Earn your Industrial Revolution

[civilizationfanatic2000]

Known, Unknown. Desired, Undesired.

Let's set a design goal that 85% of games, from 4000 BCE to 2500 CE, will never experience an Industrial Revolution.

How to make it so? Exploit the concept that technology must be desired to be researched. Most polities didn't go through an Industrial Revolution. China didn't. India didn't. Persia didn't. Egypt didn't. It was only Britain that did due to cultural and material factors:

1. Easy to access coal reserves
2. A culture that encouraged rational study of the world
3. Not being stuck in a High-level equilibrium trap

Most civilizations don't have any of those three hard to achieve requirements. This is to teach the player just how unlikely the Industrial Revolution was and how much it changed everything. Some players may start an Industrial Revolution in their games, only for it to die out half way. Fewer players would be able to recreate something like our society.

Of course, this would be an opt-in feature.

 

[Evie]

The idea that Great Britain alone had an industrial revolution is only maybe true on the technicality of defining "industrial revolution" as "first country to indistrialize". Which is quite the questionable definition.

Absent that definition,in reality, the UK was merely the first nation to industrialize, no more: all the others you've named, and indeed essentially the whole world, eventually followed also ended up indistrializing, unless they were destroyed first.

Which should, in the game, be the only scenario (or two) that prevent eventual emergence of industrialization: becsuse the game ended before you could, either because you were destroyed first or because you won first.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

India didn't.

Bengal did in fact have large-scale manufactories, and some historians consider it to have been in a phase of proto-industrialisation. In all probability they might have developed full-scale industrialisation had not the English East India Company showed up.

 

[Zegangani]

There is no Industrialization in the Game anyway. We only have a tech with that name as flavor. So why even bother?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

There is no Industrialization in the Game anyway. We only have a tech with that name as flavor. So why even bother?

Chiefly because the 'Industrial Revolution' or Industrialization had enormous effects on almost every aspect of the Civilization involved.

For examples:
Application of the Steam Engine to transportation (railroads, steam-powered ships) effectively increases the City Radius from which an individual city can gather Resources from X Tiles to Wherever the Railroad Runs or the Ship Can Sail. Even the early 1900s Trans-Siberian Railroad could get a train (carrying at least 1000 tons of material) from the Pacific Coast to Warsaw in less than 3 weeks - 12 Time Zones in less than 7% of the shortest turn (1 year) in Civ VI. Moscow could get its food and raw materials from virtually anywhere - after she industrialized.

Industrializarion changes Politics. Before the British Industrialization the political parties were Whigs and Tories. After Industry began to transform the entire workforce, they were LIberals, Conservatives, and Labor. Labor, as in Industrial Labor, was in fact an entirely new Class added to the old mix of Rural Agricultural and Urban Artisan and Professional. It could be argued that most countries were still trying to come to grips with the changes politically and socially for another century and more after Industrializing.

Industrialization changed the way Money was worked. Before Industrialization, the most expensive thing a government or industry had to build was a Harbor, the most expensive unit a Ship of the Line (which has been described as "the most complex machine ever built by Humans up to that point"). But a simple point to point railroad covering a few hundred kilometers required more machinery, more iron and steel,, more construction, excavation, and a larger (initial) workforce than anything since the Pyramids. Essentially, in the game an Improvement becomes a Wonder in its requirements - including and especially Financing to pay for all of the required labor, materials, and specialized machinery. That meant that Industrializing also required new public Stock Markets, public Bonds, and other financial arrangements to concentrate enough capital in government or private hands to build the huge Factories (a 'simple' Bessemer or Open Hearth steel furnace was one of the largest non-government or monumental buildings ever seen up to that time: another conversion of District or Building into a Wonder in its requirements).

Which means, in short, that no 4X game has come close to really giving the gamer all the ramifications of the Industrial Revolution to play with. It made more changes to human society than just about any other process since Agriculture and the ability to concentrate population into Cities - Industry required that the urban population be almost completely reorganized into new forms and groups (Industrial Labor, see above) and even changed the family structure - Industrialized societies almost all lost the extended, multi-generational family structure that had prevailed since before agriculture for the Industrial Economic Unit of the Nuclear Family.

