Industrial age in 800 - 1400 AD

[Saint Marcus]

In just about every game I play on a huge map with 16 civs (on monarch), I (and the other civs) reach the industrial age somewhere between 800 and 1400 AD. Kinda stupid and certainly annoying. Has anyone else experienced this? And is it the same on other difficulty levels?

[PerpetualNewbie]

I play standard size, 8 civ, Monarch, and the only countries not building railroads by 1000AD are third-world backwaters. Has to do with the aggressive tech trading. Yes, it seems silly compared to the modern timeline.

Lower difficulties are much closer to the standard timeline. At least they used to be. I haven't played less than Monarch since 1.16F.

Higher difficulties are much faster. There are stories floating about where the player won on Diety by space race in the 1200s...

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

The one thing about the Civ series is you get to skip the "dark" ages. Some tv show was once talking about how concrete was "lost" for about 1000 years. Civ3 allows us to replay history as if Rome never fell, and thus society continued to "progress" technilogically.

[No.Dice]

Thats actually pretty fast for monarch. I entered the industrial age at about the same time on emperor, though there was a ton of warmongering done by everyone. Athens, Rome, and Babylon were all razed to the ground before 10 AD.

A while back, i changed standard map size to allow 16 civs, and we were in the industrial age in the BCs.

[watorrey]

LOL... it finally happened... i heard about a BC industrial age!!!

[Inverse Icarus]

my modern armors in the 1700s arent to realistic either, but they sure would have helped in the revolutionary war

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by ALPHA WOLF 64
The one thing about the Civ series is you get to skip the "dark" ages. Some tv show was once talking about how concrete was "lost" for about 1000 years. Civ3 allows us to replay history as if Rome never fell, and thus society continued to "progress" technilogically.

are you saying you'd like every civ to have like 10 turns of no tech advancement every so often? i think it's pretty stupid, no matter how realistic.

[PhoenixPhlame73]

If the game had just the right conditions, it could happen. Rome could fall, you could make it, and one of those "Massive barbarian uprisings" could take a huge chunk out of your empire. If there was enough war then there could be a dark age, just not as a segment of time that the game has given a name.

[Ninot]

well... in my opinion, what brought up the "dark ages" could theoretically happen in the game, but it would be so imposibly rare that it never will...

Rome was one of the only civilizations dicovering new technologies rather quickly, up untill it fell. (ok, im ignoring the Eastern civs, like India, China...) And after Rome fell... game wize, everyone else had their tech sliders really low or just at 0%.

You can either take that explanation, or all the Euro Civs were switching from one government to another?

But i would go for the first explanation... Rome didn't trade its techs to the barbarians, so some got lost (concrete)... and the new monarchies of Europe would take a while to re-build the tech tree.

I ask this however... didn't Rome kind of get out of the Ancient age? They had all of the Ancient age techs discovered... maybe they had engineering...

[nato]

I have a cool note about Roman industrialization that might be interesting...

The Romans were actually not interested in anything like industrialization or automation. There were some attempts at developing mills and things ... however they felt things like that would replace human workers, and so would increase unemployment. Unemployment was a major bad thing for Roman leaders. Therefore they did not try to advance along those lines, stopping what development and ideas they might have had.

That doesn't really relate to the thread, but I thought it was interesting.

[Beren]

Originally posted by PhoenixPhlame73
If the game had just the right conditions, it could happen. Rome could fall, you could make it, and one of those "Massive barbarian uprisings" could take a huge chunk out of your empire. If there was enough war then there could be a dark age, just not as a segment of time that the game has given a name.

The problem with the barbarians is that they don't capture or raze cities. So you only might loose improvements, production, money.

BTW: about money: really stupid. If there are 20 barbarian next to one of your two hundred cities, they might steal about 50% of your gold

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

You misread if you think i like the dark ages. i hate when games force us to replay history that might not be relevant to the game. To me a Civ3 dark ages would be if you lose alot of cities, your science would naturally go down thus a dark age. I sure dont want to see where the game tries to force techs at about the same time as historically discovered. Just imagine the world now if Rome had somehow not fallen, and we hadnt had a dark ages. Since the concepts of steam power were known back them, i wouldnt bet against the Romans having railroads around 1000ad, give or take a little.

[Bleyn]

Originally posted by ALPHA WOLF 64
The one thing about the Civ series is you get to skip the "dark" ages. Some tv show was once talking about how concrete was "lost" for about 1000 years. Civ3 allows us to replay history as if Rome never fell, and thus society continued to "progress" technilogically.

Rome could have still fallen, and the "Dark ages" might still have been mostly avoided if history had gone a little differently in the timeframe Marcus is talking about.

There is some speculation amongst those who like to kibitz on these things that Charles Martel's defeat of the Moors at the Battle of Tours in the 700s basically prolonged that feudal period. Had the Moors won and continued to sweep through Europe a renassiance era may have happened hundreds of years before it did, and could easily have led to an industrial era much sooner. Certainly history would have been very different.

Indeed, the "New World" may have been "discovered" much sooner(though we know now that Europeans knew of parts of the "New World" for centuries, they just didn't know they know, if you know what I mean Verne). And certainly Moorish influenced explorers would have handled contact with the native peoples much differently. Maybe not better, but definitely differently.

Alternative history is always interesting to contemplate.

Now if we could just find a truckload of tribbles and a way to get them back to ancient Rome....

[GeneralTacticus]

In just about every game I play on a huge map with 16 civs (on monarch), I (and the other civs) reach the industrial age somewhere between 800 and 1400 AD. Kinda stupid and certainly annoying. Has anyone else experienced this? And is it the same on other difficulty levels?

I actually find that on Regent with a Huge map, tech advancement is a lot slower, and tech trading isn't so common. Probably 'cos even the AI isn't stupid enough to sell a double-price Rep or Monarchy for a handful of gold.

[star mouse]

Originally posted by nato
The Romans were actually not interested in anything like industrialization or automation. There were some attempts at developing mills and things ... however they felt things like that would replace human workers, and so would increase unemployment. Unemployment was a major bad thing for Roman leaders. Therefore they did not try to advance along those lines, stopping what development and ideas they might have had.

I heard this was because the Roman empire employed a lot of slaves and with such copious free labour available there was no real incentive to develop such mechanical devices. This ultimately contributed to the downfall of Rome. The most reliable source of slaves was conquest, and when they ran out of places to conquer, the supply of slaves was diminished.