The riches of the New World...

Gammaray fan · May 20, 2001, 23:19

Since Firaxis have verified the implementation of trade goods, they have given themselves an opportunity to make the New World (the Americas) significantly different from the rest of the world, and thus making the Earth map a classic map to play!

The New World should have no horses, or iron, but should have an abundance of luxury goods such as gold. This simple act would have disproportionately positive ramifications.

1. New World civs such as the Aztecs, or Incas or whatever, will become rich , luxurious, happy, high culture civs, but lack in military technology. This means that Eurasian civs will invade America rather than the other way around (in civ1 the Aztecs always crossed the seas first to invade the dominant Empire in Eurasia!)

2. It sets up a challenge for perfectionists to a head to head battle with militarists in a conflict that inevitably took place in the real world - the battle for the Americas! The perfectionists would have to attempt to change the course of history by fending off the transatlantic invaders with limited resources.

3. If the invaders do win, they could truly demand luxury goods for their goodwill effectively simulating colonization of the New World.

NOTE: this depends on the US not being a starting civ because then they would be on the side of the natives instead of the invaders!(but perhaps it would be interesting anyway to see the US struggle against colonial invaders!)

GaryGuanine · May 21, 2001, 00:33

That would be really cool. I bet you they at least have that as a scenario.

Gary

raingoon · May 21, 2001, 02:58

Agreed, I'm betting this is the scenario wave of the future... too much fun.

Grumbold · May 21, 2001, 05:37

How would you stop the civs in the Americas from getting a colony with iron (even pretending America is totally iron free)? Are you going to make every ship more seaworthy than a trireme require iron to build? I think you'd have to actually build research penalties into the civs to make this scenario work rather than hide iron.

lord of the mark · May 21, 2001, 10:10

This would be great for a colonization perspective, old worlders taking over from pre-iron new world civs.

It doesnt work so well for post-conquest and settelement era (ie post 1776 in OTL (original time line for those not conversant with alternative history usage))

Eventually new world should become a source of iron and and of full fledged industrial and military civilizations. Denying iron to the New World seems to prevent this.

Historically Aztecs and Incas were prevented from iron working not by lack of iron deposits, but by their late start on bronze working (old world civs needed centuries of experience with bw before moving on to iron) which in turn is probably due to a later and weaker start on agriculture. due to lesser availability of suitable plants and animals for domestication) (See Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel)
Incas had been working bronze only briefly when Spanish arrived. Had they been left alone, they would have achieved iron working sooner or later.

This should be reflected in civ terms, in much weaker food production, and thus smaller and fewer cities, and much wekare researhc

senowen · May 21, 2001, 10:28

As far as resources go, there was/is plenty of iron in the New World. For decades Pennsylvania was one of the world's greatest producers of steel, which comes from iron, that was mostly mined inside the state.

bagdar · May 21, 2001, 11:00

only in a scenario x 1000

Gammaray fan · May 21, 2001, 22:50

Quote:

Originally posted by lord of the mark

Historically Aztecs and Incas were prevented from iron working not by lack of iron deposits, but by their late start on bronze working (old world civs needed centuries of experience with bw before moving on to iron) which in turn is probably due to a later and weaker start on agriculture. due to lesser availability of suitable plants and animals for domestication)

This comment from Lord of the mark gave me an idea.
What if resources affected not only what units you could build what you could research!
Eg. Aztecs need to research domestication to research anything else, but due to a sparsity of the suitable 'domestic animal (whatever that may be)' good and the 'crop' good in the Americas, they take a while to find the two goods, build colonies on them, and link them with a road. By that time, the Euro civs with abundant access to 'domestic animal' and 'crop' goods have already researched iron working, and are on the verge of sending a fleet to the Americas!