The fact that there is "no industrialization' in the game now does not mean there shouldn't be, or that Civ VII should continue the woeful trend of leaving it out.

 

[Zegangani]

Which means, in short, that no 4X game has come close to really giving the gamer all the ramifications of the Industrial Revolution to play with

For the exact Reasons you mentioned it's practically non-existent in the Game for me. Which is unfortunate, bc it's The missed opportunity to make Late-Game better. No need for forced Ideological Wars (not everyone likes their games to end in huge wars), just have an organic way for Industrialization to happen, and then let the ramifications of it shape the rest of the Game.

Edit: also, I didn't mean that "bc there is no Industrialization in the Game, thus we don't need it". At least that wasn't my intention, but, rereading it again, I get why it may come across like that. But tbh I just don't think that we will get it in Civ7, or even in the other 4X Historical Newcomers. It comes so late in the Game (The Industrial Era is perceived as the start of the late Game by many), that it would be hard to design proper mechanics around that, that would still make a difference that late in the game. I think for that to work, Devs need to rework how balance, pacing and Victories work altogether, and that's where I don't have much hope, because it's a very risky thing to tackle.

 

[Marla_Singer]

The fact that there is "no industrialization' in the game now does not mean there shouldn't be, or that Civ VII should continue the woeful trend of leaving it out.

Before the Industrial Revolution, there was the 18th century Agricultural Revolution which considerably increased food output leading to a massive demographic booming. With far fewer farmers required to feed the population, this has lead to a sustainable rural flight to the cities. That is I believe what characterized the most the period leading to an acceleration in technological progress that was already in steady increase since Renaissance. The increase in production output is only a consequence of it.

Now that is actually represented conceptually in the game (at least from Civ1 to Civ4, I never played that far in Civ5-6), but not in quantities being involved. Cities do not grow 10 times in population as they actually did. Yet the problem is that you could hardly represent quantities accurately without overwhelming the player with excessive micromanagement. As such, you're forced to do it somewhat more conceptually, with an increase in production input yet new buildings requiring many more production so that things get more balanced and you don't overwhelm the player with excessive micromanagement. Maybe in Civ5 and Civ6 the inability to stack made the problem worse though, I don't know well enough those games to tell. In Civ1-4, late wars did involve many more units than earlier ones.

Also to answer the OP, I can't see any reason to consider the Industrial Revolution any different than any other game-changing technologicial eras such as Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Classical Age, gunpowder, Age of Discovery/Renaissance, and later on mass consumption and globalization. You could indeed play a game in which we stay in Paleolithic until 2500 CE but I'm not sure that would be very thrilling.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The Agricultural Revolution changed the pattern of human habitation from scattered bands to concentration of sedentary populations ranging upwards from a few hundred to several thousand. Later, better organization of supplies from further away (up to and including Rome and Athens gathering food from Africa across the Mediterranean and the Crimea, respectively) brought city populations into the hundreds of thousands, and arely, to the million mark.

And there they stayed for over 1500 years, from Imperial Rome and the Imperial Chinese cities to the western European cities of 1800 - 1850: until the Industrial Era, with vastly increased transportation and better handling of food ranging from Grain Elevators to mechanical refrigeration which pushed humanity's general population into the billions and city populations into the tens of millions - an order of magnitude increase in both scales.

In game terms, after the ability to establish the first cities on the map, I would argue that nothing changes the major ingredients of the 4X game like Industrialization. The size of cities in both population and the area they cover on the map, the resource gathering, the size of military forces, the speed with which those forces can be moved, the speed with which technological innovation was applied to everything. As stated, using the actual figures would probably overwhelm the majority of gamers (as it nearly overwhelmed generations of professional politicians, city planners, and technicians) but at present, Change is only incrementally increased where it should accelerate dramatically.

And note that one advantage of simulating the effects, even if watered down in sheer numbers, of Industrialization will give the gamer a whole slew of new problems to solve and conditions to react to, and if done right, shou ld go a long way to relieving the infamous Late Game Ennui that now infects Civ.

