Fun with Anachronisms

Playing as the Shoshone, my first Great Work was "I Am A Cat" by Natsume Sōseki. I have read an English translation of "I Am A Cat", and the idea of prosperous, urbanized Shoshones having some of the atttributes of Japanese society during the Meiji Period was fun to contemplate.
 
Playing as the Shoshone, my first Great Work was "I Am A Cat" by Natsume Sōseki. I have read an English translation of "I Am A Cat", and the idea of prosperous, urbanized Shoshones having some of the atttributes of Japanese society during the Meiji Period was fun to contemplate.

I got it as the Shoshone too and laughed. It's an odd excerpt.
 
The tech tree weirdnesses have been discussed to death already, but let's go one more time...

- gatling guns without gunpowder (rapid fire slingshot?)
- fighter planes without combustion engines (giant rubber band planes?)
- Internet without computers (some supercool telephone network, maybe?)

And my favorite from Civs 1-3
- alphabet before writing (...what are you using them for anyway?)


EDIT: Also, submarines can be constructed before combustion or steam engines... although there have been some attempts, historically, to produce subs with other power sources like plain old muscle power.

I thought Hwachas before gunpowder were a time paradox, and you tell me a lot more of those...
 
The tech tree weirdnesses have been discussed to death already, but let's go one more time...

- gatling guns without gunpowder (rapid fire slingshot?)
- fighter planes without combustion engines (giant rubber band planes?)
- Internet without computers (some supercool telephone network, maybe?)

Nuclear submarines without Atomic Theory. And, pre-BNW, Anti-Tank Guns without Tanks.

And my favorite from Civs 1-3
- alphabet before writing (...what are you using them for anyway?)

Currency without Writing is somewhat odd, though not actually paradoxical, given that writing likely first emerged to keep ledgers of transactions.

There's also the entire religion tech path in Civ IV - you can develop Priesthood and Monotheism, and even Divine Right, without ever having the ability to create priests or knowing how to build temples (if you happen not to have a religion).
 
The rigid adherance to culture being proposed is a bit counter to what Civilization has always been about.

Part of the fun is essentially running a parallel history to the real world, in that what if... China had built in the Pyramids and the Persians the Great Library.

Perhaps in the future there will be a more involved and intricate system that defines the culture of your empire and from there great works relevant to that culture is born. But in that system you could still have the Chinese producing Mona Lisa or Symphony#9

Until then, we have this heavily abstracted system that essentially says what if a different civilization produced the Mona Lisa
 
Why in that case aren't they able to use the majority of popular songs? Most of those rap artists aren't sampling Beethoven. I find the Great Works of Music a particular letdown - given how many of the best-known classical works were by a small number of artists, each of whom has one work each, you get a small number of snatches of genuinely "Great Music" and a whole lot of stuff that they seem to have put in because it's too obscure to copyright, which is pretty much at the other end of the scale. Not to mention how weird it is for a Civ game of all things - which has had him as an advisor, Great Musician and entertainer specialist before now - not to have Elvis Presley.

Copyright isn't valid for more than about 50 years in most territories anyway, is it? It should be no bar to people like Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, even the earliest Ray Charles.

'In most territories'

Ay, there's the rub. For you see, Disney's aggressive pursuit of copyright protection means that American copyrights last 'the number of years since Mickey Mouse was created +7' years. It's a serious problem that's locked down the creative domain in America and is very frustrating for new creators.
 
Playing as the Shoshone, my first Great Work was "I Am A Cat" by Natsume Sōseki. I have read an English translation of "I Am A Cat", and the idea of prosperous, urbanized Shoshones having some of the atttributes of Japanese society during the Meiji Period was fun to contemplate.

I had my Polish society's first two Great Writings be Genji Monogatari and I Am a Cat

Apparently my Poles were Japanophiles.
 
I had my Polish society's first two Great Writings be Genji Monogatari and I Am a Cat

Apparently my Poles were Japanophiles.

As for my first playthrough with the Poles, the first two Great Works of Writing to be made were Alice in Wonderland and Chu Ci's Songs of the South.

It was quite a thought experiment to contemplate what my Classical/Medieval Era Catholic Polish society would have had to be like to produce those two Great Works.
(Not to mention how the poetry in the Songs of the South would end up reading in Polish.)
 
The day I get a Great Musician Justin Beiber appear, I'll know Civ as a game is dead.
 
The day I get a Great Musician Justin Beiber appear, I'll know Civ as a game is dead.

:rotfl:

I like trading the different Great Works but I wish I could see/read/hear what the other Civs have before I trade.
 
Currency without Writing is somewhat odd, though not actually paradoxical, given that writing likely first emerged to keep ledgers of transactions.

