Ancient tech tree looks mighty weird

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Harlan
I don't have any idea why you'd think I would want Monotheism and Polytheism to switch places - I clearly stated I wanted to see them both replaced by something else (presumably of a religious or ethical nature). Ribannah had a couple of good suggestions with Mythology and Ethics,

Ok, my blunder - but frankly why discuss tech-name changes that have no chance whatsoever to be implemented? That goes for big tech tree-rearrangements with completely new ancient tech-additions also. Both polytheism and monotheism is well established in previous versions, and besides; the game is already in QA-stage. Why kidding yourselves?

"God that can't be seen, mentally pictured or physically represented in any possible way"- does the Bible not say that man was created in God's image?).

Well, I meant the misguided viewpoint of Jesus being literally God himself.
As for "Gods son/Gods image" - well, in that case we all are Gods sons/images. God talks and acts through all living entities throughout universe. So, in the latter case every living entity is created in Gods images.
Compare with a shining lightbulb completely covered with black paper - then punch small holes with a needle. Each bright little spot is a living entity, but behind the black paper is God, and God only.

There are other monotheistic religions that aren't even part of the Judeo-Christian stream of thought that fit even fewer of your definitions. Maybe you consider them more "tainted", but they're just as monotheistic as any other monotheistic religions. But you're not the only one to be essentially thinking of Christianity when saying "monotheism".

Dont jump to conclusions. In my view the word monotheism is not something specifically Judeo-Christian only. Its a generic gathering-name for ALL religions that believes in ONE God, regardless culture. Obviously!

Civ2 and now Civ3 do this as well (Civ2 actually having the Crusader unit with big crosses on their shields!,

The CTP-2 team dumped the roman legion all together and replaced it the japanese samurai-unit as an universal ancient infantry-unit, regardless civ. That was NOT a popular move at all. I guess the team tried to be culturally "fair", but it backfired.

As for the crusader-unit. Well, Civ-2 still managed to sell in several millions. Also, no game-magazine reviewers ever bothered to complain about that crusader. Frankly, I dont think they complained over at asia/japan either.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Harlan
Look at the very location of Monotheism in the tech tree. If placed in context with when monotheism was first developed by the Egyptians (or even the Jews), it would be well into the Ancient Age.

Not only could it be argued that Monotheism is out of place in time even if one wanted it in the tech tree, but so is Ceremonial Burial and Polytheism. Can does anyone doubt that both of those concepts were widespread well before 4000 BC? Ceremonial Burial dates to something like 100,000 BC, in fact.

There are only a few things that prevent Civ3's tech tree (as much as we see of it, anyways) from being able to apply to more than just Western civilization. The main problem is Polytheism leading to Monotheism,

The position of monotheism in the civ2 tech tree is late medieval, early renaissance. I dont know if Reynolds was doing it deliberately, but this CAN be read as distinguishing a more philosophically advanced monotheism (Erasmus or Aquinas) from a dark ages christianity that is implicitly an extension of polytheism. To broaden from christianity, I would add Ibn Rashid and Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon) for the Muslims and Jews respectively.

Finally, Ralf, you didn't respond to my main point, which is should Monotheism be a prerequisite for future developments like the Printing Press, Education, Banking, Astronomy, Chemistry and so forth? As I said before, non-monotheistic civilizations were the first to discover many of these.

I agree that there are problems introduced in the Civ 2 tech tree by the interlacing of technologies with social ideologies. I agree that monotheism, while presenting advantages, should not be a prerequisite for scientific techs.

Oh, and to respond to an earlier point: yes, monotheism has "devolved" to polytheism on occasion. For instance, Buddhism and Taoism became primarily practiced as polytheistic religions, even though their founders did not intend them that way. And this is no minor exception: these Chinese religious practices have been practiced by more than 1/5th of all of humanity for most of history.

