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To: Raahul Kumar <raahul_da_man@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Freeciv-Dev] Re: Alternative nation dialog
From: aliaga <aliaga@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 15:48:05 +0100

At 28-02-02 20:46 -0800, you wrote:
Ah hah. A Guns, Germs and Steel reader. Geographical determinism at its worst.
No, not quite true. North America is a case in point. The Sioux and the other
tribes could have taken up farming, it was rich farmland. They instead chose
the nomadic lifestyle.

Too big a country to develop unified kingdoms without help of horses. What if they had been given more time?

Also, farming comes from population pressure, so in really big and rich and unpopulated spaces, why bother?


True. Incidentally, I play on the world map. It's just more emotionally
satisfying to conquer the earth than some random islands.

Hehe, me too.


No. In the real world map, they get the correct starting points. It sucks
to be japanese though.

Tried that once. Scary. Only got through by "cheating": populating Australy then SouthAmerica.


Who are the Dunadun?

The Dunedain, from Tolkien, the Silmarillion version, not the expatriates from LoTR. Talk about the wrong leaders...


You're going to argue realism ;). Like I said before, any game that allows you
direct control over your empire, a satellite overhead view long before your
civ achieves the wheel and immortality already has problems with realism. I'm
not even going to touch the issue of being able to research tech you do not
even know exists.

Agree, though would be nice if some wise coder could overcome that...


Quite a lot. Military and scientific knowledge, control of huge chunks of the
planets surface, defeating and being acknowledged as great powers by all other
nations. It's quite an easy list.

Agreed, but still opinion matters.


If your nation has survived to the present day - you make the list

India
Japan
China
Egypt
Rome
Persia
Greece/Macedonia
England

Ahem, and many others :-)


Current powers list is based on

1) Posession of Weapons of Mass Destruction or the ability to easily and
quickly build them
2.) A space program and a ballistic missile capable of reaching the US
(If NMD is built, then enough missiles to get past them)
3.) Prominence in technology
4.) Land Area
5.) Control of important world resources
6.) Economics

Definition of (1) has varied wildly in the last centuries.
(2) is a subset of (1)
(3) is their prerequisite, unless magic is allowed :-) also wildly changing
(4) is the true invariant throughout the ages, but the ratio power/land is not.
(5) has changed very much too
(6) only now beginning to be a science. Strongly dependent on (3)

So you can top the list by excelling those who already are there or by CHANGING the list itself. It's been done before.

<snip futures talk>

I do reserve the right that if certain technologies are developed to junk these
predictions. After nanotech, ball gazing is worthless. This is the only
technology that could make any civ on this planet undisputed ruler.

Speaking of remaking the list from scratch, agreed. What if today's economic powers get smashed by unimaginable catastrophes ushered by unleashed nanotech experimenters? Tibetan Monks could inherit the Earth. Their list would be amazing to read, then :-)

My 0.02E



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