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Pyrodrew
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quote:
Originally posted by BlueO
Hmm, you know what? Civ3 isn't the only game that gets boring by midgame. All other strategy games are the same. From Civ2 to Mom, Moo, Botf, Pax Imperia, and even Imperium Galaticum 2. |
I never tried most those games, but Civ2 always had the weaker AIs team up against the strongest player (usually the human) near the mid-end game. This balance of power always kept things more interesting than the mid-end game that Civ3 has. In Civ3, there is no balance of power... simply fear of the strong. And as I said in another thread, in a Regent game the "Furious" Babylonians (Aggressiveness4) was one of the other superpowers & they let me finish my spaceship (which they didn't even start building) for Ivory! For mere Ivory they let me win the game! If I was in Civ2 they would have teamed up with the "Annoyed" Indians (2nd strongest) and/or the "Furious" Aztecs (4th strongest) and attacked me.
quote:
Civ3, I don't know what the lategame challenge could be... except I suppose, the game could come up with a number of doomsday scenario |
My guess is they thought Corruption would be the late game challenge. But corruption isn't dangerous... it simply slows the player down & severely limits empire size (which some hate). Civ3 Corruption also guarantees that no AI Civ will ever conquer the world since they don't know how to solve corruption.
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lategame challenges should be a toggleable option |
The 1 thing I did expect in Civ3 was more options. But if you start a game, there are exactly the same world generation options that Civ2 has (only now you cannot walk on glacier, and there are no swamps). I agree it would be great if there were options for random volcanos, wild earthquakes, floods or whatever.
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Marcus Agrippa
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I like your idea of civil wars, degression, etc. The only thing I disagree with was the "ancient units should be able to fight modern units" post. That has never been the case. Modern riflemen would slaughter samuri without any trouble.
However, the few examples of successful "outdated beating modern". For example, Afganistan vs Brits or vs Soviets, or Native Americans vs Europeans/Americans. But all of these defeats have been due to terrain. So, I think that modern units should always be able to overwhelm older units on normal terrain, but could run into trouble in mountains, jungles, etc. Thus, terrain would be the "great equalizer".
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squeeze truck
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Dazaifu, Japan
Nov 2001
time: 14:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Duddha
awesomedude:
I don't post much on this forum, actually basicly not at all, but after reading your post I felt obligated to correct you.
I don't know what history classes you've taken but your wrong and macaskil is right.
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Actually, you're both only partly right. Yes the Catholic church's cosmology was mostly Aristotolean, but the point was moot because during the Middle and Dark ages, questions on the nature of the world and the universe were considered to be answered by the church, and people as a rule did not go around asking them. Early Carolingian (Pre-European) civilization knew *of* Aristotle, but simply didn't care.
Greek and Roman Classical thought was preserved in their entirety by the Arabs and Persians. It was re-introduced to Western Europe when the Franks conquered Toledo (in what was Muslim Spain) and discovered the university library filled with classical texts written in Arabic, the most important of which were the Trivium, the Quadrivium and the Digest.
Without the Trivium, there likely would have been no scientific method, and hence, no Copernicus.
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Furtigan
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Interesting ideas. My (inflated) dos centavos:
--Some elements of technological progress are pretty undeniable: life expectancy, etc. Military units are one of them. Give me a shotgun and I'll wax any Samurai you got. I have achieved some interesting results by making some civs unable to build modern units (and very aggressive) which got me what I wanted: lone rifle units trying to hold out against wave after wave of spearmen (sometimes succeeding, but not always). Unfortunately, you have less control over improvements, etc, though I am creating an "Inquisition" (negative culture) that only theocracies can build.
--I've always loved the idea of regression, although I think the word we're looking for is "decadence." The tendency for populations to become complacent and the resulting decay. The problem comes when you try to make it into a game with any sense of continuity. Of the Civs that existed in 1000 BC, only China still exists in any recognizable form. Did they "win?"
Still. this has to be a part of any game called "Civilization." It is a glaring omission.
One step towards this might be to make happiness much more important, and a "happiness victory" a possibility (quality of culture, rather than number of temples). Another practical problem is that we're starting to move more towards a "Civilization Sim" and away from a "Strategy Game." A great idea in my book, but not everyone's.
--I agree with Ozymandias about the tech tree. If you want to pursue arts and culture to the exclusion of science, for instance, you should be able to try. I'd like to see a real tech "tree" that branches, in dozens of different ways (more than you can build in one game) rather than the tech "path" we have now.
Another game with the same issue is SimCity. After awhile, every city has the same "special" features (theme parks, military bases, etc). I live in a city (Orlando) with a slavish attention to one and only one industry, with the resultingly unique problems and benefits... which can never possibly be anywhere close to created in SimCity.
Similarly, there should be a rainbow of ways for cultures to develop. One of the biggest letdowns in Civ is when you finally cross the ocean and discover a new continent and other civs... and they have the same technologies, etc as you do. I would like some sense of "boy, these people are weird."
My suggestion for CIV4 (God, I hope Firaxis reads this), would be that the shape of your civ be multi-dimensional. Simply having five (or fifty) different government types isn't enough. I think the attributes are a step towards what I'm imagining, but I'd like it to be something you choose rather than something assigned.
