Technologies

[ianinsane]

I like the tech tree in general but I don't like the lack of "intellectual" technologies. I think they are both an important part of civ in general and of the real world. This current tech tree consists entirely of "technologic technologies", if you understand what I mean.
I think it is important to include intellectual technologies as well. If the decision was solely on me I would even add (utopian/futuristic) intell. techs for the future era that are now thought of but don't work yet (like "multiculturalism"). But I can understand the dislike of utopian techs some people are having.
But maybe we can agree to at least include some intell. techs for the modern era, i.e. some that are only discovered by certains civs. An example of this might be a "gender mainstreaming" tech, or, as Bahmo pointed out in the other thread (I found his arguments very convincing), even "democracy" and "liberalism".
What do you think about this, DVS? What was the reason not to include such techs in this tree?

 

[DVS]

I had a line of techs like that, I removed it because I thought it was highly unrealistic that any, let alone all of them will be happening within the next 43 years, our game's time span. There will be no racial equality, or any type of utopia, within our mod's time span.

Communism, socialism, free market capitalism, emancipation, all civics that any country in the world could conceivable change to within the next 43 are already understood by everyone. Changing to them does not require further research, like scientific technologies do. Changing a society will take time to implement, which is best represented by extended revolution times.

That is why I chose to only include Total Identification. This is something that doesn't exist yet, but is clearly being worked on. If any of you can suggest any others like that, we could add them.

 

[ianinsane]

Yes, I know. It is hard to predict the future. Although I'd like to point out that 43 years ago most people wouldn't have believed that there would be an Afro-American president in 2009...
But I accept that opinion of yours. However, that does not mean that we can't include such techs at all. There are social/intellectual techs that are existent but not yet everywhere in the world.

For me the moment a civ tech is fully researched in a civ does not represent the moment when the first scientist had the first successful experiment on that tech but the moment when that tech is known well enough and so well-established to be used throughout the whole civ. It is the same with "gunpowder" as it is with "liberalism". Otherwise you couldn't explain why in very moment you discover "gunpowder" you're able to build muketmen in each city on a grand scale.

So it is the same in our mod. The discovery of a tech should mean that it can now be fully mastered everywhere in that civ. Not the knowledge of it's functioning is the important thing but the ability to actually apply it. That's why I'd like to have the following techs in our tech tree:
Liberalism
Democracy
Gender equation or mainstreaming
Biopolitics

 

[DVS]

"43 years ago most people wouldn't have believed that there would be an Afro-American president in 2009"

That is far from a civic change. The last change in civics to occur in the USA was universal suffrage in 1964. And that wasn't something that took research.

 

[MasterOfDomain]

I'm a little confused about what Total Identification is exactly. I have some ideas, but unless it goes under a different name I can't find much about it.

 

[DVS]

It hasn't happened yet; modern totalitarianism basically. It is pretty much what the UK and others are heading towards; a society where the government tracks every citizen at all times. It's the culmination of cctv cameras, fingerprinting, RFID chips, etc etc.

Don't worry about doing pedia entries for this and/or others you're not sure about. Or, just send me a message and I can elaborate as much as possible on any you're not sure about.

 

[MasterOfDomain]

Oh a Big Brother society. I thought as much. I might take you up on a few offers for the pedia entries, but most I am able to get ahold of (occasionally some naming conventions are lost in translation).

 

[DVS]

yes exactly.

feel free to hit me up any time.

 

[ianinsane]

That is far from a civic change. The last change in civics to occur in the USA was universal suffrage in 1964. And that wasn't something that took research.

I know. That was just to point out that there can be sociocultural changes that you cannot predict.

Sorry if I'm annoying with this but I think you still weren't really responsive why not to include sociocultural techs that are already existent but not yet managed throughout the whole world.

Concerning expanded anarchy times due to civic changes...I don't feel it is realistic if Russia changed from State Controlled media civic to State Censored that Russia would descend into anarchy for 10 months...

 

[DVS]

Revolution times vary depending on what the changes are! So, the change you mentioned may mean no anarchy at all. Whereas a drastic change, from something like democracy to communism will take months, even years.

 

[ianinsane]

OK. That sounds reasonable.
Yet at the moment we have no means to tackle the gender issue. If we had a civic on that I'd shut up now. But we don't and I feel this is to big an issue in the world to ignore it. So I think it deserves a tech. If you have a counter-proposal how to include the gender issue I'll be glad to listen.

 

[DVS]

The "gender issue" hasn't been solved in 18 million years, I guess it won't be solved in our game. Sorry bro.

 

[ianinsane]

Excuse me...but we have states, like Norway, or Sweden that are almost there. You can't tell me that these states won't be able to achieve gender equality within the next 50 years.

And even if not: You can't tell me that the situation for women is the same in Yemen and Sweden. And you can't tell me that this difference has no effect in the world. Have a look at the current Gender Equity Index. We must not ignore that.

Don't take this the wrong way but it really really rankles me that people put such a lot of effort into putting every single HUMVEE into it's correct placement on the map but just have a shrug for the complex of problems that affects the lives of half the world's population. Is it because the team entirely consists of males? We shouldn't be that ignorant on that.

