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Nah, I don't think so. The middle ages were not exactly know for their innovativeness. Maybe a few events, which introduce new farming methods, which result in higher crop income or maybe a few advances in weaponry and siege weapons. But a state-controlled science is even more absurd than it was in EU. Definitly, techs should only come through events and the date on which these events pop in, should be variable maybe by the amount of business contacts to other sovereigns or so. And I hope that the muslim lead in technology is reflected right.
I think that earlier on (in snowballs days) they said something like there would be 4 (i think) different lines of research wich you should complet for each era (!) before moving on to the next. All this can of cause have changed after Paradox took over, or my memory can have served me wrong...
Well, it would be nice to see different techs of building different types of fortifications, artillery and gun powder introduction, medicine improvements, fine arts inventions, new ways of forging and invention of new armaments and stuff...
Originally posted by Sonny
Yeah it was something like that.
Glad to se that i'm not totally bonkers
Nr1: I refer to an earlier thread. Prior to the modern era the middle ages were in all likelyhood one of the more inventive eras. This makes more sense when you know that almost all of the inventions we usually credit the "Renaissance" with were made during the late middle ages...or earlier.
State-controlled science has always been absurd, even in Victoria.
The arab lead in tech is also a bit of a chimera. In theorethical science they had preserved more of the roman cultural legacy than latin christendom had, but except for a few areas they weren't really that far ahead in applied science. The much-vaunted castle buidling techniques the crusaders 'brought back' from the holy land were, for example, not much more than texts on mathemathics that were put to good use by the fortification engineers of europe. At the end of CK they are starting to slow down, but not all that much.
EF
Optics, astronomy and medicine are just a few big areas that leap to mind.Endre Fodstad said:
Keynes said:
The astronomical advances made during the arab era were miniscule, though they preserved the greco-roman traditions better than did the latins. One of the greates arab opticians(and eye surgery theorists, and astronomers) was Ibn al-Haithan(the 'Kitab al-Manazer') in the 11th century, who was largely ignored by his contemporaries and later arabs- he did not get much attention until he reached the latin world as the the Kitab al-Manazer was translated into greek in spain in the 13th century. The optical direct advances mostly occured during the 14th century and were largely oriental imports. Eye surgery was highly advanced and while having reached something of a dead end in the 15h century was extremely impressive. Otherwise medicine was more advanced but not the endless gulf you usually hear about.
The text that most often is cited in comparing the "civilized" arab doctors vs the "barbarian" latins is the 'Kitab al-I‘tibar' by Usama ibn Munqidh from the mid-12th century. This is the famour text in which a Frankish physician amputates a leg and drills a head open to evacuate evil spirits. This must be the most misread and misinterpreted text in the world. After Usama has described this one obivous quack he goes on to describe a number of other Frankish remedies, less extreme and more effective - and remarking upon the similarities to his own techniques, while certainly strange. Usama's greatest outrage actually is about how free the frankish women are! Moral rot!
In terms of developing new instrumentation, advances were only incremental, but in terms of developing a wide body of relatively accurate observations, an enormous amount of work was done.Endre Fodstad said:
Endre Fodstad said:
Agreed, but it would be even wierder to play a 12th-century Russian prince who has to spend a large part of his budget on funding research... :wacko:
Victoria took a step in the right direction with the random inventions, hopefully CK will feature even less scientific control.
Mieszko said:
I love when people who have no idea about history continue to say that there was no development in Medieval times. Most of "inventories' in Renessaince were in fact little polished things invented in Medieval times. I've read people who said that some Medieval times (Except of course early really dark period) were most innovative in human culture until industrial period.
Keynes said:
I'm usually thinking in applied science or larger leaps when I discuss science in Paradox games. You need to consider this, however: while the arab(or rather persian, mostly) astrologers could gather large amounts of empirical observations with the instruments they possessed, they were limited by the low level of practical development of optics in the arab world.
It's not like the muslim world was behind the latin world in learned culture...in 850. But by the time the game begins the latin world had just about caught up with the muslim world and by 1300 the muslim world had stagnated while the latins were shooting forwards.
Szopen, the problem is that the fields were the Renaissance Italians DID make great was history and philology-the humanities. Thus Renaissance humanism(medieval academic specialities was law, natural science and theology) and that they more or less created the modern view on history. This meant that they essentially are the only period in human history that actually got to coin their own name! It also means that they have left a deep imprint, strengthened by the Enlightenment, and a lot of bias on the 'Middle Ages' they despised. We carry this bias today, and apart from some medieval history specialists the fact that the Renaissance was fairly weak in practical inventions and science compared to the preceding period is almost unknown.
Weak is perhaps a bad word - they had all the stuff created earlier. But it's still very much a question of building on what others have done.
A good solution to this, in my opinion, would be to have the clergy do the research, and then you would buy innovations from the clergy. By capturing Bichopries you would broaden the available field of research. Thus, you would be able to control a certain amount of research, but most of it would be bought from the clergy.
Sinatra said:
So instead of the Mad Rush To Lisabon For Maps, it would be the Mad Rush To Every Miniscule Clerical Realm For Research
Sorry, but becoming more inventive by crushing bishops sounds very, very silly.
I'd say it would be a pretty safe bet that the research model in CK will be similar to those of the previous Paradox games, where the amount of research is determined by base investement from your treasury plus a variety of modifiers.
I always remember my history teacher saying to me "the medieval period was not the dark ages". Its true many of the things we think are the product of warring italian city cities were in fact developed in the medievil period. Not to mention the amazeing flowering of a christian culture that would be idealised for centuries to come. The fact that religion was such a fundemental aspect of many peoples lives in Medieval times and they were far more certain about their place in the world than most people in modern times means that the medieval period was a fascinating period to look at from a socio-political standpoint rather than a mere inventions standpoint. That is what heartens me for the forecoming game which will have roleplay elements that will allow the player to take account of concepts such as grace and sin rather than the ususal video-game money and power bais.