Tech trees are everywhere. They look like someone forced human development into a flowchart and watched it regurgitate a schematic filled with clean lines like a family tree. It isn’t realistic, but as a device that gives a great visual overview, it couldn’t be any better. Yes, it turns development into a chunky process, but gamers have grown use to this because games and physical materials mandate it as much as nature does. Level advancement in RPGs is a tech tree, albeit in an inconspicuous form. I point this out because RPGs predate Sid Meier’s Civilization and shows he didn’t invent the idea.
The tech tree is a gaming convention used to control game states so that trigger points escalate play and further drive the game to an end. While not all games use tech trees, they’re extremely common. Chess and checkers use them, so does shogi. Promotions of pieces is a tech tree. By reaching the threshold—in this case the other side of the board—the evolution in abilities is attained. There is virtually no difference between this promotion of a piece, gaining a character level in Dungeons & Dragons, or acquiring a new technology in Civilization.
So, why does Sid Meier get so much credit for tech trees? Because he made them popular and accessible to players in a way that made sense. If you look at how he structured his tech trees, it can explain why they exploded in popularity. There are a few key items that set the standard represented in every tech tree since Civilization, and they’re tacitly present in all tech trees since then.
The most obvious is the tree structure that shows the relationships between one technology and another. It’s important to note that “technology” is the skin that contextualizes the math underpinning the system. The relationship between the technologies is often a logical progression and, with the exception of the base technologies, you see which technologies are required to unlock the next. Sometimes this is singular, other times multiple technologies, but often a tech tree uses both throughout its structure. Compare Navigation and Optics to the Wheel and Masonry for Construction in Civilization V and you see these varying relationships.
So, that’s the window dressing. What’s under the hood? Without getting into the mechanics of how a game allows players to acquire a technology, the short answer is this: each technology is a binary switch unlocked when the threshold is reached. At that point, the player has access to new assets, units, upgrades, bonuses, and/or other advantages that modify how the rules affect the player’s choices and resolution outcomes. These technologies then reveal or augment the strategies available.
The changes in play are ways to allow players to drive the game to its inevitable conclusion rather than relying on the core mechanic to do it. By doing this, the design creates an environment where the players’ actions cause the game to end and frees the conflict resolution mechanic from the win condition. In other words, the players drive the game to its end state based on the strategy pursued more so than in other game types. Anyone who’s played Civilization often enough will recognize this as a familiar tactic used by players based not only on a play style, but also the unique advantages of the civilization that help critical timing decisions to push forward certain branches before others.
The relationship to other advantages and knowing just what privilege is being unlocked by a technology is what makes Civilization stand out, but tech trees are far older and appeared well before Sid Meier made them accessible to such a large-scale audience. The form he used was lifted straight from the Civilization board game. But, the idea of gaining advantages is also found in chess and Monopoly, amongst other games. While there are fewer branches to follow, nonetheless the idea is still there.
In chess, the tech tree begins with the pawn and ends with the selection of piece for promotion. That’s a short chain, but there are fewer options and getting across requires quite a bit of resource investment. Likewise, in Monopoly, the properties form the tech tree and the benefits are listed on their associated cards. The houses represent the evolving tech that ends in the hotels. Even Risk uses tech trees to some extent with the steadily increasing reinforcements allotted with every set turned in. Then again, so are character levels in roleplaying games, and this is all the more evident in the 3.x version of Dungeons & Dragons.
So, while Sid Meier didn’t create the concept, he did make it more accessible; and that makes all the difference. The popularity of the idea owes as much to how transparent he made the concept as it does its versatility. Likely the computerized format displayed the fluidity from one era/technology to another is the whole of the mechanic’s appeal since it adds an extra layer of strategy players can plan for well in advance of the technology’s acquisition. This level of play invites metagaming into the fray but without the negative connotations associated with the term. In effect, the game about the game is the game.
Previous:
Anatomy of Game Design: Why Game Designers Need to Care About Sports
Next:
Anatomy of Game Design: Design as Art