Anyway on to the points i'd like made:

First off, the military tactics will be handled prob in their own small section (for now atleast) to make it easier on me.

As to Mark's reply on the technology drop...if you really think its better that way i'll go ahead and do it, just let me explain why I liked the other way.

First off, taking the example about microelectronics, it is true that it did make things smaller and wasn't implimented overnight (in fact we still use vaccuum tubes in many airports), but it did allow for a major rethinking in electronics as far as the engineering and compasity are concered. Before transitors and microchips were around, tell anyone we'd have computers the size and power of PCs today, or even 10 years ago, and you'd be laughed atm or at best they'd say maybe in several hundered years. Also i wasn't planning on starting the player off on square one once this technology was discovered since the basics of the technology apply, its simply the way in which it is implimented. And no our engineering and electronics usage didn't become worse, but our understanding of its new potential wasn't as good as the older vacuume tubes, and that is what basic technologies represents IMO, the potential beyond the basic understanding of the currently developed technology that a civilization has brought itself.

About the tech discovery out of order, i was planning on implimenting that mostly on the basis of using "more soft than hard" technologies for many of them. Though the added idea of attempting to learn a tech b4 u've reached the hard rq of a basic tech does have potential...i'll have to check this out when I do some "cleaning up."

The tactics i'm using is based on your current level of technology in using the weapons u have available. Therefore this would have very good reason to "decrease" as new technologies emerge to enhance your weapons. FE i saw a documentry on the LC about how the army is integrating the new advances in computer technology, choosing which ones work best and which ones aren't good, atleast currently.

Yea as far as its size i'm not planning on adding any much more techs cept basic and a military tactics section. Plan on getting rid of some i seen were kinda useless or could be combined.

Meturallagy in basic? That can be done.

Minor Point:

The reason i had copper working is that not all civs discovered copper....most did, but a few didn't, most noteably as i mentioned b4 in the former research discussion, the Japanese who had virutally no copper (unaware about tin, but with no tin, no bronze) but plenty of iron.

I can concintrate on the ancient techs if u want...that's not too hard. I'd ask though that u give me more input in that area as to what needs changing. Also, although i've not programmed much in java (beyond a little menu sys i got for my webpage which was mostly compiled anywayz) If someone shows/gives me a tutorial on how to program it, as long as its written descently and unconfusing I could prob learn in a couple of days how to program and could get atleast a basic source code out to u.

I will try and look carefully at the ancient end of your tech tree as soon as I can. With luck that'll be tomorrow.

On military tactics, why don't we see how the notion of military tactics and organizational advances, etc. fit into the ancient part of the tree (I'll try to include thoughts on this in my comments) and take it from there?

I think if we can get the ancient part of the tree working sensibly when playtested then generating the semi-final version for the rest will be a lot easier. We'll already know what Sort of things work, or are too complicated etc. So I'm happy leaving the contentious parts of our discussions somewhat on hold, and mostly making progress on places where there's already substantial agreement.

I get the feeling we might be mis-communicating on the set-back in basic techs. Can you give a simple example, but using several techs, of what you envision. So, FE, pick a basic tech X, and several techs A-C that are related to it. First describe what happens when you discover A. Then when you discover B what effects the set-back in the basic tech X has upon A in terms of its effectiveness, etc. I think a simple example with made-up numbers Might show that I just don't understand exactly what you mean and vice versa. If nothing else it will serve as a useful base for further discussions.

Glad you thought my other ideas might be doable. We can discuss them in the light of firming up the ancient end of the tree and see if we want to try them in the first shot.

I understood your point about Japan and copper-working. But to accomodate that one little bit of history we'd need to add a whole new special to the game. Things are getting Very complicated, and I'm just trying to keep somewhat of a lid on it as much as possible. But we can see in playtesting whether my concerns are warranted.

On java tutorials... You can look around the web, there are a bunch available. Also, several old java books are available for free in electronic format on the web. I can't give you specifics right now, but you can probably find some info after a little web searching. If you find a really good source, please post it so others can skip that step...

