[Vote] (6-33) Move Coal Reveal from Steam Power to Chemistry

[Stalker0]

Alright if we are going to be whining about historical accuracy, let’s dig in.

1) coal has been mined and traded for thousands of years, the Roman’s had a pretty robust coal trade in fact for quite a while. So the idea that coal mines are unlocked before steam power is not crazy.

2) the fact that you can unlock “railroad” before the steam engine is “historically crazy”…yet it can (and often does) happen in game. Because it’s a game. If you want to make a stink about historical accuracy in civ 5 be my guest, but it’s a long list with things on it much more egregious than coal mines being usable earlier than are now (and still not as early as they were in history).

 

[gwennog]

Alright if we are going to be whining about historical accuracy, let’s dig in.

1) coal has been mined and traded for thousands of years, the Roman’s had a pretty robust coal trade in fact for quite a while. So the idea that coal mines are unlocked before steam power is not crazy.

2) the fact that you can unlock “railroad” before the steam engine is “historically crazy”…yet it can (and often does) happen in game. Because it’s a game. If you want to make a stink about historical accuracy in civ 5 be my guest, but it’s a long list with things on it much more egregious than coal mines being usable earlier than are now (and still not as early as they were in history).

As pinappledan pointed out for oil, it is not really the discovery that is designated in the technology tree but the use that the world has made of it.
In the case of coal, it marks the entry into the industrial era, hence the problem of placing it at the beginning of the renaissance.
But where I agree with you is that we can have Railroad without coal, which is a little strange. The best would have been at Accoustics but here it's even stranger.

 

[Legen]

As pinappledan pointed out for oil, it is not really the discovery that is designated in the technology tree but the use that the world has made of it.
In the case of coal, it marks the entry into the industrial era, hence the problem of placing it at the beginning of the renaissance.

Coal had been increasingly used as fuel for home heating during the Renaissance, and already had economical value before the Industrial Revolution. By the time the first steam machines were invented in Europe, coal mines were already set in place and able to supply the initial demand of the emerging coal-dependent industries. People were not suddenly finding out that they had zero coal mines to fuel those machines. Having coal revealed before its first uses make sense, as it captures the initial economic value of their mines already prior to the Industrial Revolution.

the fact that you can unlock “railroad” before the steam engine is “historically crazy”

I think Railroad and Fertilizer could switch places, with Steam Engine being a line above as well. There was an agricultural revolution in England before the Industrial Revolution, so it doesn't make much sense for Fertilizer, which captures the former, to come in the late Industrial. That's something for the next congress, I guess.

 

[pineappledan]

Yes, and bitumen was being used as mortar by the sumerians.
Uranium was isolated in the 1700s.

I guess in order to believe your side has some rigour you have to convince yourself the other side thinks coal popped into existence in 1750. coal was not a strategically important resource until the invention of the steam engine. Until then it was as strategic as firewood.
Likewise, oil was used as a building material for millennia, but didn’t become strategically important to control until the invention of the internal combustion engine.

But the votes are cast, and you are going to upweight and dismiss whatever historical trivia justifies what you’ve already decided you need to convince yourself that chemistry makes sense… It doesn’t, but that doesn’t matter. Just don’t pretend like it’s coherent or defensible.

The only leg you have to stand on is timing it’s reveal with pioneers. Nevermind you could just as well push pioneers later if it were so important to have these two together. The conclusion I come to is it doesn’t matter, and this is pretense. Paper thin justification for nonsense decisions. But oh well. At least this is easier to revert locally.

 

[CppMaster]

the fact that you can unlock “railroad” before the steam engine is “historically crazy”

Not necessarily, because mine carts existed before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecart

But the votes are cast, and you are going to upweight and dismiss whatever historical trivia justifies what you’ve already decided you need to convince yourself that chemistry makes sense… It doesn’t, but that doesn’t matter. Just don’t pretend like it’s coherent or defensible.

We could say the opposite easily. That it makes sense and don't pretend like it's not coherent or defensible. Yet again... It's not really an argument.

 

[Legen]

No one is suggesting resources pop into existence IRL. However, coal was not a strategically important resource until the invention of the steam engine. Until then it was as strategic as firewood.
Likewise, oil was used as a building material for millennia, but didn’t become strategically important to control until the invention of the internal combustion engine.

But the votes are cast, and you are going to upweight and dismiss whatever historical trivia justifies what you’ve already decided you need to convince yourself that chemistry makes sense… it doesn’t, but that doesn’t matter. Just don’t pretend like it’s coherent or defensible.

