Possible New Eras

tmv said:
The tech tree is not about world history so much as about tech development. And techs in this context is whatever can be researched by :science:. Everything that would be done with :hammers: or :culture: doesn't really belong there (as a tech). And I think the eras as they are take more inspiration from whatever culture group got there first - e.g. the Ancient Era is not about Europe at all, and after what would be World War II the tech tree is more about America. Medieval is a bit of an exception, but even then very important things from that era came from Europe (especially the University). Doing this in a more inclusive way would be difficult - you would have to imagine how you think this invention would have been made in a different culture region.

In this context it is very important IMO to keep the different "ways of production" separate: :hammers: is about producing something you know - very little creativity is necessary. :culture: is about choosing one of many different possible paths with no objective way to say what is better. :science: is about finding out what works, where you can say that A is better than B in a way. Things don't obsolete because they fall out of fashion (well, they shouldn't), but because they are superseded by something new (a new way to handle the need, or a way to remove the need altogether). This is of course an idealized picture, but even in this game we cannot go for a "realistic" one (with billions of different resources, replacing the map grid with something continuous, etc.).
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I said the game is about world history and I just feel that the era names should reflect that. But yes I also agree that the tech tree is about technology. Eras usually begin with a major innovation. Neolithic begins with Agriculture. Ancient era begins with recorded history. Classical begins essentially with iron working. Medieval begins with major agricultural innovations and so on. The game will never be completely realistic. That’s impossible. If it were realistic this would become a history lesson and not a game. But there is definitely room for improvement in regards to getting the game closer to how historians perceive world history.
 
UncivilizedGuy said:
Why is it silly? The game is about world history after all, not just Europe. It's always something that has bugged me. There is more to the world than just Europe's progress. The Renaissance was strictly a European event. Medieval is mostly a European concept. The name of the game should be "Civilization from Europe's POV". What I think is interesting is that Civ VI is the most inclusive to date and yet the developers still leave the era names untouched.

The historical timelines on Wikipedia have different eras for different regions of the world. Maybe the game should have an era tree or pathways. Different eras could unlock different cultures and techs. Hmm... could be an interesting modmod!
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That I think is a good idea. Hell, I think its a FANTASTIC idea. Different culture groups having their own eras as they advance, novel really. European/Western cultures keep the current system. Mind you, this wouldn't be in C2C, but another mod entirely if done. So instead of just Unique Units and Buildings for a Civ, the civ would have cultural eras, and share those with other civs in the same group.

Combine that with unique era splashes and unique era music, flavor units, city art, would a be a work of art.

tmv said:
The tech tree is not about world history so much as about tech development. And techs in this context is whatever can be researched by :science:. Everything that would be done with :hammers: or :culture: doesn't really belong there (as a tech). And I think the eras as they are take more inspiration from whatever culture group got there first - e.g. the Ancient Era is not about Europe at all, and after what would be World War II the tech tree is more about America. Medieval is a bit of an exception, but even then very important things from that era came from Europe (especially the University). Doing this in a more inclusive way would be difficult - you would have to imagine how you think this invention would have been made in a different culture region.

In this context it is very important IMO to keep the different "ways of production" separate: :hammers: is about producing something you know - very little creativity is necessary. :culture: is about choosing one of many different possible paths with no objective way to say what is better. :science: is about finding out what works, where you can say that A is better than B in a way. Things don't obsolete because they fall out of fashion (well, they shouldn't), but because they are superseded by something new (a new way to handle the need, or a way to remove the need altogether). This is of course an idealized picture, but even in this game we cannot go for a "realistic" one (with billions of different resources, replacing the map grid with something continuous, etc.).
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But on another note what TMV just said above is how basic civ, most mods, and C2C work. Eras are not so much about time periods so much as development.

I said the game is about world history and I just feel that the era names should reflect that. But yes I also agree that the tech tree is about technology. Eras usually begin with a major innovation. Neolithic begins with Agriculture. Ancient era begins with recorded history. Classical begins essentially with iron working. Medieval begins with major agricultural innovations and so on. The game will never be completely realistic. That’s impossible. If it were realistic this would become a history lesson and not a game. But there is definitely room for improvement in regards to getting the game closer to how historians perceive world history.
Click to expand...

Don't forget though, that historians are not a monolithic group. There are many camps and disagreements among them. To me, the Era names, as I view other things in life, should reflect an epic, artistic interpretation, not a cold scholarly one. Era names that bring to mind images, events, like Medieval brings to mind castles and knights in the west or samurai. Its epic, its awesome. Is calling it "Middle Period" epic or awesome? So my point? In this modern era we live in, we tend to be very logical, but does that make life better? I disagree. Where is the romanticism of the past that inspired so many to create? Remember, this is art here. To much these days art isn't held with the Romantic view either. Cold logic prevails. But is that more fun? Remember that is the goal of C2C. There is steampunk, all sorts of sci-fi concepts. All for fun.