To Wit: You pick (with some constraints) your society's religion, economic system, government, social structure, etc.
Modern India, for instance would be a Polytheistic Capitalist Democracy with a modified Caste system. Your relations with other civs would hinge around how similarly configured your societies were. e.g. US and EU share almost all attributes, are allies. US and India share some (democracy, capitalism) but not others, and are quasi-allies. 1970s China and USSR shared one thing (Communism), but could not ally because they shared nothing else.
If you had four axes of culture (say, gov't, religion, economy, and social structure, as above) with five choices each, that would give you twenty different types of civs, all with varying strengths and weaknesses, each with different possible routes around the tech tree. (Communists, no Wall Street... Atheists, no Crusades)
Anyway, that's what I think.
...and I'm right, because I scored in the top 3 percent of the GMAT, so "don't mess." 
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squeeze truck
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Dazaifu, Japan
Nov 2001
time: 14:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Furtigan
Interesting ideas. My (inflated) dos centavos:
...and I'm right, because I scored in the top 3 percent of the GMAT, so "don't mess." |
I scored in the top 1% in English Usage and Spatial Comprehension Whatever. That and dos centavos will buy you one tamarindo in Tijuana.
Finally someone who thinks as big as I do!!
I love the multi-dimensional culture idea. This may make civ into a game that only I would be interested in playing, but here goes.
"Polytheistic" describes India the same way that "round" describes earth. I would love to se a detailed (and customizable) civilization attributes, all the way down to names of individual Gods, a complete cosmology, detailed social order, and a list of totems and taboos.
To give a real world example, if I play the Aztecs then my major totem would be the sun god. The only way I can keep my empire together is by sacrificing one person to the sun god every day. As soon as I stop doing this, the empire loses its authority and literally falls apart. This means I have to raid neighboring civs or barbarians to capture soldiers and workers constantly so I can sacrifice them.
If I play the Chinese, I maintain my authority by building and maintaining massive public works. As soon as the dikes on the yellow river fall into disrepair and break, the citizens will revolt and the empire will come apart.
The Americans are an extremely legalistic society. If I as leader violate the constitution repeatedly, I lose authority and chaos reigns.
The taboos and totems thing simply means there are certain things that each civ MUST do, and other things that they MUST NOT do.
In game terms this would be similar to the superhero role playing game "Champions". Placing restrictive taboos and totems on your civ gives you "points", you use the points to buy special abilities (like "industrious", "religious", "commercial", etc.)
Also, if a civ develops some advance, let that advance be historically appropriate to the civ that invented it.
If the Babylonians develop a number system, let it be base-60 instead of base-10.
If the Chinese invent map making, make East the top of the map instead of North.
If the Aztecs develop a calendar (astronomy?), let the dates appear in the form of "one reed" instead of using the BC-AD scale.
...and any civ who learns a tech from another civ learns it as that civ developed it. If the French learn writing from the Egyptians, then French from then on is written in heiroglyphics. (Similar techs could bring civs closer together, and different ones could drive them apart.)
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Furtigan
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Unplayable; or at least unmarketable, as you said.
What difference does it make if they use base 60 math? How do you know the Babylonians in Civ3 don't already use it? Unless you're saying that base-60 math would somehow inhibit development, on the macro-level that Civ exists on, details like that and the East vs. North map are irrelevant.
Some things wouldn't be, like the nature of the religion. Again, the Diety's name is not important; but the social effects of the religion are. To use one example, in China, the same religious/governmental system (neo-confucianism) that gave political and social stability also led to eventual stagnation. It giveth and it taketh away. There would be all kinds of situations like that. Freer societies produce more tech. They also don't follow orders. Some of this is there now, of course, but I'd like to see it in much more depth and nuance.
I don't like the idea of tying any attributes, much less rules or taboos to a given civ. A culture's attributes should arise at least in part as a consequence of the game itself. Let's say I decide I want to play a game and be pacifistic, go for a culture win. So I pick India as my civ. Then I find, by 2000 BC, that I am sharing a relatively small island with the Aztecs and Zulu; to win the game, I'm going to do a lot of fighting. I should be able to build a military-oriented culture. I can do this in Civ3, sorta, but I'm running against what the computer "wants" me to play.
It made sense for the game designers to give England a naval unit as their UU; if your goal is to replicate reality. But we've all had the experince of playing a landloked UK or a Germany whose mobile land units are wasted in an achipelago game. I want to recreate history; and if the way the game plays out and my imagination lead me to make a Pacifist, non-expansionist, polytheistic society living in the tropics and centered around the fruit-and-spices trade, I should be able to do so. The fact that my Civ is named "Russia" only makes it more interesting. Otherwise, why bother with randomly generated maps at all?
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Ozymandias
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My thoughts are actually along different lines.
The basic mechanics would be that there would literally be too many techs to research within the course of one game.
Branching tech trees would flow from basic decisions essentially geared towards which type of victory you were going for and/or your play style.
The "essential" techs would remain the same -- you'd still have to discover iron etc. Yet (for example) each specialized military tech (armored cavalry; blitzkrieg) would require research.