So, aside from being better History, a more accurate simulation of Industrialization and its effects and (dis)contents has the potential to produce a better game as well.

 

[Marla_Singer]

The Agricultural Revolution changed the pattern of human habitation from scattered bands to concentration of sedentary populations ranging upwards from a few hundred to several thousand. Later, better organization of supplies from further away (up to and including Rome and Athens gathering food from Africa across the Mediterranean and the Crimea, respectively) brought city populations into the hundreds of thousands, and arely, to the million mark.

Sorry you've been misguided, I was referring to the 18th century agricultural revolution.

Here is chart showing how fast population boomed in Britain by 1800AD. Also as a disclaimer, population was still predominantly rural in Britain by that date, so it's really the agricultural revolution (and not the industrial revolution) which triggered that booming (both later fueling one another).

 

[luca 83]

Improvement of transport 2 duplicate production 3growth of middle class 4 mass goods production (retail , production goods , clothes , coal , steel , weapons , food , mass production5 growth of the proletariat possible workers' strikes and union claims 6 , finance creation industrial trusts , banking , 7: awareness and demands of national minorities , example 1848 people’s spring

 

[Marla_Singer]

Interestingly, the population of Germany also boomed pretty much at the same time as Britain in the early 19th century:

Overall, the population boomed in all European countries during the 19th century. The only notable exception is France which had a smaller increase due to a fertility rate fastly decreasing from 2 to 3 whereas it stayed from 4 to 5 in all its neighbours untill the early 20th century. That French lower fertility is generally explained by both an early dechristianization and the fact that farmers became landowners after the French Revolution with a law enforcing equal inheritance between children. As a consequence, farmers limited their number of kids to prevent their property to be excessively divided.

Ironically in Britain, one of the arguments to explain the increased crop output during the Agricultural Revolution is the Enclosure Act, which basically individualized farming (that was mutualized since Middle Age). That looks very similar to what the French did except that it only decreased mortality, it didn't have any impact on natality.

Also as another sidenote, France did experience an Industrial Revolution during the 19th century nonetheless. The difference is that industrialization relied on a foreign immigration to the French larger cities and mining regions rather than a domestic one.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Sorry for the mis-understanding: the original adoption of agriculture had such fundamental importance for the development of citis and urbanization of any kind that it was at the front of my mind.

The agricultural revolution of the 18th century was, I as I understand it, also partly fueled by technological processes: Jethro Tull's innovations in planting and crop management, more readily available iron plows (like the all-metal Scots Plow which required only 1 man to operate, a massive saving in agricultural Labor) - a collection of 'small' advances that collectively increased agricultural efficiency appreciably.

What is most interesting about the figures for the population increase in late 18th - 19th century Europe is that it apparently had very little to do with Industrialization directly. Evidence for this is from the non-industrial areas of Europe:

Russia, which industrialized late and slowly, still doubled its population, from 35.5 million in 1800 to 74.1 million in 1860. During that same period Russia expanded their limited metallurgical factories in St Petersburg and Tula, but otherwise the only sign of industrialization was the three textile mills built in Naro-Fominsk in the 1830s, with the rest of the clothing/textile 'industry' being still cottage-based until the last half of the century.

Also interesting is that Russia continued expanding its population, to reach 126.4 million in 1897, or another 52 million people in just 37 years. That, however, was at least partly due directly to Technology: railroads making distribution of food more certain to reduce localized famines, and the advent of Pasteur's anti-germ sanitation processes with all the consequences in clean water supply and generally better preventive care that dropped the appalling pre-industrial infant mortality rate. The same trends, I understand, also applied to the (especfially urban) populations in Britain and Germany in the same late 19th century period.

