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So if I understand the problem correctly, it’s “how do you build a tower by adding onto the bottom?” correct? So I would suggest using a sort of screw system. Make the blocks such that when assembled into a tower, they have a set of corkscrew grooves on the outside that fit onto rollers. Every time they want to add a new layer, they turn the tower, and it lifts up on the rollers. This would definitely not work in real life, but it would work for longer than those forklift things. It is more believable to the mechanically minded individuals because screws can exert a lot of force.
Thank you for your comment! Hmmm... This sounds good but in that case let's say they finish the first layer how they supposed to squeeze first stone of the next layer? There should be some balance system to hold tower I guess? If you want you can come to the discord server and we can talk this through :) Lifting machines are kinda related for the next step of their story and that's why I kinda must to have them there even illogicalness of this idea exploded my brain hehe
@@TalesofLost well, unlike a conventional screw that has one continuous groove, I figured that each block would have a groove on it going from 3/4 of its length on the top to 1/4 of its length on the bottom. This way every single block would have a groove to be supported with.
@@GusCraft460 Good idea. Another thing you could try is have a four toothed vice made out of the surrounding buildings, and have the faces of the teeth slanted, grooved, and lubricated so that the pinch of two opposite teeth slides the tower upward. It could potentially have teeth numbering any multiple of four or six to maintain its rotational symmetry.
i mean the problem is kinda already solved. didnt they raise entire buildings in chicago? the use of oversized levers just adds a kind of ancient fantasy placeholder for very real tech.
@@theshuman100 Chicago basically did it with jacks. But they had the advantage of doing it building by building, not what basically amounts to an entire small town with blocks that you would use to build egyptian pyramids.
The "it's magic, who cares" side fails to understand that "that's not how it works" is criticism pointed at very mundane IRL things. Of course there's a point where caring too much about whether an expert in something would be satisfied gets pretty silly, but I see little difference between, say, a normal man with a normal sword chopping through breastplate like paper, and a conversation leading to nonsensical decisions (in such a way that anyone would call it bad writing). You need to _earn_ your audience's suspension of disbelief and the point where it's earned differs for different people.
The imagery used in the faith is very well thought out! The celestial themes combined with altered limbs and watchful faces perfectly integrates the story into the visuals. Great work!
Three things, Firstly, really cool art and good video. Secondly, the tower will fall under its own weight. A general rule of thumb is the taller it is the bigger base it needs. With stone you might be able to get a few dozen meters before it crumbles, like cathedrals, but not much more. To have a city that's constantly rising you will need to build a giant hill/pyramid. Thirdly, lifting machines, like most construction tools, use the concept of force multiplication. It's not the full story but for simplicity w=x *(sum of F) where w is work (energy) x is distance and F is force. To lift a 1 kg block 1 m you need to apply a sum of 9.81juels(irl usually you have static friction so the force always needs to be bigger than that threshold). If you increase the mass, like a tower, you need more force, which usually is hard to get, so you make the path longer thus using up less force along it. That’s why pulleys work, and why jacks use driving screws. With low tech you best bet is having a shit ton of lubed pulleys or using driving screws with a fine pitch.
Thank you for the feedback! Really appreciate when the comments help me to make my world more believable :) If I ever decide to produce this type of video I will use your comment as a tutorial😌
Yeah, but it's kinda hard to build a pyramid while lifting the center piece up and up constantly. You would need to have some sideways access to the bottom center, to keep filling it with rocks or sand as you lift the top. Another idea would be to build the hill/pyramid in a way like a circular dam and have it filled with water and as the level rises so does the center piece which is the floating city. It will need some huge floaters as foundation though.
I like the whole building a tower to reach the heavens idea, its a classic. But slowly raising a city or even building a tower by raising it. Is essentially impossible even with our tech today. You'll either need magic, a low gravity world, or sci-fi tech for it to even begin to resemble reality. You have to understand that before they even begin to hope to build upwards, they first have to build a foundation that will hold the weight of the towers total mass. That means they must dig out the entire area needed to do that. On top of that they need to make sure the building only allows for so much sway, even small amounts of movement becomes catastrophic upwards. This means raising the building as you go must be handled extremely slowly. You must also understand that for every action their is an equal and opposite reaction. The forces applied will create so much friction and force that materials will crumble, melt, and snap in the lifting. You would end up with so much internal damage all throughout the structure that it would need mgs sci-fi nano bot level tech to maintain. On top of that they have to deal with the ever growing mass to lift, eventually this becomes impossible to overcome due to materials failing to ever hope to handle the leverage required to do so. You need tech we dont have, materials we dont have in our world, and people smart enough to pull off such a backwards inefficient feat. If we assume the level of tech is a composite of pre 1600 world, and their goal is to build a tower to reach a specific height which would be above that of a large mountain. Their only option is to build a city sized pyramid. Essentially making a mountain, and they wouldn't lift the ground and build under it to raise the total height. Just normal building on top of already put down material.