At a more fundamental level, large branchings would occur, for instance, to make you decide to pursue one tree towards Democracy OR the tree towards Communism (I would point out that no major state has ever truly gone from one to the other -- China under Chiang Kai Shek was an authoritarian regime a la Franco's Spain, and within the scale of the game I'd discount short-lived communards).
I would also envision religious/ethical pathways: Monotheistic, Polytheistic, Conufician. A Confucian path would lead to the possibility of an early establishment of a state bureacracy (and the improvements that go along with it) but probably not much of a chance to build cathedrals.
The different paths would have variation in improvements, wonders, units, etc.
Of course, trading of techs might become rampant -- but, again, the basic mechanism is to literally have it it be impossible to do everything.
So we would encounter truly different civilizations, with different force structures, etc.
Some historical examples of military units which might NOT co-exist on the same path or might be on a unique path:
Advanced Phalanxes (Hoplites) and Legions.
Armored Cavalry (Knights) and Horse Archers.
Roman triremes armed with the corvus.
Archers armed with recurved composite bows v. Longbowmen
Guerillas (infiltrated insurgents as opposed to partisans).
Military technology obviously converges dramatically as the centuries roll on -- "Military Darwinism" at work. However, independently researched units (representing the units themselves and/or the tactics and training employed) and technologies might include:
Advanced fortresses (Vauban as opposed to the ancient city walls)
Aircraft Carriers.
Blitzkrieg armor.
Cruise missiles.
Submarines.
Tercios.
-- Basically, any historically significant unit or tactic (PARTIALLY represented now by UUs -- I would much rather have a Militaristic civ develop Legions than just hand them to the Romans!) whose deployment is not an "obvious" and ubiquitous extension of the technology at hand.
Best,
Oz
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Mizaq
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San Diego
Nov 2001
time: 21:17
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you could do something like this now, but you would have make a separate mod for each style. that kinda cramps the whole idea of specialization, but hey don't let that stop you from making a mod of just one of those branches.
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s3d
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quote:
Originally posted by Ozymandias
I would much rather have a Militaristic civ develop Legions than just hand them to the Romans!)
Oz |
In my mod I have Legioner as UU roman unit and Legion as common early and cheap army (2 units without blitz, available with code of law).
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Furtigan
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quote:
Originally posted by Ozymandias
My thoughts are actually along different lines.
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No they aren't. 
Maybe I wasn't clear, but that is exactly the kind of tech tree I would like. A branching "tree," as opposed to a directed "path" as we have now, which allows real diversity of civs (more than just their team colors and the look of their buildings) and adds replayability to the game.
I don't think trading techs is a problem.
1) You pick up other people's techs from you libraries, etc. Say each library gives you a 1% chance per turn of learning a tech from someone else in the world whom you've met. You would also get them from capturing cities, like civ 2, and just from trading with them.
2) Many Civs wouldn't value techs. You meet a militaristic feudal monarchy, and offer them Epistemology, and they're probably going to say no, or offer very little.
Trading techs would only happen with major, pivotal techs: iron, gunpowder, etc. And in those cases, you really have to ask if anyone would give away a strategic edge easily.
The only idea I would disagree with is the idea of either/or branchings. You could know about both democracy and communism, though you could only implement one. After all, it's not like the NATO countries were democratic because they didn't know how to be communist.
But yes, there should be sub-techs everywhere. For example, you can only learn Crusade/Jihad if you're running a monotheism. You can only have Feminism if you're a democracy or something close to it, and so on.
300 techs...
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squeeze truck
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Dazaifu, Japan
Nov 2001
time: 14:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Ozymandias
My thoughts are actually along different lines.
I would also envision religious/ethical pathways: Monotheistic, Polytheistic, Conufician. A Confucian path would lead to the possibility of an early establishment of a state bureacracy (and the improvements that go along with it) but probably not much of a chance to build cathedrals.
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Oh, don't get me wrong. I dig the massive tech tree.
I just don't think a culture or a religion is a form of technology. India didn't "develop" polytheism, they were polytheistic as long as they were India. It's innate to their civilizaion. Ditto for Monotheism and the Jews; they were always that way.
To me at least, what is now the tech tree needs to be broken up into at least 3 different entities.
The massive tech tree idea is perfect for the hard sciences. I like Ozymandus' ideas here. I would even favor some sort of randomization of the tree, and some sort of automatic generation of techs (don't ask me how), so that the end of either branch is impossible to reach.
Culture however should not be in the tree. Some should be dictated by the terrain of the starting location (I have heard it suggested that Mesopotamia and Egypt were theocracies because they were on fertile rivers, and Greece and Rome became republics because they were hilly.), and the rest should be innate.
Neo-Confucianism wasn't so much an invention as it was a codification of existing traditions. It should be "developed", but seperately, I think, from the tech tree.
I think the application of technologies, as in military units and city improvements should be dictated by both culture and science, rather the way it is now. So any civ that has Iron and a strong military tradition should develop a sort of legion unit.
Oh, and whoever said that Feminism was developed by democratic nations needs to brush up on their 20th century history. The first country to have any sort of laws guaranteeing the equality of women was the Soviet Union.
