Gave Civ V yet another try...it's still not doing it for me

As a History major, I'm just going to politely bushwhack your argument on two points:

1) Its not as if everyone started at the same time.

2) The Native Americans were not 'nations' and according to their life philosophy had no need to be more scientific.

In sum, you're right. Population does not IMMEDIATELY mean technologically advanced. There has to be an impetus and a will for improvement - however, population does facilitate research to a great degree, so yes, it does make sense for it to be tied to population.



Im a history major too.. Population does not = technologically advanced


The Chinese had an earlier start than the euros... then they became isolationists.... and even up into the 20th century were not technologically equivalent to their European counterparts... Before Isolationism they were considered one of the most technologically advanced civilizations. I'd argue that communication between different types of societies breeds technological innovation more than raw population.


That was the example you purposely skipped over...


The example of the American Indians.. again.... Aztecs, Incans, these were NATIONS with leadership hierarchies and traditions rooted back at least several thousand years.. They both had a very sound understanding of astronomy. Yet no use for the wheel.. They never developed past the neolithic period yet used gold and silver as precious metals never experimenting with the ability to make bronze or iron.


The League of Peace and Power (also known as the Iroquois Confederacy during the 7 years war or the War for Empire) Would also be considered a NATION even by its own admission as such. The League of Peace and Power still exists TODAY. The Confederacy dissolved eventually.

"The Confederacy dissolved after the defeat of the British and allied Iroquois nations in the American Revolutionary War"

Now that is a quote from a textbook. I underlined and emphasized the part thats important.


Lets move onto Africa... Universally Recognized in the Scientific Community as the oldest known ORIGINS of man. Abyssinia also known as the Ethiopian Empire dated to 925 B.C. (and possibly earlier) was one of the first empires. Never advanced beyond the stone Age. And In fact up to 1100 A.D. was still considered a stone age civilization.


So the amount of time a society or nation exists and its population are both not factors for technological advancement in any shape way or form. I would say war is the major factor for technological advancement but there are also examples where that doesn't seem to be the case (mainly african nations warring)


A better question for discussion on the subject is... What does breed technological innovation? How should it be implemented in Civ VI? As we can formulate that Population nor Time of existance are major contributing factors in how much a nation or civilization advances technologically.
 
Thanks for making a new thread about this. Your unique opinion is interesting, but I don't agree with what you wrote.
 
Let T = Technological position of a society.

Then dT / dt (rate of change of technology over time) can be approximated by a function f(P,F,W,C)

where
P is the population of the society,
F is average number of free man-hours a person has each day,
W is some measure of the willingness to accept new ideas (e.g. a society being held back by a church would lower the value of W), and
C is some measure of the wealth of the society including what natural resources and animals it has access to.

One could make a basic model for f() as follows:

f(P,F,W,C) = A * P * F * W * C

where A is some constant.


The reason I say this (apart from having a bit of fun :p) is that it sounds like some of you are arguing whether a model:

f(P,F,W,C) = A * P

would work very well. I don't think any rational person would argue dT / dt is proportional to population and nothing else. However it's quite reasonable to use a model where there are other variables involved and where f(P,F,W,C) is still proportional to P.

I don't know if you are refering to me as one of those that think that f(P,F,W,C) = A * P. I specifically said that the educational system does play a role in real life, just like it does in Civ5.

The other variables could be tied to the Social Policy system of the game, where the value of W would increase with something like Rationalism, and C is the resources you have available. More resources = more growth and more research pacts. I will assume that F is a constant that is shared amongst the nations of Civ 5.

I don't really think anyone is arguing that the rate of scientific progress should be tied only to pop, but to say that it doens't play a major part looks like a desperate attempt to make reality fit ones opionion of optimal gameplay.

As you stated yourself, P is a factor in the fuction.
 
China's age and population wants to know why your argument doesn't fit for them.

Are you trying to say that more pop always means faster research in Civ5? Thats most certainly not the case, and if you do not build any of the science-related buildings, and avoid social policies like Rationalism, it would be possibly to outtech you, even with only a quater of your pop.

If Chinas educational system and mentality had matched that of europe, they would have been able to keep up. At certain points in history they were also far ahead.

I don't really see how YOUR argument fits China in the real world.
 
When talking about technology, we need to all get on the same page.

Are we talking about atoms, medicines, and numbers?

Because Civ has had philosophy, music, meditation, and monotheism.

China, for instance, has excelled in the second group. While not having big factories or inventing the car, China has given us some of the biggest advancements in human history. We just need to look at advancement from another point.

The Iroquois, correct me if I am wrong, were likely much more socially advanced than the Europeans that met them. Of course, social advancement doesn't mean all that much when the other guys have guns, but but which was more advanced? Look at it from another way.

