[Freeciv] Tech Tree Ends Too Soon

[Mark Metson <markm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I do not like the "endgame effect" caused by the tech-tree ending so soon.

I have a game in progress right now in which suddenly there is no point in 
continuing to build libraries because I am already aquiring tech so fast 
that I will have every tech there is before the library is completed. This 
seems an artificiality, in history when we have imagined that there is 
nothing left to learn we have found - in a big way !!! - that we were 
wrong. !!! Big time wrong. Was it in the nineteenth century or early 
twentieth that newtonian physics thought it was running out of things to 
learn? Then along came relativity and quantum mechanics.

This effect is way too artificial. Or, if not, then the effect should 
maybe also be thrown in at other points along the way, such as after you 
get newtonian physics have some chance your scholars will refuse to 
continue to develop new tech. That is, have other places along the tree at 
which an attempt is made to cause you to decide there is no point in 
continuing to research.

This is also a waste of my SETI project, I'd like to build libraries all 
over the place to continue to take advantage of that bonus, but whats the 
point? I am thinking of saving the game, creating some additional techs to 
add to the tree - even if they do nothing in the way of crreating units, 
just call them "space age I", "space age II", "space age III", "space age 
IV" and so on as placekeeps, granting no units, just for book-keeping 
purposes so you know how many techs you are ahead of the rest of the 
planet and so that in some future space game you can say aha but you see 
by the time got to alpha centauri I already had the first twenty-two 
space-age technologies.

Or, what I am thinking might be good for growing the game and extending 
it, maybe some new techs should require actual in-space experience. Like 
maybe once you get to alpha centauri you have sufficient length of 
baseline of actual ability to observe from both ends of a distance of 
light-years that maybe only by actually having gotten that far could you 
manage to figure out warp technology? An option could be added whereby 
instead of ending the game upon reaching alpha centauri, Reaching it 
could be set up to be something like the apollo project or the manhatten 
project, it could grant something to everyone. Or, it could be something 
you could keep private, so that instead of automatically gaining whatever 
you gained the other civilisations would have to either steal from you any 
new tech you gained or actually make an interstellar journey themselves. 
Or maybe as well as making it possible for everyone to develop a new tech 
(warp? antigrav?) it could also grant to the person who actually gets 
there some material benefit, such as the colonists could ship back home a 
certain number of resources every so many turns or something. Maybe the 
time between shipments could be proportional to the time it took them to 
get there.

Basically I do not like it that suddenly after all of history I was aiming 
at researching researching researching, suddenly artificially I as a play 
- but hopefully not the actual people whose civilisation i am playing - 
know that there is no point in further enhancing my research ability. 
Plus, notice this is before I have actually quite gotten the last few 
tecchnologies. Once I have them, then not only will there be no point in 
continuing to enhance my research capacity, I will in fact be faced with 
the fact that all my existing research facilities are obsolete. Not 
obsolete due to a new development that, like barracks, requires new 
facilites. Oh no, nothing so nice as that. Research itself is going to be 
obsolete. Like what? Huh? Stupid. At least if we are going to refuse to 
find military uses for it how about simply making it that once you have 
all the techs all further research is privatised, turned over to the 
economic sector, so that all the lightbulbs are sold for cash? That could 
give the same effect as if you switched your trade ratios to have 0% 
science, but without actually having to do the switch.

I dont actually know yet what does happen when there is no more tech 
available, as in will I no longer be able to zet a non-zero rate for 
research in the gold/luxuries/science trade-ratios? Will it automatically 
turn off the science percentage?

Its is just so artificial. Realitically my civilisation ought to keep on 
building libraries and universities, it is a cultural tradition maintained 
for thousands of years, and we are not presently threatended by the other 
civilisations, there is no warlike A.I. putting pressure on me forcing me 
to abandon building research facilities, on the contrary the A.I. is being 
so darn peaceful - despite a few of its civilisations been very large and 
not so very far behind me in some technologies - that it makes no sense, 
culturally, for me to decide hey lets wipe out all the other nations take 
over the whole world then worry about libraries and universities later 
after we have dominated the world. Its just does not make sense. What I 
should be doing is keeping on building as many libraries and universities 
as I can, developing all the tech I can - antigravity? warp drive? quantum 
computing? nanotech? whatever? - while at my leisure also heading into 
space and buying cities from the other nations...

I also think the artificiality is maybe produced by the fact that to 
speculate about technologies that we here on Sol III have not yet actually 
confirmed the real life existence of means getting into science fiction or 
speculative fiction instead of a purely historic game. But hey, we dont 
have to go as far as gravitics and lightsabres and The Force and Jedi 
Knights, or warp drives and transporters. We could just make a very 
conservative standard modpack that simply assumes that all that will 
happen will be gradual incremental improvements in existing units and 
such. But, I think that it might be a good idea to make some very 
significant military stuff that is on a different branch of tech from the 
sapce stuff. As it is, heading for space also gives you super-improved 
fighters and bombers. Maybe it could be more interesting if there were 
also some super-improved stuff available to groundhogs, so that if you 
head for space and gain with that a bunch of great new air-capability, 
your opponents/competitors might meanwhile instead head into the ground or 
into the atoms and get super-improved ground capabilities, or into the sea 
and get super-improved sea capabilities.

But however it is done, I would like to see the incentive to do research 
continue way past the point where you reach alpha centauri, just so as to 
prevent endgame effects whereby suddenly for what amounts really to "no 
good reason" your civilisation abandons the pursuit of knowledge. Even if 
most players might figure out "aha this that and the other branchs of the 
tree will not help me reach alpha centauri" it would be nice to still have 
plenty of research still to do right up until the actual end of the game. 
Though of course also nice would be to have it set up in such a way it 
could easily lead to a while next game - which is why my first stab at it 
might simply be to add a long list of undetailed, useless in this game, 
"additional tech one additinoal tech two etc" techs that will have no 
function other than possibly in scoring the game and in being used for 
determining your starting values in some other game such as a "what 
happens once you reach alpha centauri" game...

-MarkM-

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