If you could get a start on coding up the tech model it'd be Great! My code so far already has a crude tech model in it. I'm not sure how much of it you'd want to use, but starting using it as a basis would probably get you going faster provided the general objects are the right ones (which I think they are). It would also mean you could learn java by modifying existing code, which I find to be generally easier than creating code from scratch when learning a new language. Just let me know if you want me to send you the source.

Must Go... Cya,

I'm using physics as the base technology.

The related techs:
a> Gunpowder
b> Flight
c> Theory of Quantumphysics

First we discover gunpowder. Physics would be at 35% needed and would prob not change since gunpowder doesn't really change the fundimentals of physics.
Then after a while of increasing our techs we dicover Flight. Flight has to have physics at say 60%, but lets say it was at 66%, well because flight doesn't change what we basically know about physics, it can remain the same.
Now its on to quantumphysics. We need, amongsth other things, a physics tech level at say 75%. Quantumphysics doesn't change our understanding of physics as Isaac Newton knew them, but allows for understanding of why atoms don't seem to react to his model. Thus because we had to reevaluate how physics works at such micorscopic levels our understanding as a whole on physics is lowered, say to 70%... If it were at 90% when i discovered this it would be down to prob 79% because I have to relearn more of how physics applies to science. Remember before this i didn't know how to explain why an atom works the way it does and so didn't compute it into my understanding of physics in general

Another example in case that didn't explain that is to use Biology.

a> ecology
b> theory of evolution
c> genetics

Ecology needs say 10% biology...after discovering it, it doesn't really change what you currently know about biology, just allows to understand why an animal lives here instead of there. The understanding of what its made of and how it came to be there is the same.
The Theory of Evolution is a radical change in the thinking of creation and biology. This really did turn the world upside down with its ideas once accepted. Lets say it needs 40% to be learned and u happen to have that...well because this is a radical revaluation of how organisms came to be, even if incomplete, it would require several years of rethinking fundimental thoughts on biology. Thus bilogy would be lowered about 50% or to 20.
Genetics doesn't really change anything like the theory of evolution does, but adds credince to it and other ideas. It does however allow a much more in depth look at how organisms work. Lets say biology rq is 70% and you have 90%. It would prob lower this, but not as much as evolution did....it would prob be lowered to 80%.

What bothers me is when you use the base technology number (say physics for flight) to gauge the effectiveness for the related tech. At least as far as I know this is a major rationale for this system. And in fact I Really Like the general idea...

But, Taking your first example, let me describe what bothers me about your proposal and you can confirm or deny my take of how your system works. So we have:

Physics as the base technology, enabling:
a> Gunpowder
b> Flight
c> Theory of Quantumphysics

I assume you take physics as an enabler of Gunpowder in that knowledge of ballistics enhances the capabilities of gunpowder weapons, esp. cannon. So, looking at it from a modern perspective, the higher my Physics number, the more effective my artillery would be. So we have some relationship between Physics # and artillery firepower. So far so good. Its not necessarily rigorously true, but Clash is a Game .

Physics enables Flight and similarly you can make better planes the more you know about aerodynamics.

Now lets take your example that we are at Physics = 90% and are about to discover quantum physics. I will use made up effectiveness for gunpowder and airplanes to illustrate my problem with your model. I assume that for each tech there is a pre-determined connection between its enhancement in effectiveness and the base tech number. These enhancements will, at most get to the 2x better than usual level when the base tech gets extremely advanced. I think this basically agrees with what you've said about the issue before IIRC.

So lets look at two years in Clash, the one before I discover quantum physics, and the one immediately after.

Just Before Discovery of Quantum Physics

Physics = 90%

Any artillery I build has effectiveness 2x base # from my better ballistics knowledge. This is because if some other civ that has only Physics 35% captures plans for my artillery piece and copies them, they can only use it at half effectiveness since they don't understand ballistics well. Their effective firepower is diminished since their shells don't go where they want them to.

Similarly my airplanes are at x1.5 base effectiveness due to knowledge of aerodynamics.

Just After I Discover Quantum Physics

Physics = 79% due to your desired drop in base tech when a 'revolutionary' tech is discovered.

Now any artillery I build has effectiveness 1.9x base # from my ballistics knowledge. My Artillery is Less Effective because my scientists are concerned about wave-particle duality!