Wow it’s the longest and most detailed comment I’ve ever have! If you see the second part of this video you understand that all the logical explanation part is actually leading to something rely on manipulation with belief. Let me know if you watch that one too 🫀Thank you 🙏
SmarterEveryday once showed a video where he shows how those big grain silos are built and they actualy ARE built from the bottom! They build one segment - startig with the roof - of the silo tower and then lift it up with pneumatic pumps and then bolt the next segment under it. Of course this only works because the walls are thin sheet metal but the concept isn't entirely out of this world!
In real life, a problem engineers have to deal with when designing dams is the fact that the water being blocked can seep through the ground underneath the dam, creating upwards pressure from underneath the dam which can lift it up and make it unstable. Perhaps your people could have drained a portion of the sea using pumps and dikes, like the Netherlands, placing the base of the tower below sea level. They could then build the tower on the ground, use pipes to channel sea water into the ground below the tower expanding the soil and lifting the tower up using the water pressure of the entire ocean. They could then stop the flow of water, add supports, and pump the water back out, allowing the saturated soil to settle back to its original level as it is dehydrated. Then build the new layer in the empty space, and repeat the process to lift the tower up again. Maybe for added believability, instead of just using the saturated soil to lift the tower, they could use some hand-wavy alchemical substance which they filled the bottom of the workspace with and that expands a great amount when hydrated and shrinks a great amount when dry, but maintains a high level of "thickness" which gives it enough rigidity to push the tower upwards rather than simply flow around it.
I assume i delivered this different to you but they are not building it over moist or watery surface. They using water canals for carrying stone blocks under the construction like Egyptians did. Thanks for your detailed explanation of yours which totally will be useful in some other scenario 🫀
@@TalesofLost Yeah, I understood the water canal idea you explained, very cool! Too bad my idea doesn't fit, best of luck figuring this out, I'm excited to see where you go with it.
Honestly, this is like an extreme version of an already real phenomenon: the layering of cities. Rome, Seattle, Paris... as time passes, the old works slowly sink into the ground and new works are built atop them.
@@TalesofLostIn a way we’ve already lifted up an entire city: Chicago During the 1850’s and 1860’s they lifted entire sections of the city (sidewalk included) on jacks.
this is all viewer's reminder that building your world is fun, but making sure that whatever it is you're building is relevant to the story is more fun because then you can actually build out the story that said, this is a cool process
Such an evocative tale behind a wonderfully mythic setting! But with an added layer of human elements behind it, like drugging your work force for grand infrastructure works. And a caste of divine builders obsessively devoted to one goal so much, their bodies changed, is a great origin story. I want to know more about these cities, towers, builders and even the salts. Blûdy well done o7
Mmmh wooden levers would snap when forced to lift such huge loads, even with a very long distance from the fulcrum, I fear that for a feat such as this steel would be needed, and not only that but those small hands to lift the masonry wouldn't work either, they would need to be wider and less long, a smarter way would be to dig a trench under the bricks and lift the tower up with thousands of wooden or metal screws, a bit like a screw pump works, maybe that's what another kingdom did
Yeah, agreed. Steel at a minimum, and even that is being generous for such a mind bogglingly ludicrous amount of weight being lifted. The hands I imagine seems to be cast out of brass or bronze or something, which again ain't gonna cut it. I'm also having some trouble figuring out how the actual act of lifting is performed here. It seems like maybe it has something to do with the movement of the carriage back and forth but I cant figure out how. Looks like theres some counterweights which are supposed to help the lifting, but its not even using any mechanical advantage with the counterweights so they really aren't going to help a whole ton. If anything they might even hinder the whole process by massively increasing the complexity of the mechanism, introducing a bunch more parts that could break, and adding moving parts that add more friction to the system. Also, people pulling a rope is a really inefficent way of inputting human power. Something foot operated like a treadwheel would be much better, and is what we see historically from premodern cranes and such. All that being said, I have no idea in which ways magic is being used for here. Magic could potentially solve some of these problems, but he didn't explain anything about the magic other than these salt sphere drugs altering the bodies of the workforce.
