Dark Ages?

[Frankenchrist]

Anyone think it would be neat if, during the middle ages, each cathedral and religous wonder you had would affect your science reasearch negatively, to better reflect reality?

 

[Mr Spice]

Cathedrals in Civ 3 are not supposed to only represent Christianity, but any monotheistic religion. Indeed, many civs in the game were historically not Christians and still they build "cathedrals". So how do you defend their getting science penalties beacause of the Inquisition? Also, Civ 3 is not supposed to be a miniature model of Earth history, but more like "what could have happened".

 

[Ironikinit]

What I think would be cool is a 20 turn dark age, similar to the golden age. It would be linked for each civ to a tech era, I suppose... e.g., the Americans would have an ancient dark age, Rome would have a medieval, etc. It could be triggered by losing a battle, a city, being last in the rankings. With excellent management, a player should be able to avoid having a dark age altogether.

Dark age penalties could be something like reduced commerce and fewer happy people.

 

[Willem]

Originally posted by Frankenchrist
Anyone think it would be neat if, during the middle ages, each cathedral and religous wonder you had would affect your science reasearch negatively, to better reflect reality?

You have your history wrong. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the church was extremely valuable in regards to saving all the knowledge that would otherwise have been lost. All through the Dark Ages, church scribes would meticulously recopy most of the ancient texts they had stored in their libraries, and preserve them for the future as best they could. It wasn't until the Renaissance that people in general even knew about the Roman Empire, or their knowledge, and then only because the church libraries had made the effort to preserve their texts. If it wasn't for the church, it probably would have taken Europe much longer to grow out of the Dark Ages.

 

[korusus]

Of course. The Church monks and priests were the only people who could read and write. The Dark Ages was a time when the Church destroyed books and manuscripts of ancient (or censored them) and manipulated people easily due to their ignorance (their inability to read and write). It was the onset of the printing machine that spurred people to become literate due to the wide availability of books previously only available to the minority of the Church. People began to think for themselves thus the beginning of Luther and his Protestants. The Dark Ages was a time when the Church controlled the masses by their ignorance. It was not the place of common people to try and interpret the "Holy Book" or any other book for that matter. And the whole black plauge thing...

You see it was the Church that kept Europe in the Dark Ages by keeping people illiterate and ignorant and only giving information to people as they saw fit and as they thought would benefit the Church. Duh.

 

[Selous]

crap idea .... the dark ages is simply where the world slows there science rate due to war .. seen it in many games where war has ravaged entire continants ... science become less important as everyone has knights and the next military improvment isnt untill cav ... long time away ..... unless u can avoid war of corse ... and avoid the dark ages

 

[cephyn]

Originally posted by korusus
Of course. The Church monks and priests were the only people who could read and write. The Dark Ages was a time when the Church destroyed books and manuscripts of ancient (or censored them) and manipulated people easily due to their ignorance (their inability to read and write). It was the onset of the printing machine that spurred people to become literate due to the wide availability of books previously only available to the minority of the Church. People began to think for themselves thus the beginning of Luther and his Protestants. The Dark Ages was a time when the Church controlled the masses by their ignorance. It was not the place of common people to try and interpret the "Holy Book" or any other book for that matter. And the whole black plauge thing...

You see it was the Church that kept Europe in the Dark Ages by keeping people illiterate and ignorant and only giving information to people as they saw fit and as they thought would benefit the Church. Duh.

The Dark Ages weren't that Dark. There was plenty of original thought and studies of ancient greek texts. Aristotelean thought was the basis for many of the thinkers in the 12th Century Renaissance. Things were actually stagnating in the 1300s until the Black Death (bubonic plague, not black plague -- no such thing ) caused a massive shift in the population makeup. After the Black Death, literacy spread like mad as a new class, the clerk, became the foundation of the learned community.

Plenty of common people did think for themselves, rising to become the powerful merchant class in Florence, Venice and Genoa. Bottom line is though that the Dark Ages weren't really that dark, and the Renaissance wasn't that huge of a shift compared to the 1100s and 1200s -- the 1300s were hit hard by the Black Death and thats why it was such a fluorish of thought ---- a whole social paradigm shift had occurred.

 

[Willem]

Originally posted by korusus

You see it was the Church that kept Europe in the Dark Ages by keeping people illiterate and ignorant and only giving information to people as they saw fit and as they thought would benefit the Church.

The church played more of a stabilizing role than a suppressive one. The politics of the time was primarily that of warlords battling amongst themselves to gain more and more power. Quite often the church interfened between opposing sides and used their influence, and the threat of excommunication, to arrange at least a cease fire, if not all out peace. Yes there were abuses, having power always means that will occur from time to time. But over all Europe benifited from the church, they provided an important bridge between the old Roman Empire, and the new European nations.

 

[elfstorm]

The dark ages were the absense of central authority and the destruction of civic life in Europe.

Do I win a prize for the shortest description ever?

There was none of this persectution of science which some people seem to believe happened. That took place during the "Renaissance" funnily enough.

 

[john heidle]

During the "Dark Ages" the Arabs/Muslims probably played a bigger role than the Christian churches in saving Roman & Greek writings for future generations.

 

[elfstorm]

Originally posted by john heidle
During the "Dark Ages" the Arabs/Muslims probably played a bigger role than the Christian churches in saving Roman & Greek writings for future generations.

In the East there were a number of ancient texts in Arabic and Greek which the west had lost.

But the biggest way they helped the West in teaching Italian scholars how to read Greek and Arabic.

You could have dozens of copies of (for example) Plato's Republic stashed away in monastry libraries - but if no one can read ancient Greek no one can translate the documents.

Once western scholars existed who understood Greek, Arabic and Latin then ancient works could be recovered.

But most of these scholars, Petrarch for example, spent their time scouring monastic libraries for ancient partchment and texts.

So the East was very important, but don't under estimate the role of monastic libraries.