Oh, I didn't realise it had that much of an importance in historical division (that'd probably be because there is a lot less "exploration" focus in Polish history books). I suppose I feel better about it then.
Age medieval
- Thread starter Stoic
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Speaking not as a historian but just a history enthusiast, I'd also suggest that while historically the "Age of Exploration" is very Western European centric, it's probably also the necessary catalyst to lead the the "Modern Age". If you look at thinks from the perspective of trade, the Roman Empire was a vast trade network that spanned the Mediterranean and when the Western Empire collapse that level of trade didn't recover until the Renaissance era. Similarly a big part of the Bronze Age collapse was the destruction of trade networks between the significant Empires & Kingdoms.
Trade makes for more advanced societies, and the Age of Exploration pushed it to a global scale, and not just for luxury goods like the Silk Road used to do. From potatoes to cotton to coffee to sugar, funnelling all these goods into Europe caused a massive boom in Europe that pushed them from a clear 3rd place behind Asia and the Middle East in the Medieval era to just lapping the competition into the Industrial Era.
BuchiTaton
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About minimizing civ switching.
OK is understable that one of the reasons CIV7 is going to have only 2 civ shifts is to reduce the chaos (lesser traceability and attachment) from the 4 culture shifts in Humankind. But what if there are 4 ages but you can only do 2 shifts?
What I mean is that CIV already had "dark ages" gemeplay, make players to play one age without the benfits of shifting is a strategy gameplay factor that could add be viable with the general reset from each new age. As a players would need to think if you spend one of your two shifts in the religious gameplay of the Medieval Age, or save the two for the Exploration and Modern, or maybe change in Medieval and Modern but not in Exploration.
acluewithout
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As I said in another thread (link): … I don’t think Civ needs a medieval or other historical ages to feel ‘complete’. … at the moment, it looks like the game still has all the ancient -> classical -> medieval etc age progression, it’s just the game sort of ‘calls out’ specific transitions from one ‘epoch’ to another. Your game still moves through ancient to classical to medieval, it’s just that when you move past medieval etc there is this extra big world shaking ‘jump’.
Honestly, I kinda like that idea. Civs moving from eg classical to medieval is still a big deal, because of the science and culture jump, but then eventually you trigger these even bigger global ‘jumps’.
… Civ 6 already had this - moving into some ages was more significant than others, and with golden / dark ages you already had a crisis mechanic. Civ 7 seems to be just putting those mechanics a bit more ‘on rails’, which I guess might make some things feel less organic or open ended, but I assume also lets them make the mechanics more robust and opens up other mechanical options.
Basically, we’ll have to wait to see how it all goes, but I think it’s like Civ 7 will still very ‘Civ-like’ moving through the tech tree. It likely wont feel like you only have three historical ages, more like you have all the usual Civ ages but some transitions are more earth shaking than others.
Honestly, I kinda like that idea. Civs moving from eg classical to medieval is still a big deal, because of the science and culture jump, but then eventually you trigger these even bigger global ‘jumps’.
… Civ 6 already had this - moving into some ages was more significant than others, and with golden / dark ages you already had a crisis mechanic. Civ 7 seems to be just putting those mechanics a bit more ‘on rails’, which I guess might make some things feel less organic or open ended, but I assume also lets them make the mechanics more robust and opens up other mechanical options.
Basically, we’ll have to wait to see how it all goes, but I think it’s like Civ 7 will still very ‘Civ-like’ moving through the tech tree. It likely wont feel like you only have three historical ages, more like you have all the usual Civ ages but some transitions are more earth shaking than others.
Stoic
Warlord
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Thanks, from the tech tree you can see that the main units and structures start in the first turns of the exploration era.
Stoic
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But if the catapult is the first siege weapon in the exploratory era, what is it in the ancient and classical era?
Once you start adding that in, then you need to make sure every civ plays in multiple ages. Maybe it's not a big problem, but it does mean 2x as much work for each civ to make sure Egypt can play in either Antiquity or Medieval, Shawnee can play Exploration or Modern, etc... I do think it would be very tempting if there was an easy way to do it. I wouldn't even mind if there were, say, 5 ages in the game, and you got 2 spots you could switch in. But if you do that, then you'd have to shorten up each age if you want them similar length time. Once you fall down to the 100-150 turns in an age, if you only had a civ for one era, that's not a lot of time to really establish a big identity with them.
They could always give each age a "mid-life crisis" that perhaps is less than a full crisis, but still some sort of big challenge that triggers within the age. That could let them sort of give the feel of more ages, while not forcing as many switches in. But I think also just because the medieval doesn't get its own full blown age, obviously techs/units/etc.. should still feel medieval in that period. It's just that they'll make way to the "next" era of tech within the same age.
Leyrann
Deity
I'd like to point out that the Justinian Plague (540 AD) was likely also Black Death. (and also continued roaming through the former Roman Empire and Europe for a few centuries before disappearing entirely)
And the rest of the world also participated, albeit not voluntarily so.
"I get a bounty of nutritious crops that will revolutionize agriculture and cuisine as well as luxury goods like chocolate and vanilla; you get debilitating diseases that will nearly wipe out your hemisphere. That seems like a fair trade, right?"
"Okay, but you also get syphilis."
Trav'ling Canuck
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I wouldn't be surprised if its just a battering ram. Not saying that's good or appropriate, but in past Civs we've had slingers before archers, as if the one led into the other in real life.