The Maya calendars predicted eclipses very accurately, and, if I am right, will continue to do so for about another year. They figured it out a heck of a lot faster than us decedents from the Romans did.

Not all advancement is in the hard sciences.
 
Shouldn't having a small civilization have some disadvantages? I think partially tying Research to population is a good mechanic for that. Large spawling empires certainly have a number of disadvantages.

But I do admit by playstyle is completely expansion oriented. I think among 100s and 100s of games of Civ4/Civ5, I have won no more than a couple of games via anything but Domination or Conquest. For my playstyle, I am greatly enjoying Civ 5.
 
That's one of things I quite like about EU3. You can take a small nation and succeed with them.

Staying small and playing a trading game with Venice, Genoa or some member of the Hanseatic League is very fun and rewarding. :D

Generally speaking, if you are not going for a cultural victory, there is very little incentive to staying small.
 
Is EU3 turn based?

Seems all the builder/conquest games nowdays are real time
 
Is EU3 turn based?

Seems all the builder/conquest games nowdays are real time

EU3 is real time but with variable game speed where you can play it on extremely slow coupled with the ability to pause the game at any time effectively makes it turn based.

Real time is not always a bad thing though.

Rise of Nations was an excellent Civ style game. :)
 
I don't know if you are refering to me as one of those that think that f(P,F,W,C) = A * P.
No, not anyone in particular. Sorry, I sort of oversimplified the argument that I was reading from people in this thread.

I specifically said that the educational system does play a role in real life, just like it does in Civ5.

The other variables could be tied to the Social Policy system of the game, where the value of W would increase with something like Rationalism, and C is the resources you have available. More resources = more growth and more research pacts. I will assume that F is a constant that is shared amongst the nations of Civ 5.

I don't really think anyone is arguing that the rate of scientific progress should be tied only to pop, but to say that it doens't play a major part looks like a desperate attempt to make reality fit ones opionion of optimal gameplay.

As you stated yourself, P is a factor in the fuction.

Yes. The thing is, deciding how significant P is in the function, and whether it deserves to be called major or not seems such a subjective thing, and based on something which doesn't have any obvious tangible way to measure, seems impossible to decide.

As much as I like using models, there is a good argument for some things in life (perhaps including this topic of discussion) not being well described by models. I would have thought it fairly obvious that P has to play a pretty significant role. This should be obvious from the very fact that the technological progress of the entire planet is greater than one single country's, is greater than one state's, is greater than one city's, is greater than one institution's, is greater than one building's, is greater than one team's, is greater than one person's, etc (in general, of course).

And if P = 0, you have none at all. "Two heads are better than one." That sort of thing.

Maybe there's a difference between calling something a 'factor', a 'significant factor' and a 'major factor'.

Rooftrellen said:
Not all advancement is in the hard sciences.
I agree with that too. It's especially important if comparing 'tech' in civ games to reality. Technology and science are not the same thing in reality, but are used pretty much synonymously in the game.
 
That's one of things I quite like about EU3. You can take a small nation and succeed with them.

Staying small and playing a trading game with Venice, Genoa or some member of the Hanseatic League is very fun and rewarding. :D

Generally speaking, if you are not going for a cultural victory, there is very little incentive to staying small.

Tell me a bit about EU3, I have not played since the original. At the time I loved the game but I had this old system with windows 2000 that lagged the game bigtime. When I was able to play it was a great game. Tell me a bit about what it is EU is like now. Can you discover America with Columbus still?
 
The Iroquois, correct me if I am wrong, were likely much more socially advanced than the Europeans that met them. Of course, social advancement doesn't mean all that much when the other guys have guns, but but which was more advanced? Look at it from another way.

This is something I try to stress to my students all the time:

It is very easy to look back and see the advent of firearms as pre-ordaining European success on the global stage. However, if we actually look at Early Modern Firearms (Bert S. Hall's book on weapons in the Renaissance remains the best text about gunpowder weapons I've ever read) you'll find that European soldiers would be lucky to get even 2 rouonds off before the combat descended into a general melee (excluding conflicts in North America where both sides had firearms, of course). At that point, the battle is equal or perhaps has even shifted from a European-advantage to a native one (owing to the possible presence of armour or shields or simply more skill and familiarity with melee combat, etc.).

Firearms, alone mean very little (in my opinion).
 
Not going to read through all 31 replies (skimmed page one, and not a SINGLE reply actually addresses OP's 'problem'.

OP is wrong. Civ5 supports small empires keeping up in tech like never before. Research agreements combined with the economic system as well as infrastructure that provide massive bonusses to science rate for cities with large populations (starting already with the National College, which is incredibly huge for science), this is the first Civ game that lets small empires maintain a good science rate.

There are a number of things you can criticize about Civ5, and small empires being left behind big ones certainly isn't one of them. Civ has never been friendlier to small empires, ever. OP's post is complete and utter bollocks.
 