There is throughout history a great deal of 'connectness' among different systems: organizational and social, technological in various fields, which IMHO the Civ games have only nibbled at. The 18th - 19th century Agricultural and Industrial 'revolutions' are a very good example. Doubling the population in a half-century is so dramatic it would probably have to be 'toned down' for the game, but to ignore it almost entirely reduces that part of human history to Fantasy.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I think to get the industrial revolution right would take the brave decision on the game designers part that at the start of of IR you are (almost) starting a new, different game. I like the adjacency system but it should not mean as much as railroads or a modern education system. The tiny British isles should compete with the sprawling Russia and China.

 

[Marla_Singer]

I think to get the industrial revolution right would take the brave decision on the game designers part that at the start of of IR you are (almost) starting a new, different game. I like the adjacency system but it should not mean as much as railroads or a modern education system. The tiny British isles should compete with the sprawling Russia and China.

It wasn't that small if you would look at its colonial Empire, and even more importantly, its control on resources and trade. Also smaller states with large importance aren't a novelty from the Industrial Revolution, check what Portugal achieved in the 15th century or Venice in the 13th century. And you can continue this way up untill the Phoenicians at the Bronze Age.

Maybe that's my bias, but from what I learnt about History of civilizations, I've grown the idea that true power has always been a matter of trade control. That is even the reason why civilizations emerged in the first place.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It wasn't that small if you would look at its colonial Empire, and even more importantly, it's control on resources and trade. Also smaller states with large importance aren't a novelty from the Industrial Revolution, check what Portugal achieved in the 15th century or Venice in the 13th century. And you can continue this way up untill the Phoenicians at the Bronze Age.

Maybe that's my bias, but from what I learnt about History of civilizations, I've grown the idea that true power has always been a matter of trade control. That is even the reason why civilizations emerged in the first place.

You can certainly make a case for Trade = Civilization, since there is archeological evidence for trade in commodities and Useful Stuff from the very first urban settlements: obsidian for blades traded clear across the Mediterranean basin and out of Anatolia as far as Egypt, seashells and amber for decoration traded from the Levantine and Baltic coasts all the way to the inland Near East. And there were probably a mass of items too perishable to show up in the archeological record that were also carried some relatively long distances - the Harappan or Indus Valley Civilization was making decorative objects out of gemstones sourced from Central Asia - 400 to 1000 kilometers away overland at a time when Overland meant On Foot: no telling what else the 'traders' were also carrying, because it's a pretty safe bet that no one was going to make that trek empty-handed in either direction..​

​

Most games set in any kind of historical background simply do not recognize the importance of Trade, or the terrain that makes it possible: rivers, for example, were Highways from before writing: the earliest non-dugout log boats are Nile rivercraft and Mesopotamian reed boats on the Tigris and Euphrates, but Civ VI assigns no importance whatsoever to rivers for Trade or Trade Routes, only as sources of drinking water for your cities (and the new Millennia game doesn't even manage that: as far as I can tell from their Demo game, rivers are just pretty blue lines on a map with no significance at all, at least in the first three 'Ages' of the game that the Demo covers)​

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

The idea that Great Britain alone had an industrial revolution is only maybe true on the technicality of defining "industrial revolution" as "first country to indistrialize". Which is quite the questionable definition.

Absent that definition,in reality, the UK was merely the first nation to industrialize, no more: all the others you've named, and indeed essentially the whole world, eventually followed also ended up indistrializing, unless they were destroyed first.

Which should, in the game, be the only scenario (or two) that prevent eventual emergence of industrialization: becsuse the game ended before you could, either because you were destroyed first or because you won first.

They ended up industrializing because they wanted to compete with Europe, either before they could get colonized (Japan) or because they were beaten into the ground for a century straight (China). Europe effectively scared them straight.

If Europe didn't care about the outside world, those countries would stay agrarian.

Bengal did in fact have large-scale manufactories, and some historians consider it to have been in a phase of proto-industrialisation. In all probability they might have developed full-scale industrialisation had not the English East India Company showed up.

TIL.

Chiefly because the 'Industrial Revolution' or Industrialization had enormous effects on almost every aspect of the Civilization involved.

