Civil Energetics
From CloudPad
Civitas: a distinction is drawn between the city and the country. civilization is the activity in the civitas, or the city. "Boor" is a term that derives from "farmer". until the latter centuries of this millenium, cities were rare centers.
References:
- Critical Path, Buckminster Fuller
- Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
- A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, Michael Scheider
- Thomas Cahill's Hinges of History
- Sailing the Wine Dark Sea, The Gifts of the Jews, How The Irish Saved Civilization, Desire for the Everlasting Hills
- Synchronoptical World History Chart, Andreas Nothiger
- The Long Now Foundation
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2 Hallmarks of Civilization |
=The Intelligent Other
outsider art "During the 1960s, when she was well into middle age, the German painter and writer Unica Zürn (1916-1970) made a series of psychologically intense line drawings that combine Surrealist automatism with the mania of Outsider Art and a certain residue of contemporary experiments in psychedelic drugs. Erotic and trancelike, the works depict fantastic chimeras, bizarre creatures with double faces that represent multiplications of herself, either repeated across the page or set in intricate dream landscapes of mystic animals and otherworldly plant forms." - The Chimeras of Unica Zurn by Valery Oisteanu
lewis thomas / the lives of cells primary source of experience the wheel is not a spiral; wheels and hubs; born of the unity of one; expanding and contracting graviational waves; having to traverse a greater arc, a point on the rim moves faster than a point near the center; the buddha and the wheel of the law; prayer wheels; dipping your foot into the wheel generates a spiralling vortex, the centrifugal path with angular momentum; fivefold symmetry of the spiral; the eye the path of the labyrinth at chartres; superimposed reflections, gears and pulleys. the bicycle universe; fractal moments, the prism of spinning wheels path of the sun across the sky, indian temple of the mountains set to capture the sun in a net (Conty). letters beyond zee and dr. seuss; beyond the word. zentropia. the four tenets of the zen sect. the wordless world. the atreides manifesto and heretics of dune. things for which there are no names. the closest approximations. the phantom tollbooth borges' monsters
the name of the rose, illuminators
how will we ever communicate with the dolphins and the squids?
Starhawk's Fifth Sacred Thing
buckminster fuller's critical path, the autonomic dome city
Heathens and Barbarians
Population
A populated province; population rank; overall measure of population, technology, industrial prosperity; the sum of societal workings from the relative contributions of the subjects of the province; the buying power and prosperity of the province’s loyal citizens and taxpayers. Highest level settlement in area (?) Represents areas of land in which common-folk live; depends on the province regent for protection (military, food); Province Rank = a rough indication of the number of citizens living in settlements; the largest settlement found in the province; the Storyteller has a number of SP = cost of the Province Rank (e.g. 5 SP for Population [2]); citizens = SP x 300 people [0] thorp, cabin; [1] outpost, small village, hamlet; [3] small town; [4] large town; [5] city; [6] metropolis Doesn’t include non-contributing individuals that live in the province; frontier families, nomadic tribes, bandits
Footprints of Civilization
- River Culture: logging roads, the log-riders; e.g. Laketown from the Hobbit, the Voyageurs of early Canada.
- the Canal City
- the Log Town
- Asia: china, japan, india: rice paddy culture
- Egypt: canals and the irrigation of the Nile
- floodplains and controls - wetlands; a cleared jungle becomes a floodplain. floodplains are known to breed diseases, insects, wetlands
Wilderness, Rural, Urban?
- [0] Wild: unsettled, wilderness, usually unpopulated by people;
- [1]-[4] Rural / Natural: standard 30-40 mile across (roughly); population is spread through small towns and villages;’
- [5]-[6] Urban: a city is an entity separated from the province; considered stand-alone for population effects (e.g. plague, siege, realm-spells); the terrain is the same and is part of the surrounding province for geographical effects (e.g. earthquakes)’
- City Boundaries: metropolitan area, usually within a rural province (separate entity)’
- Trade: relies upon trade from rural provinces; in any Season in which the province has no active trade routes, the Population loses one rank due to starvation / migration’
- Capitol City: considered one Rank higher than indicated by the rank of the province;’
- Metropolis
- cosmopolitan
Culture
- Society: 1) the totality of social relationships among organized groups of human brings or animals; 2) a system of human organizations generating distinctive cultural patterns and institutions and usually providing protection, security, continuity, and national identity for its members
- Community: the people living in one locality
- Civilization: a human society that has highly developed material and spiritual resources and a complex cultural, political, and legal organization.
