Ancient tech tree looks mighty weird

[Ribannah]

The Wheel as a prereq for Horseback Riding??
Monarchy springing from Warrior Code and Polytheism??
Math and Philosophy are pretty strange, too.

Let's hope this is not definitive

[korn469]

Ribannah

i agree with you completely! when i first saw that screen shot i thought it looked messed up too...i am almost positive that on the tech chart that the wheel still provided chariots...ok if your society doesn't know how to ride horses...then how in the world has it learned how to harness them up to a chariot?

i'm not sure if the tech tree is finished but i do hope that they clean up a few things especially thing like you can have chariots before people know how to ride horses

[Ralf]

A link please. Always add a link to the source.

I have only seen a close-up of the middle age part of the tech-tree, so far.

[korn469]

ralf it was one of the four screen shots in the new gamespot review of civ3 found here

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories...1449-2,00.html

[Ralf]

Oh ****! I already knew about that one, but... Ok, I be back!

[Ribannah]

The Middle Age part has some peculiar links, too. I'm glad that art and printing made it in, but .....

Why not:

Literacy + The Mill (!) -> Printing

Polytheism + Philosophy -> Arts (instead of Music Theory)

Arts + Democracy (better: Nationalism) -> Romanticism (instead of Free Arts)

[BeBro]

Originally posted by Ribannah
The Wheel as a prereq for Horseback Riding??
Monarchy springing from Warrior Code and Polytheism??
Math and Philosophy are pretty strange, too.

Let's hope this is not definitive

Only to the Wheel thing: As far as I know chariots were earlier used as normal cavalry I think (eg in ancient Egypt they used chariots, but no seperate cavalry units) so at least this point seems ok to me.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Ribannah
The Wheel as a prereq for Horseback Riding??

Check out this step-by-step description how the wheel was invented. Then read some wheel history. Finally, read about Horses in the ancient world.

Interesting! As for the your other objections...

I for one think that the tech-tree seen so far is perfectly OK. Im sure the team havent mix & match the techs together without leaning back on some historical facts. And after all: history is non-exclusively multi-facetted, isnt it? Take theology as a prerequesite to printing press. Why is that wrong? Didnt the printing press come about in order to spread the world of God more efficiently?

[Ralf]

Originally posted by BeBro
As far as I know chariots were earlier used as normal cavalry I think (eg in ancient Egypt they used chariots, but no seperate cavalry units) so at least this point seems ok to me.

I buy that argument. Its good enough for me.

[S. Kroeze]

Originally posted by Ribannah
The Wheel as a prereq for Horseback Riding??
Monarchy springing from Warrior Code and Polytheism??
Math and Philosophy are pretty strange, too.

Let's hope this is not definitive

I suppose History was never your forte?!

I am glad the Firaxians at least did some research before making a new Tech Tree. Perhaps they even used my extensive contrubutions to Yin's List. What bothers me is that Alphabet and Writing are still in the wrong order! Yet I suppose you don't care or didn't notice it....

Despotism:
Sargon of Akkad(~2334-2279BC;dates contested), who plundered all the lands of Mesopotamia around his capitol city of Kish, was the first king whose power rested as much on the army as upon religion.

Since Despotism is a game concept in its own right, I think it deserves to have its own headword in the list. I would like to add the following:
'Between 3100BC and 2300BC, as a result, warfare increasingly dominated Sumerian life, leading to the supplanting of priest-kings by war leaders, military specialisation, the accelerated development of a weapons metallurgy and, probably, the intensification of combat to the point where we can begin to speak of it as 'battle'.

These are, of course, suppositions, to be pieced together from fragments of evidence - the appearance of walls at city sites, the discovery of metal weapons and helmets, the frequency of the inscription for 'battle' on clay tablets, records of the sale of slaves, who were perhaps captives, the gradual replacement of the prefix en (priest) by lugal (big man) in the titles of rulers, and so on. Particularly important is the evidence for the infiltration of Semitic peoples from the north, the Akkadians, who first founded cities of their own on the plain and eventually, after some centuries of conflict between their cities and those of the Sumerians, supplied the world's first emperor, Sargon of Akkad.'
(source: J.Keegan:'A History of Warfare',1993)

