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Dis
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Las Vegas, Nevada
Feb 2000
time: 21:37
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I'm hoping my fellow intelligent posters can help me out. Because I'm not that versed in this particular aspect of world history (I'm more interested in wars  ).
It seems to me the way technlogy is in the civ games is very unrealistic. Though it may be better this way from a gameplay standpoint. we can discuss this later.
I may be wrong, but I'm curious. Did a nation such as switzerland ever have to research gunpowder? Or nationalism? Nationalism isn't a great example since it's a human thought concept and not a concrete technology. It seems to me many technologies flowed rather easily between european nations. Some easier than others, however.
What are your thoughts on this? I was thinking I hate seeing nations that are horribly backward in technology (because they are small). I wouldn't mind seeing a continous great library effect. A technology known by 3 nations should be spread around. But there should be geographical limitations to this, however. For example, africa never had access to these european technologies. And neither did Asia. So you could limit this effect to continents. What are your thoughts on this?
Or to represent the effect, they could make it easier to steal technology. I'm not really sure how tech steal worked in civ3 (I never used it). But it seemed to me to be expensive, and difficult to pull off. Granted, some technologies such as nuclear fission should be difficult to pull off. Most nations guard these secrets ver well.
which brings another point briefly mentioned above. Not all technologies are equal. Some such as nationalism, or mystism aren't really technologies, but ideas. Techs such as these should spread as migration spreads. As people communicate this ideas through migration and travel. Other that are concrete scientific tech such as nuclear fission should not spread so easily (even in tight geographical areas such as europe).
It would be difficult to implement these ideas into an already finished game such as civ4. But it is something to consider for mods or future versions of civ. I just think technologies such as nationalism and mysticism should spread quickly no matter matter what your science rate is, or the amount of gold you have to trade/steal for it. And techs such as nuclear fission should be very difficult to obtain without research.
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H Tower
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technology spread across trade routes in ancient history, so if you're trading with another civilization, then perhaps it will lead to you learning their technology. Heck, I'd even settler for increased science beaker production if you have a road connecting your civilization with another civ that has the tech.
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Standup
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Really Interesting point. One of the big fears in other countries after the French revolution in 1789 was that the ideology could spread and affect other countries. Similarly there was a big worry that communism/socialism could upset the natural order after the Russian revolution - all those soldiers coming back from the war. Not sure how you'd represent this in CIV. The great library effect is a good idea - seems strange that everyone else in the world has something like gunpowder (for example) but i have to discover it 500 years later. The idea of human thought concepts speading or attack by ideology sounds like an extension of culture.
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:37
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Governments developing tech is fairly silly until the manhattan project. Instead governments used private sector developments and the individuals in the military adapted them to warmaking. The Chinese developed gunpowder as everyone knows, but not as a weapon. It was used for centuries as a noisemaker for celebrations before being adapted for war. In fact that adaption was to take rockets used for celebrations and firing them at opposing forces to unsettle them. So governments through most of history are not the developers of science, in fact they mostly hinder progress. An example of that would be the treatment astronomy got from the government. Instead of devoting tax $ in an effort to aquire this new tech, governments, controled by corrupt church officials, punished those who worked on it. Astronomy was developed IN SPITE of the governments until England put up a prize for someone to develope a method of determining longitude...iirc....or was it latitude.
Civ is a game that teaches people to look to government for the answers, when historicly government was a drag on science and it was the people themselves who, by working and inventing to better their situation, developed science.
Another interesting bit about historical sci is the Aztecs and the wheel. Yes, they (the people) had developed it for use on childs toys but they had never adapted it for other civilian or military use.
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H Tower
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
That was the spirit behind "roads produce science" from the beginning of Civ. Though they're overhauling the way income works, I wouldn't be suprised if they kept a bonus for connecting to other cities and other civs. |
roads produced trade in Civ1 and 2, did they actually produce beakers in 3?
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sophist
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quote:
Originally posted by Lancer
Another interesting bit about historical sci is the Aztecs and the wheel. Yes, they (the people) had developed it for use on childs toys but they had never adapted it for other civilian or military use. |
The wheel is a lot less useful without draft animals.
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H Tower
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the chinese and their rickshaw boys would like to differ
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sophist
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quote:
Originally posted by H Tower
the chinese and their rickshaw boys would like to differ |
There's a big difference between "useless" and "less useful."
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Dis
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Las Vegas, Nevada
Feb 2000
time: 21:37
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
Tell that to the Aborigenes of Australia, who lived in bascially the same way successfuly for 40,000 years.
Technology spreads not only because the knowledge is there, but because regimes or societies decide the technology might be necessary or useful. That does not mean all societies will think it useful.
The thing is, most large, centralized states will seek to keep up with the jones' techwise, so in civ the differences should not be that huge. |
if we really want to delve into it, we could go into domesticated animals and agriculture as Diamond suggest in Guns, Germs, and steel
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Adm.Naismith
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Milano - Italy
Oct 1999
time: 06:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Lancer
Governments developing tech is fairly silly until the manhattan project. Instead governments used private sector developments and the individuals in the military adapted them to warmaking.
(SNIP)
So governments through most of history are not the developers of science, in fact they mostly hinder progress. An example of that would be the treatment astronomy got from the government. Instead of devoting tax $ in an effort to aquire this new tech, governments, controled by corrupt church officials, punished those who worked on it. Astronomy was developed IN SPITE of the governments until England put up a prize for someone to develope a method of determining longitude...iirc....or was it latitude.
Civ is a game that teaches people to look to government for the answers, when historicly government was a drag on science and it was the people themselves who, by working and inventing to better their situation, developed science.
