For those history buffs....

[stljeffbb]

Hello everyone....I've modded (ever so slightly) the game to enable technology trading when finding Education (as opposed to Alphabet) to try to avoid races going to Alpha Centuri by 1850, etc...

I'm wondering how civilizations really traded technology. I'm assuming that sometimes things were learned upon conquering (ala Civ II and like real world WWII in relation to rocketry and the space race), but did early civs (in real life) learn from one another? When, if it ever did, does "technology trading" take off?

I kind of made an assumption that education would be a boon to the learning of different knowledge, and to me it seems fitting to allow trading (or maybe even just brokering) then as opposed to earlier....

Thanks in advance

Jeff

 

[Gooblah]

Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Inda (the so-called 'founding civs') traded extensively due to their relative close proximity. Thus, the art of Sailing was given by Mesopotamians to INdians, who used this to give the art of Currency, etc. If an Egyptian trader went to Babylon, then saw the use of a currency, came back, spoke to people, then the use of currency would spread. Technology was purposefully and accidentally traded as resources were shared.

 

[gdgrimm]

I think tech trading started the moment that 'civs' started running into each other. Things like Writing, Alphabet, Education, etc., etc., etc. certainly sped the process up. But the instant one 'civ' member saw another 'civ' member using a rock to chip flint into a sharpened edge, you can bet that the knowledge was transferred. You only need to be able mimic (not even speak with) others to learn from them.

And mimicking is something humans were doing even when they were still called apes (or chimps, or whatever).

 

[Lord_Zath]

yeah trading had plenty to do with technology.

For example, the Chinese developed gunpowder. The Arabs learned how to use it in military strategy, and the Europeans took that knowledge and mass produced guns.

I liked how the ViSa mod had technology leaks as you were trading; beakers for all sorts of techs you already had would slowly bleed out of you .

 

[stljeffbb]

I've decided to try turning off tech trading....my current idea is that these techs (like how gunpowder developed into the use of muskets) may have been 'found' before they are researched, but the time spent is actually mastering each technology, and unless each civ researches each tech, they will not have mastered it (unless of course they build Al Gore's internet toward the end of the game)....this may give me the imbalance I crave, or not....