The decisive factors that brought about the early civilizations were the new kinds of economic and social organization, the large-scale exploitation of human energy, the formation of ruling classes, hierarchical organization, and the administrative division of labour. Under such conditions polytheism, which had undoubtedly been nascent before, could develop fully. The social order is mirrored in the conception of city and state gods and of a hierarchically organized "state of gods" with a division of labour. The concentration of power and people in one place, in contrast with the wandering of earlier nomadic cultures, enabled fixed central shrines to become influential. Yet the old traditions continued, and not least among them, that of animalism, in the form of conceptions about a ruler of the animals, animal cults, and similar phenomena. Female fertility figures remain generally prominent, such as the Great Mother and the Earth Mother.'
(source: Britannica.com, article 'prehistoric religion')

the Wheel
the chariot (NB: not the war chariot) for carrying goods was invented ~3500BC

War Chariot
soon after 1800BC: invention of light but sturdy two-wheeled vehicles that could dash about the field of battle behind a team of galloping horses without upsetting or breaking down. The compound bow was an important part of the charioteers' equipment.
NB: the chariot is older than Horseback riding!

Horseback Riding:
'No one knows for sure when the practice of riding on horseback first became normal, nor where. But early representations of horseback-riding show Assyrian soldiers astride.
Men occasionally rode horseback as early as the fourteenth century BC. This is proved by an Egyptian statuette of the Amarna age, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The difficulty of remaining firmly on a horse's back without saddle or stirrups was, however, very great; and especially so if a man tried to use his hands to pull a bow at the same time- or wield some other kind of weapon. For centuries horseback riding therefore remained unimportant in military engagements, though perhaps specially trained messengers used their horses' fleetness to deliver information to army commanders. So, at least, Yadin interprets another, later, representation of a cavalryman in an Egyptian bas-relief recording the Battle of Qadesh(1298BC).


Horsemen:
'By the eighth centuryBC, however, selective breeding had produced a horse that Assyrians could ride from the forward seat, with their weight over the shoulders, and a sufficient mutuality had developed between steed and rider for the man to use a bow while in motion. Mutuality, or perhaps horsemanship, was not so far advanced, all the same, that riders were ready to release the reins: an Assyrian bas-relief shows cavalrymen working in pairs, one shooting his composite bow, the other holding the reins of both horses.'
(source: J.Keegan:'A History of Warfare',1993)

'Even after the steppe nomads took to horseback in sufficient numbers to organize massive raids on civilized lands, several centuries passed before the techniques of cavalry warfare spread throughout the length and breadth of the Eurasian grasslands. The horizon point for cavalry raiding from the steppe was about 690BC when a people known to the Greeks as Cimmerians overran most of Asia Minor. This, incidentally, was nearly two centuries after Assyrians had begun to use cavalry on a significant scale in war. The Cimmerians inhabited the graasy plains of the Ukraine, and returned thither after devastating the kingdom of Phrygia. Subsequently a new people, the Scythians, migrated west from the Altai region of central Asia and overran the Cimmerians. The newcomers sent a swarm of horsemen to raid the Middle East for a second time in 612 BC and shared in the plunder of Ninive.'
(source: W.H.McNeill:'The Pursuit of Power',1983)

[DarkCloud]

Originally posted by Ribannah
The Wheel as a prereq for Horseback Riding??

Even supposing that Horseback riding was important in war after the wheel (chariot that was drawn by horses)... a logical argument

They should not be related- horses should be a completely different line of technology

Monarchy springing from Warrior Code and Polytheism??

They must have centered this on Middle Eastern History

[Rhysie]

Originally posted by DarkCloud

They should not be related- horses should be a completely different line of technology

I disagree... It is logical to assume that the first training of horses developed in order to have them pull wheeled carts and chariots, and the training of horses to allow a rider would follow on from such basic training as pulling a wheeled object.

Therefore

Wheel -> Carts/Chariots -> Horse drawn carts/chariots -> Ridden horses

[splangy]

well, this is odd. does that meen horses are better than chariots?

[korn469]

The threat of raids by the Altai and Turkic-Mongol nomads who controlled the borderlands north of China became a major problem during the 21st century BC throughout the great farming regions developing in northern China and the Liao River basin. The Chinese considered these northern tribes to be a barbaric lot and referred to them disdainfully as Xiungnu, a term meaning nomad. All nomads hunted in one form or another, but the Xiungnu lived a life that provided a virtually permanent training ground for war.

