Tech tree and AI research choice

[civctp2]

Tech tree and AI research choice

[LynxAbraxas]

Hm, many considerations to do. I'm not sure if modifying the tech tree would be a good idea, because with that we would need to provide a new "rendering" of the tree deps (i.e. the cool printed tech tree form activition would not be valid any more). Having Theocracy, Monarchy or Republic not at the very exact level I think is OK since even human players do not just go straight for a specific gov but might put more interest on other directions first, like ship-building, tile-improvments, buildings, units, wonders.

[MartinGuehmann]

Hm, many considerations to do. I'm not sure if modifying the tech tree would be a good idea, because with that we would need to provide a new "rendering" of the tree deps (i.e. the cool printed tech tree form activition would not be valid any more).

That is a nice poster and I still should have it somewhere, but you only have it if you bought in 2000 the original box. And fact for some reason I bought a second CD and that was the CD only edition without a printed tech poster and without a printed manual and the CD does not contain a PDF of the tech poster. Anyway, this information should be available in the Great Library, even so the tech tree isn't really presented nicely there.

Having Theocracy, Monarchy or Republic not at the very exact level I think is OK since even human players do not just go straight for a specific gov but might put more interest on other directions first, like ship-building, tile-improvments, buildings, units, wonders.

Well, I don't mind if the needed amount of advances is a few off for one another, but double for one than the other is too much.

Yeah I think one issue is to figure out how off they are.

[LynxAbraxas]

As you see fit.
Where and in what why is the tech tree defined? Perhaps it is not too much work to generate a dot-language representation that could then be nicely plotted with graph-viz and other tools.

[MartinGuehmann]

As you see fit.
Where and in what why is the tech tree defined? Perhaps it is not too much work to generate a dot-language representation that could then be nicely plotted with graph-viz and other tools.

The tech tree is defined in Advance.txt. Basically, it is a graph, the nodes are the advances and the edges are the prerequisites. Some of the advances have no prerequisites, so the "tree" has more than one root. And one advance has as prerequisite itself and so cannot be researched.

By the way, if the generate a dot-language representation can be saved to a text file then it could be generated from within the game, since the data has been parsed.

[LynxAbraxas]

Looks doable to me, might just need a bit of sed/awk magick. I'll take look.

one advance has as prerequisite itself

Why that? Just to disable it or by mistake?

[MartinGuehmann]

Looks doable to me, might just need a bit of sed/awk magick. I'll take look.

Sounds great.

one advance has as prerequisite itself

Why that? Just to disable it or by mistake?

Just to disable it without removing.

[MartinGuehmann]

With #135, I can now say that you need

0 techs for Anarchy
0 techs for Tyranny
8 techs for Monarchy
11 techs for Republic
15 techs for Theocracy
21 techs for Fascism
31 techs for Democracy
32 techs for Communism
46 techs for Corporate Republic
66 techs for Technocracy
75 techs for Virtual Democracy
79 techs for Ecotopia

For Theocracy, I have to research as twice as many advances than for Monarchy, which makes Monarchy already more interesting.

Democracy and Communism are quite close, so those shouldn't differ, but Fascism comes 10 techs earlier, even so it is historically the last of the three. In fact, it was moved in the ApolytonPack to mass media. Corporate Republic and Technocracy are also quite far away.

Virtual Democracy and Ecotopia are quite close. However Virtual Democracy is a prerequisite for Ecotopia, which makes it a bit questionable.

However, if you don't have the city limit like in CTP1 than you could be more tolerant of the differences.

[MartinGuehmann]

By the way, communism is a dead end tech and only gives the government communism, so if I don't wanna use communism, I shouldn't even research it.

[LynxAbraxas]

I see, thanks for researching that. I'd say that some govs are mostly intresting due to the special units and not necessarlily due to increased production, commerce, reduced crime and corruption. So I guess for the AI to choose e.g. Theocracy it would need some afinity towards it and the special units it brings. Either this could be specific to the type of nation or possibly just randomly assigned when a new game is created to avoid stigmatization.

Fascism comes 10 techs earlier, even so it is historically the last of the three. In fact, it was moved in the ApolytonPack to mass media.

That I would find more appropriate, in the game I'm currently playing all AIs took Fascism and are sticking to that for many, many turns now, which becomes a bit boring from a human player's view.

[MartinGuehmann]

Actually, my test AI first picks Theocracy, but just a few turns after Anarchy it has researched Fascism and so switches again.

[LynxAbraxas]

one advance has as prerequisite itself

That seems to be "subneural Ad" from CTP1:

[MartinGuehmann]

With #225, we now have:

0 techs for Anarchy
0 techs for Tyranny
8 techs for Monarchy
8 techs for Theocracy
11 techs for Republic
29 techs for Democracy
32 techs for Communism
33 techs for Fascism
44 techs for Corporate Republic
66 techs for Technocracy
75 techs for Virtual Democracy
79 techs for Ecotopia

Corporate Republic and Technocracy are quite far away. But that is a quite long way, so the AI would use both governments, but of course the unfavorite shouldn't be used as much as possible.

Theocracy is now at the right spot, Republic is a bit off. If we leave it this way then we could care about the AI research choice.

[LynxAbraxas]

If we leave it this way then we could care about the AI research choice.

Sorry, not getting here what you want to say.

[LynxAbraxas]

Just for ref. of related PRs:
#184
#187
#225