But I think a lot of sandbox players find arbitrary barriers to be...well...arbitrary. How many times do you play a game and ask yourself "I wonder if the developers will let me do THIS" and been disappointed when you are literally blocked from trying rather than encounter some result which is consistent with the game world?

If I'm walking around in a CRPG and I run into an invisible wall that indicates the end of the game map, that bothers me. On the other hand, if I just find it more and more difficult (or more and more obviously pointless) to continue going in a particular direction then the effect is the same, but it doesn't break the suspension of disbelief. Soft barriers vs. hard barriers.

Right now the concept of Ages is a hard barrier which requires an elaborate explanation for why a civilization which just researched "Agricultural Optimization" can't start trying to figure out "Food Distribution" or "Intensive Farming" until they research Missile Point Defenses and Zero Gravity Construction.

The populous of your civilizations feel that it is important to have military defenses.

Part of the distribution of the food would require larger ships which need to be constructed in Zero G.

Some of the missile point defenses have made some realizations that including some food packages in these missiles leads to better food distribution around the planet.

The desire to consider more farming techniques is not something your populous feels is important at the time.

The agriculture ideas seemed to have reached a culminating point among the scientists and they are pondering other problems that they wish to study, most of which does not include any farming. Thus, these old generation scientists are spent and require another new generation of scientists to take their place with fresh ideas about things that should be done with research. Thus, a new age is dawning among the researchers.

I've come across several hard barriers in games, this I do not consider a hard barrier as it falls in the category of how science is researched. Without many different ideas being presented to the table the ideas of a particular field do not advance. No matter how much money you place towards a topic the government wants to have research, the researchers may never advance any farther until something that seems completely unrelated is researched and techniques and ideas are used that many people didn't think were plausible. This is what scientists call striking results and usually surprised by the results. Take the proof of Fermat's last theorem. The simplicity of the theorem required many different fields in mathematics just to prove the results. Each of these fields individually didn't really have much relation to the problem until the relation was made known by Andrew Wiles. It was a surprising result that required many different fields to be researched deeply before he could present his argument.

Okay, let me take it from a different angle.  I haven't even seen the game or the tech tree yet.  So think of it this way, you're seeing how the game and the AI reacts to being modded, which is something that should definitely be tried.  Because I can't.

More to the point, after GC2: TotA I think that taking a peek at the game data to look for bugs in the tech tree (which you can do while you're there) isn't a bad idea at this early stage.  If you've been wondering why the AI is doing something that isn't optimal considering its situation, maybe the answer is in there.

If you want your money's worth then be inquisitive.

Got it. But it might make a good scenario.

I think I may be in the minority...

I read most of the comments in this thread (I admit I skimmed in a few places), and I think there are a lot of interesting thoughts and valid arguments. My following thoughts synthesize several of these ideas, but it would be a nightmare to try to quote each of you whose thoughts may be in some way presented below. So if you think, "I already said that," or "That was my idea," that's fine--I'm in no way claiming these thoughts are entirely separate from what has already been posted.

First, I think this issue has to be looked at as a game-mechanic issue and not a realism issue because the very premise that a sprawling galactic empire can only research one technology at a time is by nature unrealistic. There are other factors that make the way GC handles technology inherently unrealistic--but the game wouldn't be fun if its major features (population/culture, economy, war, research, etc.) were not abstracted.

So while I appreciate a certain level of realism, I think the foremost consideration for the tech tree should be how it actually plays. Is it simple enough? Does it allow for strategic choices? Is it balanced with other game factors? Is it fun?

The GCII research system--which has been described in this thread as "free" because of how it allows players to beeline to their advanced tech of choice--worked fairly well in GCII, in my opinion. It was simple to use. It allowed for strategic choices. I also think it was fairly well-balanced. And it was fun.

But the GCIII tech tree is quite a bit different from the GCII tech tree. In GCII, there were several techs that didn't do anything other than unlock a future tech. In GCIII, however, every tech (to my knowledge) has some effect on the game--providing a bonus, reducing a cost, allowing a new component, etc. This key difference causes me to question the viability of a "free" system.

Regarding simplicity/ease-of-use:

A "free" system is easy to use, but might be difficult for new players to learn (i.e. too little direction on how far to research a particular tech branch).

The "tech age" system is simple and easy to learn (harder for new players to make really bad tech choices).

Because of how much more the GCIII tech tree has to offer (which I love), I think that creating a list of cross-requirements for each tech would be too complicated and difficult to learn. I think the "tech age" system is a fair abstraction of a cross-requirement system.

Regarding strategy:

I think a "free" system offers the highest number of potential strategies--but many of them are actually bad strategies. I think providing some structure helps players (especially new players) to find workable strategies that they can implement in different ways, at different times, and with varying levels of ability/success. Limiting players with the "tech age" system, in my opinion, helps raise the bar and promote feasible strategies in a user-friendly, balanced manner.

As has been said, you can still execute a "beeline to planetary invasion" strategy--but the path is just different than in GCII. The current "tech age" system doesn't prevent this strategy, it merely changes the means of implementation.

Regarding balance:

I'm not sure how well a "free" system like GCII's would balance with the number of techs and amount of effect each has on the game in GCIII.

Creating cross-requirements would be a method for creating balance, but as said before, this could be difficult to learn and become no fun. As a viable alternative, the "tech age" system functions in much the same way as a cross-requirement system and helps prevent unbalanced playing.