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Andrew Cory
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SF bay Area
Jan 2002
time: 21:17
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Hmmm, tec. trees. This is part of how I would like to see UUs handled in the future: instead of each civ. being asigned a UU at the outset, I would like to see unique tecs. If you are the first to hit a certain level, you can decide to research a certain (terminal) tec that comes with a UU, _or_ you can research somthing else. Only the first player there gets to research the tec, though they can sell it to other players. Any given Civ. would only be able to build two or three UUs in an era, so they would not be able to just stay at the head of the tec. curve that way...
One thing someone said struck me as historicaly accurate, but phylisophicaly ignorent. I forget who it was, or the exact quote, but the thrust was the Democracy and Comunism should be on compleatly seperate branches, as no one had ever successfuly gone from one to the other. Technicaly, this is true, only in the sense that what we today call "democracy" is not at all what the word actauly means. Without going into a lengthy digression on the deffinition of Democracy, suffice it to say that Comunism is the logical outgrowth of well thought out Democracy...
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awesomedude
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quote:
Originally posted by squeeze truck
Actually, you're both only partly right. Yes the Catholic church's cosmology was mostly Aristotolean, but the point was moot because during the Middle and Dark ages, questions on the nature of the world and the universe were considered to be answered by the church, and people as a rule did not go around asking them. Early Carolingian (Pre-European) civilization knew *of* Aristotle, but simply didn't care.
Greek and Roman Classical thought was preserved in their entirety by the Arabs and Persians. It was re-introduced to Western Europe when the Franks conquered Toledo (in what was Muslim Spain) and discovered the university library filled with classical texts written in Arabic, the most important of which were the Trivium, the Quadrivium and the Digest.
Without the Trivium, there likely would have been no scientific method, and hence, no Copernicus. |
Holy...  I thought this thread 'died' long ago. I do not really see in what way we are "both only partly right". It might be due to me being tired; I really don't feel like going back and checking out what I actually wrote earlier (it all came off the top of my head, I just enjoy a good discussion as it really enhances your argumentative abilities). As for the events in Toledo, I have no deep knowledge about them I must admit. Would you mind filling me in on what the works you mentioned above contained? I hope you didn't resort to any greater means of research to put me in my place  ...
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Ozymandias
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quote:
Originally posted by squeeze truck
I just don't think a culture or a religion is a form of technology. India didn't "develop" polytheism, they were polytheistic as long as they were India. It's innate to their civilization. Ditto for Monotheism and the Jews; they were always that way.
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Hmmmm... two points.
First, of course, Civ forces culture to be viewed as being "developed" just like technology -- and we wind up with Monotheism being an "improvement" over Polytheism. On one level, it's just game mechanics; perhaps, given a sufficiently complex tech tree, starting any one Civ as Monotheistic, Polytheistic, etc., would be possible, and each Civ would naturally follow it's own thereby innate path.
Second, however, as with so many questions about the game, the root question is, "What is being modelled?" I would submit that the two intertwined issues are technology and "culture" -- and I am here going to define and use "culture" in the very specific sense of "possessing shared assumptions about reality". You know, those things people in a society take for granted -- one deity or many or none; superiority or equality of various ethnic groups; etc. In game terms, this encompasses both political / philosophical (government types) and religious choices (very limited in the game).
At this level of abstraction, in the Civ model (and, interestingly enough, the properly comprehensive definition of "model", be it of a toy car or an econometric system, is very close to how I'm using the word "culture" -- to wit, a model is a set of assumptions about reality) "philosophy" and "religion" are really the same -- they're culture as applied to world view. For example, Maoism has often been compellingly described and defined as structurally indistinguishable from religion. (And, PLEASE!, before anyone launches on a diatribe about religion and communism being antithetical etc., I do try to choose my words carefully -- they are "structurally indistinguishable" in how Civ models reality, which is very different than being "the same as" in the real world!)
-So, the question is how, in game terms, "world view" translates into conrete, bricks-and-mortar / blood-and-iron issues. Mechanically, some aspects might be straightforward -- Cathedrals probably should not have ANY effect under a Communist regime -- indeed, declaring a Communist government should probably force a sell-off of every religious improvement, which would of course make maintaining a happy Civ populace extraordinarily challenging, to put it mildly (BTW, in the mod I'm working on, choosing a non-religious path compensates for this in ways we've seen before --colloseums with greater power increased by radio and the minor wonder of a national broadcasting sysem; etc.).
Likewise, Hoplites worked really well in narrow mountain passes; Roman manipular legions far better in open terrain. If the Greeks had overrun Anatolia pre-Alexander, they might never have developed hoplites (and let's not forget that Alexander the Great's military arm of decision, in Anatolia and beyond, was his heavy cavalry) so I believe, in game terms, developing Hoplites or Legions truly should be a choice -- both were the result of technologically equivalent societies developing different "UUs" as adaptations to their circumstances.
But that's all just the easy stuff: the Chinese had paper and water clocks and gunpowder by 1000 AD and yet never fielded the sort of gunpowder based armies used in Europe centuries later, etc. Was this due to (a) an "innate" cultural bias against integrating technology into their society (making them an "ingenious" but "impractical" Civ?); (b) a lack of competition due to not being amongst densely packed rivals, as was the case in Europe; or (c) something else entirely? -- that the form of governance sometimes called "Oriental Despotism" derives from peasants' passivity due to the prevalence of the debilitating schistosomiasis blood fluke in rice paddies?