Leyrann
Deity
Could you (or someone else) please elaborate on siege weapon dating for historical barbarians like me?
If you ask someone to draw a siege catapult, they will probably draw you an onager. A torsion-powered catapult with either a bucket or a sling attachment for hurling projectiles:
These are ancient weapons, and are recorded as having been used by the Romans from about 350 CE. However torsion catapults scale quite poorly, and even early medieval fortifications rendered them useless. They were really more of an anti-personnel artillery, and even then their impact may have been more psychological.
Age of Empires 2 raised a generation of us to call the onager a “mangonel”. This is not a mangonel. The term mangonel is used in medieval sources to describe the real workhorse of that era, the traction trebuchet:
Invented in China as early as the 4th century BCE, traction trebuchets were in common use in Europe and the eastern Mediterranean by the late 6th century CE. Driven by manpower alone, they supplanted the onager entirely, as they are strictly better. They are considerably simpler to design and build, can easily be made bigger to achieve greater power, they do not rely on dangerous torsion, and have a faster rate of fire.
Then of course we have the internet’s favourite, the counterweight trebuchet:
First described in an Ayyubid source in the late 12th century, the trebuchet was able to achieve much greater power than any other mechanical catapult. It was in wide use across Europe and Asia but there is a misconception about its power. It couldn’t breach the thick curtain walls of a medieval castle, but was instead used to great effect to shatter the defensive towers, battlements and machicolations from which the defenders rained arrows, stones, oil and other projectiles on the besieging army.
Contrary to what video games might suggest, sieges were not resolved by trebuchets alone. Access to a walled city or castle was usually granted by subterfuge or treachery, or else a successful escalade.When walls were breached it was usually through sappers undermining them. It wasn’t until the invention of the bombard that the mighty medieval walls finally lost their defensive might.
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So in my mind, the onager makes more sense as a late Antiquity weapon than an early Exploration Age one. It’s real life window of use was brief, and it was rapidly superseded by the traction trebuchet at the beginning of the medieval era.
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Boris Gudenuf
Deity
In fact, 'Mangonel' was a semi-generic European medieval term for any one-armed catapult-like weapon, including early Trebuchets.
As early as 2400 BCE siege towers and battering rams or picks (against mud-brick walls) are shown being used by Egyptians (and in response, towers are being embedded in walls to provide flanking fire against towers and battering rams!)
The earliest 'artillery' seems to have been the oversized bow catapult invented in Syracuse, Sicily around 400 BCE and the traction trebuchet invented in China at very roughly the same period.
The Greeks within a century had expanded catapult development from bolt-throwing to stone-throwing and torsion propulsion using wound ropes for power. Consequently, by the Imperial Roman period catapults were available in all sizes from 2-man semi-mobile Carroballistae to larger crew-served stone-throwing Onagers.
The Chinese traction trebuchet was introduced to Europe by the Avars in the second half of the 6th century CE, and was adopted by the Byzantines by 587 CE. Traction trebuchets were called Mangonels or Petraries and ranged from one-man machines with a single rope to throw a single projectile long ranges, up to massive engines with mutliple ropes and 20 - 100 people pulling on them to launch projectiles up to 60 kg.
Another 'engine' used in Europe was the Great Crossbow, first recorded in the Siege of Paris in 845 CE. These bows, either stave or composite, could fire large bolts weighing over 2.5 kg that in one instance "skewered several Vikings like meat on a spit". They required some kind of winch mechanism to draw the bows and so were crew-served weapons, but could be transported intact, unlike trebuchets of any kind, and so were used until at least the 13th century in France and England and even mounted on ships by Venice in the 13th century.
The earliest mention of a Counterpoise or Counterweight Trebuchet may be in 1097 CE by Alexis Kommenos of Byzantium, but the record is obscure: he only speaks of a 'new engine' with no details. By the following century the Counterpoise Trebuchet is in general use by both Christian and Caliphates in the Middle East - they appear specifically in the Crusader States by 1124 CE.
By 1129 CE the Song Dynasty decrees that all Chinese warships have trebuchets firing gunpowder incendiary bombs, the first certain record of gunpowder naval weapons. These were traction trebuchets, though - the first certain record of a Counterpoise Trebuchet in China is in 1268 CE, used by the Mongols against a Southern Song city, manned by Persian crews imported along with the technology from the west. These machines could throw 100 kg rocks that penetrated up to 2.5 meters into the rammed earth city walls.
In 1304 CE Edward I of England's largest counterweight Trebuchet took 4 master carpenters and 49 workers 3 months to build on site for the siege of Stirling. These were NOT mobile machines!
The last known use of any trebuchet in Europe was at the Siege of Burgos in Spain in 1475 CE.
The replacement for all the earlier 'artillery' was the explosive-gunpowder-powered Bombard, developed in Europe as a wall smashing weapon. They first appear in the record between 1362 and 1372 CE: on the latter date they were used in France at the Siege of Bourges where a 1-ton Bombard firing 45 kg stone shot demolished walls and towers both.
In 1377 CE Burgundy used massed Bombards firing shot up to 90 kg in weight against the fortified city of Odruik which so damaged the city walls that the city surrendered immediately. That was, effectively, the end of the traditional stone curtain wall and stone tower as a defense for a city in Europe.
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