War requires learning, organization and teamwork and can be executed efficiently only after intensive training, usually accompanied by firm, sometimes savage, discipline. Here, the Xiungnu had one great advantage over the Chinese; they could fight where they lived - on horseback. They trained horses, hunted in disciplined units under their clan leader, and always practiced using their weapons on horseback. Archery was basic to their fighting prowess and the composite bow was their primary weapon. All able-bodied men, not to mention many women, were highly skilled in shooting a composite bow from the back of a horse while riding at a full gallop.

also i'm almost positive that native americans could ride bareback and fight like that (yes i do know that horses weren't reintroduced back into america until the europeans arrived)...

For centuries horseback riding therefore remained unimportant in military engagements

so could it not be possible that some other culture could overcome these difficulties...it also sounds like most of your sources are dealing with egypt and greece and not giving the eurasian steppes the spotlight, where it seems to me that horseback riding most likely developed

edit

however despite my arguments...this is just a game

and splangy was onto something

elephants are gone...check out the screen shot again

what we have are

bronze working: phalanx
iron working: swords men
warrior code: archers
mathematics: catapults
horseback riding: horse men
map making: trireme

so that makes it all good to me

edit #2

i also figured out what the T's are for...they represent buildings, wonders, and the one in the box is going to be the tech's picture

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
They should not be related- horses should be a completely different line of technology

Exactly.

Ralf: Those pictures are suggestive, but not historically proven AFAIK. The Wheel was most likely invented by potters.

Theology as a prereq for Printing is imho ridiculous. The Bible was multiplied by machine not because of a few scholars, but because of the many common folk who could read.

S. Kroeze: I did not say that Monarchy was not related to religion. I think Civ2 has it right with Ceremonial Burial as a prerequisite. I would rather remove the less essential Polytheism altogether and replace it with Mythology.

With regard to Alphabet: just because I didn't mention it, doesn't mean I find it OK! I would make Alphabet a wonder rather than a discovery, available with the discovery of Writing. Possible prerequisites for Writing are Storytelling and Herbal Lore (but that would mean extending the tech tree to the left).

The history books on Horseback Riding are quite vague. The fact that we can only prove its use from a relatively late date, doesn't imply that it didn't exist much earlier. Other animals (camels, zebras) were used as mounts quite early as well, the advance Horseback Riding could include those.
Note also that early on horses were mainly used for scouting and messages, not as regular cavalry.

Rhysie: Horses were used to pull sledges first, wheeled carts came later.

[star mouse]

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
What bothers me is that Alphabet and Writing are still in the wrong order!

In some cultures, the earliest use of writing was for accounting purposes, such as who grew the grain in storage. I think of this use as "alphabet", where certain symbols acquired specific meanings. You cannot write down complex histories with symbols that only mean "ox", "goat" or "amphora of grain".

Only later did this alphabet expand into a general-purpose tool that could be used to record histories. I think of this phase as "writing" where the "alphabet" is put to general use.

What bothers me is that Bronze Working doesn't appear to be a prerequisite for Currency.

[tniem]

I would make Alphabet a wonder rather than a discovery, available with the discovery of Writing.

Um, except you would give only one civ the chance to have an alphabet throughout the whole game. Sure this is realistic and will add a level of fun to the game.

In some cultures, the earliest use of writing was for accounting purposes, such as who grew the grain in storage. I think of this use as "alphabet", where certain symbols acquired specific meanings. You cannot write down complex histories with symbols that only mean "ox", "goat" or "amphora of grain".

But it is not an alphabet. It is a picture.


Here are the definintions for each from Miriam Webster.

Alphabet is a set of letters or other characters with which one or more languages are written especially if arranged in a customary order

While, writing is to form (as characters or symbols) on a surface with an instrument (as a pen)

Now which one do you think comes first?

[Nenad]

So, in civ2 horseback riding was a prereq for a wheel, and in civ3 will be oposite?

[Urban Ranger]

Is it just me or does the science guy looks like Sid?

[Kenobi]

Originally posted by star mouse

What bothers me is that Bronze Working doesn't appear to be a prerequisite for Currency.

You don't need metal to create currency - many cultures around the world did OK with things like pig tusks, jade, shark's teeth etc. instead of metal coins.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ribannah
The Middle Age part has some peculiar links, too. I'm glad that art and printing made it in, but .....

