Realm Management as a 4x game?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Coinage

I am curious. How exactly would one deal with a Tech-Tree, or advancing technology? Does anyone have any suggestions for how to deal with scientific or technological growth?

Would it be something like Gadgeteering (B475)? Would it be Engineer (IQ/Hard) (B190)? Do the rules for either City Stats or Realm Management cover this?

That's a critical choice: there is no one way to do it, and it has a huge effect on your game. My game was short enough and small scale enough that "getting new tech" was about buying or hiring from people who already had it.


Using a gadgeteer model means that PC's or notable NPC's do all of the inventing. One gadgeteer can make huge strides all by themselves in terms of inventing. I don't know that this is in the spirit of 4x.



You could possibly steal some other game's tech tree, and then let yourself spend money/some other resource on "scientific progress". That tells you what gear from the books you can access. One really nice thing about Gurps is that you can slide it into other systems and watch it just work.



Historically, technological progress is weird. One key ingredient seems to be having a large amount of people working in a field, plus leisure time to tinker around. Mastering the last stepping stone often helps in achieving the next one. And learning things from your neighbors is huge... but it doesn't happen automatically.



So what spread of tech do you want to play through, and what time span do you want this tech to occur over?

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by ericthered

So what spread of tech do you want to play through, and what time span do you want this tech to occur over?

Excellent question.

Thinking out loud, I may have to base it on something like Tech Level.

If I wanted to be realistic, then I probably would have to make some sort of equation so that the amount of population you have affects the time it takes to advance technology.

Taking it the New Inventions section (B473-474), each civilization may have a given number of "inventors". So, a stone age band in a quasi-permanent settlement might have one, while a modern city might have many more.

Each civilization has 1 change to invent or discover something. Every turn, they can roll. For each inventor, there is a bonus on that roll. Also, if you fail, then you get a bonus on a next roll. Maybe each term is roughly one generation, or twenty years? Maybe something else.

EDIT: Another pre-requisite would be that one needs a certain level of population. A hunter-gather band might be able to invent pictographs or ideograms. However, I doubt they would have the resources necessary to construct a nuclear bomb.

Of course, I still need to iron out a tech-tree. I am checking out the Steve Jackson forums to see if anyone else has any suggestions.

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by Coinage

Excellent question. Of course, I still need to iron out a tech-tree. I am checking out the Steve Jackson forums to see if anyone else has any suggestions.

Still no luck. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Coinage

Still no luck. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Steal a civilizations game tech tree. Both it and gurps were made by big enough history buffs that it should be mostly compatible. As a bonus, you can get a big beautiful chart of it for free.

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Steal a civilizations game tech tree. Both it and gurps were made by big enough history buffs that it should be mostly compatible. As a bonus, you can get a big beautiful chart of it for free.

Okay, I'll give it a shot.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Steal a civilizations game tech tree. Both it and gurps were made by big enough history buffs that it should be mostly compatible. As a bonus, you can get a big beautiful chart of it for free.

I can also suggest the games from the Paradox company. Civilization can have some... Weird things.

Paradox games are Imperator Rome, Crusaders and Kings 2 and 3, Europa Universalis IV, Victoria Age 2 and 3 and Hearts of Iron IV. And the good thing is, each one covers a sensible historical period, so the tech changes arent insanely abrupt. Imperator Rome covers the ancient world (TL 1 and 2), CK covers medieval age (TL 2 to 3), EU covers mostly gunpowder and sails age (TL4 to 5), Vic covers early industrial age (TL 6 mostly) and HoI covers specifically the period of WW2 (TL 7).

The good thing about those games is that the changes are gradual - heck, all the tech evolution can even be contained in a single TL and still show technological improvement.

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

I can also suggest the games from the Paradox company. Civilization can have some... Weird things.

Paradox games are Imperator Rome, Crusaders and Kings 2 and 3, Europa Universalis IV, Victoria Age 2 and 3 and Hearts of Iron IV. And the good thing is, each one covers a sensible historical period, so the tech changes arent insanely abrupt. Imperator Rome covers the ancient world (TL 1 and 2), CK covers medieval age (TL 2 to 3), EU covers mostly gunpowder and sails age (TL4 to 5), Vic covers early industrial age (TL 6 mostly) and HoI covers specifically the period of WW2 (TL 7).

The good thing about those games is that the changes are gradual - heck, all the tech evolution can even be contained in a single TL and still show technological improvement.

That is very helpful thank you. My one concern is that, if one is playing a grand historical game where one goes from stone age to futuristic, then it can be difficult to cover the transition from one period to another. But I will give it a look.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Coinage

That is very helpful thank you. My one concern is that, if one is playing a grand historical game where one goes from stone age to futuristic, then it can be difficult to cover the transition from one period to another. But I will give it a look.

In that case, having 5.000 technological steps may not be the best idea, and indeed you might wanna simplify things a bit. In this case, Civilization might be a better alternative.

Another alternative is also the game Rise of Nations. It's an RTS game instead of turn based, and is like a mix of Age of Empires with Civilization, that goes from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Yes yes, this in fact may be the best model, having the necessary simplicity to make it manageable (for example, simple resources - currency (gold), food, wood, iron, oil and research points).

It's also a great game, one of my all time favorite RTS games.

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

In that case, having 5.000 technological steps may not be the best idea, and indeed you might wanna simplify things a bit. In this case, Civilization might be a better alternative.

Another alternative is also the game Rise of Nations. It's an RTS game instead of turn based, and is like a mix of Age of Empires with Civilization, that goes from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Yes yes, this in fact may be the best model, having the necessary simplicity to make it manageable (for example, simple resources - currency (gold), food, wood, iron, oil and research points).

Okay, so there are 2 things to look at:

1) Sid Meier's Civilization

2) Rise of Nations

I will have a look. My own idea is to use the Dawn of Worlds game I mentioned earlier as a sort of base. I can then add some complexity and dice rolls if necessary.

For a tech tree, i would probably incorporate the tech tree from the above mentioned games. If I wanted to extend to a space age, then I could take a look at the Endless Legend series, or the video game Stellaris.

[SydneyFreedberg]

Fascinating thread. But I have a warning about technological advancement: Having spent a lot of time both studying history and playing Civilization, I can say that the classic 4x model does a TERRIBLE job modeling how tech actually progresses in real life.

In Civ and similar games, the more prosperous your society, the more resources you can put into research, and the faster you advance — which makes you even more prosperous, so you can do even more research, so you advance even faster. It’s a positive feedback loop. But in real life, societies often experience negative feedback: There’s a crisis or a problem, people are willing to risk trying new ways of doing things, one of the new ways solves the crisis, the society becomes more prosperous, people become risk-averse and stop being open to innovation. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — especially if you’re living on the margins and don’t have much room for error, like most subsistence-farming economies throughout history.

A lot of Europe’s rapid technological progress in the post-1500 era is arguably driven by constant warfare and economic competition between hostile states, in stark contrast to (say) China which spent much of its history unified and stable and using gunpowder only for fireworks. And you have Tokugawa Japan actually going backwards technologically in some respects once it unified politically, effectively banning gunpowder because it threatened the social order.

I’d say the secret of modern capitalism in this context is “creative destruction”: There’s constant competition and threat of going out of business, which drives innovation, without the accompanying costs of actual warfare, revolution, famine, or other disasters.

A realistic model of technological progress would have an inverse correlation between social stability and technological progress: If your realm has +3 Stability you take -3 to tech advances — and vice versa, if you have constant innovation you’re also rolling constantly on the Social Disruption & Unrest table as people lose their jobs to new machinery, farmhands become factory workers, and old elites struggle with the new money.