***TECH TREE***: General Discussion

[yin26]

While specific threads are being setup as we move ahead (...we are now on Wonders of the Industrial Age), we still need a place for general discussion. Here it is.

[Harel]

Note on Philoshophy: while I think we all agree that philosphoical thoughts date back to the evolution of mankind, we must use the first date the TERM itself was declared. It was Pythagoras that created the title Philosphy. He lived between 500 B.c to 580 BC, which probably put the reasonable date at 550 B.c.

[Huey]

With regards to the tech tree, I've been wondering. I have a feeling that all of us are looking at history from an ethnocentric Euro/American view. I for one have absolutely no clue as to what happened in China, Africa and the America's but I'll bet that at least some of our inventions were actually invented earlier by other cultures without the most of us knowing.
Maybe it's worth trying to find sources other than the obvious ones already quoted here? Anyone any thoughts on this?

[yin26]

Huey,

Those of us with knowledge of discoveries found in Asia have tried to represent them here. I agree that looking at a Civ game primarily from a western perspective limits how much we learn about and appreciate history.

The problem, of course, is that most reference materials have the same western perspective. If anybody among us has reference materials relating to non-Western discoveries, please speak up!

[KoenigMkII]

Here is a thought on the tech tree and the difficulty of making the date of a tech discovery appear realistic.

In general, a human-run civ will develop in the game according to how much easily accessable, high quality territory is available.

On a huge map size there is of course more space before expansion is choked off by rival civs fighting bitter wars of attrition.

What I am saying is that with a fixed number of turns in the game, a greater map size speeds up the tech-rate. So trying to anchor the tech tree in a certain time line, this tech in that year, magnetism in this decade etc., will fail unless every gamer plays Civ on the same map size.

My solution:-

Make the number of turns available in a game directly proportional to the ratio of the played map area divided by the "standard-map area."

The "tech rate" [number of units of science output required per tech discovery, i.e. the price of tech advances] proportional to the square of the ratio of map area played divided by the "standard-map area

So if i play on a map twice the area of the "standard map size" i get twice the nuber of turns, but tech costs four times as much per advance.

This cant hold for all maps, but surely a similar formular could be devised to increase turns on larger maps, but stop the tech tree getting "blown away" way too soon.

A fixed number of turns is my pet hate. I want to be able to research tech, build a large military and actually move it against an enemy before the clock runs out.

If we are granted ultra large maps as an option in CIV III, then a balancing formular must surely be applied.

Ko

P.S. any ideas on how to calculate "civ-score" in such a game?

[Yuvo]

Yin: While we're doing the wonders, improvements, advances and units, why not do the civilizations as well?
We could just find their starting date and, if applicable their 'ending' date. Maybe even their peak of power date, if we can find it.

[yin26]

Yuvo,

I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. Anything we could do to make the historical aspect of the game richer would be great. Would you like to start and lead that thread? I'll eventually get to it, but my hands are full now, so if you run with it, I'd be greatly appreciative.

[Urban Ranger]

Hi Yin, a great source for Chinese civ advancements is Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China, an enormous, multi-volume definitive work on the subject. Don't even try to buy it, each volume goes for US$145 on Amazon.com!

Bigger libraries, esp. university libraries, should have it, though.

------------------
audentes fortuna juvat

[yin26]

Urban Ranger,

Thanks for the tip. Since I'm stuck in Korea, any chance you'd like to swing by a library for us?

[Urban Ranger]

Okay, I'll start grabbing random volumes and see what are in those thick tomes

[don Don]

Of those equivocal dates I stated I can confirm or correct:

• 1933 as first flight of the DC-2 and first production run of the DC-3
• Hammurabi as 18th c. BCE
• 1687 as the publication of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica including a full description of his 1665 experiments. He had corresponded with several people from 1679 onwards about centripetal forces and elliptical orbits, but let's use 1687 for the record.
• "In 1694 [I was off by a year] the Bank of England was established and almost immediately started to issue notes in return for deposits. The crucial feature that made Bank of England notes a means of exchange was the promise to pay the bearer the sum of the note on demand. This meant that the note could be redeemed at the Bank for gold or coinage by anyone presenting it for payment...
  In 1833 the Bank's notes were made legal tender for all sums above £5 in England and Wales." Bank of England

Still looking for something on Johnson's discovery of the electron, but search engines have trouble being that specific.

[S. Kroeze]

Pottery:
'In the early 1960s, excavations at a Neolithic settlement at Catalhüyük, on the Anatolian Plateau of Turkey, revealed a variety of crude, soft earthenware estimated to be approximately 9,000 years old. A more advanced variety of handmade pottery, hardfired and burnished, has proved to be as early as 6500 BC. The use of a red slip covering and molded ornament came a little later.
The earliest building period at Çatalhüyük is tentatively dated to about 6700 BC and the latest to about 5650 BC. The inhabitants lived in rectangular mud-brick houses probably entered from roof level, presumably by a wooden ladder. In addition to a hearth and an oven, houses had platforms for sleeping, sitting, or working.'
(source: Britannica.com)

City Walls:
What's wrong with Jericho?
'At Jericho, 600 feet below sea level in the arid valley of the Jordan, archaeologists have found the remains of what by 7000BC was an eight-acre town, housing 2000 or 3000 people, who made their living by cultivating the fertile zone in the surrounding oasis; their strains of wheat and barley were imported from elsewhere, as was the obsidian for some of their tools. (NB:Trade!!) Only a little later, at Çatal Hüyük, in modern Turkey, a much larger town grew up, eventually covering thirty acres and accommodating between 5000 and 7000 people, living a life of considerable sophistication. Digging has disclosed the presence of a wide variety of imported goods, presumably traded, an equally wide variety of locally produced craft goods, suggesting a division of labour, and most arresting of all, traces of an irrigation system, indicating that the inhabitants were already practising a form of farming previously thought characteristic only of the much larger and later settlements in the great river valleys.