Being able to extract a material and being able to use it for strategic purposes don't have to require the same technology, and often didn't.

You're ignoring that multiple civs can be on different tech paths and often traded strategic resources with civs in different technological levels. One civilization may have the ability to extract a material and trade it, but not the ability to build anything strategic with it. This is the case currently with uranium; some countries have the technology to extract it, but not the technology to refine it for energy or military purposes, and just trade its uranium with countries that do. The idea that a strategic resource must be tied to the same technology that has a strategic use for it is the one that is counter to history, and which would only make sense either in a world with only a single civilization, or where all civilizations somehow always have the same technologies.

 

[pineappledan]

We could say the opposite easily. That it makes sense and don't pretend like it's not coherent or defensible. Yet again... It's not really an argument

No the burden of proof is on people who want a change.

It is currently on steam power because seaports unlock at the same tech so it’s immediately useful. Also, coal became a strategically important resource when the steam engine was invented, allowing for the mechanization of work and the creation of self-propelled engines. This opened up countless industrial and military applications that needed coal to function.

You want to put it on coal because something something pioneers and something something indoor heating?

 

[Stalker0]

No the burden of proof is on people who want a change.

This is something we can agree on. I feel like I have made my case, but ultimately it is my job to convince.

If all strategic resources were used on the tech they were revealed I could see the notion that moving coal before it’s use was a real problem, but that is actually common in the resources we have today, so that’s not a valid argument.

Now this is more of a gap than we have for other resources, and if that bothered some people to the point where they want to vote against it, I can respect that.

What I don’t respect, frankly what enrages me, is the note that this change is so egregiously ahistorical that its quote “embarrassing”, as once again this is already the case for a good number of the strategic resources. That is not argument in good faith.

 

[gwennog]

What I don’t respect, frankly what enrages me, is the note that this change is so egregiously ahistorical that its quote “embarrassing”, as once again this is already the case for a good number of the strategic resources. That is not argument in good faith.

We must not be angry, for my part it is the position of coal as a marker of the industrial revolution that I defend.
All the arguments used to justify an earlier appearance on the tree are valid in the sense of resource, less in the sense of initiating a big change.
If we refer to the use of coal as a source of heating in particular, why not place it in the 11th, 12th century which seems to be a significant period of its use and not only in Europe?

 

[ma_kuh]

There's no way to reveal a resource on multiple techs, right? That's just out of the question?

I feel like at a certain point this just sounds like wanting a slightly modified version of "Reveal All Resources" mode, where it reveals a resource on as soon as you enter the era it's used, rather than pinning it to a specific tech.

 

[Recursive]

Moderator Action: Simmer down with the hostility. Disagreeing with decisions, being upset about outcomes you don't like, objecting to others' reasoning, or making modmods are all perfectly okay. However, an atmosphere where people are attacking each other for their ideas, or labelling them as "nonsense", "pretense", "embarrassing" and so on does not contribute to the discussion, discourages people from participating in the process, and only serves to make people angrier. Please be respectful to each other.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[dostillevi]

One argument that @pineappledan use (and I agree with him there) is that the technological capability to use a resource is not historically linked to its use. There are a lot to be used in nature, the revealing of a resource is like going from "we have found some useless materials" to "actually, this is very useful because we found a use for it". I remember (can't give source) that oil, or petroleum, was already used before its actual use, just for other things, like culture or medicine (not sure for that part).

As a modern civilization, we know what is useful and what is not, but simulating an evolving civilization, they probably see resources without thinking it warrant notice (like a billion other things in their environment).

I tend to feel this favors the argument that resources should be revealed slightly before they become useful. We don't both suddenly discover a resource and also find a civ-altering use for it all in one go - just about every resource that has become impactful was well known and used prior, and that use led to the research that gave us the civ-altering use. Civs researching nuclear power, for example, would already know what Uranium is, where to find it, and how important it would be if their research succeeds.

 

[Rekk]

Within the context of our second wave of settlers, were countries actually settling mining towns with the explicit purpose of obtaining coal before the invention of steam power, or were they just towns that happened to be near coal that became boom towns afterwards?

 

[CppMaster]

Within the context of our second wave of settlers, were countries actually settling mining towns with the explicit purpose of obtaining coal before the invention of steam power, or were they just towns that happened to be near coal that became boom towns afterwards?

Both

 

[ma_kuh]

The issue with trying to copy history here is that you would ideally build a bunch of village/town improvements, and then one of them would "boom" into your actual City tile. Which isn't how the game works, so abstraction is necessary.