Am I the only one liking the limit on tech?

I'm liking it. Its simply a case of you can't please everyone.

It's definitely a twist from GC2.  Thus far I don't think that it's good or bad per se.  Just different.

 

I think I'll need to play GC3 a bunch before deciding good/bad.  But honestly I'm not all that opinionated on it.  Generally I find hard choices to tend to make the game fuller and each instance unique.  Most of the time I haven't found myself caring all that much which specialization to choose because it's either obvious (I'm focusing on X, so I choose X) or spurrious and I'm just trying to get to the next step in the tree.

 

There's another post where everyone claims to hate having to choose, so apparently people don't like it or something, but it really does take the tedium out of having to research crap that you don't want.  A lot of them seem to be situational buffs, which are nice (I'm continually having morale problems and here's a juicy 20% empire wide morale boost at a low cost, for example (for all you haters out there, the cost is a low direct cost but the full cost is higher because there's an opportunity cost of giving up the other 2 things you could have specialized in -- that's where the leverage of choosing comes in - it makes it a much higher all-or-nothing trade-up  -- the ability to double down on one thing and forego the other produces a lot of leverage and a lot of risk -- this is why the choice is interesting)).

 

Just my take, I only have a handful of hours in on beta6 though, many others have played a whole lot more than I have.

 

cheers

 

I mostly like it.  I think things need to be rebalanced to make choices viable... and I think there are a some optimizations in there that probably should not be mutually exclusive.

No your not alone. You just can't please everyone. I was talking to a coworker who happened to be a civilization, and other stradegy games fan. Who told me he was to old to have to learn to beat a game. He plays the easiest levels to floor the game. We disagree on how a game should be done.

 

Having certain tech excluded and forcing you to make choices and games somewhat different every time you play is a good thing.

 

I just wish you could not trade the techs to get them all...

 

Can't you disable tech trade now?

Only a choice if you want to disable ALL tech trade... I want specialized tech to exclude you from attaining any of the others. Either through trade OR research.

 

It makes no sense you can trade for them if you can't research them. In a logical sense that is.

 

I view the mutually exclusive tech as a choice. You can either choose to make your beams more powerful, cheaper or smaller. It is impossible to do all three from a technical standpoint and whatever you choose become a principle among your culture.

Yep, love it, you have to make tough choices which can have significant consequences on your future empire.

Not that it doesn't need some tweeking and balancing, but this is definitely the right direction for the game. Though I fully understand those who want it all and to research everything and build everything, and I'm sure there will be mods that let them do that to their heart's content.

 

 

I like it but too many of the choices are no-brainers, and that does suck a bit of the diversity out of the game.

For to have true relevance it needs to be that you cannot trade them or receive them as gifts from other factions, that just makes it only slightly more difficult. I built dreadnoughts that have all possible tech combinations, I traded with the Yor and Dregin who had the other specializations I was missing 

Choices are fun. I like it.

I think the decision to limit the specializations is great personally, a vocal minority are broadcasting lots of hate about this decision but as far as I'm concerned it's great for the following reasons;

1) Forcing the player to make a decision adds another strategic choice to the game, always good in a strategy game.

2) It is great for modders as it enriches the possibilities for custom tech trees.

3) It can be modded out by editing the tech trees to make the current specializations normal techs instead, and no doubt someone who doesn't like this decision will quickly make such a mod available, pleasing those that don't like this.

 

One of the main objections I've heard is that this reduces the amount of tech there is to research, and they don't feel there are enough, to that I say the answer is to add more techs as they no doubt will with the spying expansion and others. Modders can also extend the tech trees if they want to.

So yes I think this was a great decision.

 

As for Tech Trading, I'm happy to play with all tech trading turned off which I believe is an option though I haven't looked for it yet.

I like it, but there was a discussion around boosting the power since they ar now exclusive.  I feel there is, in most cases, a single correct choice and the other two fall by the wayside.

I like this too, it force me to make more importants decisions. And i can always trade the techs that i miss.

I don't think it's bad, I think like for many ideas they've implemented in the game, they're just throwing it in the pot without wondering if it will integrate well with the rest of the game, or how to make it work well with the rest of the game. 2 weeks before release.

 

For instance, if you trade a specialization tech before researching one, you can't research another. But if you do it the other way around, you get both... this is the sort of thing that needs to be cleaned up when integrating a new design choice.

 

Oh, I did not realize that this was the case -- yes, I agree that this needs to be cleaned up...

 

 

Like it.  Love it.  Want more of it.

I love it.    I also like the fact that they have made a few of them actually special.

 

I feel that there is still more they can do here by making follow up techs that are only available if you choose specific specializations..

for example the early game choice of Increased Food production/increased Growth rate/reduced cost.

I think if you choose food production, you should get "Hot house farms" or something that can then be researched as an early game food distribution center.

if you choose pop growth it should lead to "cloning centers"

if you choose reduced cost it could lead to something like "commodities trading"  where you can build farms that produce less food, but also produce money or something.

Give us branches to follow the specializations...   then they would be really cool.

I checked before trading for this reason, which is a bit cumbersome but okay IMO. It would be nice if for specializations there was an additional section on the bottom of the tech trade tooltip saying something like "The other specializations in this tech are X (not researched) and Y (researched)"...

I get the sense based on some changes that this is a work in progress and that more balance-changes are on the way here. I do feel that this should be implemented before release (since a big change to this after release might be too little too late for newbies) and I hope that is the plan.

I really like the idea of exclusive specialization (something I advocated/hoped for at the beginning along with exclusive ideology choices...)