New NESes, ideas, development, etc

[Immaculate]

 

[Dachs]

I'll keep that in mind if I ever get around making a serious althis.

That would be the general, unspecific "you".

 

[Milarqui]

Yup.

That's my problem. I have too many ideas to begin what could potentially be good NESes, but I cannot bring them to completion and make them work well.

 

[Immaculate]

You had two very promising NESes that i was a part of but then just stopped updating. They seemed to be well executed within their short lifetimes however.

 

[bonefang]

Milarqui, really nice idea .

Must have the four horsemen ...

 

[Thlayli]

The only comment that I have to add to Dachs' thorough trashing of Grandkhan is that with the possible exception of the Umayyad Caliphate, (who were constantly at war with themselves when they weren't at war with Eastern Rome,) hegemonic empires with no credible military rivals are almost universally locales of technological stagnation compared to smaller nations with a bunch of credible enemies that *need* to stay economically and militarily competitive through ever-better technology. When you have a political entity (like Rome, or China, or the Turkish Caliphate) that can conceivably qualify as a closed system or considers itself as such, technology doesn't really go anywhere.

The 'Dark Ages' regressed in only one major area: Monetization and (very partially) civil engineering, with the exception of the Byzantines who were more impressive than Rome in some architectural areas (church building) and less showy (though not necessarily less effective) in others (like aqueducts). The post-Roman period in Western Europe featured major advancements in agricultural technology, mechanics, and within a few centuries (and virtually no time at all in the Eastern Mediterranean) architecture had surpassed anything Western Rome could do.

If you can't explain to me why a hegemonic Rome with no credible rivals avoids the technological stagnation that a hegemonic China or Ottoman Empire experienced, then your technological advancement hypothesis dies in the water. International political competition, chaos, and war stimulates technological development much more than long stretches of peace and complacency do.

To anticipate a possible counterargument, the so-called 'hegemony' of the British Empire was under near-constant existential threat from its inception to its terminal decline. Nothing near Rome's absolute dominance.

 

[Masada]

That seems to be a dubious set of assertions. See: United States, Tang China.

 

[Milarqui]

Milarqui, really nice idea .

Must have the four horsemen ...

No Four Horsemen. Those would only appear in the Armageddon, not in Armageddon???.

Check the story (the TV Tropes page at least) and you'll understand a part of this.

 

[DC123456789]

@Terran Emperor

That seems like an interesting timeline, I'd be interested in playing it.

@Grandkhan

I'd play that if you used a better map. I generally like classical history and countries. One problem (on top of all the historicalness argument above)- I don't think Axum is actually inside Axum on that map- it looks to be in Sheba (incidentally, the heart of Sheba is also not actually inside Sheba on that map).

 

[Terran Empress]

@Terran Emperor

That seems like an interesting timeline, I'd be interested in playing it.

@Grandkhan

I'd play that if you used a better map. I generally like classical history and countries. One problem (on top of all the historicalness argument above)- I don't think Axum is actually inside Axum on that map- it looks to be in Sheba (incidentally, the heart of Sheba is also not actually inside Sheba on that map).

Well thank you, Ive done a wee bit more adjustment though, south america is back to regular, the ottoman empire no longer controls Sudan, and A-H doesn't have any colonies any more

However I now have 2 maps, one taking place right after ww1 ends, and one taking place a few years later where some of the problems have solved itself, IE closer to the start of IRL WW2, I can upload both after I do a little bit more tweaking, and we can vote on which map to play on.

 

[DC123456789]

I think right after WWI would be interesting, to see what happens in all the post-war countries (especially Russia and Austria-Hungary, which will probably be the focus of the first few turns).

 

[Grandkhan]

I don't know where you all got the idea that I'm trying to make anything other than a scenario with a history that is defined enough to give context when playing and allow players be justified in their gameplay and RP decisions, or that it is meant to be anything more than vaguely plausible.

I'm not going to write reams of text to justify what are essentially stylistic and gameplay decisions.

That said, I do appreciate the critique, and the consensus seems to be that the technological and social difference of 400 years is excessive and too silly, which is a legitimate concern - I'll address that with the timeline.

I think that my biggest concern is the overall lack of change in the scenario. Almost all of the polities you have on the map are ones that existed in some form a millennium earlier. That sort of thing is certainly possible, but I don't think it's very plausible. I'm not really arguing that everything must be changed for the sake of change because it is a lolthist woooo, but at the same time, it's jarring to see the classical world survive pretty much intact just because.

Valid point. I figured people wouldn't see it as that jarring. I'll look into changing the names and the histories of some of the polities.

To Grandkhan that looks interesting, I am not sure if someone has brought it up already, but I am interested in why the Roman Empire is so stable right now, and why it never actually fell at any time, unless of course it has had many ups and downs, larger at some times and smaller at others, I can buy that.