Of key significance to military historians is the structure of these two towns. Çatal Hüyük is built with the outer walls of its outermost houses presenting a continuous blank face, so that even were an intruder to have broken a hole through it, or through a roof, he 'would find himself not inside the town but inside a single room'. Jericho, even more impressively, is surrounded by a continuous wall ten feet thick at the base, thirteen feet high and some 700 yards in circumference. At the foot of the wall lies a rock-cut moat thirty feet wide and ten feet deep, while inside the wall at one point stands a tower that overtops it by fifteen feet, providing a look-out place and, though it does not project beyond to form a flank as later bastions would, a dominant fighting-platform. Moreover, Jericho is built of stone, not the mud of Çatal Hüyük, indicating that an intense and coordinated programme of work, consuming tens of thousands of man-hours, had been undertaken. While Çatal Hüyük's conformation might have been chosen simply to keep out the occasional robber or raider, Jericho's is quite different in purpose: incorporating as it does two elements that were to characterise military architecture until the coming of gunpowder, the curtain wall and the keep, as well as the even longer-lived moat, it constitutes a true fortified stronghold, proof against anything but prolonged attack with siege engines.'
(source: J.Keegan:'A History of Warfare',1993; a brilliant book)

Warriors:
'6800BC The earliest known township of Jericho possesses a protective wall, a sign that organised raiding and warfare has appeared'
{source: H.E.L.Mellersh:'Chronology of the Ancient World')
It may prove to be difficult to object against this argument! Warfare is as old as humanity; organized warfare appears but a short time later.

Temple:
'That southern Iraq had been inhabited long before the middle of the fifth millennium was demonstrated in 1946-49 by the excavations conducted at Eridu (Abu Shahrain, twelve miles to the south-west of Ur). The ruins of Eridu are now marked by low mounds and sand dunes surrounding a much dilapidated 'ziqqurat', or stage-tower, erected by Amar-Sin, king of the Third Dynasty of Ur(2046-2028BC), but under one corner of the ziqqurat Seton Lloyd and Fuad Safar unearthed an impressive series of seventeen temples built one above the other in proto-historic times. The lowest and earliest of these temples (levels XVII-XV) were small, one-roomed buildings which contained altars, offering tables and a fine quality pottery (Eridu ware) decorated with elaborate, often elegant geometric designs in dark-brown colour and presenting affinities with the Choga Mami transitional ware. The poorly preserved remains of temples XIV-XII yielded a slighly different ceramic characterized by its crowded designs and 'reserve slip' decoration, which was identical with the pottery found in 1937-39 by German archaeologists at Qal‘at Hajji Muhammad, near Uruk. This Hajji Muhammad ware, as it is called, is also present on other sites of southern Iraq, notably Ras el ‘Amiya, five miles north of Kish, where , it must be noted, fragments of walls, clay vessels and other objects lay buried under several feet of alluvium and were discovered by chance. Finally, temples XI to VI, generally well preserved, contained numerous specimens of standard Ubaid ware, whilst temples VI-I could be dated to the early stages of the Uruk period(~3750-3150BC). Since the Eridu, and Hajji Muhammad wares are closely related to the early and late Ubaid ware, these four types of pottery are now commonly called Ubaid 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively.

While a progressive architectural development can be followed throughout the superimposed temples of Eridu, there is no break in ceramic styles or techniques. Another, inescapable, conclusion to be drawn from the Eridu temples is that the same religious traditions were handed down from century to century on the same spot from about the middle of the sixth millennium BC until historical times, and from the relatively recent finding of two Ubaid shrines near to Anu's 'White Temple' at Uruk. (One of these lowermost temples at Uruk, built on limestone foundations, measured 87 by 33 metres) Thus the more we dig, the more we find that the Sumerian civilization was very deeply rooted in the past.'
{source: G.Roux:'Ancient Iraq',1992)

[The Mad Viking]

S Kroeze

I was reading of Catal Huyuk jsut last night! I can only concur, and feel it is only logical, that advances in masonry, pottery, ceremonial burial, and polytheism are clearly Neolithic, at least 7000 BCE and perhaps as much as two millenia older. The lack of an alphabet means simply that that there were no written records, hardly evidence that they did not exist. Of course, these advances were also very limited in their distribution. 4000 BCE remains a reasonable start date for a civilization game, IMO.

I had posted about the temples of Janna at Eridu and the white temple of Uruk earlier.

What do you know of speculation that the earlier religion was monotheistic, worshipping a Mother Goddess?

[Steve Clark]

But that would be animism, not monotheism, I believe.

[yin26]

Some stuff updated. Thanks guys.