Why not:

Literacy + The Mill (!) -> Printing

Polytheism + Philosophy -> Arts (instead of Music Theory)

Arts + Democracy (better: Nationalism) -> Romanticism (instead of Free Arts)

Printing has nothing to do with the mill. Also Arts should be ancient. A lot of arts we know (singing, dancing, painting, etc.) date back to antiquities lost in the mists of time.

Chariots indeed had preceded horsemen in warfare. Horseback riding and the domestication of horses are two different things.

[korn469]

urban ranger

it's no coincidence that your science advisor looks like sid, all of the advisors are based on the firaxis staff

what bothers me is that the entire tech tree and all of the ages are too biased toward western civilization, (disclaimer i'm from the US)

iirc one of the major civilizations in the new world hadn't applied the wheel to any vehicle and as far as i know the Byzantines didn't experiance a middle age nor did sanitation in ancient rome lead to refrigeration

but hey i realize that it is hard to make a tech tree and as long as it is balanced and fun i could really care less

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kenobi
You don't need metal to create currency - many cultures around the world did OK with things like pig tusks, jade, shark's teeth etc. instead of metal coins.

Also seashells.

Coins weren't exactly minted out of broze the most early ones were from copper, lead, or their alloys.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by star mouse
In some cultures, the earliest use of writing was for accounting purposes, such as who grew the grain in storage. I think of this use as "alphabet", where certain symbols acquired specific meanings. You cannot write down complex histories with symbols that only mean "ox", "goat" or "amphora of grain".

The earliest writings wereglyphs or pictograms a la Egyptian writings. Later on symbols representing abstract concepts were added, making them into ideograms. The Chinese used this system exclusively. Now tell me they couldn't write down complex histories.

Alphabets are only used in phonetic languages, which were a later development.

[Harlan]

Regarding the Horse Riding vs. Wheel dispute, I too was very confused about this for a long time. I think the reason for the confusion is one factor most people don't realize: horses used to be very small, too small to ride. For instance, I found this on the internet:

"Homers Iliad in 800 B.C. details the first account of horses used in battle situations: 'Homeric heroes fought from two horse chariots from which they dismounted to fight from the ground with swords and spears.'. These horses were not however ridden, they were too small."

People were also smaller: 5 feet would have been tall for a man back in classical times, so horses were very small indeed.

However, some people, especially the people who in the steppes of Asia, were probably riding horses much earlier, maybe 3000 to 2000 B.C.

Why? The vast steppes of inner Asia were ideal for horse breeding and developing horse riding expertise, since they would be so fantastically useful there. The vast plains could also support larger sized horses.

But these areas could not naturally develop advanced civilizations. The centers of civilization (China, Middle East, India) used most land for agriculture or as pasture for cows, goats and other food producing animals, so horses tended to be ever smaller there (just as animal populations on islands tend towards dwarfism). In fact, finding and keeping stocks of large horses was a contast problem for most civilizations for thousands of years.

Thus, all the major civilizations went through a phase of chariot riding, until horses could be bred that were large enough to ride. Some barbarian areas probably skipped the chariot phase altogether, but these were clearly exceptions to the rule due to their very barbarianness. You can't have an advanced civilization without extensive agriculture.

Since Civ3 is about the development of advanced civilizations and not barbarian civilizations, the tech tree is correct on this point, though perhaps Horse Riding could be called Animal Husbandry or Horse Breeding instead, since advances in breeding were the real key.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Nenad
So, in civ2 horseback riding was a prereq for a wheel, and in civ3 will be oposite?

Dont make such a big fuss out of it. Read S. Kroezes historic background reply further up about horsemen. The Civ-3 team obviously had that in mind then they did the change.

-------------------------------------------------------

A general word of advice:

The Civ-3 tech-tree is an abstraction - a simplification of our historic progress. Try to remember that. The tech-tree designers MUST cut corners - especially since their overal goal also was/is about balancing the game in terms of gameplay, just as much.

[Kenobi]

Originally posted by Ribannah

Theology as a prereq for Printing is imho ridiculous. The Bible was multiplied by machine not because of a few scholars, but because of the many common folk who could read.

S. Kroeze: I did not say that Monarchy was not related to religion. I think Civ2 has it right with Ceremonial Burial as a prerequisite. I would rather remove the less essential Polytheism altogether and replace it with Mythology.

