Oh, fascinating. This gives context to my latest Crusader Kings 3 campaign with the “All Under Heaven” DLC. I was playing as a Bengali suzerain rather than a Chinese one, but whenever I demanded that a tributary pay tribute, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that most of the reciprocal gifts I could offer cost more than I gained. 😭
But sometimes I could get away with sharing technological secrets instead of a tangible gift, which cost me nothing and helped their culture progress toward an innovation that mine had already discovered. Any historical basis to that?
But sometimes I could get away with sharing technological secrets instead of a tangible gift, which cost me nothing and helped their culture progress toward an innovation that mine had already discovered. Any historical basis to that?
“Technology”, both in real life and in CK3, is a very funny thing. Insofar as pre-modern polities did sometimes discuss such matters as we would recognize as belonging to the realm of technology, yes. Any technology ‘transfers’ would largely have been specialists being sent to train other specialists (smiths, weavers, woodworkers, etc), rather than more abstract exchange like texts or diagrams, or of specific techniques.
Unfortunately, my knowledge of China is rather sparse, so I couldn’t definitely say whether the Ming sometimes did that, but I would imagine so.
Oh, fascinating. This gives context to my latest Crusader Kings 3 campaign with the “All Under Heaven” DLC. I was playing as a Bengali suzerain rather than a Chinese one, but whenever I demanded that a tributary pay tribute, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that most of the reciprocal gifts I could offer cost more than I gained. 😭
But sometimes I could get away with sharing technological secrets instead of a tangible gift, which cost me nothing and helped their culture progress toward an innovation that mine had already discovered. Any historical basis to that?
“Technology”, both in real life and in CK3, is a very funny thing. Insofar as pre-modern polities did sometimes discuss such matters as we would recognize as belonging to the realm of technology, yes. Any technology ‘transfers’ would largely have been specialists being sent to train other specialists (smiths, weavers, woodworkers, etc), rather than more abstract exchange like texts or diagrams, or of specific techniques.
Unfortunately, my knowledge of China is rather sparse, so I couldn’t definitely say whether the Ming sometimes did that, but I would imagine so.
This reminds me of CK2 where you could get generals from China with unique military knowledge.