Ancient Wars, SEIV style

[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

[Singollo]

Huh. Okay, fair enough. It's your mod, after all. I guess we have different opinions of cultural affinities; I definitely do see these types of features as being intrinsic to individual cultures, because it is impossible to simply embark upon, or "take", the vast intricate web of factors that is responsible for such features, as if it were nothing more than an area of learning to be studied.

In fact, the same thing can be applied to the existing technologies in SE4. Things like crystallurgy, organic technology, etc....if viewed simply literally, as the physical ability to work with crystals etc., then there is no reason that these technologies should not be available to everyone. The game clearly views it as something more than this, as something intimately associated with the culture's history and character, something that is impossible for others to reproduce. If it consisted solely of crystal refining abilities, then anyone should be able to master them.

In other words, if the [fill in organic empire] have Organic Tech simply because their grandfathers decided to study organic tech, then there's no reason that any other Empire couldn't do the same thing. But it isn't like this. There must be something more going on there. Similarly, if the Persian expansion and poetry/government were merely something that their grandfathers decided to do, then you're right, anyone should be able to do that too...but it was much, much more than this. Those elements were inextricably bound up with the fabric of their very Empire, just as religion was with the Romans, sacrifice was with the Toltecs and Aztecs, orderliness and caste were with the Indus civs, etc.

Sorry, I don't mean to be argumentative. As I said, it's your mod. Methinks my degree in anthropology is causing me to be more stubborn about this area than I am usually. (Then again, I am a stubborn person in general.)

[ August 19, 2002, 20:20: Message edited by: Singollo ]

[geoschmo]

I don't take it as argumentative. And yes, it's "my mod" but I don't intend to actually do it. We could just as easily not do your idea as not do my idea, as long as we can agree upon which idea not to do.

Your point of comparison with the Racial traits in SIEV is valid. Although I have in fact argued the same position in the past agaisnt racial specific traits in SIEV. Although there I have been able to tell myself it's something intrinsic because they are in fact different races from different planets. They may in fact have a bioligical differance that allows them to manipulate matter differently than us. The universe is a big place afterall. Even if it's a cultural and not a biological thing, there you are talking about perhaps millions of years on a different cultural track to get to where they are. Not somthing to be overcome easily.

I am suprised that a person with a degree in antropology would be disagreeing with me on this actually. I would think you would be of the opinion that we all are pretty much the same at our root, not intrinsically differant than one another.

Truely it's difficult to equate the variuos empires of history strictly, as they did not develop at exactly the same time. The Romans came to power after the Greeks, and much of their culture was based on Greek culture as you pointed out yourself.

My idea in proposing this mod was not to take the end result of Roman, Greek, or Cartheginian culture and compare them and compete using their various historically accurate strenghts and weaknesses. But to modify the game and place you at the head of an empire early in it's history, before those cultural differances arose, and allow you to choose the path to domination that you feel suits you best. You wouldn't actually be nessecarily controling the Romans agasint the Carteginians yourself. You would simply be running an empire in an alternate universe, that as closely as possible models the choices that were made along the paths of development for those peoples.

So if you wanted to develop your empire as the Roman Empire did, you could. But so could your neighbor.

Geoschmo

[Singollo]

I am suprised that a person with a degree in antropology would be disagreeing with me on this actually. I would think you would be of the opinion that we all are pretty much the same at our root, not intrinsically differant than one another.

Actually, "universality" and "cross-cultural truths" are big no-nos in academic anthropology. The trend is to say that, yes, at the base, we are all the same thing: homo sapiens, developing on an oxygen planet with 1G, requiring the same basic nutrients, etc.....but that's all that we share. Everything else is due to cultural conditioning, which is vastly different in different contexts. So, to quote your post, we are indeed "pretty much the same at our root"...but our "root" is before cultural conditioning crops up, and when that is taken into account, we are indeed very different creatures. I am not arguing that we are "intrinsically different from one another", but that we are culturally different from one another, and that culture (however you define that term) is so ingrained, so powerful, that it may as well be intrinsic.

My idea in proposing this mod was not to take the end result of Roman, Greek, or Cartheginian culture and compare them and compete using their various historically accurate strenghts and weaknesses. But to modify the game and place you at the head of an empire early in it's history, before those cultural differances arose, and allow you to choose the path to domination that you feel suits you best.

Hmm...maybe I've given the wrong impression here. I don't mean to say that, in my idea, you would take the Romans and then have to play a Religious culture, a la CivIII. (Actually, I want to move away from the association of Romans with religion, since it isn't really as intense as other things. Let's go with Egyptian.) Of course, each culture would be free to choose whatever the player wanted, just like with the SEIV empires. I am saying that if you were to choose Religious for your culture, you would be describing your culture as having the kind of intense, dominant fascination with religion that characterized the Egyptians, and that this complex, interwoven religious nature is not something that another culture could just "pick up". You would be saying that your culture has a long, complex, evolved history that involves religious beliefs, which influences the government, the state as an institution, etc. The same would be true of other Cultural "Technologies". Now, certainly, any other Culture could do the same thing...but then that culture would also have Religious as a cultural trait. That's all I'm saying; I didn't mean to suggest that a particular culture had to be married to a certain trait.

By the way, this is how I get around the strict literal view of technologies in SEIV. As you said, the technology could indeed be intrinsic to the race, having to do with the race's history, society, mentality, or something else that can't be reproduced--or even understood--by other races. This pretty much already exists for Psychic and Religious technologies, since you couldn't just learn such things, and it also probably exists for Temporal races...if your race's brain patterns can't intuit the concept of Temporal warping and such issues, you wouldn't really be able to fathom the technology. It isn't all that hard to extend this to Crystalline and Organic technologies, too. Again, though, this depends on one's view of the racial techs as being something more than literal, physical paths of learning; if you hold that view, I can see how the idea of culture-specific techs is kind of illogical.

[geoschmo]

Well, if I were going to include these ideas in this mod I am not going to do, I would have to stipulate that these cultural differances be slight, and have little effect other than maybe "flavoring".

I wouldn't want the Shaman warrior priests or whatever they are called able to convert entire army units(ships) at a time to change sides in the middles of a battle.

Otherwise we would get all bogged down in trying to balance the various racial traits and we would never not get the mod done. I wan't to have this mod not done fairly soon, so that will require keeping it as simple as possible.

Geoschmo

[Singollo]

Gotcha. So, you want to do away with cultural-specific "techs" altogether?

Changing the topic: why not have each star be sort of like a ringworld, with the equivalent of being like a larger city. That way you can have each star/city be the center of the surrounding area, with all other towns (planets) in the region (system) being outlying satellite towns or suburbs. That creates a more realistic idea of a piece of land, with one cultural center and a bunch of towns that spring up around it. (Obviously I don't mean that the culture starts with a free ringworld, just that the concept of a central uninhabitable star exerting gravity and keeping the planets near it should be translated as a central inhabitable town that exerts its cultural/political influence on the surrounding area.)

[geoschmo]

I don't diagree that you empires culture greatly affects many aspects of it's development, even technology. I was thinking along the lines that sinec these empires are all made up of men, they just shouldn't have any prediliction towards one or the other until the game starts. That the research points spent in effect would be your method of choosing a cultural path, and that would result in the various plusses that came along with it.

You could make stuff expensive enough that it would be very hard to change the course in the game, just not impossible. You'd have to tart over from scratch basically. Not a good thing to do with other empires about.

Yes, a large central city and smaller surrounding towns fits quite nicely with what I had in mind for the maps.

Geoschmo