With regard to Alphabet: just because I didn't mention it, doesn't mean I find it OK! I would make Alphabet a wonder rather than a discovery, available with the discovery of Writing. Possible prerequisites for Writing are Storytelling and Herbal Lore (but that would mean extending the tech tree to the left).

The history books on Horseback Riding are quite vague. The fact that we can only prove its use from a relatively late date, doesn't imply that it didn't exist much earlier. Other animals (camels, zebras) were used as mounts quite early as well, the advance Horseback Riding could include those.
Note also that early on horses were mainly used for scouting and messages, not as regular cavalry.

Rhysie: Horses were used to pull sledges first, wheeled carts came later.

I think the printing press tech evolution works well in a European context. The bible was the most copied (best-selling?) book in the middle-ages in Europe, and copied laboriously by hand, mostly by monks. The first use of the printing press in Europe was mass production of bibles for the educated classes (priests and nobles), not for the (overwhelmingly illiterate) common people. It was only after the spread of printed books that most people gained the opportunity to read. This does not explain why the printing press took off in China, however, where wide-spread literacy amongst the nobility and bureaucratic classes probably created the demand for printed books.

On the subject of chariots/horses, I agree with Rhysie: horses had to be domesticated, trained and - importantly - bred before they could be ridden. The horses that pulled chariots in ancient times were no larger than our smaller ponies. It must have taken many centuries of breeding before horses were large enough to ride and to act effectively in combat. Their first use must have been as a work animal, then a chariot-puller, then a war steed.

On the subject of alphabet/writing, I don't have a firm opinion on which came first, but it seems pretty clear that the use of written symbols came out of a need for accounting first. This suggests that trade or accounting were necessary advances before either of alphabet or writing.

Apologies for the long post. May the Schwarz be with you.

[Rhysie]

With regards to horse units being better than chariot units, this does make sense to me - Horse units are easier to steer in that they have a faster turn rate, they have less weight to pull (unless it's a multiple horse chariot, in which case it's much more expensive to run and its a bigger target to hit) and horse units are also more mobile in that they can pass over small walls, through wooded areas, over mountains etc. without the chariot tipping over or getting stuck.

Of course, chariots do have some advantages, such as being able to handle multiple humans, so that some can be dedicated to weaponry, and probably being easier to control and thus easier for a single 'pilot' to use weaponry at the same time, but from the fact that chariots haven't been used for a _long_ time, and yet mounted soldiers were common right up until the first world war (When they were shown to be pretty much useless if I remember my rusty history well) would indicate that the advantages of a ridden horse outweigh the advantages of a chariot.

[Harlan]

A couple of thoughts I'm surprised that no one else has brought up so far (as far as I know).

One, am I the only one, or does anyone else find the whole Polytheism and Monotheism thing annoying? There is no reason why Monotheism should be considered more advanced a religious form than Polytheism. The Hindus and many other groups today do just fine with Polytheism. Much better would be to have, say, the development of a religious heirarchy be one religious "advance" and the development of a holy book(s) be another.

Second, I'm surprised more haven't commented just how similiar Civ3's ancient tech tree is to Civ2's. Its nearly exactly the same techs, just slightly slimmed down, and the ages defined slightly differently, and a few techs renamed (i.e. Literacy now Literature, University now Education).

As far as I can see, ignoring the moving of techs between ages, the Ancient Age loses:

Seafaring, Bridge Building, Trade

The Ancient Age gains:

nothing

The Middle Ages lose:

Navigation, Medicine, Leadership (I'm assuming Military Tradition is essentially Conscription renamed)

The Middle Ages gain:

Printing Press, Free Artistry, Music Theory

Firaxians also answered a question about how the game would deal with managing so many cities and units at the end of the game, by saying their solution was trimming down the tech tree at that point. So we're ending up with a smaller tech tree, and if anything, less units and buildings. Again, looking at the two parts of the tech tree we can see, there is an overall loss of general units (like the Explorer, Legion, Elephant) with the only compensation being the exclusive unit you get.

This is not what I was expecting from Civ3! I thought I'd be getting more detail, more stuff, not less!

[Jon Miller]

Go is an extremely good strategy game

yet there are only two peices (and the board could hardly get simpler)

complexity can be found in areas other than the number of peices

BTW on the horseman vs Chariot debate

Chariots were very expensive

perhaps there cost will be exrteme in Civ3

(they were basically the tanks of their era)

Jon Miller