Israel

[Sharule]

I was refering the the ancient state. Before the destruction of the first temple. Until the time of Ezra, the Jews didnt not have a Tanakh, and were a largely unorginized people.

Actually, it was written by more than one person, at more than one time, and it isn't all about Jesus.

It wasnt all, but a large ammount of it was at the very least edited by him. Its not all about jesus's life, but its about his faith, and the house he built so to speak.

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by curtsibling


Balderdash.

Other cultures (Indus/Chinese/African) far predate the Judaic peoples.

And on the subject, anything is in CIV4 is moddable,
So, we could have the 'banana' civ included by the public.

PS
This thread just screams 'political rant' at me.

Could you please reread my post and my reply to the other post saying the same as you? Thanks!

[Alexander I]

You know, this seems to be the exact opposite of my old Mali thread. That one was about why a Civ shouldn't be in, and everyone got furious, saying that it should be. This one is about why a civ should be in, and now everyone's jumping all over, shouting that it shouldn't be...

Perhaps some people just like to be antagonistic...

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Alexander01
And I think their culture has had more influence on western civilization than they've been given credit for in this thread.

I agree with this, though I also accept that with only about 16-or-so slots in the game, some 'deserving' civs will lose out, and some tough decisions will have to be made.

Are the Civs present which invented/discovered the other religions used in the game?

It seems to me (as a non-Jewish atheist) that apart from the three Abrahimic religions, modern western progressive traditions of democracy, secularism, liberalism and socialism also owe much to the Jewish Civ.

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by Cort Haus

I agree with this, though I also accept that with only about 16-or-so slots in the game, some 'deserving' civs will lose out, and some tough decisions will have to be made.

Are the Civs present which invented/discovered the other religions used in the game?

It seems to me (as a non-Jewish atheist) that apart from the three Abrahimic religions, modern western progressive traditions of democracy, secularism, liberalism and socialism also owe much to the Jewish Civ.

I agree wholeheartedly. No, the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews (gradually getting more specific) did not have a huge long-lived conquering empire. But their culture has had such influence on the world as we know it that I think they merit a place in a Civ Expansion. After all, they've never been in a Civ game before.

[lord of the mark]

judaism is clearly a civilization, a distinctive and creative one, which has had many influences.

However a civilization, the game Civilization (at least all previous incarnations) is really a State. A state that goes throught processes of the advancement of civilization. I havent heard that Civ 4 will be any different in this respect.

Judaism is an example of a civilization that achieved many of its great advances precisely when it was NOT embodied in a state. It therefore doesnt fit the Civ paradigm.


It would still be helpful to have for specific scenarios.

[Kinjiru]

Originally posted by tuckson
Whatever u say on Israël, the fact that nearly 2000 years after their destruction the nation is re-established and is florishing (in spite of the continuous war-like situation) is quite an achievement imho.

That ('Israel is now flourishing') is a concept that I wonder about sometimes. The israeli intelligence service is certainly top notch, no question, but if the nation were not heavily supported militarily by the US, would Israel still exist? I suspect not.

The reason I say that Israel is supported militarily by the US is that, AFAIK, pretty much all of the military hardware possessed by the Israeli's is American made and given and/or sold to them at a heavy discount. (Possible exception: I seem to recall that they bought some French Mirage jets a while back). Not to mention the fact that Israel is generally considered to be under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella.

Anyway, I will leave the discussion to those with more concrete knowledge of the region...

[MarkG]

threads with ideas that are obviously too late to have anything to with civ4 belong here now....

[DarkCloud]

Originally posted by Joseph
We had a big discussion over at the FFZ about who invented what. Chris 62 remember him, look it up.

Sorry, ever since I was permabanned from that forum, I refuse to visit it.

But thank you for telling me your source.

And Boris- thank you for backing me up with hard facts.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Kinjiru


That ('Israel is now flourishing') is a concept that I wonder about sometimes. The israeli intelligence service is certainly top notch, no question, but if the nation were not heavily supported militarily by the US, would Israel still exist? I suspect not.