-And, on a related note, the Jews certainly weren't always Monotheistic (something about a golden calf?) -- and one compelling theory about why Pharaonic Egypt's flirtation with monotheism fell flat on its face while Abraham's carried on is that the Jews had the advantage of an alphabet instead of hieroglyphic pictograms, and an alphabet is innately easier to use to express abstract concepts, such as an invisible and omnipresent deity.
All this having been said, I believe that one of the best potential strengths of the Civ "model" (or rather, how we modify it!) is that it CAN illustrate world views evolving / transforming over time; and, in this, "culture" and "technology" proceed very much hand-in-hand, in the game as in history -- the 18th Century Deists could hardly have imagined a "clockwork universe" without clockworks, now could they?
Or: how easy would it have been for a culture (again Pharaonic Egypt) which believed that only certain individuals had immortal souls, to develop democracy? (Let us not forget that Monotheism, in the form of Islam as rendered in the Arabic alphabet, was imposed upon Egypt by conquest.) So perhaps an "evolution" from Despotism to Democracy really does require Monotheism which really does require an alphabet.
For me, the intellectual joy in playing with the Civ model is NOT to express what I believe to be ideologically Right or True, but to discover if can be made to reveal great truths about the very shape of history -- while of course still being fun to play!
Yours way too late at night,
Oz
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Cossack
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Moscow
Nov 2001
time: 08:17
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This thread has some excellent ideas and i just wanted to my own thoughts on the tech.development subject. I'm not sure what people will think of this but it is an extension of something I wrote about in another thread to do with far to few units in the game.
I was thinking along the lines of the tech tree that you could also expend money to research improve your military units. The easiest example to illustrate this is the Second World War, take tanks, all countries improved their tanks from the twenties through to the end of the Second World War. The Russians had T-28's and others which went through to the T-34A-85C through to heavier tank designs such as the KV-series through to the Joseph Stalin tanks. The Germans similarly progressed from Panzer I to Panzer II, III, IV, Panther, Tiger, King Tiger.
If in CIV you could expend money to develop more advanced military units once the discovery of a tech allows that type of unit it would make the game much more interesting particularly towards the end of the game.
For example getting motorized transportation would be less of an advantage if you only got First World War quality tanks but with some prototype development you could advance to medium tanks and then advance to develop light and heavy tanks/armoured vehicles then you would slow your rate of tech research and switch this money to the development of prototypes.
Cavalry would be the same, you could have basic cavalry and the prototype develo lancers, heavy cavalry, light cavalry, then rifle based cavalry. The Roman legions also went under significant development/enhancement with time as did musketmen, knights (just go to the Tower of London) and cannons/artillery.
Just an idea, although I am aware the above is impossible in the current game may be an expansion pack or CIV IV will include it. Personally I have to admit that I am disappointed with CIV III Firaxis have corrected and improved some aspects of the original game but not expanded the game concepts significantly enough/ or converted many of the things in SMAC to CIV as I personally had expected they would have.
Got to admit I am tired with the fanatical supporters of the game who can't see the wood for the trees when it comes to the lack of features or bugs, they come up with excuses like in the space of year the Samurai could creep up and slaughter infantry at close quarters.
Absolute rubbish, combat has to be taken realistically and therefore a phalanx would be fighting were they were traditionally most effective, on open ground where it could maneuver easily and therefore infantry would massacre them before they even got close. These pointless agruments would be avoided if Firaxis provided some idea of the size etc. in terms of men/tanks/planes of each unit or had in place the HP/FP system.
At the moment I have to agree with Yin and some of the other so called whiners that the members of these forums are doing the beta testing of a game which has limited long-term appeal due to a lack of expansion of the game concepts in the first place. I wonder sometimes should it really have ever been released.
I consol myself with the fact that, although I don't agree with the business approach taken by Firaxis and Infogrammes, may be by buying the game and any expansion pack I may be helping to fund the development of a game truly great game that includes many intelligent features/ideas provided by members of this forum.
Sorry if this is a bit of a rant but I have come to the point with CIV III where I feel like I am totally wasting my life playing it as opposed to playing it and knowing I am wasting my life and still not being able to help myself. Sorry of this is a long post but I am happy if you are still with me at the end.
Cheers
The English Cossack
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squeeze truck
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Dazaifu, Japan
Nov 2001
time: 14:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Ozymandias
Hmmmm... two points.
First, of course, Civ forces culture to be viewed as being "developed" just like technology -- and we wind up with Monotheism being an "improvement" over Polytheism. On one level, it's just game mechanics; perhaps, given a sufficiently complex tech tree, starting any one Civ as Monotheistic, Polytheistic, etc., would be possible, and each Civ would naturally follow it's own thereby innate path.
Second, however, as with so many questions about the game, the root question is, "What is being modelled?" I would submit that the two intertwined issues are technology and "culture" -- and I am here going to define and use "culture" in the very specific sense of "possessing shared assumptions about reality". You know, those things people in a society take for granted -- one deity or many or none; superiority or equality of various ethnic groups; etc. In game terms, this encompasses both political / philosophical (government types) and religious choices (very limited in the game).
