Advanced Tech Trees

**Sundjata Keita** · 05-31-2005, 17:56

For ZTW we are going to try to implement a slightly more advanced tech tree. The plan is for the European factions (and the Zulus if this works) to have four different types of town; military, religious (spreading christianity), economic (resources) and trading (markets etc.) We are hoping this will add more depth because it will allow the player to think what town he is building. Of course it is more productive to have a military town near the enemy, a religious one where people are unhappy, an economic one where there are lots of resources and a trading one for income.

How will it work? Well because there are tech tree lines eg. roads, mines, weapons etc. four of these lines will be deignated to each different type of town with a core building being the starting point of each tech tree line, a church for religious, a war office for military, a market for trading and a mine for economic. Here lies the problem, we only want the town to be one type. So if they build a church the other tech tree lines cut off and they cannot build buildings of the other three.

The question. Is it possible in any way, maybe with scripting to make it that once a player has picked one of these four core buildings the others become unavailable to build? Therefore cutting off the tech tree line for that type. Any suggestions, ideas and solutions are welcome.

Cheers,

Sundjata Keita

**Encaitar** · 06-01-2005, 03:34

You could probably do it (whether with core buildings or regular buildings) using the "and not building_x" conditionals for the building requirements.

e.g. If your four tech-tree buildings are "Building_A, Building_B, Building_C, Building_D", then it might look like this:

Code:

Building_A requires factions {  zulu, } and not building_present_min_level Building_B and not building_present_min_level Building_C and not building_present_min_level Building_D

Alternatively (and probably more simply), you could use temples. The existing temple buildings seem to be hardcoded such that there can only ever be one line of temples in a settlement. So if you simply rename some temples and give them the stats that you want for the building, that should give you the effect you want.

**shifty157** · 06-01-2005, 04:10

id agree that temples are probably your best choice here.

**Sundjata Keita** · 06-01-2005, 08:31

Well I was thinking of using temples at first but I thought the tech tree wasn't big enough ie. there were not enough temples to fit in all the buildings we need. You see once the core building is built all the new lines of tech have completely different buildings but with temples they all have to be shrine, temple, large temple etc. no matter what God you choose. Also we want to use the temples as temples so we can have basic religion but then more advanced missionary buildings that help weeken opponents.

The first suggestion you made sounds great although I can't write scripts to save my life so I would need some help from someone. This is a bit down the line from here, it won't happen for a while yet though.

**Epistolary Richard** · 06-01-2005, 10:08

That isn't a script, that's just an extra conditional in your export_descr_buildings. Scripts are great, but they can't do everything!

**Sundjata Keita** · 06-01-2005, 19:35

So I just add extra conditionals in? I haven't really explored all this yet, I'm just a modeller. Well that doesn't sound too difficult anyway so I will try that. Thanks for the help guys.

Sundjata Keita