Historic dates for Civ3 ages

[Akka]

Originally posted by Nym
In France it would be somehing like that:

• -> 476 AD (Fall of Rome) : Ancient Era
• 476 AD -> 1453 AD (Fall of Constantinople) : Middle Age
• 1453 AD -> XVII century (not very clear) : Renaissance
• XVIII-XIX centuries : Industrial Era
• XX century : Modern Era

But of course it can then subdivided.

The "by the book" classification is :

Prehistory => up to about -5000 (first writing).
Antiquity => 476, fall or Rome.
Middle-age : 476 to 1453/1492 (fall of Constantinople or first use of large-scale artillery or discovery of America).
Modern times/Renaissance : 1453/1492 to 1789 (French revolution)
Contemporary era : 1789 to today.

[dunk]

Re: TREBUCHETS

Originally posted by Coracle
War elephants should be 3.1.2 and at slightly cheaper cost. They were terrible on defense, and problematic on offense. They also should NOT have airlift capability!

Didn't you see Dumbo Drop?

[SirSebastian]

Breaking it up into 5 eras is cheating. =P

I'm curious as to the continued classification (apparantly) of WWI as an Industrial-Era war instead of a Modern War. Machine Guns, Battleships... geez.. what more do you need? Nuclear weapons are a product of the Modern Era, not a demarkation line that begins it! Personally, I think I'd vote for 1903 ... why? Wright Brothers.

The person who pointed out this is all Western-centric, is of course, correct.. but... oh well.

About Abraham & Monotheism. 2 points: a) I _think_ it took a long time for the Hebrews to come around to realization that there God was the -only- God ... certainly they believed he was "their god" and in fact, the "Creator" ... they probably considered the other gods as "demons" or "evil gods" ... (and perhaps they are). b) In antiquity this is still essentially confined to a few (?) million people wandering around in deserts or in captivity. The widespread conversion to monotheistic ideas in Western Civilization is what they probably mean by Monotheism as a "technology."

Also, let me throw my vote in for the fall of the Byzantine Empire as a barrier between Medieval and Industrial. The Byzantine Empire was always a Medieval-ish/Classical Empire, and although it rarely found itself unable to adapt to new technology, the pounding of its ever-oscillating empire by cannons was too much. Note that these cannons were not the lightweight types that you think when you think of pirate ships or the Civil War or that seem to be represented in Civ! They were MUCH larger, and fired with an extremely long wait time afterwards (measured in hours, not minutes or seconds). I think you'd be hard pressed to say that the 15th century was entirely medieval or that the 16th was entirely non-medieval. Obviously, lines are blurred and it would depend upon where you lived.

So, my votes:
Classical -> Fall of Rome -> Fall of Constantinople -> Wright Brothers

[N. Machiavelli]

I believe that it's a little 'off' citing the begining of the middle ages with the fall of Rome. There was certainly a distinctive period between the fall of the Western Empire and the rise of Charlemagne. Many refer to these as the Dark Ages. Feudalism itself arose from the fall of the Western Empire. Keep in mind that the Western Empire extended through Spain, France, and Britain. Each territory was divided and governed by individual reagents who answered to Rome. When Rome itself fell, it marked the end of the unification of the Western empire, but the local reagents now had even greater power within their spheres of influence, since they no longer answered to Rome. They bargained, hired, absorbed, and even inter-married with local tribes (Gauls, Celts, Goths, Visigoths, etc), and thus created their own militaries. These localized concentrations of power was the begining of the Feudal system, which lasted well into the late middle ages(and existed in Italy to the end of the Rennaisance).

That out of the way, I agree that it is inadequite to divide all of history into simply 4 'ages'. My personal count is 11 distinct 'ages', but is also difficult to represent in the game. Not to mention that the 'stages' of mankind are also measured by governments and societies as well as warfare and/or technology. As far as Civ terms, I'd measure the 4 ages like so:

Ancient: Creation of the City-State (usual begining of Civ games) to the discovery and implimentation of large Republics (discovery of the Republic).
Middle: Feudal System (Feudalism) to the stage of warfare wherein armies consisted of many more(80%) gunpowder weapons than melee (Metallurgy).
Industrial: When warfare was passed from the 'hobby' of Kings to that of the State itself (Nationalism) to the advent and conception of Atomic Power (Nuclear Fission).
Modern: The second that the world was introduced to atomic weapons (Nuclear Fission).

[White Pine]

Many thanks to all responders. Y'all have given me much grist for the intellectual mill. Very good reading.
I want to respond to a few items. SirSebastian commented that the technology of monotheism could be dated from the time it became a mass movement, instead of the time of Abraham. For about 2000 years after Abraham monotheism remained the intellectual property of the Jews, a relatively small group. However, by the time of the Roman Emporer Constantine, Christianity was spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. The year of Constantine's conversion, 312, might do for marking Christianity (and monotheism) as a mass movement. 312 still seems too early to mark the start of the medieval age.
Some suggested Charlemagne's rule (c. 800) as the birth of feudalism. I prefer to the division of the Carolingian empire (843) as the starting point for feudualism. Feudalism in effect took power away from the central government, the king, and placed in in the hands of local aristocrats. Charlemagne was a strong ruler.
The tech tree shows three starter technologies for the industrial ages: nationalism, steam power, and medicine. The French revolution, 1789-1815, was rightly listed by many responders as the birth of nationalism and so the start of the industrial ages. Nationalism should not, however, allow for the production of the rifleman unit. Rifles were not the common firearm in armies until the 1850's. Civ3 should list rifles as a seperate technology. It is hard to pick a date for the start of steam power, since steam power was the sum of many inventions. I would pick 1830, because that is the year when the railroad industry began in earnest in the US and Britan. Medicine did not make any great leaps until the end of the 19th century, when the germ theory was advanced. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannia. Keep writing

[elfstorm]

It's probably best not to read to much into the Civ3 tech tree, certainly not for historical dates etc.

I mean why does feudalism appear so late in the tech tree?

I know feudalism is associated with medieval Europe, but there were feudal societies in the ancient world. Feudalism is, to me at least, representive of a very unadvanced society.

As anyone who knows anything about Greek history will know, the Macedonia, pre-philip, was a feudal society.

Likewise Education. Plato set up his Academy in the 4th century BC, and similar educational institutes spread around the Greek world.

My point is, Fireaxis had to make a tech tree for the game and they had to put various advances somewhere. But I wouldn't associate it to much with history though.