At this level of abstraction, in the Civ model (and, interestingly enough, the properly comprehensive definition of "model", be it of a toy car or an econometric system, is very close to how I'm using the word "culture" -- to wit, a model is a set of assumptions about reality) "philosophy" and "religion" are really the same -- they're culture as applied to world view. For example, Maoism has often been compellingly described and defined as structurally indistinguishable from religion. (And, PLEASE!, before anyone launches on a diatribe about religion and communism being antithetical etc., I do try to choose my words carefully -- they are "structurally indistinguishable" in how Civ models reality, which is very different than being "the same as" in the real world!)
-So, the question is how, in game terms, "world view" translates into conrete, bricks-and-mortar / blood-and-iron issues. Mechanically, some aspects might be straightforward -- Cathedrals probably should not have ANY effect under a Communist regime -- indeed, declaring a Communist government should probably force a sell-off of every religious improvement, which would of course make maintaining a happy Civ populace extraordinarily challenging, to put it mildly (BTW, in the mod I'm working on, choosing a non-religious path compensates for this in ways we've seen before --colloseums with greater power increased by radio and the minor wonder of a national broadcasting sysem; etc.).
Likewise, Hoplites worked really well in narrow mountain passes; Roman manipular legions far better in open terrain. If the Greeks had overrun Anatolia pre-Alexander, they might never have developed hoplites (and let's not forget that Alexander the Great's military arm of decision, in Anatolia and beyond, was his heavy cavalry) so I believe, in game terms, developing Hoplites or Legions truly should be a choice -- both were the result of technologically equivalent societies developing different "UUs" as adaptations to their circumstances.
But that's all just the easy stuff: the Chinese had paper and water clocks and gunpowder by 1000 AD and yet never fielded the sort of gunpowder based armies used in Europe centuries later, etc. Was this due to (a) an "innate" cultural bias against integrating technology into their society (making them an "ingenious" but "impractical" Civ?); (b) a lack of competition due to not being amongst densely packed rivals, as was the case in Europe; or (c) something else entirely? -- that the form of governance sometimes called "Oriental Despotism" derives from peasants' passivity due to the prevalence of the debilitating schistosomiasis blood fluke in rice paddies?
-And, on a related note, the Jews certainly weren't always Monotheistic (something about a golden calf?) -- and one compelling theory about why Pharaonic Egypt's flirtation with monotheism fell flat on its face while Abraham's carried on is that the Jews had the advantage of an alphabet instead of hieroglyphic pictograms, and an alphabet is innately easier to use to express abstract concepts, such as an invisible and omnipresent deity.
All this having been said, I believe that one of the best potential strengths of the Civ "model" (or rather, how we modify it!) is that it CAN illustrate world views evolving / transforming over time; and, in this, "culture" and "technology" proceed very much hand-in-hand, in the game as in history -- the 18th Century Deists could hardly have imagined a "clockwork universe" without clockworks, now could they?
Or: how easy would it have been for a culture (again Pharaonic Egypt) which believed that only certain individuals had immortal souls, to develop democracy? (Let us not forget that Monotheism, in the form of Islam as rendered in the Arabic alphabet, was imposed upon Egypt by conquest.) So perhaps an "evolution" from Despotism to Democracy really does require Monotheism which really does require an alphabet.
For me, the intellectual joy in playing with the Civ model is NOT to express what I believe to be ideologically Right or True, but to discover if can be made to reveal great truths about the very shape of history -- while of course still being fun to play!
Yours way too late at night,
Oz |
I am truly enjoying this thread.
Re: The Chinese. It is a common misconception that gunpowder was first put to good use in Europe. Certainly the Europeans brought it where it is today, however... IIRC, the first mass deployment of gunpowder technology was Korea. China and Korea (and Japan for that matter) had a nasty problem with Japanese pirates marauding coastal cities. Chinas solution was to pull all the people away from the coast. Korea deployed massive cannon batteries along it's coastline, which I understant worked rather well.
Re: Alphabet and monotheism.
The Hebrews most certainly were always Monotheistic. The incident with the golden calf was Hebrews being corrupted by Egyptian religion. If you recall, Abraham was monotheistic, and he was patriarch long before the Egyptian captivity.
Also, I don't agree that heiroglyphic (or ideographic) writing systems don't do well with abstract thought. I read classical Chinese, and I can tell you it is nothing but abstract concepts (ever read the Tao Te Ching?) I would agree that It could be resistant to foreign abstract concepts however. Also, doesn't Sanskrit use an alphabet? And Latin? Speakers of those languages were polytheistic.
Anyway, why would the most powerful empire on earth adopt the religion of slaves? 
Hm. Seems like I have nothing to add to the discussion. I do like talking about culture though. 
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Ozymandias
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quote:
Originally posted by squeeze truck
Also, I don't agree that heiroglyphic (or ideographic) writing systems don't do well with abstract thought. I read classical Chinese, and I can tell you it is nothing but abstract concepts (ever read the Tao Te Ching?) I would agree that It could be resistant to foreign abstract concepts however. Also, doesn't Sanskrit use an alphabet? And Latin? Speakers of those languages were polytheistic.
Anyway, why would the most powerful empire on earth adopt the religion of slaves?
Hm. Seems like I have nothing to add to the discussion. |
Re: your last comment -- Quite the contrary!