Similarly my airplanes are Now at x1.4 of base effectiveness.

It is the Loss of Effectiveness of all the other Enabled Technologies that leads me to believe that, in the model, you Shouldn't Lower basic tech levels upon the discovery of a new and revolutionary technique. So IMO either you need to ditch the whole machinery connecting effectiveness to basic techs (which I rather like) or you have to give up the idea that the basic tech should decrease upon discovering a revolutionary tech.

I think the problem is we're using Physics as an umbrella for a lot of different areas of knowledge. The fact that things are in turmoil in the atomic and particle physics community in my civ has No Effect on the knowledge of military ballistics experts or aviation physicists in the society. But you are making it have one with your model as I understand it.

I know that as a player I would find it Maddening to have the discovery of quantum physics Screw Up my fighter-bombers while I'm fighting a war!

Now you can tell me if I have the idea right or wrong... and if wrong where my error lies.

Cya,

e.g. before quantum mechanics.
Space flight would require 60% electronics.
After quantum mechanics
Space flight would require 75% electronics.

Welcome back! (At least in a visible presence, you may have been lurking for all I know )

On your idea... at least its much less objectionable from the player's perspective IMO . I just don't see why having one sub-set of the scientific establishment being occupied in radical re-thinking of their world view should affect completely different parts of the community's projects. Now for Similar projects maybe something should be done.

I'm not sure we even need a special rule for this type of thing... Why don't we wait until there are concrete instances of this in the tech tree in the parts of Clash that get into playtesting first, and see what works best. It may be that the structure of the tech tree means that tweaks are generally not needed anyway. I really dislike putting in special rules to make things just a little more realistic when our models are getting Very complicated in general... For one thing the more special rules the tougher it is to write the AI. And that's a daunting task already!

a Mathametician named Maxwell over a 100 years ago made a unified field theory that actually works, why, the scientist Tesla creditied all his inventions from that theory.
Then another professor translated Maxwells theory and 'simplified' it that made it our now 3d model of the atom, chich through that thinking split natures forces of gravity, magnetics, and electricity. In Maxwell's theory there were 4 dimensions(minus time). And because Einstein was taught the simplified version of Maxwells theory it split gravity and electricity even more, and at the end of his life someone told him about Maxwells actuall unified field theory, but Einstein was less than a year from dieing when he found out about that. Quantom Mechanics is just starting to barely touch what Maxwell disovered 100 years ago, the reason this theory isn't used? Because that one professor 'simplified' Maxwells theory and then said that was the theory, and the simplified version is what is taught anywhere.

Some of the benefits this theory would give if we perfected it and engineered with it...
1. A type of energy recourse that makes thousands more energy than fusion in one cubic centimeter.
2. Gravity Control, i.e. anti-gravity.
3. Hyperdimensional travel.

If you are interested in looking at this further just E-mail me, I was rather shocked when I first came across a report on it too.

IMO we should include this. Whatcha think?

Matter of fact, there's A Lot of good stuff in the Tech summary and thread. If you haven't seen it, check it out!

Cool new idea
Instead of having hard and soft prerequisites for techs, why not just have a weighting put on all tech prereqs. Then we can tune them to be as hard or soft as we want. The weighting factor would affect the cost to put one point into getting the tech. For purposes of demonstration just assume each prereq has a weight which divides the points put into the tech if you don't have that prereq, and that all the modifiers are multiplied together.

Suppose we have the tech Navigation with the pre-requisites Astronomy (formerly hard), Compass (formerly soft) and Seafaring (formerly soft). In my proposed method it might look like this (don't worry about the specific numbers, this is just for demo):

Navigation (100points)
Astronomy (5)
Compass (2)
Seafaring(3)

So if you have none of the pre-reqs each point of Navigation would cost 5x2x3 = 30points. So all of Navigation would cost the Enormous amount of 3000 idea points. If you have Astronomy and Seafaring it would cost 200. Of course with all three pre-reqs the cost would be the base cost of 100.

BTW I'll redo this for the next tech chart update...

