I think it’s a good point that Europe is divided enough for diversity but connected enough for unity. The Romans did conquer all of Europe at one point, and other countries have conquered nearly all of Europe for a few years, Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany. It wouldn’t have been inconcievable for some other power to reunify Europe at some point between Napoleon and Julius Caesar. And note that China and India and the Middle East haven’t always been unified themselves. And the famous Zheng Ho voyages show that China had the technology to do what Europeans did, they just lacked the political and economic desire.
In the 1500s Europe was poorer than the Ottoman Empire, India or China, most of the gold and silver looted from the Americas ended up traded for eastern goods. If the European age of exploration had been set back then some other Eurasian region could have discovered the Americas.
What I said in relation to Diamond’s work was that, “the competition factor was pretty crucial in Europe’s eventual domination of other areas.” I then went on to state my idea as separate but related to Diamond’s, starting by saying, “My idea is. . .”
I was not quoting him nor putting ideas there that he did not state. Also, I kind of doubt I would be able to find a specific citation for such a general idea. I know that he talks about cultural differences in a few places but I did not cite him as saying that any particular culture had an edge in competition. That was my idea. Sheesh.
Just as important, the individual cultures in Europe are large enough to possess large amounts of resources, as opposed to, say, New Guinea where they tend to amount to a few villages. Diamond considers that an important point.
Not exactly, and this is something Diamond uses to point out the weakness of China’s usual unity. IIRC from the book, there was a fight in the Imperial Court between two factions, one of which built and owned the ships. When they lost, the winners had them and the shipmaking facilities destroyed because they belonged to the losers, and the knowledge and skills were lost. In China, this ended the affair, but if that happened in a European country, the slack would have been taken up by another country, If Spain burned it’s shipyards, England wouldn’t.
Oddly enough, some people at www.apolyton.net (a civilization site) started developing a game based upon the GGS concept. It didn’t go anywhere, possibly because the underlying game element theme to GGS is, as you noticed, starting position is everything. Imagine how a MP game would go:
“We all set?”
“Yup” “Sure” “Go ahead” “Wah?”
“All right, I’m about to start the game.”
…
“Done! Now for the map reveal!”
“Dammit, I’m on an island - I lose.”
“I’m stuck on some damn peninsula, 10 spaces away from the main continent. I lose.”
“Huh? Surrounded by mountains? This game sux!”
“Whoo-hoo! I’m in the middle of the biggest continent! I win!..”
“… who wants to play again?”
Of course, in conjunction with my earlier survey of aggression and acquisitiveness, I will note that I cannot think of any cultures (above the organizational level of hunter/gatherer) that were not pretty competitive when given the opportunity. I doubt that anyone could make a good case that Europeans are more competetive than any other group.
My problem is that now I tend to see too much in terms of Civilization.
Everytime they cut some cutting edge science funding, it feels like someone is changing the “Science Research” percentage to 40% while the other Civs like Japan & Korea seem to be locked in at 80-90%. And I wonder what will happen to this real world 100 ‘turns’ down the road, because in-game you would lose.
True, but they would build the Colossus of Kim Il Sung that cost hundreds of shields, take 60 turns to build, and adds 0 to science, trade and happiness.
You would first have to switch to Communism to build it, and spend 5 or 6 turns in anarchy with zero production and rioters running around wrecking shit. Then the corruption and waste under Communism means you lose 9/10 of the production shields anyway. You’ll never get it finished! Even if you do, the next time you try to switch back to Democracy, the first thing the rioters do under Anarchy is topple the Colossus of KIS.