- Culture: 1) the total of the inherited beliefs, ideas, values, and knowledge which constitute the shared bases of social action; 2) a particular civilization at a particular period; 3) the total range of activities and ideas of a group of people with shared traditions, which are transmitted and reinforced by members of the group.
- Cultures,
- Pseudo-Historical
- Fantastic
- Tools
- Equipment
- Age of Sails
- Technology
- Magic
- Spirituality and Faith
- Prophecies
- Information Flow
- Rumours
- Lore
- Visual Symbols
- Arcane Items
- Politics
- Conspiracies
Character of a Civ
(Civilization III) the personality of a nation; a combination of two charactersisms; rates of Aggression: ambitious, etc.
- Expansionist: to expand and multiply. Pottery as a free technological advance. In addition to this, your civ will also gain better prizes for raiding Barbarian villages and it will begin the game with a free scout.
- Commercial: Commercial civilizations dwell upon making money and increasing profit. It will allow you Alphabet as a free technology. They will also gain extra commerce in your city centre and lower corruption.
- Militaristic: Militaristic civilizations, as you might expect, prefer military action to diplomatic discussion. The Wheel or Warrior Code.
- Industrious: Industrious civilizations prefer to produce and build their civilization's cities. The free technology granted is Masonry.
- Scientific: Science plays and important part of a nation's development. Your civilization will need to embrace with technology in order to become stronger
- Religious: Religious nations have religion as an extremely important part of their lives. This can lead to advantage in civilization. Religious countries begin the game with Ceremonial Burial.
Ages
fantasy for all ages. living in the ruins. "if i have seen far, it is because i have stood upon the shoulders of giants." one of the most important aspects of the world is a sense of depth. creation of strata to be discovered while delving, archaeology through storytelling, uncovering forgotten treasures and curses, dealing with the legacy of past ages as the past now informs the shape of the present.
Hallmarks of Civilization
Cultureal: History of Civilization
Memoria Prehistoria
Geological Epochs
- Pleistocene: stone age
- Holocene: epipaleolithic/mesolithic
Mythological Inheritance
for each culture develop 3-4 anterior/ancestor ages. presents a storyteller with a choice of timelines in which to play the game; flavours the style of the story. can play a "historical" game in a ficticious world, or include the ruins of ancient civilisations and mythology inherited from time immemorial. traditions, rituals, history, web of unseen power relations, the structure of society itself.
- Current, Past, Historical, Ancient, Legend, Mythical
- Star Wars: Episodes 1-3 (Old Republic, Trade Federation), Episodes 4-6 (Rebellian and Imperial), Episodes 7+ (New Republic and Imperial Remnant)
Afterlife: the Relations
conception of the afterlife, and "this world's" relationship with the spirits of the deceased. heaven, hell, limbo? reincarnation and trans??? ancestor worship? resurrection?
Civilization Simulator
Civ III Strategy Guide (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/)
Money and Trade
- REAL/LIVE: wealth you can eat. grains and animals. real life-support wealth. pigs, cattle, horses, goats. steers are bigger food animals than pigs, thus worth more.
- BARTER: trading in kind; value is established (?)
- COINAGE: iron, silver, copper, gold. coins often bear the image of the sovereign.