Welcome Back. It occurs to me I may have to rework my figures of speach because with the slow advance of inflation the dollar:donut ratio ain't what it used to be

On the incremental scale you brought up...
I'm still trying to get my mind around whether it'd give us a real advantage in modeling things to do it as you suggest. The previous discussion about artillery vs. physics doesn't worry me all that much because as I see it good physics Would be a big bonus for say up to Napoleonic artillery, somewhat of a bonus up to WWI type pieces, but by the time you get to WWII, physics at the level of decent ballistics knowledge is more of a pre-req than a bonus enabler if you get my drift. However I certainly can't say that would be so for all basic techs and related techs. I'll have to get back to you on my take on it after i've thought a bit.

Lord God Jinnai:

Glad you like the idea... It does seem to take care of several issues. I Think it could even be used for the basic techs in a way... I'm still trying to work something out, but the basic path is that you'd pile all the various pre-reqs at the start of say agriculture. So chemistry 50% (2) for fertilizers might be there. If you just make the points to get the early parts of agriculture somewhat easier than 'before' (because now everything early costs 2x as much because you don't have chem 50%) then everything flows smoothly, and chemistry 50% or whatever just kicks in to boost things whenever you get it. So it might end up that chem 50% gives you a bonus before explorers to the new world bring back potatoes, or maybe the other way around. I'm not quite happy with my solution yet but I thought I'd throw it out for everyone else to think about and maybe we'd get somewhere!

Also Mark the combining of many of the sciences into "hard sciences" that u listed i think is going too far in the way of simplicity...I believe you loose too much reality that way to make up for the simplicity of just one group.

Anyway I'm thinking of a better way to impliment the increasing cost of basic techs than by era...i was planning on using a diminishing returns formula, though i can't think of the basic formula for it right now...I know it cuz it was used in my economics class, but that was over a year ago...

Anyway that would settle the problem of increased cost better because it would allow a civ that's behind to catch up faster while still allowing another civ to develope a basic tech more early on but still costing a lot to do a lot of research in it.

>
Also Mark the combining of many of the sciences into "hard sciences" that u listed i think is going too far in the way of simplicity...I believe you loose too much reality that way to make up for the simplicity of just one group.
>
I hear you. But there's also a danger in having Too Many things for people to keep track of... If you're going to distinguish at the level of chemistry & physics then at a guess you are going to need at least 30 basic techs or social advaces to cover realms of knowledge. Maybe you can make it understandable with 30 and about 1-200 other ones, but I'm sceptical.

Agriculture
Resource Extraction
Land Transportation
Sea Transportation
Economics
Medicine
Biology
Mathematics
Civil Engineering
General Eng.
Communication
At Least a general Social Science category for the things missing from this list (tho it might be broken down much finer)
Law
Government
Philosophy
Chemistry
Physics
Not to mention any miltary or artistic categories... and i'm sure I'm missing some others.

I understand that in the modern world hard science tech is about as important a thing to get right as there is. But there are a Lot of other important things too.

Law and government go hand in hand since government enforces and sets up laws and laws develope as gov changes so the evolving of one evolves the other so I think a basic tech called "Governing" is enough.

If you want to devide transportation up you also need air transportation.

Resorce extraction i was going to leave with geology since that's the major need for extracting anything is to geologically where it is.

Finnally Social Sciences could be changes to Psychology and with Philosophy that should be enough for all the techs we have.

The 5 military techs i have should be enough unless u or someone else has reason for more.

>
If you want to devide transportation up you also need air transportation.
>
Air transport shows up so recently I think just a few techs should cover it.

>
Resorce extraction i was going to leave with geology since that's the major need for extracting anything is to geologically where it is.
>
There's logging, and growing flax, and raising sheep for wool... Everything ain't just minerals. Esp in the ancient world. So I think geology only gets at one important aspect of it. But I'd have to see your final chart on this issue, you may be right.

>
The 5 military techs i have should be enough unless u or someone else has reason for more.
>
Five! For All of History? Or do you mean five basic techs, which might be getting at least somewhat closer. Until about 1500 military advances were of Ultimate Importance. IMO at a Minimum 10% of the techs should relate to weapons, military organization, etc. For a lot of players, the military will be the one aspect in the game they really care about.