well I have no option but agree with you because I don't know how these things works mechanically. I tried to look here and there how people did it in old times but even with that you might give me credit with that such a thing as lifting whole city and build a wall under it never happened. I just wanted to keep the main idea of lifting the city part in there as a focus but not solve an Egyptian math to build a pyramid. Also about your feedbacks I want to invite you the discord server or at least could you please DM me there about your approach :) the help much appreciated :)
I overlooked on some of the aspect of logic here and there for the sake aesthetic here at first also I thought it might be good to have some complex mechanics ( you may see them at the beginning of the video) but then I realize it might change the whole vibe of overall world. I agreed the things you said about the material and stuff I could think through too but as I said in the video some part of this system is beyond my knowledge. Keeping the main idea in the center is a better idea instead of cracking my head on "how can I lift a whole city and build a tower under it" Magic easily solve the issue but in my opinion it's an escaping point. Especially for keeping the main idea of this world as a whole. I mentioned it in the video but let me explained it briefly here too: Those necklaces act as smelling salts with a pinch of magic in it. If you can recall what is smelling salt you might understand it better. That's why using people as a work force was a logical choice there but over time ( in the next video more clearly) those salt pebbles serves better overall. It's up to you whether you like it or not but I rest my case about mechanical logic all over :)
I think the less a machine could be built in my backyard, the more believable it is. This looks tiny and fragile. A dingy little weight pulling the arms up would be overpowered by the tower weight immediately. I love that idea though. The world of Windforge has an almost weightless construction material which makes skytravel possible. If every block were to "float", you would only have to connect and place them, from top or bottom. Good luck and many more good ideas to you!
Uhm... Thank you? Well as I said main focus was lifting such mass with a illusion of power to people think it's coming from their gods so even your backyard machine work better to make viewers believe this is possible but its not my concern to use *science* in this case. It's just a result of delivering the message of how masses can be manipulated in such a mission which was impossible. Thank you for recommendation and will check it out how things work there 🫀
You could use a passive lifting mechanism! All materials expand and contract as their temperature changes, but different materials expand at different rates. That means if you had two pillars made of different materials, then the one with the greater coefficient of thermal expansion would stretch more during hot weather and shrink more during cold weather. If you used a mix of these two pillar types, then the weight of the city would transfer from one set of pillars to the other as the seasons change. The workers could raise the non-loadbearing pillars while the loadbearing pillars lift the city higher!
I love how in the series the Scholmance, it does use magic because they it's convenient, but there's still semi-detailed engineering plans on how it works and the magic is more of a cog in the machine rather than the entire part of how it works
@@TalesofLost Here, have a gander if you haven't, from SmarterEveryDay, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ywBV6M7VOFU.html There is, however, a big difference with your proposal, that is of weight when built, silos are empty, and the structure overall is relatively light. Pardon the wall of text; In your case, with each rise, you're not only lifting the city(citadel) at the top but the combined weight of all the layers you have added to that point, nor will you have to increase the capacity of the machinery to lift and increasing weight each time, but the material the stone blocks are made of will eventually be unable to bear the added weight, you will have to start using bigger blocks, and eventually you will have to start using a more durable material until the problem comes back around. Another problem is the soil, it may come to be that the land itself is not solid enough to support the weight of the structure, that's why foundations are so important, they distribute the weight of the upper structure over a wider area or connect it to a more solid layer deeper down. I don't know where you intend on taking the story, but considering your setting, you could work these details into in, you could have the mindless workers at the bottom increase the size and shape of their machinery as they realize the previous models are no longer viable, have them scourge the land around searching for more durable materials, and so on.
Yeah, thing is you gotta make the base wider and wider as it goes up, else it would quickly collapse under it's own weight. Calling this a monumental effort would be an understatement, it would be like building mt everest from scratch, but even harder since you gotta keep lifting the kingdom up every time.
Most mechanisms are hidden 90% of the time, so you dont need to know how something works behind the scenes. Instead just focus on what people can see. And your not going to get what people can see all that correct anyways. Its best just to rely on the most important rule in fiction, the rule of cool. Tbh magic is a perfectly good reason for something to work. Just dont be lazy about it and its more than good.
@@TalesofLost Its something I have as well, I'm super into physics and wanted my magical world to have most its stuff based on real mathematics and physics. Which ended up actually making me sick and burning me out for a time.
BTW, there's old videos on RU-vid by an old fellow who recreated Stonehenge in his backyard using mechanisms that relied upon his muscles, only exceptions being using a power drill to install modified trailer hitches as pivot points to walk the massive stones. There was also a cunningly simple thing to lift the stones upright that just required easing it side to side and adding in shim material little by little in between two wooden frames that constrain the fulcrum. Wally Wallington, just checked my watch history to find him. Might give some ideas.
