Natives

DirkHowitzer · #1 March 6th, 2001, 12:53 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Windborne:
Dirkhowitzer:

Keep in mind how little the tech level changes from one class to another, twenty years from 1950 to 1970 was enough to put us from the world war era all the ways into the space age, and ten years after that Mere was going up. Some races may be smarter then us, others may take much longer to progress, especially if you make the chance of any one race advancing small and only let them advance when a higher ranking race has been destroyed. Of course usually i play with other human players so our games Last a minimum of four to five hundred turns in a large galaxy without the ability to steal/trade techs.

You make a good point. I guess I should've said perhaps natives starting out before the industrial age shouldn't be allowed to advance...after all it took us thousands of years to get to the industrial age. After that things progressed much more quickly. Unless, of course, this particular civilization progressed more quickly than we mere humans;-).

As for neutrals getting bonuses and such, I've always opposed this as well due to another realism factor. In the real world how long would little "neutral" country such as Cuba, Switzterland, Panama, etc...Last against a much larger power such as the US if we really decided that we wanted that country? Not very long...I do think, however, that a diplomatic penalty should be charged to the Empire that slaughters the neutrals because, once again alluding to the real world, if the USA ever decided to decimate some small nation such as Cuba/Switzerland/Panama, etc...the worldwide outrage would be enormous. Trade sanctions would be imposed etc...Therefore I don't think neutrals should be given bonuses, but I do think they should be protected by the fact the the other AI's would hate you if wiped the neutrals out. Kind of like in MOO 2 when the AI's got angry when you used biological weapons and the like.

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"He's dead, Jim."-- Lt. Commander Leonard "Bones" McCoy |Chief Medical Officer / USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Suicide Junkie · #2 March 6th, 2001, 06:46 AM

Another way to protect the neutral races would be to give them special racial techs.

Then if you wipe them out, the techs are lost, but if you keep them alive, you can capture their ships & use the flux capacitor cannon that they put on.

PS: the flux cannon would be somthing like the temporal shift-em-to-beginning-of-time device, but would smear the ship out over all time instead.

dmm · #3 March 6th, 2001, 05:00 PM

Once discovered, natives might advance much more quickly than they would otherwise progress if left undisturbed. That is a dominant theme in many sci-fi sagas. For instance, how many StarTrek episodes mention the "prime directive?"

Remember, in SEIV there are supposed to be scads of independent traders roaming the galaxy. The unscrupulous ones would be willing to trade technology for a green Orion slave girl.

Plus, empires would have their own reasons for "helping" the "natives." I think a good example would be native populations on Earth who encountered European empires. It didn't take the Plains Indians (e.g., Lakota Sioux) very long to incorporate metal knives, horses, and rifles into their culture.

Windborne · #4 March 6th, 2001, 06:42 PM

It's hard to imagine a stone age culture STAYING stone age for long after my ships enter the system, for one thing it would be in my best interest to give them a gift of, for example, mining technology so they could trade with me. And if I ever planned on conquering them I'd want to make sure that:

(A) They had something built on the planet I could use
(B) they were somehow defended against my rival human players, ground troops and one of MY space stations in the air at the least. lol

Which brings up a point I had not thought about, how much of my technology should a level 1 culture be able to understand? There should certainly be limits or we'll all simply raise the natives up to full player status in a few turns.

I suggest that we limit them to level one of anything they couldn't research themselves, and block their ability to gain certain techs at all, things like steller manipulation for example.

dmm · #5 March 6th, 2001, 07:30 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Windborne:
how much of my technology should a level 1 culture be able to understand? There should certainly be limits or we'll all simply raise the natives up to full player status in a few turns

In Asimov's first Foundation novel, the planets surrounding the Foundation are still using Imperial technology but haven't a clue as to how it works. Later, the Foundation introduces more technology, but in the guise of a religion, with the hierarchy of course all being unbelieving Foundationers. (That's Asimov the Agnostic for you!)

Anyway, my point is that low-tech populations can be taught to use very high-tech stuff. (Like, 4-year-olds who can operate PCs and camcorders [and shoot guns].) Really, if you think about it, how much science and technology does the average American, European, Japanese, etc. properly understand? Heck, I'm a physicist and one of the world's smartest people

and I don't understand most of it!

dmm · #6 March 6th, 2001, 07:40 PM

I forgot to say that maybe primitives shouldn't be allowed to research anything, even after being given lots of tech.

But maybe not. Who's to say that primitives wouldn't be quick studies? They might even be inherently smarter than tech-reliant races. Do you really think you're smarter than Isaac Newton, just because you've got better tech?

But some races might react strongly against tech, because of religious or cultural reasons. What if you run the risk of "infecting" your own society with a "Back to the Forests" movement or a pacifict movement? Maybe contacting primitives should have some big risks attached! What other risks might there be?

Windborne · #7 March 6th, 2001, 07:46 PM

One risk might be the evolution of the "Pirate races" talked about in a previous post, with their own ai, the natives take your ships, and modify their own tech to learn boarding, suddenly they are attacking your fleets and planets, co-opting them into their own little parasite-empire, entirely reliant on pillage from higher races bacause they are unable to build their own ships or even really repair yours!