True!

I also was now reminded how Shakespeare's Theatre requires the advance Medicine in Civ II. Maybe it's a none-too-subtle hint towards his alleged drug use?
 
So is there like a bias for which Great Person you get depending on the civ? Like does America have a greater chance to spawn Robert E. Lee and Steve Jobs than say, China?
 
Playing as Zulu, having built the CN tower, and Verdi appearing as a Pop star going to perform on China : who got better ?
 
I just had my Shoshone Shaman, Aesop, pass along the wisdom of the Tortoise and the Hare in the Classical Era. I parked his fable in the National Epic, so the world may be drawn to the wisdom of Shoshone Shamanism. I have sent missionaries to inform the world of the benefits of Shamanism, something Genghis Khan does not appreciate.
Now my tribe of industrious artists have just completed the Parthenon, but I don't recall what the Great Work of Art was.
 
Way out in the medieval desert, in the Moroccan capitol of Marrakech, far away from most edibles and exotic fruits, young Guiseppe Arcimboldo dreams of vegetation.



I'm surprised he even knew what a cabbage actually looks like... Appearantly, it looks like a human with a pear for a nose.
 
...

Now that I'm on the topic, I just realized: I've not seen the Mona Lisa in the game. Is it just that I've not seen it yet, or did they go with some other Da Vinci?

I got the mona Lisa after constructing the Louvre.. thought that was funny :) put yes, she is present!
 
In my first game as the Shoshone, I built the Parthenon and the great work that came with it was Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends. That is more of a general chronological anachronism, but it is still one that got me as being ridiculously on the nose.

In another anachronism, the first great work of music I got was "Electric Counterpoint III Fast" in the Renaissance. As I learned later due to interest in the song, this is anachronistic not just because of the need of Electricity due to the electric guitars (maybe Radio also represents moves forward in music technology that would allow electric guitars), but because the song was from an album was called "Different Trains" and had an interesting story behind it with a necessary technology being Railroad. Also, since the different circumstances were inspired by the rise of fascism in Europe, one could say that Industrialization is also necessary for the ideologies to be present.
 
'In most territories'

Ay, there's the rub. For you see, Disney's aggressive pursuit of copyright protection means that American copyrights last 'the number of years since Mickey Mouse was created +7' years. It's a serious problem that's locked down the creative domain in America and is very frustrating for new creators.

So essentially nothing created after the early 20th Century can ever fall out of copyright?

That would certainly be awkward for licencing American works, but that should leave a gigantic body of music from other parts of the world that can be included. Yet most Great Works of Music I've seen are European, or for those I'm unfamiliar with (in truth, the majority) appear to have European names. I'm not sure it is, as previously suggested, the case that many seem obscure because they're from unfamiliar cultures - few seem to be; when I'm thinking of obscure pieces/artists I'm thinking of obscure Europeans and Americans (although of course that too could reflect limits in my knowledge - I also hadn't heard of Steve Reich, but he does appear to have been somewhat influential).

On a related note, while I like the Great Works system, I'm less happy that it removes the focus from the individuals - is someone who produces a single memorable or popular work really a Great Writer? I wouldn't list James Fenimore Cooper among the world's great writers (indeed for all the novel's ubiquity, the prose in The Last of the Mohicans has often been critically panned).

And of course you lose a lot of Great Works by only allowing each Great Person only one, and not always the best or at least best-recognised candidate (Macbeth rather than Hamlet, for all that the latter is traditionally regarded as the best play in the English language; The Sign of Four (misnamed as The Sign of the Four in the Great Work) over The Hound of the Baskervilles).

In my first game as the Shoshone, I built the Parthenon and the great work that came with it was Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends. That is more of a general chronological anachronism, but it is still one that got me as being ridiculously on the nose.

It's not a coincidence. This Great Work is linked to the Parthenon - it will always be the Wonder's free GW, and you can't create it from a GP.
 
In my first game as the Shoshone, I built the Parthenon and the great work that came with it was Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends. That is more of a general chronological anachronism, but it is still one that got me as being ridiculously on the nose.

In another anachronism, the first great work of music I got was "Electric Counterpoint III Fast" in the Renaissance. As I learned later due to interest in the song, this is anachronistic not just because of the need of Electricity due to the electric guitars (maybe Radio also represents moves forward in music technology that would allow electric guitars), but because the song was from an album was called "Different Trains" and had an interesting story behind it with a necessary technology being Railroad. Also, since the different circumstances were inspired by the rise of fascism in Europe, one could say that Industrialization is also necessary for the ideologies to be present.


The Phidias painting always comes with the Parthenon. It's on purpose.
 
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