First pass at… The Tech Tree
Designing the tech tree is something that I did on my own - at least the first pass. I began by running through the WTS v2 tech tree to circle all the techs I liked. My main problem was that many of the techs were only descriptions of technologies and didn’t actually tell you what they do. To make tech tree design easier, I wrote down all the different WTS factors that new technology gameplay could influence and came up with the following list: Military strength, Money, PR, Terror, Artifact/Tech acquisition and Role-play. I used that list to come up with what my technologies might do and gave each technology a name that somewhat matched the mechanic: e.g. +1 interceptor move = enhanced rocketry.
I then spent the next couple of hours writing the tech mechanics on different colored sticky notes, putting them up on my wall and bucketing them by level (how X technology is probably better than Y technology and what are it’s prerequisites). After arranging them in a first pass, I transferred them all to a table and used poker chips to give them all relative costs according to the science auction lots, knowing that I wanted each Nation to be able to develop 1 or 2 techs per turn. In case you’re curious, the picture is below.
You may not be able to see it too clearly but some extra information for you: Pennies represent green tokens, blue and black both represent blue tokens and red represent… well, red tokens. I assigned all tokens a numeric value and did some small math calculations just to see if I had balanced my tokens by checking things like making sure the average cost per level was ascending etc.
In green at the top, you can see where I’m thinking about how many techs you need in previous levels to gain access to the next level etc. And you can see how different colored techs (category) might be prerequisites for others in the same category.
As this is a first pass, it may change drastically when I try to balance the game, but it’s a good start.
First pass at the Human tech tree