Does the Twelve-Year-Old play CivIII? I wonder hat he'd think of having to research Printing Press, a technology with no immediate benefits, in order to get Democracy.

Just like in the real world. In Civilization you play the State. Most of the benefits of movable type went to citizens, not government. Gutenberg made it possible for the individual to compete with the State in the arena of mass communication. Printed media allowed the philosophies of Samuel Rutherford and John Locke to proliferate and eventually influence a certain chain of events that started in Philadelphia in the mid-1770s.

Democracy is another one of those general-purpose technologies. In real life and in the game, it benefits the State by increasing productivity, in part by decreasing corruption, thereby increasing tax revenues and R&D output.

Now if only more political leaders would learn from this lesson that government can become stronger by delegating more of its power to the people...

Turnips young man. Turnips came before steel and electronics (from a piece I am writing on K-waves)

A major agricultural breakthrough occurred in England in the early 1700s with the invention of four-course rotation. By treating farming as a science, continually experimenting with new vegetables and grains, English farmers discovered that by introducing root crops (such as turnips or potatoes) and cover crops (such as clovers) into their mix of planted crops each year they could improve land productivity and soil health. The replacement of the three-field rotation system (wheat, barley, fallow) by the four-course rotation system (wheat, turnips, barley, clover) was a radical invention in its day. First it ensured that no land would need to lie fallow between periods of cultivation. Second, it meant that clover, turnips and potatoes could be harvested throughout the winter and feed to animals.

For the first time, farmers in England had enough grain to feed their livestock throughout the winter. This did away with the historical practice of slaughtering animals in the autumn and salting the meat for storage through the winter, which was detrimental to people’s health. Over a few short generations food surpluses and improved protein intake by the English population began to significantly decrease infant mortality, increasing population growth. The result was growing supply of labor for the burgeoning factory system.

Assume a can-opener!

I'm beginning to think that I should give up Age of Empires in favor of this "Civilization...."

Every child should play Civilization! (III if available, II otherwise) It's the "Guns, Germs, and Steel" of computer games.

Most. Educational. Game. Ever.

Anyone ever compared "Civilization",
"Age of Empires", or "Empire Earth" to see which has the most realistic model of historical change? My son loves this type of game but I haven't looked really closely at them to understand the differences. These games are interesting examples of "unofficial learning".

I'm curious as to what people think about what kids pick up as concepts of societal change from these games.

Um, unless I am totally off my rocker, Civilization is quite different than Age of Empires/Age of kings and empire earth. Civilization is a civilization development game, and the others are a bit more focused on wargaming. CivIII in particular, tried to get rid of the necessity of war. It kind of failed (IMO), but there were user mods that made it reasonable.

I only have played a bit of AOE, and while I may have missed something, it really wasn't the same.

I liked Alpha Centauri, as well.

Rise of Nations, coming out in Spring 03, looks really good though.

As for the original question, a proper model of human innovation would have to be tremendously fine grained. For instance, the development of good steel requires the development of a coatings industry, cryogenics (to have reliable, high purity oxygen), and a cheistry/mining industry that can separate out the critical additives (chromium, vanadium, silicon) and remove teh bad stuff (sulphur, potassium). How fine grained you really want to make it is really a question for the developer.

B

Oh, there's no question that AoE/AoK/AoM are much more focused on wargaming. (There's nothing quite like watching the computer send an infantry charge against a Teuton castle with 20 archers inside, by the way.) And as for historical change...AoE et al really kinda suck ("Research Imperial Age" and so forth).

I can't speak for the other games ...

Your kid says "bloody"?

I need to get Civ3 one of these days, but I still maintain that you should get Tropico one of these days. While it's diplomacy and war engine is essentially non-existent, and its technological progress system is TOTALLY non-existent (you have all the techs in 1950 that you'll have in 2000), it has a very fun combination of politics and economics. You can't allocate your workers Stalin-style, using incentives like wages and (occassionally) working conditions instead. In addition, there are the intracacies of maintaining power, whether you choose to be democratic, dictatorial, or somewhere in between, with various special interest groups (six of 'em, to be specific: communists, capitalists, religious, militarists, intellectuals, and environmentalists) to be pleased.

Not to mention that in contrast to the somewhat technical, humorless style of Civilization (no offense to Civilization: it's one of the all-time classics of gaming, both one and two, and possibly three too.), Tropico is very funny and characterful (if a tad politically incorrect).

Gee, I sound like a salesman for PopTop don't I?

Anyway, though, I really like it. The demo is pretty good in and of itself, and allows a huge amount of flexibility of play in and of itself, even if it's more limited than the full version. It's a big file, though: be warned.

Jules

For Zack Lynch:-

- Potatoes are not a root crop; they are tubers. In fact, they are not well suited to the kind of mechanisation that 18th century agriculture started adopting.

- The word "turnip" varies with dialect; the turnip of southern England is not the turnip of northern England and Scotland (also known there as the "neap"), which is known in the south as a swede if I haven't got confused myself.

- The "advantages" of crop rotation are imaginary right up until the point where land is in short enough supply that more intensive use pays off.

- Much of the improvement in protein use actually came indirectly from improvements in carbohydrates, which are only "empty calories" when there aren't eough of them (which is why glucose was a wonder drug for concentration camp survivors). When you get more calories, protein need not be burned as fuel so you get more freed up protein - IF you had a poor diet to begin with. So, much of the improvement in the 18th century European diet actually came from sugar from the West Indies.

I think it might be time for a brief lecture on the subject of using English profanities!

I second Jules' notion that Tropico is an outstanding domestic-policy game. It's different than Civ in that Civ models 1000-year development and Tropico models 50-year development.

But it's a blast to pretend to be Castro, and the game really does illustrate important ideas about how countries are governed.