In agrarian times, population almost 1 to 1 collerated with GDP. India alone had more population than all of Europe (75 mil to 36 mil), and so did China (60 mil to 36 mil). The latter also wasn't divided into many states, making it an extremely powerful state almost unmatched in the world. If Europe never industrialized or even colonized the Americas, we (if we were literate) would view it as something minor, far less grand compared to China, and less important overall.

illustration of gdp over time: https://www.newgeography.com/content/005050-500-years-gdp-a-tale-two-countries

In a game, this means a player that wouldn't even be in the top five in the score rankings suddenly discovers forbidden technologies and skyrockets to the top of the list and gives everyone else the worst wake up call of their lives. This would make Industrialization inevitable, at least after a certain skill level, because nobody wants to be China in the century of humiliation. People want to be France and the UK, or failing that, Japan.

The solution, to make every game different and not so linear, is to make the in universe desire of a people important towards attaining technology. If you have no draft animals, you won't want the wheel, so you won't be able to research it. If your economy is too stable and your religion discourages study of the rational world, you won't be able to research Industrialization (or whatever). If you want to change this, you need to make your people desire it.

Somehow.

 

[Marla_Singer]

They ended up industrializing because they wanted to compete with Europe, either before they could get colonized (Japan) or because they were beaten into the ground for a century straight (China). Europe effectively scared them straight.

If Europe didn't care about the outside world, those countries would stay agrarian.


TIL.



In agrarian times, population almost 1 to 1 collerated with GDP. India alone had more population than all of Europe (75 mil to 36 mil), and so did China (60 mil to 36 mil). The latter also wasn't divided into many states, making it an extremely powerful state almost unmatched in the world. If Europe never industrialized or even colonized the Americas, we (if we were literate) would view it as something minor, far less grand compared to China, and less important overall.

illustration of gdp over time: https://www.newgeography.com/content/005050-500-years-gdp-a-tale-two-countries

In a game, this means a player that wouldn't even be in the top five in the score rankings suddenly discovers forbidden technologies and skyrockets to the top of the list and gives everyone else the worst wake up call of their lives. This would make Industrialization inevitable, at least after a certain skill level, because nobody wants to be China in the century of humiliation. People want to be France and the UK, or failing that, Japan.

The solution, to make every game different and not so linear, is to make the in universe desire of a people important towards attaining technology. If you have no draft animals, you won't want the wheel, so you won't be able to research it. If your economy is too stable and your religion discourages study of the rational world, you won't be able to research Industrialization (or whatever). If you want to change this, you need to make your people desire it.

Somehow.

The thing is that technologies can be exchanged between countries, therefore openness to the world certainly matters even more than demographics in this regard. The more you are in contact with different cultures, the more you'll know. That is the reason why the most advanced civilizations accross History were always those dominating trade. That works in every Historical eras in every regions.

And that's the reason why navigation in High Seas offered such a decisive advantage to Western Europe from the 15th to the 19th century. From 100 BCE to 1500 AD, the largest trade network in the world was the silk road, with all the most advanced countries being connected by it. Yet that connection was indirect. Goods were exchanged by multiple hands from China to the Roman Empire (later Byzantium and the Arabs). High seas navigation on the other hand allowed direct contacts with any parts of the world. By the middle of the 15th century, Portugal and Spain were in direct contact with every civilizations in the world, from the Incas to Japan. That means they had direct access to all knowledges in the world. No matter what the Chinese, the Indians, the Aztecs or the Arabs would invent, they would know. And they had a monopoly on that, as all the others remained disconnected between one another.

Now the key question is why the Asian giants haven't joined the race to rival Western European domination over the Seas. And from my understandings, that is essentially because nothing really changed for them, so they didn't see it coming. Their existing trade networks remained, and Western European ships coming was only an additional trading partner. It's like a frog that you put in a pot. If water is boiling when you drop the frog in it, the frog will immediately spring out from it for its survival. But if the water is only warm, then the frog will be happy and stay. And when you very slowly heat up the temperature of the water, the frog stays happy and doesn't realize anything untill it passes out and utlimately gets boiled and die. Slowly but surely, Western Europe grew more technologically advanced and other civilizations didn't really realize it before it was too late.

