DG's Age Of Empires
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Market
WOODWORKING | ARTISANSHIP | CRAFTSMANSHIP | STONE MINING | SIEGECRAFT | GOLD MINING | COINAGE
DOMESTICATION | PLOW | IRRIGATION | WHEEL

Siege weapons/ships: Siege Workshop units, Catapult Trireme, Juggernaught.
Missile weapons: Archery Range units, towers, Scout Ship, War Galley, Trireme.
Hand-to-hand units: Barracks, Academy, Stable units (except War Elephant).


Woodworking
  • Cost: 120F 75W
  • First Available: Tool
  • Effect: +1 range for missile weapons; +2 woodcutting ability.
The small stone blades that characterized the New Stone Age (neolithic period) made possible finer techniques in many areas, including woodworking. The larger and more unwieldy stone tools of the past were capable of crude cutting and carving only. Better woodworking improved other tools and weapons, making possible the bow and arrow and spear thrower.


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Artisanship
  • Cost: 170F 150W
  • First Available: Bronze
  • Effect: +1 range for missile weapons; +2 woodcutting ability.
The discovery and use of first copper and then the much more useful bronze for tools and weapons was a dramatic leap in technology. Bronze, especially, possessed a hardness, strength, and ability to hold an edge that far surpassed the best stone tools, making it much more useful when working with stone, wood, hides, meat, and other materials. Cultures that used bronze had a decided economic and military advantage over those that did not.


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Craftsmanship
  • Cost: 240F 200W
  • First Available: Iron
  • Effect: +1 range for missile weapons; +2 woodcutting ability.
The discovery of inexpensive ways to make iron was as great a technological leap over bronze making as bronze was over stone. Iron surpassed bronze in every critical characteristic hardness, strength, and ability to hold an edge before needing to be resharpened plus one. Iron was much easier to acquire than were copper and tin, making it available to all cultures and for all uses. Historians consider the ability to make and use iron one of the distinctions between a barbaric and civilized culture.


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Stone Mining
  • Cost: 100F 50S
  • First Available: Tool
  • Effect: +3 stone mining ability.
Wood for building was scarce in most places where civilizations first arose. Vast forests just did not exist in these predominately arid regions. The principle building material for common uses was mud bricks, sun-dried at first and then fire baked. In some areas important structures such as temples, palaces, tombs, and fortifications were built of stone when it was available. Much information about ancient Egypt was preserved because of the permanence of stone. Equivalent structures in Mesopotamia collapsed into mounds of earth after many centuries of neglect and weathering. Acquiring non-wood building materials through brick making or quarrying was the object of Stone Mining.


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Siegecraft
  • Cost: 190F 100S
  • First Available: Iron
  • Effect: +3 stone mining ability; villagers can destroy walls and towers.
Despite the written records and depictions of cities and fortifications being stormed with the aid of siege equipment, starvation was the only certain and effective way to take strongholds before the gunpowder age. The defender of a strong position, with adequate troops, food, and water, had all the advantages. Physical assault of strongholds was a difficult proposition accomplished regularly only by those armies possessing siegecraft the necessary equipment, resolve, leadership, élan, discipline, and skill. Examples from ancient history were the army of Alexander the Great that conducted 20 sieges over a ten-year period, most after the fall of the Persian Empire; the Hittites, the Assyrians, and the Romans.


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Gold Mining
  • Cost: 120F 100W
  • First Available: Tool
  • Effect: +3 gold mining ability.
Gold washed down from hills and mountains was probably the first metal with which humans experimented. It was sufficiently soft and pure to be fashioned easily into objects of beauty for adornment and trade. The value of gold remained high as populations increased because the demand for it continued to exceed supply. Because of this value, the trail of gold was followed back to the source of the alluvial nuggets. Gold mining was developed to obtain ore from which the pure metal could be extracted. Many of the most beautiful objects that survive from antiquity are made of gold, including hundreds of items from the Egyptian Pharoah Tutankhamen’s tomb.


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Coinage
  • Cost: 200F 100G
  • First Available: Iron
  • Effect: +25% gold mine productivity; free tribute to other civilizations.
The first true coins were minted in ancient Lydia, now part of modern Turkey. These first coins were made from electrum, a naturally occurring malleable alloy of gold and silver. Coins, and money in general, proved an important facilitator of trade and economic progress. Money acted as a storehouse of value, a medium of exchange, and a standard of value, as it continues to do today. Following the conquest of the Persian Empire, the concept of coinage was adopted by the Greeks and spread by them throughout the Hellenistic world.


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Domestication
  • Cost: 200F 50W
  • First Available: Tool
  • Effect: +75 Farm productivity.
The revolution in agriculture involved both the development of farming and the domestication of animals. The ability to control and manage herds of milk- and meat-producing animals also served to free humans from the drudgery and desperation of continual hunting and gathering. Herding did not lead necessarily to a sedentary village life, however. The need to find pasture often meant that herding societies remained nomadic, at least for part of the year. Domesticated sheep and goats first appear in the archaeological record around 7500 BC in the Zagros Mountainsto the east of the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys. Cattle were domesticated around 6000 BC in both the Sahara and Egypt, perhaps near simultaneously. Domestication of cattle alone may have been responsible for a doubling of world human population in a few generations.


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Plow
  • Cost: 250F 75W
  • First Available: Bronze
  • Effect: +75 Farm productivity.
The first agriculturists planted seeds by hand using digging sticks to open the ground. The invention of the plow made it possible to more easily prepare farmland for planting. The plow ripped open long rows for seeding, burying unwanted plants and cutting unwanted roots in the process. When pulled behind domesticated animals, such as oxen, food production per farmer and per acre again increased. The plow has continued to evolve since ancient times. For example, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson invented an improved version.


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Irrigation
  • Cost: 300F 100W
  • First Available: Iron
  • Effect: +75 Farm productivity.
One of the key steps in the agricultural revolution was understanding and managing irrigation. Observation of the natural world revealed eventually the relationship between planted seeds, good soils, sunlight, water, and resultant crops. Large-scale irrigation in both Mesopotamia and Egypt turned the rich but arid soils near the rivers into rich farmlands and made possible the rise of the first great civilizations on earth. Building the dams and channels to irrigate these lands required sophistication in government, construction, and engineering not seen previously in any society.


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Wheel
  • Cost: 175F 75W
  • First Available: Tool
  • Effect: +30% villager speed.
The use of the wheel for transport was discovered in Sumeria sometime after 3400 BC and derived from the potter's wheel that appeared first. The Sumerians learned that in a small cart, a donkey could pull a load equal to three times what it could carry on its back. The wheel revolutionized transport and had an important impact on the battlefield as well. By the Bronze Age, chariot archers were dominating warfare on the open plains. The wheel was apparently used only for children's toys in ancient America, probably because of the rough geography and the lack of an animal like the ox or horse.

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