I think that's an example of a religion changing as it is popularized. The populace that turned Buddism into a polytheism was never monotheistic. I think history does not contradict Ralf on the issue of directionality on this point.


LOTM

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ralf

Dont jump to conclusions. In my view the word monotheism is not something specifically Judeo-Christian only. Its a generic gathering-name for ALL religions that believes in ONE God, regardless culture. Obviously!

Or Judeo-Muslim for that matter

Arguably Judaism has more in common with Islam than with Christianity - an austere monotheism, a parallel notion of religious law and its centrality, etc. In the 19th century it became fashionable to speak of "Judeo-Christian" heritage - by Jews eager to assimilate, and by Christians eager to look more pluralist - also "Judeo-Muslim" points to the more legalistic aspects of Judaism favored by Conservative and Orthodox Jews, and largely dispensed with by Reform (and historically never understood by Christians) The Judeo-Muslim notion has of course not gained popularity, largely because of Middle East politics. Unfortunately the historic peace that might have overcome that now seems very far away

Sorry to go on like that Ralf. it just happens to hit a hot button

LOTM

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Harlan
Ralf,

There are other monotheistic religions that aren't even part of the Judeo-Christian stream of thought that fit even fewer of your definitions. Maybe you consider them more "tainted", but they're just as monotheistic as any other monotheistic religions.

But you're not the only one to be essentially thinking of Christianity when saying "monotheism". Civ2 and now Civ3 do this as well (Civ2 actually having the Crusader unit with big crosses on their shields!, and don't even get me started with that game's nonsensical connection between Polytheism and war elephants).

Hey Harlan, where I grew up an awful lot of people wouldnt have even considered Christianity to be a monotheism

Somehow the crusader unit never bothered me at all. (perhaps because unlike muslims, chinese etc my people werent building any military units at all in the middle ages?)


I agree that the polytheim was elephant thingee was one of the weakest aspects of the Civ2 tech tree. OTOH, i suppose they war elephants were "kewl" , yet not worthy of taking up a slot with an "elephant riding" tech, and they had to put it somewhere, and polytheism seemed about the right place on the tech tree. It does always annoy me that I need horseback riding to get polytheism

LOTM

[star mouse]

Re: Ancient tech tree looks mighty weird

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
And the alphabet-Writing thing makes me
The line should go Writing --> Alphabet --> Literacy
The Gilgamesh-Epos was written in Cuneiform - not really an alphabet

IMHO, "Alphabet" means the initial creation of symbols that mean specific things with limited use, and "Writing" as the invention of some technology that allows these symbols to be used more generally. Perhaps "writing" was the invention of papyrus, or a better stylus.

Although you don't support your argument for writing leading to alphabet, I know what point you're making and it is equally valid.

Not all writing uses a phonetic alphabet. A Chinese person would say Writing -> Literacy and omit Alphabet altogether as being an irrelevant Western invention. Someone using Cuneiform would probably insist on Pottery -> Writing -> Literacy because knowledge of pottery was needed to write on clay tablets. We could argue a lot about this, but one thing we can agree on is that the invention of writing was not one single advance but a series of technological steps.

Wouldn't it be cool if the different civs had tech trees that reflected this?

No point arguing about a name. I would rather play CIV3 when it comes out. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet - William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) Whatever names are chosen for the early advances of writing, we will know that you need to get both early because you need them.

Two important points to remember about "writing":

* It includes "reading" as well. Maybe the spread of technology that allowed educated people to learn to read was also important?
* As late as the Middle Ages, most people could not write. Writing was the specialised job of scribes. A literate person in the middle ages was someone who could read and dictate. A scribe then wrote down what the literate person dictated. Even though the scribe could write, they would not have been considered literate by the standards of the day unless they could also read and dictate. This shift in literacy standards with time is not unusual. We are rapidly approaching the time when reading, writing and the ability to use a computer comprise the standard of literacy.