 

[Evie]

So long as there are even two civilizations on the map, there should always be one (the weakest, or both if a tie) that has an advantage in having an industrial revolution, and seeking a technological edge to gain the upper hand. The only way a high level equilibrium trap leading to no industrial revolution ANYWHERE ever make sense is if there's only one civ left in the game, in which case there isn't a game.

China wasn't just inwardly enjoying a high stable economy: they were absolutely dominant toward any of their surrounding civs, without any major threats rival-wise. As you note yourself, once they had dangerous rivals (industrial euros), they industrialized to match.

Pretty much the only games where no industrial revolution happens should be the ones that end before it.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The thing is that technologies can be exchanged between countries, therefore openness to the world certainly matters even more than demographics in this regard. The more you are in contact with different cultures, the more you'll know. That is the reason why the most advanced civilizations accross History were always those dominating trade. That works in every Historical eras in every regions.

And that's the reason why navigation in High Seas offered such a decisive advantage to Western Europe from the 15th to the 19th century. From 100 BCE to 1500 AD, the largest trade network in the world was the silk road, with all the most advanced countries being connected by it. Yet that connection was indirect. Goods were exchanged by multiple hands from China to the Roman Empire (later Byzantium and the Arabs). High seas navigation on the other hand allowed direct contacts with any parts of the world. By the middle of the 15th century, Portugal and Spain were in direct contact with every civilizations in the world, from the Incas to Japan. That means they had direct access to all knowledges in the world. No matter what the Chinese, the Indians, the Aztecs or the Arabs would invent, they would know. And they had a monopoly on that, as all the others remained disconnected between one another.

Now the key question is why the Asian giants haven't joined the race to rival Western European domination over the Seas. And from my understandings, that is essentially because nothing really changed for them, so they didn't see it coming. Their existing trade networks remained, and Western European ships coming was only an additional trading partner. It's like a frog that you put in a pot. If water is boiling when you drop the frog in it, the frog will immediately spring out from it for its survival. But if the water is only warm, then the frog will be happy and stay. And when you very slowly heat up the temperature of the water, the frog stays happy and doesn't realize anything untill it passes out and utlimately gets boiled and die. Slowly but surely, Western Europe grew more technologically advanced and other civilizations didn't really realize it before it was too late.

An interesting What IF? is the potential Chinese sea domnance. The Song Dynasty had extensive overseas trade routes to southeast Asia, India, and Indonesia, trading not only in the 'usual' goods like porcelain, luxury foods, raw materials, metal objects, but also in 'cultural' goods like aromatic woods from the tropics with which to formulate perfumes - in the Song court, every noble courtier had to have his own distinctive scent or he was Nobody, so the trade in ingredients for new perfumes was enormous.

This continued under the Ming when the 'Treasure Fleets (1405 - 1433 CE) under Zheng He extended Chinese tributary network, political and economic influence across half the world - from east Africa to Arabia to India to Indonesia and possibly to the north coast of Australia, and set up China to dominate trade across the entire Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian waters. Even after internal rivalries between Civil and Eunuch organizations in China ended the fleets and the voyages, Chinese ships dominated the trade over that area until the Portugeuse and Spanish and Dutch arrived at the end of the 15th century and later.

While there has been ferocious debate over the exact cause of the cessation of the fleets, consensus now is that they were profitable and achieved their political and economic (trade) purposes, and the reasons to stop them were internal to Chinese politics. Absent that internal disruption, China would have still fielded an enormous fleet of military/economic power and consequence, and with their economic and technological base they could have given the Europeans a run for their money (note that the Treasure Ships were much larger than any European ship that ventured into Asian waters for the next 200 years, and the Chinese were able to 'reverse engineer' European ship's cannon as soon as they got their hands on them, and quickly produced their own hybrid cast iron/bronze cannon that were metallurgically superior to any European type)

As stated, the real problem was that all the overseas trade was Nice To Have, but not Critical to China's own economy or well-being, so it could be sacrificed to internal rivalries, and was. The consequences only became apparent a century later, when Europeans began to move in on the Chinese overseas trade, now virtually unprotected by any Chinese naval presence.