It may just be that you should do your bit, and then hand it over to someone else to add the mil stuff since, as you'd mentioned before, you're really not into that part.

So what's your current list of basic techs? If you can easily post it here maybe people would get a better idea of where you're going.

Cya,

Agriculture
Architecture
Astronomy *
Biology
Chemistry *
Civil Engineering *
Economics
Electronics
Engineering
Geology
Governing
Mathematics
Mechanics
Medical *
Metallurgy
Philosophy
Physics
Social Sciences
Transportation

The ones with stars next to them are ones i may decide to get rid of since there are somewhat related basic techs already up there.

Yea, i was refering to basic techs for military and yes that aspect as i mentioned b4 and in my tech model i'm not the best expert on, although preindustial eastern miliatary i'm somewhat more familar with than most people. As far as governments go, I'm much better at, although i'm no politcal scientist. This is one of the major aspects of a culture and as i'm very interested in the evolution of culutres I've taken many courses on politics and government.

Physics and chemistry both similar...I was thinking this at first, but then i remembered there meanings...Physics dealing more with Physical nature, although this has much to do with chemistry, while chemistty deals with chemicals.

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

Finally on that new tech model you posted...I've noticed a major flaw that needs to be addressed. I'm not saying I don't like it, but the other model did have a way of addressing this:
say for example you wanted to develope the animaldrawn cart and the animaldrawn plow. Both need domestication and one needs the wheel while one needs the plow, however if you know one, developing the other is easier. This is also a similar case with Knighthood and Way of the Samari which are helped by code of honor.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Chemistry and Physics being separate. They're Both very important. It was just that when the list had 8 things I thought it was overkill. I think the longer list, simliar to what you have now and adding military ones is the way to go. The idea being, as has been said before that each will take the place of at least 5 individual techs. I am assuming they all start Very early, excepting a few like electronics.

Now my thoughts on the details... Assume I like everything I don't mention.

I'd ditch Astronomy and subsume it into Physics, or call it Physics and Astronomy. the match is good IMO since there is a Lot of important astronomical stuff early, and not that much in Physics.

IMO Biology and Medicine could go together. The early medical stuff like hygiene gives it something to do early.

I like Civil Eng and would keep it.

I'd rather have Resource extraction than Geology, but can live with it...

Mechanics??? Do you mean the sub-field of Physics? (in which case I'd ditch it) or Do you mean Mechanisms? (In which case I'd put it in Engineering) Or what?

On Philosophy and Social Science... I'm not sure about that breakdown, but don't have a good counter-suggestion. IMO, and I could get flamed for it Philosophy is Very important in Early and Medieval, and early modern Periods, but recently it hasn't done that much for us since Utilitarianism.

Finally I think Land and Water Transportation are Just So Fundamentally Different that you can't go down the middle on it. Also both transportations will tie into the military arms for the respective media.

Communication and Education are neither there, and both Very Important IMO.

So that's my list of suggested changes. I don't think we should get too hung up on this since ones to add or drop will probably be apparent as the tech chart gets more refined anyway. Whatcha think on my suggested mods?

On the flaw in my approach...
OK you sold me. We'll sometimes need and/or/ not type modifiers in the prereqs. So long as there's not too many I don't think its a big problem.

Great Work!

First of all, congratulations on your new tech system, it's working really well at first glance. Just a few points that crossed my mind while I read through the posts:

- I wholeheartely agree that increasing the ceiling of a category is better than using percentage numbers.

- Have you thought about how to relate each project to the game situation? I think I read it here somewhere, but kinda lost it...
Also, have you thought about how players 'exchange' tech?

