civilizationfanatic2000
Prince
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2022
- Messages
- 332
Undesired, Desired. Known, Unknown.
in this new tech idea your civilization would not know what techs exist. this would look like a black box labeled 'UNKNOWN'. related, your civilization would desire several techs for one of many reasons:
1. socioeconomic concerns (A volcano erupted and wiped out a few civilizations far away from you. It also wiped out all of the tin mines, leaving your empire with nothing but soft copper. As your civilization collapses at the state level, your miners begin to look for an easier-to-find metal)
2. military concerns (You have a history of martial tradition. You are well equipped and well trained. The only problem is that you are a republic. All of your enemies are monarchists and hate republics. They have a tendency to run your soldiers down with heavily armed knights. Maybe a longer spear could help?)
3. rumors (your state alchemists are talking to your 'leader' (separate from the spirit of the nation you play as) that they have found a way to transmute lead into gold. your leader has been baited into following their words)
you can 'research' techs that you desire up to 3 at once (spread across branches). If you do not desire a technology, you cannot research it. One can know of a technology without desiring it (the Chinese know that cheesemaking exists, but they don't want it, they have soy sauce). whenever you discover techs by researching them, you are independently discovering a tech. this makes a personalized version of the technology: if you discover Writing it makes your own style of writing, for instance. this personalized style can be subsumed by others or lost entirely, like how Norse runes were replaced by the Latin alphabet (this is one part of a later post where I will cover cultural assimilation and influence).
Spread of Technology (Every Single Tile Has People)
in real life, technologies were spread over 'empty' areas in civ lingo, like the Silk Road or the Eurasian steppe. to represent the dispersation of humanity, all tiles (save the uninhabitable ones) should have a 'population' and 'settlement level'. off of those two base elements, you can add more: are the people in this area 'urban' or 'rural'? 'city states' or 'united'? 'settled' or 'nomadic'? what are their beliefs? customs? technology level? this would make less of a break between barbarians and player or npc civilizations by effectively making a sliding spectrum between 'tribals' and 'urban people'.
and where there are people, there is communication. if a technology is discovered, and the people in the surrounding tiles Desire it, they will adopt it as their own. the people that surround them will then adopt the technology if they Desire it and can actually use it, and so on and so forth. this can spread to players and npcs, automatically giving them the technology. this also applies to 'civics'. travel time would be increased along rivers and coasts. culture spread would take into account travel time and possible difficulties (something like Europe would cause much culture divergence between areas)
Civics
'you said that tech spread applies to civics. explain more about this culture system please.'
i can, but only for a bit because it's off-topic. they work a lot like technologies. Known, Unknown, Desired, Undesired. civics can spread, yes, but are very unlikely to be adopted due to a little thing called cultural inertia. the Chinese heard of the republic from ancient Greece and Rome, but didn't care, because they had a thousand-year tradition of an absolute monarchy and that worked swimmingly well for them. so the longer you have certain civics the harder it is to change them unless something happens like a string of bad leaders or a foreign ideology.
in this new tech idea your civilization would not know what techs exist. this would look like a black box labeled 'UNKNOWN'. related, your civilization would desire several techs for one of many reasons:
1. socioeconomic concerns (A volcano erupted and wiped out a few civilizations far away from you. It also wiped out all of the tin mines, leaving your empire with nothing but soft copper. As your civilization collapses at the state level, your miners begin to look for an easier-to-find metal)
2. military concerns (You have a history of martial tradition. You are well equipped and well trained. The only problem is that you are a republic. All of your enemies are monarchists and hate republics. They have a tendency to run your soldiers down with heavily armed knights. Maybe a longer spear could help?)
3. rumors (your state alchemists are talking to your 'leader' (separate from the spirit of the nation you play as) that they have found a way to transmute lead into gold. your leader has been baited into following their words)
you can 'research' techs that you desire up to 3 at once (spread across branches). If you do not desire a technology, you cannot research it. One can know of a technology without desiring it (the Chinese know that cheesemaking exists, but they don't want it, they have soy sauce). whenever you discover techs by researching them, you are independently discovering a tech. this makes a personalized version of the technology: if you discover Writing it makes your own style of writing, for instance. this personalized style can be subsumed by others or lost entirely, like how Norse runes were replaced by the Latin alphabet (this is one part of a later post where I will cover cultural assimilation and influence).
Spread of Technology (Every Single Tile Has People)
in real life, technologies were spread over 'empty' areas in civ lingo, like the Silk Road or the Eurasian steppe. to represent the dispersation of humanity, all tiles (save the uninhabitable ones) should have a 'population' and 'settlement level'. off of those two base elements, you can add more: are the people in this area 'urban' or 'rural'? 'city states' or 'united'? 'settled' or 'nomadic'? what are their beliefs? customs? technology level? this would make less of a break between barbarians and player or npc civilizations by effectively making a sliding spectrum between 'tribals' and 'urban people'.
and where there are people, there is communication. if a technology is discovered, and the people in the surrounding tiles Desire it, they will adopt it as their own. the people that surround them will then adopt the technology if they Desire it and can actually use it, and so on and so forth. this can spread to players and npcs, automatically giving them the technology. this also applies to 'civics'. travel time would be increased along rivers and coasts. culture spread would take into account travel time and possible difficulties (something like Europe would cause much culture divergence between areas)
Civics
'you said that tech spread applies to civics. explain more about this culture system please.'
i can, but only for a bit because it's off-topic. they work a lot like technologies. Known, Unknown, Desired, Undesired. civics can spread, yes, but are very unlikely to be adopted due to a little thing called cultural inertia. the Chinese heard of the republic from ancient Greece and Rome, but didn't care, because they had a thousand-year tradition of an absolute monarchy and that worked swimmingly well for them. so the longer you have certain civics the harder it is to change them unless something happens like a string of bad leaders or a foreign ideology.
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