Let T = Technological position of a society.

Then dT / dt (rate of change of technology over time) can be approximated by a function f(P,F,W,C)

Someone I can argue model specification with? I tend to forget how much more sophisticated old school Civ fans are, as compared to the rest of the Internets.

I think you have a testable proposition (with regard to P), despite the fact that the data are bad. I'd ditch F and W from the model. F shouldn't correlate (technological progress happens in the course of work, too) and W is latent, difficult to measure and prone to circular reasoning.

I think you'll find that the correlation with P is nonexistent, though. A number of the best minds in economics have tried to model technological progress without coming anywhere near settling the question. A quick reading of economic history suggests that predicting the advancements that the market will accept is an impossible proposition. (Remember when Microsoft and others tried to sell us all tablets ten years ago?)

That doesn't make a linear relationship with P a bad game mechanic. Having technological progress result from working cottages isn't a lot more sensible, if you think about it.
 
Part of my point is that the advancement of knowledge and the advancement of technology are not the same thing. Whether microsoft can sell one of their products is irrelevant. (I really should have not called it technological position in my first post)

As for the factors that went into my model, I agree there are probably much better ways to do it. I just wrote the things that came to my head first (so I just called it a model, rather than a good one :)). The presence of competition (for survival or resources) is another one that comes to mind.

When it comes to how science/tech in civ5 (or any civ game for that matter) is accumulated, it really doesn't bother me. The feature is so abstracted that it is almost meaningless to argue one model is more correct or accurate than another.
 
I like the model of piece of mind.

my opinion on this comes from this book and documentary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

it is basically the same model that POM wrote down.

society's development is based on the ability of the society to produce enough food and product, to allow select few devote their time to specialization, instead of daily survival.
this would really be based and the availability of natural resources
it is not based on total population

civ4 simulated this really well: the city has food in BFC? you can assign scientists in there, or even turn it into a Great people city.

it wasn't uncommon to see an AI keeping tech pace until end of game with few good cities (that can support specialists) with some huge civ that stays at rifles.

in real world, until lately, all the huge countries were really backward, and some still are

(pre soviet russia, pre reforms china, africa, south america,) as opposed to some small very sophisticated countries: japane, S.Korea, europe, switz,

the only exception is USA. but let's see this: most tech progress in USA comes from small communities like NY, silicon valley, and others
 
Yes. The thing is, deciding how significant P is in the function, and whether it deserves to be called major or not seems such a subjective thing, and based on something which doesn't have any obvious tangible way to measure, seems impossible to decide.

As much as I like using models, there is a good argument for some things in life (perhaps including this topic of discussion) not being well described by models. I would have thought it fairly obvious that P has to play a pretty significant role. This should be obvious from the very fact that the technological progress of the entire planet is greater than one single country's, is greater than one state's, is greater than one city's, is greater than one institution's, is greater than one building's, is greater than one team's, is greater than one person's, etc (in general, of course).

And if P = 0, you have none at all. "Two heads are better than one." That sort of thing.

Maybe there's a difference between calling something a 'factor', a 'significant factor' and a 'major factor'.

Agreed. How much of a factor P should be is a question of balance. It could be slightly lower in Civ5, but I believe it should be the most important of them all. Your reasoning that the technological progress of an entire country is greater than that of a state which again is greater than that of a city is very good, and proves how population plays a significant role.

Just like population decides your potential to make gold (if one person can generate X amount of wealth in a year, 2 should be able to generate x*2, and so on), population decides your potential research capabilites.

I stand by what I said, that Civ 5 does a pretty good job at modeling this.

Which I think we agree on :)
 
Just an hour ago I lost a game, when suddenly a small civ won the game on cultural victory. There were no warnings in advance (at least none that I saw). I was preparing for a huge war against my neighbor England, and then I got the message that I lost to a petty small civ..

Whenever you see a civ that is not making any effort to expand and remaining unusually small, it's usually a sure-fire sign that they're going for the cultural win. Therefore you can't afford to just completely ignore these guys, and I like that, as it throws another dimension into the game you need to keep in mind.
 
Whenever you see a civ that is not making any effort to expand and remaining unusually small, it's usually a sure-fire sign that they're going for the cultural win. Therefore you can't afford to just completely ignore these guys, and I like that, as it throws another dimension into the game you need to keep in mind.

Sometimes it's forced on them later in the game. I just had a nasty turn trying for a cultural win as the Iroquois (King, Huge lakes map) for example. Thought I was a shoo-in, especially since the Persians started over-running the annoying Siamese next door. But then the Persians got dogpiled by a coalition, leaving the 2 biggest Thai cities, which everyone then lost interest in. At this point the Thai, who'd been no great contender before, started rushing through social policies like mad. Luckily I'd left spaceship victory turned on, heh.
 
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