It was just an idea I had, sub-eras, but it won't work for this mod I think.
 
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Sword_Of_Geddon said:
That I think is a good idea. Hell, I think its a FANTASTIC idea. Different culture groups having their own eras as they advance, novel really. European/Western cultures keep the current system. Mind you, this wouldn't be in C2C, but another mod entirely if done. So instead of just Unique Units and Buildings for a Civ, the civ would have cultural eras, and share those with other civs in the same group.

Combine that with unique era splashes and unique era music, flavor units, city art, would a be a work of art.



But on another note what TMV just said above is how basic civ, most mods, and C2C work. Eras are not so much about time periods so much as development.



Don't forget though, that historians are not a monolithic group. There are many camps and disagreements among them. To me, the Era names, as I view other things in life, should reflect an epic, artistic interpretation, not a cold scholarly one. Era names that bring to mind images, events, like Medieval brings to mind castles and knights in the west or samurai. Its epic, its awesome. Is calling it "Middle Period" epic or awesome? So my point? In this modern era we live in, we tend to be very logical, but does that make life better? I disagree. Where is the romanticism of the past that inspired so many to create? Remember, this is art here. To much these days art isn't held with the Romantic view either. Cold logic prevails. But is that more fun? Remember that is the goal of C2C. There is steampunk, all sorts of sci-fi concepts. All for fun.

It was just an idea I had, sub-eras, but it won't work for this mod I think.
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Logic and creativity aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, they're often combined with each other. Science relies on both. We need to think in novel ways to problem solve and critically think. Art, in art galleries anyway, is mostly about provoking thought. What is art, is often the question asked. The art we see online is varied, mostly it's artistic. As an artist (sort of), I like realistic, yet stylistic art. It's why I love anime so much; it's realistic in detail of the characters and backgrounds, yet it's incredibly stylized. The era names just reflect what the era is about. Civ has always been for laymen learning about history. C2C expands that by introducing Sci-Fi into the mix, by learning about the possible and/or planned future. It's not supposed to be technical. I still think we should rename Medieval into Middle Ages. That's more general. Same for Renaissance (Early Modern, Renaissance being a sub era), Industrial (Late Modern, Industrial being a sub era) and Atomic (Contemporary, Atomic being a sub era).
https://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/logic.php
https://www.thersa.org/discover/pub...ativity-and-logic-avoid-dangerous-stereotypes
https://medium.com/@micirox/logic-v...be-left-brained-or-right-brained-607d64efca4f
 
The way I see it, eras are nothing but arbitrary brackets with a label that tries to capture the essence of the age as well as it can. Sure, different things are happening in different places but the tech tree itself is a varied experience. All it basically is is a useful tool for helping the mind conceive of what was happening around that time in human history. It helps to pace certain increases through the game as well, assumptions of increasing complexity can find recognition of the right moment to register that increase - such as how education building effect and outer property impact will expand with eras, and how the population requires yet more education now because the body of human knowledge has expanded to the point that educational demands to keep the majority of people up to the cutting edge of understanding is greater and greater. But overall it's heavily arbitrary.

Spending months of effort on modding changes to those era names and brackets when the historical progress of the individual techs are far more important to consider themselves and fairly well arranged in sequence along the x grid, allowing for some variation in how you experience the passage through those eras, seems to me far too trivial a matter to invest into. If what we have comes across 'euro-centric', I suppose that's because euro-history is what has been most taught, and europe and the middle east are where the majority of all major technological progress really took place. The eastern world led the way in certain eras, sure, but if we really wanted to look at eras globally, we'd see no cause to give any brackets to an era anywhere as it would blend into a much less identified mass of constant variations of experiences all over the place.

If the game doesn't have any interaction with the distinctions being made about various sub-eras, what's the point of bothering to label them anyhow? I dunno, just seems like this is a seriously trivial matter we constantly find hardly anybody ever agrees with anyone else's take on so provides ground for neverending debates and discussions to try to urge various changes when it really means very little to the actual play experience but does mean a lot of adjustments to various progression elements of the mod being built on the assumption that this is not going to be constantly changing.
 
