Ancient Wars, SEIV style

[Singollo]

How about these for "racial techs":

--Religious (Religious)
--Gemworking (Crystalline)
--Sanitation (Organic)
--Construction/transportation (Temporal)
--Shamanism (Psychic)

These would obviously have far different effects than their counterparts, and they need not be modeled after the counterparts at all. (I do so only because it's easy, and for reference purposes.) This would do well to account for the various cultures that might be around in a Roman Empire type game. The Romans would be religious, obviously, while the various Germanic tribes might have Shamanism. (Perhaps "Druidic" for Pictish/Celtic cultures?) The Romans would also have Construction/Transportation, while Middle-eastern cultures would have mercantile technologies such as Gemworking. Indic civilizations, renowned for their sanitation and mathematical city plans, would have Sanitation, which would bestow population and happiness modifiers for various buildings (facilities).

There are many other ways to go with this, that need not have any parallel to the SE4 tech fields. Any ideas?

[geoschmo]

Well my view of this mod would be it would have no racial traits at all, but since I am not doing the mod anyway feel free to suggest it.

I think those things you mentioned would be neat to have as tech areas. General empire advancment stuff that would allow beter cities, and thus better production and reproduction. But since they are all one race, humans, it wouldn't be something someone else couldn't also develop themselves given the time and research.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Well I was thinking of something the equivalent of a train. Shove the army in, and row the boat.

I am coming back to this cause doesn't there need to be some way to increase the speed of an army unit in the strategic map, getting to the battle, that doesn't affect his movement on the combat map, during the battle.

Is there a way to do this?

And can you have negative movement bonuses? If all Army units have a base movement of 3, call that the speed of a guy walking in formation, can we then have armored troops move at a speed of 1, since they have to carry more they can't move as fast right? And could you include a "wagon train" as a component that would give more movement (standard, not bonus this time) on the strategic map without giving more movement in combat?

Geoschmo

[Singollo]

Well, replace "racial techs" with "cultural techs", and I think it would do fine. I mean, yes, there's certainly no physical reason that another culture couldn't use the same cultural techs, but there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that goes with it. For instance, the Roman religious obsession: this isn't simply a matter of understanding the concept of gods and then developing a religion. It's an entire civilization-based concept, a state machine. It is closely intertwined with the very essence of the Romans: the influence of the Greek culture, the ideas of essential materials (elements) and that which is responsible for them, the close association of the ideology of the Romans being tied up with half-divine heroes, etc. This wouldn't be something that could be duplicated by another culture, having to do with cultural mindsets and relationships and specifics as it does.

So, the effect would be the same, in my opinion. A bunch of technologies, or buildings, or weapons, whatever, that arise due to the particular characteristics of the cultures that spawn them. It would be a neat addition.

[geoschmo]

I guess so, but the question is, and I'm not sure we can ever answer this, is did their culture and religious beliefs allow them to make technology and increase their power, or did their power and technology allow them the luxury of developing this rich religious culture and the ability to spread it.

I would think the latter.

[Singollo]

I think you may be sticking to a too-rigid definition of "technology". (Either that, or I'm using it too loosely, or both.) As with any conVersion of the magnitude that you've proposed, lots of stuff will have to give, be re-interpreted, redefined, etc. I wasn't thinking of "technology" in a precise literal sense, for this Ancient Wars game. Rather, I was thinking of some way to provide a unique element to the different cultures available. Some of it could manifest itself as actual technology, such as the Oxus and Indus civilizations' sanitary prowess. Some of it could manifest itself as an enlightened political system, such as the (early) Roman state. It need not be actual scientific technology for the analogy to work.

In fact, this more loose definition is incorporated into SE4 already. The very concept of "religious technology" is something of a misnomer...I don't think of the Death Shrine, Nature Shrine, etc. as literal technological advances. Rather, they are a reflection of Religious empires' unique viewpoint and abilities.

So, the things that you are talking about--powerful culture, strong beliefs, etc.--are all included in the sense of "technology" that I mean here. I guess I made a mistake in referring only to the five technologies, and not to all of the Empire characteristics, such as Industrialists, etc. It's more a sense of the latter that I'm trying to get across.

[ August 19, 2002, 19:28: Message edited by: Singollo ]

[geoschmo]

I understood what you meant I think. The differance is I see all those "advances" as something that any race should be and would be able to acheive given time and motivation. They could in fact be "Cultural" factors and not so much pure technological ones. But I don't see them as being something that is or should be intrinsic to one empire and not acheivable by another. So the only way to reflect that in SEIV is to make them technology areas that any empire can research, and not racial traits that are restricted to empires only that chose them at game setup.

In our history the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the Carthaginians all had strengths and weaknesses. Things they did better then others, things they did worse. But they didn't do them better because they were Romans, or because they were Greeks. They did them better because their grandfather figured out how to do it better and passed that knowledge down to them, and the other guys grandfather didn't.

I was thinking of this mod as one where you would be taking the reigns of an ancient empire and leading them the way you wanted too. So you might develop these areas, or you might go another direction.

Geoschmo