- The new groups seem ok, few comments, why put Architecture into seperate group? IMO it could fit in with Civil Engineering, or Mathematics, for that matter.
The same applies f.e. for Chemistry and Metallurgy, although both fields are broad enough to warrant a seperate category I think.
I agree with Mark that Law and Government are pretty wide fields, but I´m not sure that they have enough projects to be seperate, I think it's ok for now to keep them together.
Maybe Philosophy and Social Siences can be spliced together, I'm not sure what to call this group, neither Philosophy or So.Siences are good enough IMO, Philosophy is too 'arcane' today and Social Sciences are too easily confused with the academy study Social Science which in IMHO is a very silly science, to put it mildly. This group (if united into one that is) would deal with all society based thoughts and ideas, philosphy will dominate early on, but later other ideas such as Youth Culture (a very important phenomenon in modern society), Humanitarianism, Social Welfare, and even some political thoughts as well, such as Liberalism and Individualism.

Enough for now,

Do you mean like lowering the cost for items you build? Or making techs themselves cheaper?

On Education, I meant the technology of education and how to educate people. Clearly the type of stuff you were talking about will be handled by the infrastructure category education. The education on talking about would include technologies like "libraries", schools, the University, public education (as in universal) etc. Whether it's important enough to have its own category is clearly subject to debate.

Keli:

Great to have you back!

We've been mostly discussing the basic structure, and had not yet come back to the key points that you raise.

In terms of "relating to the game situation" do you mean as in tags? Those are pretty much the same as you had in your model. On trading techs, we haven't had any further thoughts that I'm aware of. I think two big things that we need in the Tech trading area, are the necessity of prerequisites being achieved, and some amount of grow-in time for "advanced" techs to become active. On prerequisites, I think you need to have the same prerequisites as whoever you get the Tech from. I think that each prerequisite you get in trade should have some kind of latency time associated with it. For instance if my technology equals that of Elizabethan England, and I am given all the technologies and prerequisites up to flight I can't start building a fighter the next turn. It should take awhile, TBD, for each level of technology to kick in. At least that's my take on these topics.

On the specifics, oops, somehow I missed Architecture. I agree it and civil engineering should be combined. On the other stuff, I'd propose tabling it until the model gets further along and we can see the detailed interactions between different things. At that point Recognizing what is too thin should be easy.

Lord God Jinnai is officially now the Duke of Tech. Congrats LGJ, and thanks for all your hard work.

On to my ideas. First, i've decided how to impliment the basic techs for the increasing/decreasing of cost in the various related techs...buy having a base number and for every percentage above that (max 5) the production increases by 10% On the other side for every % below (up to 5) is decreases by 20%. This is because knowing more doesn't help as much as knowing less hurts and after a certain level, knowing more doesn't do any good and knowning not enough, well its self explanitoy or should be. I chose it to modify production rather than cost because i think it will be easier to impliment.

On the effects of basic techs on production in related techs. IMO your 1% basic tech gives 10% improvement is Way too steep. I had been thinking more like MOO where things increase very gradually. Maybe 1/3 your rate or so. And having them decrease at the rate you have means your tech is completely worthless if the basic tech is 5 points below 'needed'. I thought you wanted a flexible approach to tech? I agree the bite on the downside should be big, but IMO your proposed amt is way too much.

My idea:

The game engine count an average level. This level will contain three parts.
1. The average tech level of the actual civ. (A) A = (level1 + level2 + ... + leveln) / n
2. The average tech level of the other civs on the area (like agriculture, weapons, etc.). (B) B = (level1 + level2 + ... + leveln) / n
3. All the techs in all the civs. (C) C = (level + level2 + level3 + ... + leveln) / n

AvTechLevel = A 50% + B 30% + C 20%
AvTechLevel = (A / 2) + (B * 3 / 10) + (C / 5)

If this AvTechLevel higher than our tech level, the price for the tech will be cheaper, if lower the price will be higher.
The player average tech level is very important. (A) The second importan thing is the average level in that particulary are on the world. (B) (i.e.: information exchange, scientis hire, etc.) The average technology level of the world. (C)
This will be easy to implement and IMHO quite close to the reality.

I'm not sure exactly what you want, but it seems you might be looking for some tech advance that would give a player the grouping of traditionally Eastern religions. The problem (as you anticipated) is that the religions are different enough that they can't be grouped together easily. But grossly oversimplifying, you might go with this (drawing from my model elsewhere):

• Confucianism is largely concerned with the proper relations of one personal to another, that is, with social ethics. That groups with other "religions of the Book" like Judaism. A "Scripture" or "Sacred Canon" advance would cover this.
  
