An idea when building/modding tech trees

Dynamic categories

from GalCiv3 Forums

So I'm not sure if this is already going to be in the game is some form but here goes.

Something that was a pain in GalCiv 2, especially in the second expansion pack, was the manually-assigned categories for each tech to guide the AI to go in a particular direction according to its needs.

Don't get me wrong, tech categories are a great way to get the AI to react to a changing galaxy, but they need to be dynamically created.  For example, if a tech gives bonus ability points in say, Production and Economics, then it gets categorised under both of those.

Furthermore, when processing the tech tree, the information should be grandfathered along the branches.  So if a tech which comes after a considered tech gives a bonus to Soldiering, the AI can see that the current tech leads to a bonus in Soldiering, which will be very handy when deciding how to defend against ground invasions or improve ground offensives.

Of course this makes a lot of assumptions about what will be in the new tech trees, but I thought I would throw it out there while it's fresh in my mind. :)

33,328 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I have to agree. It really was a pain to manually adjust the categories. However, I think the biggest problem in finding the right category was often the likes/dislikes of the AIs. Those were too extreme in some cases (e.g. AIP 8 and Manufacturing techs, the Korath and Invasion techs).

If categories get created dynamically, then it would probably be best, if everything a tech unlocks gets taken into consideration. For example, if a tech provides a +10% bonus to Hit Points and unlocks modules that add weapons to starbases, then it should get categorised under Hull, Military, and Starbase.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Creating custom techtrees was a giant pain and I hope this gets fixed.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I like the idea of multiple paths to one tech.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Iggore, reply 2

Creating custom techtrees was a giant pain and I hope this gets fixed.

I didn't find making custom tech trees that hard, but I used Notepad++ instead of the Tech Tree Editor. The Editor was too restrictive for my tastes. You couldn't edit the TechTree.xml directly, only the racial ones, nor could you set the Editor to use a modded one, for example.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I found it time consuming. I want my Protoss and my Borgs *now* damnit.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

https://forums.galciv3.com/452379 I mentioned in game editors in the link. And gaunathor did you get receive a PM I sent you?

DARCA

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

one thing i felt was painfully missing with techs was the ability to set more than one pre-requisite

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting androshalforc, reply 7

one thing i felt was painfully missing with techs was the ability to set more than one pre-requisite

Actually, that was possible. You just couldn't do it with the supplied Tech Editor, because you needed to add additional Requires-tags in the TechTree.xml. Plus, you needed to make sure, that the racial tech trees didn't have different requirements set, because that would override the ones in the TechTree.xml. To top it all off, the UI of the Research-screen wasn't made for this, which made the end-result look pretty cOnfuSiNg. The tech will appear in front of all of it's pre-requisites. However, that's just a visual problem. The mechanic itself works fine.