Re: writing (and, as an aside, language: I believe it was Tom Stoppard who wrote, of English, "We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.") we are actually in agreement -- I view IDEOgrams and PICTOgrams as different (although some linguists do treat them the same).
In reality, of course, the issue can be rather more complex --"ideograms", "pictograms" and "phonograms" are distinguishable categories, yet (for example) Sumerian script utilized all three classes, differentiating them by the use of unpronounced symbols called "determinatives". ("Heiroglyph", BTW, simply means "priestly writing" -- revealing a religious monopoly of literacy -- and, technically, "heiroglyph" is only used for Egyptian pictograms; the later Egyptian "script", quicker to transcribe with brush and papyrus, is likewise referred to as "Heiratic".)
-- Although my point was not that an alphabet inevitably leads to monetheism, simply that, in the two earliest documented cases I'm aware of, the alphabet MIGHT have been a crucial element.
Re: power and the religion of slaves, we are again in agreement; my (admittedly abbreviated) point was that preconditions are almost certainly necessary for democracy, and that these are indeed well represented in the Civ model as "technologies".
Best Regards,
Oz
P.S. Vote/rate this thread!
-O.
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BlueO
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Another good way to model technology, is to add the concept of minor technologies. Under every major technology (ie, gunpowder, alphabets, wheels, motorized transportation, etc), there will be a list of minor techs the players can research to improve their major technology. The idea is to have so many minor technologies, no civilization will ever have them all. Thus, each civilization will be unique in their own ways. Peaceful civs can favor peaceful techs, while warmonging civs can favor military techs. In addition, all unique units will spring from minor techs, instead of being tied to any particular civs. So warmonging civs can research all the unique tech they want, if they got the research points for it.
Now, to prevent the civs from trading with one another and eventually getting all the techs, minor technologies aren't tradeable. They are ideals, philosophies, and concepts that a nation must develop on their own. For example, free speech. United States can't just say, Russia, here's 'Free Speech', enjoy! Russia will need to develope 'free speech' on their own. This applies for other concepts such as Blitzkreig, various 'military tactics' that improves unit stats, and culture thinges like Hollywood, high fashion industry, and whatever goofy ideas the people can come up with.
Keep in mind, major technologies are still tradeable. So civs can feel free to give each other gunpowder. But if a civ want to improve its musketman, they'll need to do some minor research into 'gundpowder', instead of researching into the next major tech.
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s3d
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To squeeze truck:
Re:Re Jews and monotheism.
I heared about quite controversial concept:
Genesis of Jews as a nation (well historical, not biblical) coincident in time with defeat of monoteism in Egipt (cult of Aton, introduced by Ehnaton (sp ?)). That is the ground for some (hmm researchers to suggest that monoteistic Aton-worshipper refugees from Egipt mixed with half-nomadic pre-jews and that mix became Jews themself.
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squeeze truck
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Dazaifu, Japan
Nov 2001
time: 14:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Ozymandias
Re: your last comment -- Quite the contrary!
Re: writing (and, as an aside, language: I believe it was Tom Stoppard who wrote, of English, "We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.") we are actually in agreement -- I view IDEOgrams and PICTOgrams as different (although some linguists do treat them the same).
In reality, of course, the issue can be rather more complex --"ideograms", "pictograms" and "phonograms" are distinguishable categories, yet (for example) Sumerian script utilized all three classes, differentiating them by the use of unpronounced symbols called "determinatives". ("Heiroglyph", BTW, simply means "priestly writing" -- revealing a religious monopoly of literacy -- and, technically, "heiroglyph" is only used for Egyptian pictograms; the later Egyptian "script", quicker to transcribe with brush and papyrus, is likewise referred to as "Heiratic".)
-- Although my point was not that an alphabet inevitably leads to monetheism, simply that, in the two earliest documented cases I'm aware of, the alphabet MIGHT have been a crucial element.
Re: power and the religion of slaves, we are again in agreement; my (admittedly abbreviated) point was that preconditions are almost certainly necessary for democracy, and that these are indeed well represented in the Civ model as "technologies".
Best Regards,
Oz
P.S. Vote/rate this thread!
-O. |
Re: Heiratic.
I thought that by the time Coptic came about, that Egypt was long since conquered and the cult of Osiris, quite dead.
I suppose the Coptic Christian church had priests as well though...
Re: Democracy.
My personal belief is that Protestantism had more to do with modern egalitarian democracy than just about anything else.
In any case, even if a connection could be established, I don't think either belong in a tech tree.
PS, anyone know of any examples where a monotheistic culture converted to polytheism?
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squeeze truck
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Dazaifu, Japan
Nov 2001
time: 14:17
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quote:
Originally posted by BlueO
Another good way to model technology, is to add the concept of minor technologies. Under every major technology (ie, gunpowder, alphabets, wheels, motorized transportation, etc), there will be a list of minor techs the players can research to improve their major technology. The idea is to have so many minor technologies, no civilization will ever have them all. Thus, each civilization will be unique in their own ways. Peaceful civs can favor peaceful techs, while warmonging civs can favor military techs. In addition, all unique units will spring from minor techs, instead of being tied to any particular civs. So warmonging civs can research all the unique tech they want, if they got the research points for it.
