Moving on to implement the first version of the technology system and tech trees. I like the idea of randomness in technologies: you should not know for certain what scientific discovery you are going to make next or in the whole future. Still the randomness should be balanced to avoid the situation that one civilization gets all of the good techs and some other civilization gets bad ones. The solution I made is that the technology tree is random but same for all civilizations. The tree represents the scientific laws of that universe: It dictates what kind of technologies can be found and in which order and those laws are the same for everyone.
At the start of the game some of the technologies will be omitted from that game altogether, those things do not exist in this universe. The rest forms a tech tree which is common for all civs. Civilizations will see only the techs they can research next and also how many new technology choices those techs will open up. How far in the tech tree civs can see beforehand might become variable depending on acquired techs and racial bonuses (or penalties). In addition, not all of the tech opportunities will be visible for all civilizations. This means that different parts of the common tech tree will be hidden for each civilizations and techs in those parts have to be gained via espionage or capturing bases or enemy ships. There also might be racial factors which affect how freely the common tech tree can be progressed. For example, creative races might see all options and non-creative have to follow a very predetermined path. In any case, it should be guaranteed that there are enough techs available for every civilization and that there is a path to at least some of the best techs.
In the video you can see a first version of a randomized tech tree. I ran it three times with different amounts of techs. It is designed in a way that it only reveals the parts which are known to the player’s civ. This info (and only this same info) should be available for the civs controlled by the AI also.
YrdVaab 