F$@& Tech Trees

Belated tech tree post.

This isn’t entirely about tech trees, it’s more about game mechanics that provide rules exceptions.  Often these fall into a tech tree path, but that is not necessarily the case.

Different games call them different things: buildings, research, technologies, developments or whatever.   I am going to use most of these terms interchangeably, because no matter what the game calls them, they all do the same thing; provide exceptions to the core rules.

The first game we played with this mechanic was Civilization (20+ years since we first played Civ.  Now that’s a spicy meatball).  Civ used generic resources to buy these.   Hold on before you protest that salt and bronze and cloth aren’t generic.  When you trade in a set, those are converted to a generic amount you can use to buy the developments.  And there’s no mechanic that makes you just get cloth instead of wine.  But I digress.  These developments do a couple things.  Almost always they give some kind of in play bonus (metal \m/ working lets you fight better), but they also provide a discount.  That discount makes an almost default tech tree.  Sure you can skip developments on the path, but optimally you want to get a lot of discounts before buying the higher value items.    Mike really took this to an extreme.  He had The List ™.  This was an ordered, itemized list of what to buy in what order.  I remember getting quite annoyed with The List ™ at the time, but in hindsight, a F$#%ing 6-10 hour game is probably what really bothered me.

So even though I have absolutely zero desire to ever play Civilization again, I need to congratulate that game on influencing pretty much every resource gathering game that came after.  This was the Godfather of designer board games.

Onto the modern equivalents.  Puerto Rico is a really elegant building game.  The resources are just drafted, no purchases required.  The buildings are structured within tiers.  There’s no tech tree at all, but generally tier 1 and 2 buildings are built early, with tier 3 built mid game and tier 4 for the end game.  The buildings also incorporate a draft; there are limited amounts of each building.  That is really really clever btw.  The small market costs 1 gold but gives the owner +1 gold off every trade.  Easily the most cost efficient building in the game, and if 5 were available every player would take one.  The Harbor gives +1 VP for every shipment, (arguably) the most versatile card in the game.  No matter what strategy the player employs, it’s hard to not go a game without shipping a good for VPs.  Not saying this is a must buy for every game, but it’s seldom a bad buy.  And the small market and harbor, like every tier 1 -3 building (not production facilities) is capped at 2.  Tier 4’s are strictly VPs and only one of each is available in the game.  The winner of Puerto Rico (even those with a massive shipment strategy) is the player who purchases the most synergized buildings.

So I can’t actually think of a game that has a strict tech tree hierarchy.   “You need this to unlock that, and there are not exceptions.”  7 Wonders has cards that unlock later cards, but that’s instead of paying the resource price.  That’s tech tree-ish and probably the closest example I can think of.  

A quick list of other games that I think fall into this tech tree, buildings style

Magic the Gathering

Olympos

Race for the Galaxy

San Juan

Galaxy Trucker

Brass

Glenn Drover’s Age of Empires: Age of Discovery

Most of these games are among my favorites, so I guess I really like the building-tech tree mechanic.