• Taoism is a religion that's divided between its elite and its common folk. For the elite it's the philosphical form of animism or nature/cyclical religion. For its common folk it's magical (in the deep, non-superstitious sense). I don't know about this one.
  
• Shinto is based on the idea that "kami" or spirits (more or less) inhabit certain natural phenomenon, like water or wind or earth generally--or a particular scenic view off the highway too. This makes it an advanced form of animism.
  
• Hinduism is a polygot of many radically different religious sensibilities. It contains all the diversity of the West (all three major Western religions, the mystics, the cults, the philosophies, etc), except that they agree to disagree. The only thing that makes something Hindu, really, is that it's from India. So Hinduism would fall under a pluralism advance or social choice but wouldn't really need a separate development.
  
• Buddhism is the school of Hinduism that didn't agree to disagree. Buddhism itself is pretty diverse, just like Christianity.

If you're looking for certain techs to trigger certain religious categories, I've got a few ideas.

quote:

---

Originally posted by chance on 10-15-1999 06:27 PM

Confucianism is largely concerned with the proper relations of one personal to another, that is, with social ethics. That groups with other "religions of the Book" like Judaism. A "Scripture" or "Sacred Canon" advance would cover this.

Yea but Confucianism is also a secular religion/philosophy.

Taoism is a religion that's divided between its elite and its common folk. For the elite it's the philosphical form of animism or nature/cyclical religion. For its common folk it's magical (in the deep, non-superstitious sense). I don't know about this one.

hmmm. now that i did not know.

Shinto is based on the idea that "kami" or spirits (more or less) inhabit certain natural phenomenon, like water or wind or earth generally--or a particular scenic view off the highway too. This makes it an advanced form of animism.

Yes that's true but how would that be implimented as far as a tech goes?

Hinduism is a polygot of many radically different religious sensibilities. It contains all the diversity of the West (all three major Western religions, the mystics, the cults, the philosophies, etc), except that they agree to disagree. The only thing that makes something Hindu, really, is that it's from India. So Hinduism would fall under a pluralism advance or social choice but wouldn't really need a separate development.

K

Buddhism is the school of Hinduism that didn't agree to disagree. Buddhism itself is pretty diverse, just like Christianity.

Yes, but i'm more wondering about the lesser branch.

If you're looking for certain techs to trigger certain religious categories, I've got a few ideas.

Bouncing off Buddhism still, you might offer an "Axial Age" advance. This is what scholars use to refer to the 1000 or so years when all the major religions developed. This would enable a "legal" form of religion (or perhaps that could come with whatever enables a courthouse-type improvement) but also an "established" form. The Ramayana would be a good wonder.

I think that's going to be implimented in another way

Along this line, you might also include a "prophecy" advance, which would cover the Jewish prophets, the Roman Cynics, and others.

That does sound like a good idea.

A "messianic" advance would cover big figures like Christ, Buddha, Muhammed, Joseph Smith, and Bah'ullah, but you could also include it within prophecy.

A "mysticism" would open things up for the philosphical forms of religions. (Putting the Oracle here would be completely inaccurate, by the way.)

Probably just use prophecy and if i do use that it will be an item created from prophecy.

Polytheistic, sky god-centered religions with sacrifice and everything should probably be available with either agriculture or domestication. The Oracle would be a good wonder.

Got that.

Nature/cyclical religions should be available very early, with agriculture or domestication. Stonehenge would be a good wonder.

Got that.

Animism is bare-bones basic, and all player should have this option even before any techs.

Don't have that...i have ancestralism instead. Anything else u can think of? Not just in the types but things that come from religion such as ethics.

Hope this helps. Again, feel free to email me.

Yes. Its better than b4 atleast.

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LGJ mentioned the example of the Japanese skipping the Bronze Age due to the lack of tin, and it got me to thinking. There ARE other examples of civilizations completely missing out on a major "advance". If you look at the New World, all those civs made do without the wheel and the horse. And I believe the early Polynesians had no metal whatsoever. More recently there were/are civs who actively opposed the adoption of certain technologies on religious or cultural grounds.