[Harlan]

Ralf:

"Frankly why discuss tech-name changes that have no chance whatsoever to be implemented?"

I know I'm just flapping my lips as far as Firaxis is concerned, now. But I'm looking beyond that, to modifying the game. If I like the game, I'm going to tweak the parts of the game that I don't like. From what I see of the tech tree, I can live with almost all of it, but this is one of the things I'd tweak. I brought up the point asking "it is just me" who's bothered by Monotheism and Polytheism in Civ3, and I'm glad to see that isn't not just me. Hopefully someone else will be inspired to fix Civ3's mistakes, so I don't have to bother . I was really glad to see Wes' mod for CTP2 for this reason, amongst others.

Regarding God's image, you have your more abstract beliefs about God, but the vast majority perfer to see God in some kind of visualizable form. And when the Bible talks about man and God looking the same, that was meant to be taken literally, at the time. The idea of a completely abstract non-physical God was too far out then (2000 BC? as a wild guess when that part of the Bible was created), and is too far out now for many (most?) people. The Catholic Church for instance has had trouble lately over African churches that are displaying Jesus and God as black. My society typically pictures God as an older guy with a big white beard.

Jumping to conclusions: I'm merely pointing out that, as someone who grew up and lives in a Christian society (I'm assuming you didn't suddenly move to Sweden from, say, Tibet), your view of monotheism is going to be inevitably colored by your knowledge of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Its the same for me - I know very little about monotheistic religions outside of that tradition. But we can't assume all those things you say follow from monotheism in fact invariably follow. There could be (and are) very theologically advanced polytheistic religions and very simple monotheistic ones. In fact, not far from where I live here in California, a Native American tribe shocked the Spaniards who first discovered it, because they believed in only one God, and that God was very evil and vengeful.

On being culturally fair. Probably 95% of the people playing Civ-like games are in Western countries, and those that are not are used to Western bias in most everything anyways. But that doesn't make it a good idea. Variety is the spice of life, and including non-Western civilizations and concepts in the game would make the game much better, if done well. Look at the very popular Age of Kings and Age of Empires games for instance. They use civs from all over the world - it adds to the game experience and maybe even people learn something as they play. By adding such things as the Grand Canal in Civ3, hopefully the same will happen with this game (though I'm guessing that will be a rare exception to the general Western bias of Civ3). Funneling the game into just repeating the development of the Western world limits the game in my opinion - there's a whole interesting world out there.

And historically, China was more advanced than the "West" pretty consistently through history until they were conquered by the Mongols and lost half their population. Even after that, people couldn't believe Marco Polo's descriptions of China cos they sounded too fantastic. For a game that tries to model history, they miss out on a lot because of the Western bias.

[Harlan]

LotM,

I'm looking at the Civ2 tech tree now, and I don't see Monotheism where you put it historically. The nice thing about it in that tree is that it could come "early" or "late", cos its not too tied in to the rest of the tree (and in fact this branch of the tree more or less dead ends shortly thereafter). Whereas in the Civ3 tree, there's no way to get around Monotheism - you basically can't enter the Middle Ages without it. Pretty much all future technological development needs it - dumb.

Civ3 would do better to have the religious/philosophical branch of the tree more independent of the rest. Leading to some things that give you culture points, wonders, etc... certainly. But having the number of gods you believe in be vital to the invention of, say, banking, makes just as little sense as the polytheism - elephant connection.

Speaking of the Crusader and Elephant units, they fit so much better as potential special units. That's a nice improvement (again assuming its done correctly, but that's another thread).

[Ribannah]

Re: Re: Ancient tech tree looks mighty weird

Originally posted by star mouse
Not all writing uses a phonetic alphabet. A Chinese person would say Writing -> Literacy and omit Alphabet altogether as being an irrelevant Western invention.

