Following in a series of designer diaries for Civilization: The Board Game, designer Kevin Wilson is here to present us with a look at how technology works in the upcoming game. Be sure to check out our last preview here. Without further ado, here's Kevin Wilson!

As anyone who’s played any of the Sid Meier’s Civilization computer games knows, technology is right at the heart of the Civilization experience. From the moment you first discover the alphabet, new vistas of choice start opening up before your eyes. Should you discover horseback riding and learn how to train horsemen to increase your ability to explore the land, or should you master navigation in order to start sailing the seas? Decisions like this form the skeleton of the game and I knew that I had to somehow capture that feel for the board game, but at the same time keep things simple.

I knew that I wanted technologies to either grant new abilities or improve existing abilities when a player learns them. I also wanted each player to have to research their technologies individually. Although I’ve seen games in which technologies are learned by all the players when one player researches them, I’ve always felt that missed out on a critical element of the experience – choosing your own path and customizing your civilization to meet your play style. So, I decided, every player would have access to the same potential technologies, but would have to unlock them individually.

After crunching numbers and distilling down the notes I had taken previously from the various Civilization computer games, I arrived at the conclusion that there were a ton of potential technologies – far more than I could reasonably include in a board game, particularly if I stuck to my guns of an individual tech tree for each player. Also, the way that the computer determined which technologies were available to be learned – a system of prerequisites tracked internally by the computer – just wasn’t going to work the way I wanted it to in cardboard.

Fortunately, another Fantasy Flight game, Reiner Knizia’s Penguin, gave me the initial inspiration I needed. In Penguin, plastic penguins are stacked on top of each other to form a pyramid.

That gave me the idea to start thinking about a tech pyramid rather than a tech tree. If I assigned a level to each technology and forced the players to ‘support’ each card in the pyramid as it was added, I could avoid a more complicated prerequisite system while still retaining a great feeling that players were building up to the better technologies. As a bonus, the mechanic is super visual and easy to explain:

Simply put, every level II or higher tech must be supported by two techs of the next level down. Thus, over the course of the game each player builds their own personal pyramid of technologies. This also allows players to explore the various technologies without getting trapped down too many “dead ends”. If you realize too late that you needed a different tech after all, you simply extend your pyramid out enough to support it, rather than starting over again at the beginning of a long chain of prerequisites.

This brings us to the technology victory condition. There is only one copy of the level V technology space flight, because the first player who builds it, wins the game. This requires a total of 15 technologies, including space flight itself.

I’m not going to explain how you pay for new techs yet (it involves building up your cities) other than to say that if you’re clever, you can learn a tech every turn, meaning that it takes approximately 15 turns to win the game with a tech victory. But why level V? Why only fifteen techs to win? Why not twenty-one? Twenty-eight? I went with that number for a variety of reasons including component limitations and play length. Rigorous playtesting then backed that number up, showing me that my gut feeling was pretty good. It’s always nice when things work out on the first guess.

But what do techs actually do for you? They make your civilization faster...stronger...better:

Techs can affect your civilization in a wide variety of ways. But, I’m about out of time for this article, so let me just leave you with an excerpt from the rulebook explaining some of the different things tech cards can do for you. Until next time, happy speculating!