- CREDIT
Commodities
- Tobacco, Bananas, Salt, Exotic Birds, Sugar, Jade, Oasis, Coffee, Ivory, Wines, Silks, Dyes, Fures, Gems, Incense, Spices
- Oil, Iron, Horses, Coal, Copper, Tin, Saltpeter
Resources
- Strategic: needed for the army, e.g. iron
- Luxury: increases opulence and happiness of citizens
- Bonus: Cattle, Fish, Game, Gold, Whales, Wheat
certain resources only become "visible" on the world map until you have unlocked the secrets of a related technology. You will not see iron on the map, for example, until your scientists have discovered Iron Working.
Development Tree
Tech(nology) Track
materiality; META-CIVILIZATIONS, a god-like view afforded by a few thousand years of real-history, a well-stocked library of sci-fi and speculative future history, simulation games like Age of Empires and Civilization, and an overactive imagination. my most-current affixation is the Tech Track (a.k.a. Technology Tree), the path a culture threads through epochs of technical development. in Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep, a medieval culture stumbles on a computer archive of an alien culture. after fumbling with interface, this culture learns to use the computer to navigate the dead-ends of technological development to pull themselves to a higher epoch in record time. similarly, at the novel's outset a stellar civilization follows a "recipe" found in a dusty inter-galactic archive to create a god-like technological mind. a common theme: in Carl Sagan's Contact, a message detected from space is slowly decrypted to reveal a technical manual for a technology otherwise out of our reach - an interstellar transportation system... if we found the remains of an alien computer... wow... after recovering from the xenocultural vertigo, how would we deal with the question of biases implicit in the idea of a Tech Track? what are the assumptions we must operate under? a tech tree is a useful tool for benchmarking an epoch, does it force our hand? what becomes of the question of TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISIM versus FREE-CHOICE (to make mistakes)?
the simplest models look at the materials with which tools are fabricated, known colloquially as the Ages of Man - from the Stone Age through Bronze and Iron all the way up to Industrial, Electronic, Nuclear, Digital Information, Space, etc. in the philosophy of the Tech Track, different development paths might open and close access to different paths on the tree. but just because it worked in this way, just so, in the history of Earth, doesn't mean that there are no other routes or that we were fated to follow this path. imperialism, emancipation of human rights (suffrage, racial issues, gender and sexual orientation), alphabetic literacy, mechanical philosophy and the scientific revolution, fascism... this familiar story threads the path through our own history, one route amongst many potentialities. the tech tree is built upon local, specific, cultural history. when Descartes spoke his famous words, when Galileo chose house arrest to excommunication, when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon - the turnings of history are often predicated on the whims of a moment, a decision made or half-made or perhaps not made at all...
- Warhammer Humans (http://www.battle.net/war3/human/buildings.shtml)
- Starcraft Legacy (http://www.sclegacy.com/features/tech_trees.php)
- Empire Earth (ftp://ftp.sierra.com/pub/sierra/empireearth/other/si_empireearth_techtree.pdf)
- Civilization III (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/techtree/)
- Metallurgy: Iron Working
Mind Track
spiritual developments, inner developments The counterpart to the material technology track is the spiritual track, or the track of mind-technology, if you will.
Tibetan society devoted a good part of its resources to spiritual advancement, and the result is a high percentage of enlightened beings for such a small, materially impoverished people.
Shamanic cultures also have a huge stores of culture-- not just how to maintain, harvest and use the animals and plants of their environments, but how to enter into contact with what may be non-human sentience.
- Literacy: Writing
- Theocracy:
- Government:
Disasters and Calamities
Statecraft
Governance: Ruler of the Realm
- Feudalism
- Fascism
- Tribal Council
- Imperialism
- Republic
- Democracy
- Despotism
- Monarchy
- Communism
- Free Market
Diplomatic Agreements
mix and match your diplomacy! from Civilization III FAQ (http://www.civ3.com/faq3.cfm): "To engage in diplomatic talks with another civ, you must first make contact with that civ. You can do this either by physically entering their territory or by trading another civ for contact with that civ. Other Civs may also seek you out by entering your territory."