That's why my suggestion is to make The Alphabet (= phonetic script, as opposed to symbolic script) a wonder instead of an advance. No need to
introduce an additional concept like different tech trees for different civs, which btw can be done (and has been done for civ2) with relative ease in (limited) scenarios by cutting the tree up in branches per civ. Say:

Alphabet (wonder with Writing) = all feasible techs are always available for research

I don't think techs such as Pottery, Hunting or Rope are logical prerequisites. Nature provides many suitable surfaces already such as rock, trees and sand.
More essential seem Herbal Lore and Storytelling.

This shift in literacy standards with time is not unusual. We are rapidly approaching the time when reading, writing and the ability to use a computer comprise the standard of literacy.

Or using the Internet

[jsw363]

Ribannah-

I've never liked that some wonders weren't physical structures (i.e. Cure for Cancer). That's why I don't like the idea of Alphabet being a wonder.

Alphabet definitely impacted some cultures more than others and some not at all. But I think that some kind of requirement before writing is essential, whether that tech is pictograph, alphabet or that Chinese system (sorry, I don't know what it's called). I know that there's no optional techs leading to other advances, but it would seem to solve the problems. Since different civs progressed in different ways it would be ideal to reflect this in the tech tree, but that's not possible. So I guess that this is Fireaxis' best idea for a compromise.

On a side note, I really liked being able to see the literacy rate for your civ in CIVI. That was a fun, cool feature.

[The Mad Viking]

I agree with Ribanah on several points.

Firstly, horseback riding and the wheel are unrelated techs that should not be prerequisites for each other.

Horseback riding was not discovered by a Civilization. It was developed by Steppe nomads. Civilizations, generally little more than city-states, located on the fringe of the steppes came in contact with these nomads- as they were raided by them. After a time, two things happened. One, the nomads were hired as mercenaries. Two, the nomadic bands grew in size to the point that they could capture an entire city, and occupy it, gradually losing their nomadic roots and becoming more civlized. Through both of these, horseback riding became introduced to civilization.

Further, there has been recent reconsideration of the age of the stirrup. Although still disputed, the possibility that Steppe nomads had stirrups a millenium earlier than previously thought is now held by a number of scholars. Non-metallic stirrups of nomadic peoples would be virtually impossible to find archaelogicallly. One such (disputed) find has been made.

The inventors of horseback riding clearly did not have the wheel. The inventors of the wheel clearly did not have horseback riding.

A word on chariots.
They were unwieldy, cumbersome and required smooth ground. They were very expensive. But in the absence of a mounted opponent- they were highly mobile, and more importantly, terrifying. In early war, the first massed infantry that panicked, broke and ran invariably lost. Chariots were very effective in invoking panic. However, as stirrups were developed, chariots soon lost their value. A proper horseman was faster, more agile, worked on rougher terrain and far cheaper.

Alphabet
This is not a matter of opinion. An alphabet is a set of characters representing phonenes, which can be grouped together to represent vocalized sounds for words. First alphabets, incidentally, lacked vowels.

Cuneiform and Hieroglyphics are forms of Writing. Pictographic forms of writing such as these typcially evolved towards an alphabet. Cuneiform lost symbols, and became syllabic in its representation as opposed to representing whole words.

Writing -> Alphabet. QED.

However, I like Ribanah's idea of the Alphabet as a Wonder- as clearly, it is not a necessary advance. (China)

[Ralf]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking
Writing -> Alphabet. QED.

So the Alfabeth -> Writing tech-order remains unchanged. So what - who cares?

Do you really think all the important game-magazine reviewers gonna give a **** about that? No!!
They didnt gave a **** about it then Civ-2 was reviewed, did they? Was the alfabeth -> writing tech-order a "big issue" back in 1996? Was it even ever mentioned officially?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Harlan
LotM,

I'm looking at the Civ2 tech tree now, and I don't see Monotheism where you put it historically. The nice thing about it in that tree is that it could come "early" or "late", cos its not too tied in to the rest of the tree (and in fact this branch of the tree more or less dead ends shortly thereafter). Whereas in the Civ3 tree, there's no way to get around Monotheism - you basically can't enter the Middle Ages without it. Pretty much all future technological development needs it - dumb.