Thunderbrd said:
The way I see it, eras are nothing but arbitrary brackets with a label that tries to capture the essence of the age as well as it can. Sure, different things are happening in different places but the tech tree itself is a varied experience. All it basically is is a useful tool for helping the mind conceive of what was happening around that time in human history. It helps to pace certain increases through the game as well, assumptions of increasing complexity can find recognition of the right moment to register that increase - such as how education building effect and outer property impact will expand with eras, and how the population requires yet more education now because the body of human knowledge has expanded to the point that educational demands to keep the majority of people up to the cutting edge of understanding is greater and greater. But overall it's heavily arbitrary.

Spending months of effort on modding changes to those era names and brackets when the historical progress of the individual techs are far more important to consider themselves and fairly well arranged in sequence along the x grid, allowing for some variation in how you experience the passage through those eras, seems to me far too trivial a matter to invest into. If what we have comes across 'euro-centric', I suppose that's because euro-history is what has been most taught, and europe and the middle east are where the majority of all major technological progress really took place. The eastern world led the way in certain eras, sure, but if we really wanted to look at eras globally, we'd see no cause to give any brackets to an era anywhere as it would blend into a much less identified mass of constant variations of experiences all over the place.

If the game doesn't have any interaction with the distinctions being made about various sub-eras, what's the point of bothering to label them anyhow? I dunno, just seems like this is a seriously trivial matter we constantly find hardly anybody ever agrees with anyone else's take on so provides ground for neverending debates and discussions to try to urge various changes when it really means very little to the actual play experience but does mean a lot of adjustments to various progression elements of the mod being built on the assumption that this is not going to be constantly changing.
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It is trivial but I thought it might be fun. I don't see history the way others might I suppose. To many it is a science, to me its a story. An epic story written by our forebears over thousands of years, and of those who imagine what the future might bring. Yes such a view is unscientific, not trying to learn the "facts" so to speak, of the past. But how can one know facts of the past unless one has experienced them with his or her own senses? In that sense I believe history is a story, not a science. That doesn't mean it can't be true. I like the idea of the eras as they are and what others have proposed because I think the idea is EPIC, and to view history that way makes me feel kind of cool. "hey I'm living in the Information age in real life!". You understand.

So I do not believe eras to be arbitrary. If we take that logic, applying any definition or name to anything, or anyone, would be the same. An era is a period of time. The names may change, but that does not. When something is defined it becomes reality. Does it not?

In that lense I ask the question since this is after all a game mod, and one of the biggest, most ambitious ones. Would proposed changes be fun? Or not really add much to the experience. If its the later I totally agree with you Thunderbrd. In my own mod, I have noted the different names given to different periods in the civilopedia text of technologies which are required to advance, I confess I borrowed the idea from C2C(and Avain to be honest) and not all eras have this approach.

Perhaps a better way would be to have the eras have their own civilopedia entries. This would allow people to read about what the era represents in history, in the mod and also could include what the era was called or the equal of the era. But it isn't too important.
 
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Of course you could just show sub eras by using dynamic backgrounds to the tech screen in a way similar to Platyping's "culture backgrounds" mods. The background you get depends on where your nation is at. It is just a bit of graphical information or extra. It does not reflect what you are looking at in the tech tree. In fact at one stage I was thinking it would be an ideal replacement for Civ III's "throne room" in concept. Pity I am terrible at art. :(
 
It is a good idea Dancing, but I think Thunder and others would have create some way that the techs reflect the sub eras, and when they change to another. I dont know if they want to do this or not. But regardless of what they want to do I'm thankful they are sticking it and out with this mod and doing all this work, its been a wild ride.
 
Sword_Of_Geddon said:
Perhaps a better way would be to have the eras have their own civilopedia entries.
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There are era entries in pedia.
Only dates are listed here, just Prehistoric has some text.

Eras are in Concepts subsection.
 
Sword_Of_Geddon said:
Ah I must have missed that one, sorry. If you need someone to write entries for the later eras I'd be happy to, if you aren't happy with the way they are now.
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You can write entries for all eras - Strategy Text can contain date ranges and history entry can contain some nice flavor text.
 
Sword_Of_Geddon said:
At long last my civilopedia of the eras is finished, sorry for the delay.
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Wow this file is hopelessly outdated... Looks like you aren't using SVN.
It is so old that it was before Prehistoric -> Ancient and Ancient -> Sedentary change of era tag.

I'll try to update it. Also you did tons of typos :p

I managed to clean it up, now its in Github.
 
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Dancing Hoskuld said:
I did that and it still does not work!:cry:
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Delete User Settings, and reinstall entire game from scratch.
Delete those folders too:
C:\<USERNAME>\XYZ\AppData\Local\My Games\Beyond the Sword
C:\<USERNAME>\XYZ\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword
Run game as admin.
 
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