Wheel tech requirements

[Thalassicus]

I don't understand the archery-wheel tech link. It creates one aesthetic benefit, but several downsides for aesthetics and gameplay.

I can understand the desire to make chariot archer requirements more realistic. This is one good aesthetic benefit.

However, there are 3 items on the tech which logically should not need archery (wheel, stable, and remove jungle), so the link makes three things less realistic.

The link also creates the only same-direction overlapping curves of links on the tech tree. It's a pattern that creates an optical illusion of a vertical line. I avoided this mental problem when setting up tech links.

In addition to aesthetics, the link delays the Remove Jungle worker command by 7 turns, which makes jungle starts more difficult than they already are. It also makes horsemen harder to acquire than swords. We usually want to encourage horses instead, since most people prefer swords over horses. In addition, the link reduces the power of civilizations with a unique chariot, particularly the Huns.

[GrantSP]

I think the problem here isn't just the link between archery & wheel. Remove jungle could quite easily be placed in the same tech as remove forest, presumably the process is similar. So I would put remove jungle & remove forest both at Bronze Working. I know this sets the tech back for removing forests, but this way both are available at the same time so other improvements on those terrain can be accessed together. Further I would put remove marsh back where it belongs in mining or the at the very latest masonry. Stables have no place being unlocked so early at Wheel, the player should not be able to utilize that resource when the units unlocked aren't available. Horsemen appear at Horseback Riding, so should stables.

As to the question at hand, no there is no REAL link needed between archery & wheel.

I would place the links to wheel as Animal Husbandry & Mining.

[Thalassicus]

Each of those ideas buffs the iron path, leading us back to the imbalanced past when 3 times as many people preferred iron over horses. I started working on the changes you listed after taking that poll two years ago. I shifted bonuses to the horse path as part of a broad solution to the horse-iron imbalance.

The changes also improved replayability. There's two tech paths now:

• Open Terrain: horses, chariots, stables, clearing forests, and clearing jungle.
• Rough Terrain: mines, lumbermills, spears, and swords.

This terrain-based choice rewards us for picking a different tech path each game based on the map around our capital. This variety between games greatly increases replayability, since we're unlikely to pursue the same strategic units every game.

There were other buffs to horses, including higher horse strength, better jungles, better forest clearing, weaker mines, gold upgrades branching off the horse path, and so on. This brought horses and iron closer to a balanced 1:1 ratio of importance.

I'll add this explanation to the wiki. It's apparently not intuitively obvious... I've needed to repeat it many times over the years.

[GrantSP]

I'm sorry I don't follow your assertion. How are the suggestions effecting the Iron use? If anything the removal of Archery as a prerqTech to Wheel allows Roads to be built earlier and thus making the use of horses in forested terrain viable. There is no correlation between my suggestion about Stables and the use of Iron units. How is clearing jungles at the same time as forest helping the iron path?

The first iron unit is still unlocked at the same time, if anything the horse units are unlocked earlier, thus making them a viable choice instead of iron units.

[Thalassicus]

Moving bonuses from the horse path to the iron path makes the iron path more valuable, and the horse path less valuable. If we take something good away and give it to someone else, we're weaker and they're stronger.

In addition, horses are better on open terrain than rough terrain. If we move feature-clearing away from the horse path, people on the horse path can't create open terrain without also researching the iron path. This makes the iron path more important, and horses less valuable.

Delaying stables also makes horses less valuable. This should be obvious? It would prevent us from using stables to speed production of chariots, and we won't have stables available the moment we can build horsemen.

[GrantSP]

The whole swords vs horses debate, while interesting, isn't truly indicative of the gameplay of ALL players. The available terrain & resources aren't the only reasons determining the production of units. The point about civs with unique horse units is valid though. Maybe a better option would be their preferred starting location? Huns and Mongols have the open grasslands and Egyptians have the plains and deserts. Neither the Huns or Mongols have forest as a terrain to avoid.

[GrantSP]

If you want to keep production bonuses from the stable as an alternative then there is an argument in place for that building being available at Animal Husbandry, when horses are available.

[Thalassicus]

Unless our civilization bonuses favor horses or iron, terrain is the only information we have to determine a logical tech path. What else is there?

I want both paths to be balanced when the only thing affecting our choice is terrain. If we have a unique horse or iron unit, our choice is obvious, so the civilization priorities/avoidance system doesn't affect things.

I initially tried unlocking the stable with animal husbandry. I found that swung balance too far the other way. It's too powerful at animal husbandry, and too weak at horseback riding. The wheel's a balanced middle ground between those extremes.

[GrantSP]

hmm... Your opening question was about making the 'remove jungle' option easier to get. Does unlinking Archery to Wheel solve that? Yes. Also this should fix the visual error on the techtree. Your next statement is where I disagree. Why do need to promote the use of horse over iron? If your start is in jungle then that's the hand you were dealt, work with what you have. If the civ we are playing has a unique horse variant, then we need to look at where that civ gets placed, not how to make that location more like everywhere else.

If you have tried the options for stable and found Wheel as the best spot, fine stick with that. I just made an observation about the seeming out-of-context position it sits. You concluded by speaking of a "loss of realism". My suggestions were based solely on what my perception of in-game "realism" is, if that doesn't match in-game balance then what can I say?