Building an Empire

But then there would still be train tech. There would just be barriers to implementing it - ones imposed by the church, or by greedy nobles, or by the terrain - especially ones that would seriously limit the other players in the empire in a number of other ways. I don't want you to have train tech, or steamboat tech or blast furnace pump tech or anything based on that same idea of a magical engine at the start of the game. If your application relies on having technology beyond that level, your application is too high tech.

I don't want industrialization to play a big role in this game. That was the last one I ran. :P

Then that is a problem. I cannot think of a logical arrangement of technologies then, which would not allow for motorized transport, but would also allow for Golems. And in its current state, Golems are required for the Tinkers' backstory to make sense. I suppose that I could re-write the Tinkers to be at an earlier period in their development, before the development of Golems.