Alternative techs

[Sketlux]

What about giving the player alternative techs to choose from. Say I want to research a junk ship instead of a caravel. Both would be deep sea going but have different cost and values. The player could choose from one of the techs to advance in the tech tree but the other alternative tech is not a necessary step in it. Same for a Samurai or a Knight. Also give the player the choice of dead ends in the tech tree like mounted riflemen instead of going directly for the tank wich is much more expensive to develope.

Players would have to choose between short time investments and longterm investments that suite their needs taking a somehow boring linearity out of the game.

[Caedo]

At this point, I don't think alternatives that aren't dead ends are possible without voodoo scripting. That is to say, there's no mechanic to have the next tech require either the caravel tech or the junk tech (not even in current developmental versions; this is a long way off).

The voodoo alternative would be to have a special helper tech for each set of alternatives that cannot be researched directly, but is granted to the player upon learning any of the alternatives. This would be used as a requirement for later techs. However, this would affect tech upkeep, could probably be stolen directly and could cause inconsistencies when there are possibilities to lose a tech after discovering it (since there is no way to remove the helper tech via script). It might also confuse new players.

In general, I would advise against wacky hijinks voodoo solutions. Maybe for a short test game, but not for a "proper" experimental game.