnaces.
The net result is that Death Furnaces can greatly amplify the production capacity of factories, slave pits, etc.
Slave Pits
The manufacturing base of some cultures is based almost entirely on slavery. Physical labor is considered too lowly to be considered honorable by some races.
This tendency, ironically, is amplified in the races who have had routine automation technology for a long while. Whereas races who have not had technology for as long of a time (humans, Altarians, Torians for three examples) tend to make use of factories filled with citizens or various forms of robotic automation, others consider such a thing to be unworthy of them.
For example, civilizations such as the Drengin (or their Korathian cousins) don’t tend to even bother researching robotic automation because even designing constructs that do manual labor is considered demeaning and unhonorable.
The large (and growing) population of slaves in these empires have allowed the Drengin Empire and others like them to perfect slave labor (if such a term can be considered perfected).
Slave Pits are as the name implies. Vast pits in which “slavelings” toil to produce. While slave pits don’t tend to be nearly as productive as human factories, the Drengin make use of readily available Death Furnaces to more than compensate.
The downside of Slave Pits is that they diminish the planet’s influence upon the galaxy. As impressive as slave pits are as a feat of manufacturing and engineering, they do not inspire other civilizations to want to join in knowing that only a small twist of fate could bring them to be working in these pits.
Arena of Agony
When the human beings from Earth began interacting with the established empires of the galaxy, they were initially condescending with regards to the concept of telepathy and what they called “soul energy” that other civilizations considered integral parts of not just their society but their economy.
Those naïve humans were quickly silenced when they saw the forbearers of the Arena of Agony. Some races, such as the Drengin, can literally sense pain and anguish in others. And while they may not like experiencing pain for themselves, they are absolutely ecstatic about experiencing the delicious sense of agony in others.
While races like the humans enjoy their idle entertainment centers which provide meaningless, fictional imagery, races like the Drengin have no concept of this.
To the Drengin, there are truths and there are lies. There is no such thing as “make believe”. There is no such thing as an actor in this kind of culture. There is no such thing as a book of fiction. Drengin are not entertained through make believe. They are entertained by things that exist in definitive reality.
The Arena of Agony is the natural progression of Arenas. They dispense with the quasi-gladiatorial games of the contemporary arena and focus on pitting the condemned to suffer in grotesque ways.
Through these Arenas of Agony, morale is improved and their populace made more content.
Pain Amplifier
Pain amplifiers do not cause pain. Instead, they amplify pain that already exists. A sore back becomes debilitating. A slight cut becomes mind boggling agony.
Pain amplifiers have a great number of possible applications.
For example, it is almost a universal truth that pain is the ultimate teacher. Some civilizations, such as the Drengin, believe this so deeply that their researchers, who have been bred over hundreds of generations to be researchers, actually perform better when subjected to pain.
The Drengin scientists are so conditioned to pain that they react to pain done to themselves almost in the same way that the general population on Drengi responds to the agony in others – with ecstasy. But Drengin scientists have been bred to not just enjoy pain but to allow it to focus their thoughts and creative energies to make new breakthrus.
As a result, pain amplifiers increase the rate of research being conducted in labs.
Another example is in the use of espionage and intelligence gathering. Drengin spies are almost impervious to torture. But even their most hardened opponents typically have no experience with pain amplifiers and quickly break.