12-12-2000 20:04									#31
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

There are some different ideas swimming around in here.

I totally agree that you should not get a usable free science advance from spying that is too advanced for youd civilisation. Perhaps spies should just steal extra bulbs rather than whole techs. As long as the target civ had already researched what you are researching, you automatically halve the remaining cost of learning it? Avoids messy problems of techs you know but can't use. It also stops the spy rush of advancing 10 techs in 1 turn just because your boatload of spies managed to land and sneak onto a railroad.

Conversely, the spread of military hardware around the world is pretty universal in the modern era. Even the tightest arms embargoes have never stopped 3rd world dictators, rebels and revolutionaries getting hold of assault rifles, grenades, mines and anti-tank missiles even though they'd have a hard time manufacturing a musket. Perhaps the ease with which other civs manage to steal military techs is attempting to represent that? I would prefer a button that allowed anyone to try and buy an 'upgrade' for their units to turn them into guerillas or just hire mercenaries. The troops should certainly be inferior to true regulars, but its better than facing an armoured division with spears. The cost of upgrading would decline as more and more countries acquired the capability to produce their own modern arms.

	13-12-2000 02:12									#33
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I think this is a good idea, but this did not always occur in reality, an example of this is when the british colonizers arrived in New Zealand, the Maori, quickly learnt by methods of trade the knowledge, of gunpowder, and musketry. This would not be possible in your ideas, as the Maori had not yet invented writing or litracy. There should be a chance that you can understand the advance, but not a definate NO!

	13-12-2000 07:54									#36
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

It's a good idea, but very complicated to implement. As was pointed out, gunpowder would be easy to teach to those lacking the requisite knowledge. They might not know jack about chemistry, but that really wouldn't matter. They'd have to know something about ironworking to make guns, but that's not too bad.

But things like the automobiles would definitely require machine tools and combustion and a good set of its pre-reqs.

To do it, every tech would have to have 2 sets of pre-reqs. One set is the what you need to be able to research it. The other is what you need to understand it. Gunpowder would have only some primitive stuff in the latter set, so it's easy to spread around.

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Jared Lessl