How can you have Cavalry without Horseback Riding?

[Hauptman]

Just fealt the need to comment on...

Electric vehicles still don't have the same amount of horsepower as a diesel, which is what you need if you're transporting tons of goods out of a factory. Take a look at a transport truck someday and ask yourself if electric power has reached the point where it can replace it. I don't think so.

Electric vehicles can produce MORE torque than Internal Combustion engined vehicles. Horsepower is the combination of torque and rpm. Torque is what you need to move HEAVY stuff at not neccesarily a high speed.

What would you consider the most powerful vehicle on land? the "deisel" locomotive comes to mind... However what you may not be aware of is that it is a deisel-electric vehicle. The diesel powerplant only runs a generater to opperate the electric drive. Hence in town trolleys and newer monorail systems run with power lines and such, wich would not be ideal in a cross country line.

Torque is what you need to move heavy loads. Horsepower is what you need to go fast. electric motors produce their greatest amount of torque at zero rpm. the amount of torque generated is only limited by the amount of current available.

[johnmcd]

In anycase, the investment in internal combustion engines over the last hundred years really ought to ensure they are superior to existing electric motors, in power at least. Who knows where we would be if that initial stand off had been won by electricity?

The point is, it's clear that an electrically driven distribution method could have worked and petrol engines are in no way a requirement for an industrial society.

[player1]

Originally posted by gdgrimm
You can have Factories that will build other things, but not Tanks, or Planes, or other Oil requiring units. You can build nuclear powered naval vessals though, and whole slew of Infantry, and all kinds of other stuff.

Only nuclear Battleships can be built without Combustion.
Transport, destroyers and submarines still require for you to discover Combustion tech (even if you use Uranium).

By the way, it seems only Physics is needed to make nuclear powered vessels. No need dor Fission.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Hauptman

Electric vehicles can produce MORE torque than Internal Combustion engined vehicles. Horsepower is the combination of torque and rpm. Torque is what you need to move HEAVY stuff at not neccesarily a high speed.

Yes, torque is what I meant.

What would you consider the most powerful vehicle on land? the "deisel" locomotive comes to mind...

And Deisel requires a knowledge of Combustion.

The diesel powerplant only runs a generater to opperate the electric drive.

But look at the size of it. The main problem facing electric vehicles today is storing the electricity. To power something like a transport truck you'd need to have quite a large battery array, which in turn adds to the weight of the vehicle. Pound for pound, diesel is more efficient, at this point in time at any rate.

Hence in town trolleys and newer monorail systems run with power lines and such, wich would not be ideal in a cross country line.

And again, that's not an efficient way of getting goods to retail outlets. A system that can go door to door is needed. Anything with a fixed route wouldn't work very well.

[Willem]

Originally posted by johnmcd
In anycase, the investment in internal combustion engines over the last hundred years really ought to ensure they are superior to existing electric motors, in power at least. Who knows where we would be if that initial stand off had been won by electricity?

Good point.

[dearmad]

Originally posted by Hauptman
what about the screenshot in an earlier thread, where with bombers in his cities he is researching alphabet.

Collored buttons work too I guess.

The chinese have no alphabet.

[The keeper]

A lot of research was put into the combustion engine. Thus, today, the combustion engine is the best engine we have.


What if as much research was put into the steam engine? We would be sitting here today arguing that factorys must have rivers to be built. Or irrigation. Or whatever.


Sometimes the same things are discovered through different means by different people at about the same time. (Calculus comes to mind). Sometimes, 2 people develop totally different solutions for the same problem. And because of politics and/or money, one of them win and the other becomes nothing. (AC and DC current for electricity).

Look at the different tech paths as what COULD have happened and not so much as what DID happen. After all, you can win the space race without knowing how to fly.

[Dis]

I like how you can build SDI without having fission, manhatten project, or nukes around.

edit: I was wrong on my first account, it was SDI I was thinking about not manhatten project.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Willem


But they require Oil for heating. And modern factories rely on trucks to get their products to the buyers. A horse and buggy just wouldn't be efficient enough for the sheer volume of goods being produced in a modern factory. Railroad is only good for so much, you need a smaller local system that trucks provide.

(shrug) There's no reason you need oil to heat a factory, instead of using some other method. And there's no reason you need to have an efficent delivery system; a more efficent system of production would be a profitable development even before there was an efficent system of delivery.

The whole point of Civ IV is the different paths history could have taken. And there is no inherent reason why internal combustion engines must have been developed before factories, that's just the way it happened to go in the real world.

[Dis]

yes coal can be used for factories just fine. And did we really need vehicles? We could have just laid lots of tracks. True this would not have worked for the average person (too many people), but it could have worked to get goods to and from places.

The steam engine could have been much more versatile, but it just wasn't needed.

[Willem]

Alright, I know when I've been proven wrong. I concede already.