Over the years I've put a lot of thought into the topic of Civilization Advances, especially a couple of years ago when I thought of doing something along the lines of this massive project (mega-kudos to you Velusion!
). Some of the thoughts I had were quite divergent from the thoughts of the original designers of Advanced Civ.
The rule restriction in the original Civ about there only being 4 copies of each card led me to think of Advances in the board game as being quite different from the way Sid Meier aproached them. I started to think that holding an Advance card represented a civilization not just *having* a particular Advance but *excelling* at it. Think about it, nearly every ancient culture developed pottery at some point, but not every culture is remembered for their pottery.
The rule restriction in original Civ about only holding 11 cards combined with the limited number of each advance available to force players to pick up a diverse selection of cards. I am hoping that play of the Expanded edition will show that the larger number of cards to choose from will lead to this diversity organically rather than forced by rule.
The designers of Advanced Civ also showed a bias toward Christianity and a post-Renaissance mentality. Now please understand, I was raised in a culturally diverse household and have a great respect for all religions, eastern and western, modern and ancient. That is why I was very excited to see prerequisites removed in the later editions of the expansion: no longer will the Budhist oriented "Enlightenment" be considered a "stepping stone" to "Monotheism."
As for the post-Renaissance mentality: in Jim Eliason's now famous "Beyond the 11th Card" article he recommends changing Mysticism to a pure Arts card because "...it could be argued that mysticism actually impedes true science..." However, until Gallileo's time exploring and explaining how the world works was considered the job of the not-out-working-the-fields religious class. Consider the scientific achievements of Medieval monks and Egyptian priests. Consider that Astronomy and Astrology were not considered separate sciences until the Renaissance.
Based on this last, I would consider swapping the grouping of Mysticism and Philosophy, making Mysticism the Science/Religion hybrid and Philosophy Art/Religion, placing the latter with its sisters, Rhetoric and Politics. Of course the downside to this is removing Philosophy from it's tradional receiving of Science credits.
Just some musings. Thanks for giving me a forum to say all this after all these years.
You have the right...to freedom of speech...as long as you're not dumb enough...to actually try it
--The Clash
