The spread of technology accross the lands

[Dis]

yeah I heard that about greek fire. Even today they weren't sure how it was made (but they have a pretty good idea based on the chemicals they would have access to)

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by H Tower
the chinese and their rickshaw boys would like to differ

Those rickshaw boys worked in the main urban areas, and the Aztec main urban area (their capital) was situated on water. The concept 'street' was closer to waterways then boardwalks to them.

[sophist]

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."

[Nikolai]

Perhaps something like the concept in Crusader Kings could be used for some of the techs like nationalism? There one choose a field to focus on, but techs flow over the map anyway, just slower. Things like borders, focus, trade routes and infrastructure like harbours affects the speed.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Dis


they don't reduce them enough.

It's pathetic when you find some island nation that hasn't even researched map making yet.

I think after a certain point of time, people should be able to figure out how to draw lines on piece of paper/parchment.

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.

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by Dis
'

they produced commerce I believe. And of course trade is broken down into gold/science/luxery funding.

Correct

[LordShiva]

hey conmcb25, I really like the T-shirt in your avatar. Where could I get one?

[Dis]

Originally posted by LordShiva
hey conmcb25, I really like the T-shirt in your avatar. Where could I get one?

The woman or the t-shirt?

[Dis]

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

[Adm.Naismith]

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.

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.

[GePap]

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.

[Addled Platypus]

what about out right "aquiring the scientist" or tech

The US was more than happy to have VanBraun (sp) improve upon our missle tech

The Russians desperatley needed a bomber, when the US emergency landed a stratafortress bomber, it was reverse engineered

[Dis]

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.

[molly bloom]

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:

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.

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~~history/Mathematicians/Al-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.

[Proteus_MST]

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] )