Night10194 posted:

Well, it's also implied by the conversation between Rainer and the local expert that it's sort of two different ways of going at the problem. The Iskai never really considered the human way because they hit on their magical way of doing things, while the humans had no access to the Iskai way and so did things differently. It's sort of a parallel technological development rather than one being advanced and the other primitive, as noted by Rainer and Fasiir having a long conversation where both gain some better insight into what the other's doing. Fasiir's a local equivalent of a scientist, their science and scholarship just works out differently. I really appreciate that, as someone who studies history and gets really sick of people talking about how 'dumb' ancient peoples were.

They weren't dumb, they were people making decisions as best they could with the information they had. Unlike with the Iskai, the information they had might've been wrong, but 'primitive' people still have all the problem solving faculties anyone else does and still try to use them the same as anyone else, and I really like the game trying to get that across.