Today in my world history class we were talking about the spread of gunpowder from China starting around 1000 AD. It took about 150 years for gunpowder production to spread across Eurasia to western Europe and it gave me an idea for a mini-mod.

My idea is that once a civilization finishes learning a civ, the knowledge of that technology will slowly spread to neighboring civs and they too will slowly learn "pieces" of that tech. So eventually a civ will learn the tech without having to research it by themself. It makes no sense that you can have two civs living side by side for a thousand years, and they know nothing about each other's technology.

For example, if Civ A just researched Gunpowder, Civ B will know about it eventually because merchants travelling from city to city will spread the knowledge around, until Civ B knows how to make gunpowder too. And gunpowder is just one example throughout history where civs have learned technologies from each other. Technology has never been completely exclusive to one civ/nation at any time in history (except Nuclear weapons and other modern military technology).

So to summarize, I think it would be cool if someone made a mod like this where you can still learn technologies (slowly) even if it isn't the current focus of your research.

Sorry that this got kind of long-winded. Any comments?

Hmmm... this is definately an interesting idea. So to summarize it do what religion does but with technology instead? Makes sense only if you have an existing trade route with another city.

You're understanding it correctly Lopez. Technologies would spread just like religion from civilization to civilization. Using existing trade routes does make sense. For example, if it would take you X turns to learn a technology, you might earn Y amount of beakers towards that technology for every trade route you have with another civilization. How does that sound?

Not sure about this, but I think it shouldn't be only with trade routes, wouldn't just having open borders perhaps spread it, like people boasting about their homeland when they went on vacation?

(If this doesn't make sense, sorry. I'm preoccupied.)

@ IVZanIV - Actually, I think it should be both having open borders or trade routes with cities should spread tech.

@Rabbit Alex - Hmmm... that could work.

That does make sense IvzanIV. I just think that using trade routes would give Lopez (or whoever codes this) an easier way compute the amount of trade you are actually doing with another civ and therefore how many beakers to award every X turns or so. Open Borders alone would make it harder in my opinion.

Yeah, I think that if you have trade it should be more perhaps?

We posted at the same time Lopez. I agree that Open Borders and Trade Routes are the way to go.