All this talk about engineering and physics but it's not really about literal architecture, is it? To construct the tower is to strive to create something beautiful and challenging for its own sake, but with each layer added another foundation must be built. And so the weight of the tower grows heavier and heavier, slowly crushing the artists, the workers, who had become utterly overtaken by this obsession, altered forever in their pursuit of some wondrous feat that has no clearly defined end. They are literally stacking the odds against themselves in an already impossible mission. In a way, I think this captures the essence, joyous and tragic alike, of worldbuilding itself. Maybe this was not intended, but I think its beautiful and thought provoking. Will they be ultimately destroyed by their obsession as I will likely be and so many before me? Or will they somehow make it through despite it all? I for one am excited to see what happens next!
Omg! My approach was similar but you words explain it more "elegantly" It was never about mechanisms or reality of building it but how effecting on people's beliefs. The feeling of belong to something or some group makes things happened even it's almost impossible. What happened next I already released please watch it too if you haven't. Really would like to hear your opinion about it 🫀 Thank you so much for your amazing comment and so glad you liked it 🙏 PS: I'll be so happy to see you on the Discord server. Please join if you like to 🫀
If the tower is hollow on the inside they could bring and release lighter than air gasses like helium, or burn furnaces for hot air, to make the tower lighter and thus easier to lift.. Though it probably wouldn't have much actual impact
Lack of technology probably it wouldn’t be possible but your idea remind me of those long tubes for unclog the large pipes and stuff. It sounds nonsense when writing but maybe that might be effective although since main point wasn’t creating the most accurate mechanism but to show what human beings are capable of with their belief system those doesn’t matter 🫀
Build up and down at the same time, but the tower below ground level is hollow and airtight, and then you flood the area around the tower so it floats up 50%. Then pin it in place, repeat.
The exact kind of video I always wanted to find! I have my own similar concerns about a certain degree of "magical realism" in my world building; things should *logically* proceed and cascade from those kinds of decisions; if magic exists, what would it mean? Etc.
@TalesofLost I'm afraid I'm not an architectural expert, but yeah, using the force of the water to support the weight of the tower. Was watching Issac Author's channel where it's a speculative building technique, and thought about using it in a different way.
Thank you for the comment! Haven't thought about it in detail, maybe some kind of pumping system as you said, maybe they collect water from the clouds using some peculiar device since they are so high in the sky. Will think about it and maybe it will be an idea for the new video😊
You could try shoving wedges underneath it to different extents to raise it or lower it onto other wedges after adding more material where you've temporarily removed the wedges.
so i did some math. i don't know why it's so hard to find out what stone to use for such buildings but in the end i kind of arbitrarily went with sand stone. it weighs about 1.6 metric tons per cubic meter on average. measured by the size of the human you drew, the stone block should be around 2 x 2 x 7.7 meters, which gives us 30.8 cubic meters per stone. multiplied by the 1.6 tons it comes out at almost 50 tons per stone. you're not lifting 50 tons though because you have a lever that looks to be about 3.5 meters long to the pivot point, conservative estimate. to get the weight at the pivot point you just take the weight of the thing and multiply it by the length of the lever in meters and you land around 172 metric tons for this scenario. this seems a bit much for the diameter of the presumably wooden levers you use and the struts on which they are mounted. especially since these things would hold the weight of the whole tower, that means even if you put as many as you can possibly fit, at 10 stones high, which would be about 20 meters, each forklift would have to hold 164 tons (given we have three per length of stone) at the end of the lever, which would translate to 575 tons at the pivot. and this is only 20 meters height. you get where this is going. also it would be pretty much impossible to balance a high tower with so many individual systems (forklifts). you'd have to link everything together with extreme precision to make this work. you'd have to basically make one huge machine that can carry and lift the whole tower as one unit. it's a cool idea and i always appreciate when someone puts so much thought into his lore. but it's also a really hard problem to solve.
you almost got the diameters of the stones eheh they were 2x2x10m and based on my calculation of the stones used in pyramids it was approx. 36 tons. although for the forklifts i tried more mechanical versions off screen but then i realize in such world it didn’t fit with the lore. your calculation on lifting power might be more accureate but since i gave up on math later decided to add 300-400 forklifts around the whole tower might make it seem more logical. also instead of using individual forklifts using one giant device is really good idea. in the future there will be more towers so i might use this eheh. thank you so much for your very detailed comment and so glad you liked it 🫀
I mean, looking at the machines, they'd never be able to lift those stones without magic. However love the art and the concept is bonkers, so i fully support it, but the machines are: 1: Way to small. 2: Way to flimsy.
Thanks for the comment! Yea but the intention was not to create most convincing machines more like what their motivation lead those people to🙃 Glad you like it tho 🫀
