The jury is still out on who burned down the Great Library of Alexandria and with it an untellably tragic amount of the greatness of Greek civilization - whether it was Julius Caesar by accident or a Christian mob entirely on purpose a couple centuries later. But it is exciting (and terribly terribly depressing) to think about what might have been had the diversity of Greek intellectual currents not been destroyed or overshadowed by the Aristotle and Plato Alone approach of medieval Christianity. If the thoughts of Aristarchus, Democritus and Heraclitus were allowed their proper development, who knows but that a thousand years of fumbling around, considering as VERY IMPORTANT debates about dogmatic trifles, killing each other by the thousands over disagreements in ritual procedure, might have been toned down or avoided altogether and I might, at this moment, be typing up these words while comfortably ensconsed in my condominium on the moon Europa while contemplating the three or four hundred years left to my life span...

Stupid Roman Army and / or Christian mob...

- Count Dolby von Luckner

What if the Library of Alexandria never burned?

The common route that is considered is the one where knowledge flourishes and things are automatically awesome.

However, in every game of Civilization that I've ever played, my research heavy civs tend be knowledge utopias right up until about it comes time to build railroads. Then I suddenly need to build a bunch of riflemen and artillery and go destroy whatever nearby medieval putzes are squatting on resources they have no conception of how to use.

Maybe this is just a lack of imagination on my part.

--Geoff