The reason I say that Israel is supported militarily by the US is that, AFAIK, pretty much all of the military hardware possessed by the Israeli's is American made and given and/or sold to them at a heavy discount. (Possible exception: I seem to recall that they bought some French Mirage jets a while back). Not to mention the fact that Israel is generally considered to be under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella.

Anyway, I will leave the discussion to those with more concrete knowledge of the region...

From its independence to 1967 israel principally purchased weapons from Britain and France. The aircraft were usually French, as you mention, and the armor was largely british. Israel only began to "buy american" after 1967.

Israel has long had an extensive defense industry of its own as well.

Israel receives about 3 billion a year in aid, which helps it to buy US weapons. They could probably do without this aid, but the need to cut back on subsidies to specific religious and economic groups would lessen the Govts ability to form coalitions - the US govt prefers paying the aid, and getting coalitions that are generally more favorable to concessions than it would otherwise get.

Israel is widely beleived to have its own nuclear force.

[lord of the mark]

way back when we were debating Civ3, i did a profile of the "unique units" a jewish/israeli civ would have. It was rather amusing, but i cant find the post. Anyone here better at websearching can find it maybe?

[Colon™]

About this printing press thingy again. I'll try not to pretend I know a lot about this, I had to read some re-read texts about it several times for one, but there seems to be some fuzziness going on (and Wikipedia isn't a particularly good source).
Yes, the Chinese invented woodblock printing and the use of movable types, and perhaps the Koreans metal movable types, but those elements do not constitute a printing "press".
Gutenberg invented a punch and mold system to quickly create movable metal types. And then he combined such types, put together in a tray, with the use of a screw press. Screw-drive presses is something the Chinese simply did not have.
And the significance is so not much that it printed, but that allowed printing in large quantities.

Put simply, the Chinese did not have a device like this:

[DarkCloud]

Admittedly, the way that I understand it, they did not have a mechanized way to do it, but they did have woodblock printing and produced thousands of copies of books through moving the blocks by hand and then pressing them down.

Allegedly, they could print 50-60,000 copies of some literature. Now, admittedly, I only have two book sources which corroborate this- but both books are scholarly considerations of the subject- I believe the title is "The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention
by Joseph Needham, Robert K. G. Temple" The book was recommended to me by Urban Ranger- he could probably tell you more (though admittedly, he's not the most unbiased source in the world.

PS: apologies for the overuse of "admittedly" and "allegedly"

[Colon™]

Yeah, UR already told me the Chinese made a lot of books, which is a bit beside the point and which I certainly wasn't trying to refute in any case. The point is that Gutenberg didn't just re-invent the wheel by using movable types: by using a press it was possible to print sharper images and both side of a sheet and, more significantly, it allowed for further enhancements. Dismissing the press would be like dismissing a wind mill, because manpower could drive a mill just as well.

Besides, I don't know how the Koreans did it, but Gutenberg also invented a punch and mold system to create new characters quickly, which also was far more productive than cutting characters out of wood.

Some sources:

http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Books/printech.html

http://www.gutenberg.de/english/erfindun.htm

[DarkCloud]

Okay, I'm not arguing that the Chinese system was better than Gutenberg's system. The only points that I made was that the Chinese invented the basic idea and that there is some claim that the Koreans and the Germans only arrived at the same conclusion after seeing demonstrations/and/or hearing about it.

Thanks for futher educating me on the fact of exactly how Gutenberg's sytem differed from the Chinese, though- I never quite understood their precise differences.

That still doesn't change the fact though that thousands of copies WERE produced by Chinese presses. But- once again, as you mention- Gutenberg's process was far superior, so I can see how some people would praise him for the invention of the 'press'... but regardless of whether he's more efficient or not isn't the issue- the Chinese invented the first one- much as Marconi invented the radio (actually someone else did-Marconi just took the credit- but I can't remember the other guy's name) and others built on his invention or came to it through similar lines of reasoning.

Indeed, wood block movable type was an amazing invention in its own right- and I think that the Chinese deserve a lot more credit than they're given for its invention.