Civ3 would do better to have the religious/philosophical branch of the tree more independent of the rest. Leading to some things that give you culture points, wonders, etc... certainly. But having the number of gods you believe in be vital to the invention of, say, banking, makes just as little sense as the polytheism - elephant connection.

Speaking of the Crusader and Elephant units, they fit so much better as potential special units. That's a nice improvement (again assuming its done correctly, but that's another thread).

Harlan - Re CIv2 placement of monotheism - its called a renaissance tech, and follows philosophy and polytheism. I typically get to it late in the ancient/medieval period or early renaissance. Now you could interpret philosophy as aristotle, so that monotheism is circa 1 AD, but given that phil is considered a transition to renaissance, i think the designers clearly had something different in mind.

As for Civ3 - I agree it shouldnt be prereq for all later techs.

LOTM

[Harlan]

I don't really care what game reviewers may or may not say about Alphabet or much else, for that matter. They usually look at the game in a very superficial manner anyways, and I'm much more interested in how fellow Apolytoners will review the game. But naturally the game isn't gonna be perfect coming out of the boxes, and people will want to make some changes. It sounds like one area many people would like to change is Writing / Alphabet.

Turning Alphabet into a wonder is one suggestion. However, I'm not a big fan of that. The vast majority of countries have alphabets for their national languages today, so does that mean that virtually all "civs" would have the Alphabet wonder? That's kind of defeats the point of a wonder, which is a unique thing that most don't have (even if its a minor wonder - I understand you'll have to meet certain prerequisites to be able to build them, so typically only a few civs will be able to build any particular one).

Instead, I think it would be best to just drop Alphabet altogether from the tech tree. The tech tree is a great simplication on things, and can't include everything. Alphabet falls into a wierd hole that can't easily be modelled in the game. Nobody's clamoring for an inclusion of a tech or techs revolving around numeric systems even though those also were very useful, so why alphabet?

I think the main advantage to having an alphabet was that it made the printing press a much more useful thing. The Chinese and Koreans invented the printing press first, but it didn't do them much good because they didn't have an alphabet. But how to model that in Civ3, and is it worth the bother?

There are plenty of other very deserving techs to make room for that fit the definition of a must have tech much more easily.

LotM,
You're right Monotheism is a Renaissance tech, but esp. given that a tech that comes after it has Feudalism as a prereq, the whole branch seems "out of time" to me. You could even be done with Theology while still not leaving the Ancient Age in all the other branches.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kenobi
Likewise, the key technological (as opposed to social) development required for the printing press was not mass-produced paper; it was moveable type, which requires machinery/metal working skills. The early printing presses did not need mills to generate power - they could be worked by hand.

No.

Printing was first performed by "negatively" etching characters on slabs of wood. Clearly this was unsatisfactory because the need to make new "presses" every time something new needed to be printed. So movable type was developed - again, made from wood.

The first metal types were made by Koreans in the twelveth century.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Harlan
Instead, I think it would be best to just drop Alphabet altogether from the tech tree. The tech tree is a great simplication on things, and can't include everything. Alphabet falls into a wierd hole that can't easily be modelled in the game. Nobody's clamoring for an inclusion of a tech or techs revolving around numeric systems even though those also were very useful, so why alphabet?

I agree. That's perhaps the best way.

Originally posted by Harlan
I think the main advantage to having an alphabet was that it made the printing press a much more useful thing. The Chinese and Koreans invented the printing press first, but it didn't do them much good because they didn't have an alphabet.

Not sure about that. Without printing it's impossible to explain the source for that gigantic central bureaucracy of ancient China. All these bureaucrats had to be literate, and most of them had to pass nation-wide exams. Without widespread use of printing presses this would have been impossible.