Regarding fun:

A "free" tech system was fun. But I don't have any problem having just as much fun with the "tech age" system currently in place.

All that being said, I'm not saying there aren't other simple ways of limiting players from going too far down a particular tech branch. I think balancing the tech costs to make advanced techs difficult early on is one way of limiting players. I also liked the idea of influencing the cost of each tech by the ratio of its cost versus the total number of research points spent.

But I think the "tech age" system works fine and is fun, and without any strong reason, I don't see a need to change it.

I'll reserve further judgment for when all the techs are playable.

Good thoughts. You make the point that the ages do reduce choice, but reduce "bad" choices. I feel that a fundamental premise of strategy games is that choices are always contextual, and that the ability to do something unexpected is critical for the sort of high risk plays necessary to get out of a tight situation. Consider the real world -- let's say humanity does nothing to address climate change for the next 100 years. Suddenly we're in a tight spot and there is need for a global research project to ensure survival (maybe colonization, maybe global air conditioning, whatever). Oops, we can't research it because we didn't advance far enough in building pew-pew laser beams yet.

I want new players to learn (as we all did, whether in GCII or in life in general) that singleminded pursuit of a single goal is a strategy with risk, not to have everyone corralled into some idea of "well roundedness" for their own good.

I'm not a beeline player, my play style is that I tend to play in phases -- a few turns dedicated to research, a few turns dedicated to military, a few turns dedicated to social, etc. That applies to the research tree too -- I'll keep researching techs on a particular path until I feel "proficient" in that branch of the tree, then focus somewhere else for a while when the research costs get too high or I hit a milestone (maybe getting Phasors I, then move to further develop trade, etc).

I'll be comfortable with ages when I manage to play ONE GAME without running face first into that wall. Hasn't happened yet.

We don't know what the AI is going to do at this point, so how is it we can't be competitive in research? All other players must satisfy the same requirements of researching half the techs before the next age, so how would we be non-competitive. Brad has mentioned that the AI is not going to be cheating (as was done in Gal Civ 2), if you are going to play on harder difficulties it should be harder and therefore competitiveness should be adapted to in that situation.

I still don't see the tech age as a hard cap, as it can be removed. If the argument is that the other techs are not that interesting compared to the one you want to get too, maybe the other techs should be boost to be more enticing. There shouldn't be any 'bad' choices in the research tree. The 'bad' should come from your competition when it comes to these choices. In a sense, researching any tech should give you a good boon to your civilization. It's the other civilizations that will measure whether it was 'bad' or 'good'. If you don't research guns and they do... well that's a good indicator that you made some bad choices in the tech tree when they come knocking at your door.

Ages are not necessarily created in retrospect. Where are you getting this information? Space Age, Information Age, The Depression Era, etc... modern history has very much defined its ages during the age, ancient history where we have lost quite a bit of information, we defined ages for them as that information was lost to time.

Yes, lets keep this tech wall up and convert to cyber communism! Because when punish normal people because of a minority and say "they won't be making bad choices anymore" they won't be making ANY choices anymore.

So:

Parrotmath, are you a stupid player that charges up the tech tree and needs tech ages?

How about you Marvin?

Or you erischild?

or anyone, because there are alot of names here...alot

DARCA.

No. nor did I say that it would help new players with the tech tree either.

I've already said, I don't support either side of this idea. But I also don't see any good arguments, especially the freedom argument for the tech age.

Also, do you understand what is communism? Are you referring to the economic term or the governmental term communism as there is a difference.

What freedom is being lost? Without ages they will have to implement more restrictions on the tech tree that are hard restrictions, hence you would research about half to get to the 'next age techs' except they will choose what those techs would be instead of the player.

If you really want freedom there should be no tech tree at all and we should be able research any tech we want from the start of the game, the only limitation would be the cost to do that research. So if you are advocating for a free research capability you would be asking for no tech tree at all, just the research topics.

I wonder if the tech ages would be better understood if the next age was not visible to the players. Hence, the possible research options are not visible. The next age unlocks after a certain amount of research points have been attained to unlock the new ideas of the society. I for one like to be able to see the next ages ideas and research.

After thinking through a lot of these things, I'm starting to like the idea of the tech ages. Having the idea of not seeing the next ages techs might produce a better indication of the barrier.

It would be neat if the ship models get updated to a newer look, or some other visual effect occurs. The advanced tech age might be a good trigger for random events as well. As with the requirements it has currently, the game can assume that the player has ships with guns on them.

I'm not so sure about that last part. One Dev has already commented on the intricacies of diplomacy in regards to cultural conquest, so we can be certain that will be a viable path, and one that is likely to focus more on a capture and hold research path than an openly aggressive one.

So long as they don't do an encore of the GC2 event that had an outside Civ come in and take over the bulk of the populated worlds without also accounting for planetary defenses and orbital garrisons... may as well be a random Dread Lord incursion for all the good that setting up defenses didn't do for that one.

Remember everybody, you can't really "race" up the tech tree, so hard barriers aren't that necessary.  If you try to run up one tech path, suddenly you'll see 70 weeks plus to complete.  So the idea of quickly running up any tech path isn't reality.  TBS strat games are all about choice, if you dedicate everything to trying to quickly move up a tech path, then you aren't doing other things that may be equally important.