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Sorry, my history teachers some 30 years ago teached to me a different lesson. 
You write as if governement in history doesn't care to finance state lab. In fact people studied and discovered, not countries.
Old governors (in fact, single commanding human beings, like kings/queens, empereors, etc.) sometime payed straight the artists/mathematics/philosophes/whatever for their works, sometime simply let them work and teach, free from others limits, like mandatory military service.
Sometime religion was a brake to discover and development, others it was a lifesaver (books saved from distruction and manually copied until the Gutemberg printing).
All the Italian (and European) Renaissance era developed thanks to funding by princes, merchant, etc. On the view of the time, it was *private* funding, because money are by the state treasure, OTOH you see it's the same of the Civ concept of the player assigning money to research (on a strategic level, of course).
I know some history teachers used to browse here at Apolyton, so I'll let room to the specialists to correct me. 
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Dis
if we really want to delve into it, we could go into domesticated animals and agriculture as Diamond suggest in Guns, Germs, and steel |
Gaming wise that will never happen, and it wouldn't be fun.
I personally think there should be two types of tech, general knowledge, and practical.
Gunpowder, or knowing that if you mix a bunch of chemicals you get an explosion, would be a general knowledge.
Making a cannon that works would be practical knowledge, that you can only get if you also have the general knowledge of Metalurgy, and then develop the specific techniques to make a cannon.
Under such a two tier system, general knowledge spreads easily, while practical knowledge can be hoarded and spreads with much smaller frequency, meaing that you can hev a civilization that knows all about gunpowder, but they simply never bothered to make it into a weapon.
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Dis
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Las Vegas, Nevada
Feb 2000
time: 21:37
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
Gaming wise that will never happen, and it wouldn't be fun.
I personally think there should be two types of tech, general knowledge, and practical.
Gunpowder, or knowing that if you mix a bunch of chemicals you get an explosion, would be a general knowledge.
Making a cannon that works would be practical knowledge, that you can only get if you also have the general knowledge of Metalurgy, and then develop the specific techniques to make a cannon.
Under such a two tier system, general knowledge spreads easily, while practical knowledge can be hoarded and spreads with much smaller frequency, meaing that you can hev a civilization that knows all about gunpowder, but they simply never bothered to make it into a weapon. |
I like this idea. It falls into what I was talking about with mysticism (which would be general) and nuclear fission (which would be practical).
This way certain techs that were closely kept secrets such as greek fire, nuclear fission (though those damn russians stole it  ), can remain closely kept techs. But things like nationalism can spread fast like it should.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Lancer
Governments developing tech is fairly silly until the manhattan project. |
Not strictly true- governments did have a vested interest in paid research into certain areas of technology, such as armaments, improved defensive architecture, drainage, land reclamation.
Caliph al Ma'mun:
quote:
Al-Mamun won the armed struggle and al-Amin was defeated and killed in 813. Following this, al-Mamun became Caliph and ruled the empire from Baghdad. He continued the patronage of learning started by his father and founded an academy called the House of Wisdom where Greek philosophical and scientific works were translated. He also built up a library of manuscripts, the first major library to be set up since that at Alexandria, collecting important works from Byzantium. In addition to the House of Wisdom, al-Mamun set up observatories in which Muslim astronomers could build on the knowledge acquired by earlier peoples.
Al-Khwarizmi and his colleagues the Banu Musa were scholars at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Their tasks there involved the translation of Greek scientific manuscripts and they also studied, and wrote on, algebra, geometry and astronomy. Certainly al-Khwarizmi worked under the patronage of Al-Mamun and he dedicated two of his texts to the Caliph. These were his treatise on algebra and his treatise on astronomy. The algebra treatise Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala was the most famous and important of all of al-Khwarizmi's works. It is the title of this text that gives us the word "algebra" and, in a sense that we shall investigate more fully below, it is the first book to be written on algebra.
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http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/...-Khwarizmi.html
The Sassanid Empire had also taken advantage of religious dissent amongst the Christians in the Byzantine Empire and set up academies in Nisibis and Jundishapur, and individual Islamic states in the aftermath of the collapse of strong central rule from Abbasid Baghdad had competed against each other to see who could attract the most prestigious scientists or researchers, which led to the second great flowering of Iranian science.
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Proteus_MST
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
I'd guess that they had to pay foreign crafstmen to teach rifle-making to them. In civ terms they "bought" a tech (at a bargain, I imagine). It is possible that they have modern weapons today that they don't produce by themselves (they buy the hardware abroad). In Civ terms, that would be "unit trading". |
Today it´s really difficult to see the countries isolated.
For example Heckler & Koch, a german manufacturer of small arms provides components for many small arms the american army produces.
And I think more complicated things like modern tanks depend even more on imports from other countries. I doubt that ypou could build a Leopard 2A6 (or an M1A2 Abrams), if you suddenly cut all connections from Germany (or America) to all other countries around the world (and if they´d finally get around the shortages by producing all components by themselves, the result would probably be inferior to the Leo 2A6 [or M1A2] we know).
Aside from this, as you already mentioned, there is a lot of unit trading today (Germany sells its Leopard, America its Fighters and so on [although I have no doubt, that all larger vehicles sold are downgraded versions from the versions the countries use for themselves]).
Something which was never really adressed in Civ - Games (I doubt that the unit trading by means of diplomacy is used very often [and I doubt that the AI would trade a unit to you]  )
Last edited by Proteus_MST on 27-08-2005 at 17:16
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26-08-2005 01:54
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