Now, to prevent the civs from trading with one another and eventually getting all the techs, minor technologies aren't tradeable. They are ideals, philosophies, and concepts that a nation must develop on their own. For example, free speech. United States can't just say, Russia, here's 'Free Speech', enjoy! Russia will need to develope 'free speech' on their own. This applies for other concepts such as Blitzkreig, various 'military tactics' that improves unit stats, and culture thinges like Hollywood, high fashion industry, and whatever goofy ideas the people can come up with.
Keep in mind, major technologies are still tradeable. So civs can feel free to give each other gunpowder. But if a civ want to improve its musketman, they'll need to do some minor research into 'gundpowder', instead of researching into the next major tech. |
I like the minor techs idea. What I would like even more is if each major advance had, for example, six minor techs and each civ would be able to learn only two or three of them. Possibly chosen by the player, possibly predetermined by cultural attributes or current type of government.
The invention of "mass media" is attractive to all civs, but for different reasons. America worked it into the capitalist system in the form of annoying advertisements, the Soviet Bloc worked it into communism in the form of propaganda, and Iran seems to have made it part of the church (check out IRNA.org sometime). Three different cultures, three different effects.
Another thing I think needs to be modelled in the game is what techs a civilization is interested in learning, and what techs they're culturally ready for. Traditionally strong cultures have resisted innovation because their empires' power base rested on older ideas. Southern Europe, dominated by the Catholic church, resisted modern astronomy because it seemed to undermine Christianity. The theory of (micro) evolution really cheesed off the protestants, but was embraced by the Catholics. The science of cloning meets resistance in the US because it undermines the sacred American notion of individuality.
Then there is the question of of what sorts of "development" a civilization is interested in pursuing.
The Babylonians and Egyptians were very interested in Astronomy, but little else. -- And produced a very complex astrology that was useless to everyone but them.
The Chinese were much more interested in questions of government and ethics than scientific "progress". All the Chinese classics are ethics books.
Midieval Europe was interested in spiritual progress and was very antagonistic to the idea of studying the natural world.
If this is what is meant by different branches of the "tech tree", I like it. I would love to see a branch of the tree dedicated to nothing but ethics and containing some 30+ advances. (The main advantage of taking the government ethics route is significant reduction of corruption.)
Taking a spiritual course would generate massive ammounts of culture, enough to comletely overcome neighbors.
Also, I would like to see some forks hit an occasional dead end, kind of like the Babylonian astrology idea. Civs would continue to research the same sorts of techs for smaller and smaller payoffs because switching over to a new branch of study would require a significant retooling of the scientific establishment. Such a changeover should be expensive in research, shields, and time. Rather like changing governments I would imagine.
Whew. Have I rambled enough?
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Ozymandias
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quote:
Originally posted by squeeze truck
Re: Heiratic.
I thought that by the time Coptic came about, that Egypt was long since conquered and the cult of Osiris, quite dead.
I suppose the Coptic Christian church had priests as well though...
Re: Democracy.
My personal belief is that Protestantism had more to do with modern egalitarian democracy than just about anything else.
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Re: "Heiratic", correct -- the priests I refer to are the priests of Isis, Osiris, and all that gang.
Re: the egalitarian phenomenon we call "democracy", if you're correct, then it would make sense that a civilization would have to pass through Monotheism to -- something else equivalent to Protestantism? -- before achieving democracy. Within the Civ model, how else would you have such transitions occur without using the tech tree?
Best,
Oz
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Spatzimaus
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I love the idea of a "Dark Age", although the designers would have to provide us with that mechanism in a patched editor.
In my view, the reason the late game is boring isn't so much the stagnation of technology. It's that the AI is far too conservative. Players will attack other civs early on; by the time I enter the Industrial Era I've usually conquered two or three other civs. That pretty much automatically puts me in first place.
The AI, on the other hand, doesn't often do the knock-down-drag-out sort of wars needed for this. In one 16-man game, the world went until the 1900s having a grand total of six wars in the game (4 of which I started), and only one civ was destroyed as a result of someone else's attacks, while I destroyed five. This was on a huge Earth map, and by the time anyone ganged up on me I controlled all of Asia and most of Africa.
The AI needs to be more aggressive against other AI players, so that when you get to the Industrial Era you find another superpower on the other side of the world.
Then there are Wonders. Many of the Wonders from the Middle Ages are extremely powerful; never underestimate the Art of War, Sistine Chapel or J.S. Bach's Cathedral. The Industrial and Modern Eras, though, just don't have this. The few wonders they have are either plain (Theory of Evolution and Universal Suffrage), incredibly strong (Hoover Dam) or something you actually want to avoid building in many cases (U.N. and Manhattan Project)
This one you can solve: add some new Wonders. For example, I added new Small Wonders (Hollywood, the Internet, the Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal, and so on). Hollywood adds 6 culture per turn, makes 1 happy person in every city, and increases luxury by 50% in its home city. Then, I added a couple Great Wonders: the Theory of Relativity (acts like Theory of Evolution again but also adds 50% to research in its home city like a Library), the KGB (acts as a new Great Library for the later ages), that sort of thing.
These give people something to build other than the "yawn, okay, add Police Stations to every city's queue" type of thing. New Wonders give civs something to race for, and to use Leaders for.
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05-02-2002 03:05
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