Trade
To be able to enter into trade negotiations with other civs, you need a road connecting cities to one of their cities
- Cities
- Wealth, Gold (lump sum or per turn)
- Technologies
- Luxuries
- Resources:
- World Maps: must have Map Making Tech
- Contact with other civs
Pacts
you must be at peace with a Civ to tender any proposal other than a peace treaty. You also need to establish an embassy (granted by the Writing: LITERATE CULTURE technology) to be able to enter into agreements more advanced than simple peace treaties.
- Peace treaty
- Right of passage pact
- Mutual protection pact
- Military alliance against a common enemy
- Trade embargo against a common enemy
I Spy Espionage
industrial espionage; stealing technology and information, corporate infiltration sabotage constructions and technologies. piracy. subterfuge. cloak and dagger.
from CIVILIZATION III FAQ (http://www.civ3.com/faq3.cfm) "Before you can even attempt espionage missions, you must establish an embassy with the civilization you want to spy on. Once you have established an embassy with a rival, you can perform the following two diplomatic actions:
- Investigate City (see what the rival city is building and has already built )
- Steal Technology (attempts to steal a technology from the rival civilization)
Note that when you are at war with another Civ, your embassy in their capitol is automatically closed, and you will be unable to conduct either of the above missions.
There are also five espionage missions which you can only perform once you've built the Intelligence Agency (Small Wonder), and only against Civs with whom you've established an embassy and planted a spy. They are:
- Sabotage (sabotages the current project of an enemy city)
- Propaganda (attempts to convince an enemy city to join your Civilization)
- Steal Plans (reveals all troop locations of an enemy Civ for one turn)
- Steal World Map (reveals what an enemy knows about the world)
- Expose Enemy Spy (ferrets out opposing spies)
These missions can be performed against a Civ as long as you have a spy planted in that Civ's embassy. Even if you go to war and your embassy is closed, your spy will continue to function as long as it is not caught.
Constructions and Improvements
- Cultivate Land: clear forest; clear jungle. the pilgrims clearing the stumps of trees and blasting out rocks. hard work to
- Irrigation: the taming of the wild rivers, straightening the banks and removing obstacles, rapids. canals. "Irrigation is an ancient technique, going back 5,000 years in Central Asia and a great deal further in Mesopotamia. It was used in Imperial China, in old Laos, in ancient Africa, in Tanzania and Zimbabwe, and in Old America, before the Spanish ever laid eyes on the place. For millennia, farmers have used aqueducts and ditches to take water tow here it was needed, and furrows with crude sluices to divert the water to their crops, giving them increased yields and lessening their dependence on the caprices of the weather.
- Mine:
- Roads:
Wonders of the World
see Civilization III
- Wonders
- Small Wonders
Fortifications
Systems of castles; province-wide system of fortifications dominated by a massive seat of military power (a castle or walled city);
Bridge
Allow rapid movement of trade goods and military supplies over natural hazards that would otherwise delay their transport; allow commercial and military travel over waterways and rivers; Made of wood or stone; wooden bridges can be destroyed in times of war; large rivers may require stone bridges; cannot be built over any river wide enough to provide sea access to a naval vessel;
Ferry
Allow travelers and troops to cross major rivers; a ferry may make several trips a day
Highway
a kingdom extends as far as the word of its ruler. in the days of oral culture, a kingdom was limited to the distance a man could travel in a day; beyond that the vagueries of memory could subject the king's word to distortion. the written word extended the king's reach... alphabetization, leads to military, empire. see Kadmos and Drakon Vital to trade and military responsiveness; well-maintained (sometimes even paved!) roads with frequent inns, stables, supply depots, and other facilities that expedite the movement of massive forces such as military personnel and trade caravans; postal route. good roads are often hallmark of an imperial culture that seeks to extend its domain by communication. A province with Population [2+] has simple roads, but a system of well-maintained highways is an expense; Includes both a network of paved or packed dirt highways and a system of inns, caravansaires, and other structures that support overland trade and travel; Highways are necessary for overland trade routes and increase the speed of travel within the province