Its not currently stable, and is about to experience its greatest crises yet. The transition from Second Empire to the Third Republic was less than 40 years ago, the Empire before it was undergoing a pretty bad crisis (almost popular revolt) and the transition to the Republic was basically a gigantic f*ckup carried out by the Senate because at that point they were more interested in preserving their own aristocratic power than saving the state from the threat of collapse. Its waxed and waned a lot over its history, this is just at a moment right before it might start waning again (though thats really up to the players )

I'd play that if you used a better map.

Boo

I generally like classical history and countries. One problem (on top of all the historicalness argument above)- I don't think Axum is actually inside Axum on that map- it looks to be in Sheba (incidentally, the heart of Sheba is also not actually inside Sheba on that map).

Huh, thats inconvenient. Do you know of any states south of Axum which occupied that rough area?

Yeah, looking back on it I actually misplaced Sheba geographically. Kingdom of Himyar would work better?

 

[Thlayli]

That seems to be a dubious set of assertions. See: United States, Tang China.

The US has been in a near-constant state of war or miliarization since its birth, one that's hard to appreciate without living in it.

I don't know enough about the Tang to comment.

 

[Masada]

The US has been in a near-constant state of war or miliarization since its birth, one that's hard to appreciate without living in it.

So has every hegemon, it sorta goes without saying.

 

[Thlayli]

So has every hegemon, it sorta goes without saying.

I think Rome's position was different; much of the early American industrialization and assorted improvements therein were perfected in the course of a trade rivalry with an arguably more powerful Britain, and a very non-lopsided civil war, (my thesis being that difficult conflicts spur technological innovation, which is why the Punic Wars gave us the corvus and the Hundred Years War the first major experiments with siege artillery) the Great Game that followed on its heels a decent impetus for further technological development.

But WWII and the Cold War really encouraged an American technical and technological flowering that wouldn't have been as sustainable without the idea of a difficult, or potentially difficult war with a powerful foe. I can't imagine aerospace or nuclear technology, even arguably the Internet, evolving as easily without the impetus of war, or political competition with an equally matched foe (the USSR) that could lead to war and often led to proxy war.

As for tech development since 1991, globalization and the politico-economic competition therein provided a new driver, though our military continues to push tech innovations out to the general public.

Rome didn't really have to deal with the idea of neighbors as existential threats (ever, if you believe Halsall, and only until it was too late, if you believe Heather,) which I think until fairly recently America still had to confront.

Look at Japan as another test case. Internal pressures were insufficient to drive technological development that external pressure (and the very real possibility of becoming a puppet of a militarily superior foreign power) finally produced.

 

[Gem Hound]

and Rome was in a constant state of militarization as well. (Not the whole population)

 

[Thlayli]

and Rome was in a constant state of militarization as well. (Not the whole population)

You're thinking about it the wrong way, though. The presence of large standing armies alone isn't enough to oppose technological stagnation, the foe is extremely important. Rome's army (like its society) had little need to adopt new technology since its pre-existing models worked so well.

 

[schlaufuchs]

You're thinking about it the wrong way, though. The presence of large standing armies alone isn't enough to oppose technological stagnation, the foe is extremely important. Rome's army (like its society) had little need to adopt new technology since its pre-existing models worked so well.

Sassanians?

 

[Dachs]

You're thinking about it the wrong way, though. The presence of large standing armies alone isn't enough to oppose technological stagnation, the foe is extremely important. Rome's army (like its society) had little need to adopt new technology since its pre-existing models worked so well.

The problem with that formula is that Rome's army did adopt new technology. But incremental metallurgical improvements don't exactly light up the sky. Neither do changes to personal armor based around increased flexibility and mobility.

More importantly, isn't it a mistake to associate technological progress to geopolitics in an age during which there was no obvious connection between the two? Monarchs weren't funding R&D departments back then, and the notion of scientific experimentation wasn't a systematic thing anyway. Fetishizing "knowledge" didn't necessarily help, either; the Mouseion at Alexandreia didn't lead to a technological advantage for the Ptolemaioi, nor did the obsession with geometry and mathematics in the court of Hārūn ar-Rashīd materially aid the technology of the Caliphate. Nobody institutionalized technological development until the early modern period in Europe, and that's if you're being charitable.

 

[Lord of Elves]

I would assume that (according to Thlayli) the Sassanians don't qualify as an external threat capable of producing significant technological change in the Imperial Legion or what-have-you, as that would have to be some form of existential threat. Rome didn't have to invent new weapons, new tactics or anything else in order to hold the Sassanians at bay.

But I'm absolutely terrible at classical/antique history so I could be completely wrong.