I don't want to offend anyone, especially not you, DVS. You seem to be a politically enlightened person with a nice avatar I'd use myself if you didn't already. That's why I'm especially wondering why there is so little sensitivity for this subject on your side.

I don't insist that we incorporate this for the first Version. I am totally fine if we save it for a later version. It was just this shrugging "sorry, bro" reaction that let me write another response.

 

[MasterOfDomain]

Equality eh? I can see it being an issue that is dealt with more reasonably in the next 50-100 years (I don't think it will ever be 'solved' in the traditional sense). Perhaps when we come to the attributes of the tehcs we can find one which can encorporate this ideal, or make one.

 

[sheep21]

ianinsane, I feel for you mate when it comes to trying "to get it right."

I would contribute more on this but im not so knowledgeable on this subject, perhaps I should dig out my old sociology books during the week and contribute something worthwhile.

 

[DVS]

Ok, sorry this post had to wait longer than I sad it would, I couldn't find my original tech tree. I decided not to use this line before I put anything on the computer... I had to dig up my original concept drawings.

This is what I had at first. I decided to kill this early on, so I didn't put much thought into it (not very good, if we do decided to add these, we can probably find better names etc)


>Universal Marriage Rights-

>Racial Equality
Gender Equality-

>Religious Equality

The after that, I was considering including something like "New Philosophy" and "New Financial System", similar to our new treatments and new cures techs. First I started rethinking order; gender equality includes transgender people, and I don't know, which of these will come first? Impossible to say right? And certainly, thinking further, there is no chance that there will be religious equality in 50 years. Or ever, as long as religions exist. They were invented and exist only to divide people, a world in which all religions live in tolerance is not even conceivable IMO.

However, I ended up dropping this completely. I decided that these advancements were better represented by civic changes, revolutions, and generally civil disobedience (unhappiness). So, for example, as time goes on, if you don't switch to a civic that encompasses gender equality, you'll have "-10 You should be ashamed of your woman's rights record", or the like. Same with the others. To me, it seems, social justice is achieved by people, movements, which finally put enough pressure on the people who are fighting for inequality (we all know who these people are), and that is when things change. There is no scientific research involved. So, I hope you'll understand now, that I by leaving these ideas out of the tech tree, I didn't WANT to ignore social issues. I just didn't like the tech tree as the place to represent them. Plus I'm somewhat skeptical about these things being possible in our time frame. Sweden has solved gender inequality? There is no more domestic violence? I have never heard that, that would be impressive.

If we do end up with civics that represent this issues, I was thinking we could just unlock them with other, unrelated techs. Countries should be able to make these advancements later in the game, but should it eat up research time? Or should it just take civics changes along with possible turns of anarchy? That is the question we have to agree on.

I haven't seen our civics yet, Bahmo hasn't posted them here still, and there is one asset error being triggered by his files that I haven't had the time to find yet. So I can't say exactly what our civics are looking like right now.

 

[DVS]

Sweden is close to gender equality? Sure they may have equal pay and things like that, but you think in 50 years that they will have stopped rape and domestic violence? I hope you're right, I am skeptical.

 

[ianinsane]

No, no. Sweden hasn't solved it yet. But they are so far and have made such a progress in the past 50 years that I think it would be strange if they will not in the next 50 years.
Of course there still is rape and domestic violence, without a doubt. But this is something you have to separate from gender equality. As long as there will be violence in the world there will be domestic one, too, and rape. In heterosexual relationships as well as in homosexual relationships. Gender equality, however, in this aspect IMO is reached when there are no legal or social structures that take the gender or marital status of the offender or the victim into consideration when judging.

 

[DVS]

I hope you saw the post above that one, too. ^^

Let me know specifics of what you want to see, I'm sure we can make it happen.

 

[ianinsane]

Thanks, DVS, for the post. Now I can see much clearer. I really didn't assume you were ignoring social issues but I feel I had to get this discussion started.

I can see the reasons why you left these field of research out of your tech tree. But since this is a real turning away from the original mechanisms of the Civilization game (representing social progress through technologies) I'd have liked an open discussion about it.

I personally think it makes perfect sense to have social progress as techs. And it makes perfect sense to have social progress "eat up research time". After all technological progress and social progress compete for the same resource: Young, creative minds and their time and dedication.
Not surprising that social progress in modern era (almost) always started at universities. I can think of some examples: The German democratic movement that came into being in 1848, the sexual revolution, the protests of 1968...
Not surprising that in the years of neoliberal dogmatism since the 1990s no big social advances were made in western countries: It was the aim of the ones in power to use all available young creative minds for economic and technologic progress. In Europe this led to the so-called Bologna process. It reformed universities in a way that made it impossible for students to engage in anything that is not content of the ridiculously narrowed down curricula. No time for researching social techs...
So I think the core conflict is actually not that social progress would take away research time from technological progress in an unrealistic way. The only unrealistic thing is that in civ you can only research one tech at a time. But I'm not sure if this can be solved. Would be cool if you could distribute research priorities to single techs like you can do with civs in the espionage screen.

I agree to leave the tech tree as it is for now. But I definately would like to have a discussion if this is the way social progress should be represented in our mod. We can always change it for later versions.