English colony names

Nameless One

Endarkened Despot
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Sep 6, 2007
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I just finished an English UHV with latest version of the mod. Colonizing the whole world was much fun. The only annoying thing was that I built dozens of Cambridges and had to rename them. Some names are really missing. Here are some suggestions on improving the names for English colonies:

1) East coast of North America....I really wanted to start with Jamestown but had to reload several times to find it. It turns out it has only one tile and you have to build over a forest. I really think the first English colony in America should have a greater chance of appearing.

2) Guiana has no English names it seems. Georgetown is the capital now, and I think the first British settlement was Willoughby. There's enough space there for two cities so both names could be used.

3) I managed to found Cambridge on the great eastern South African spot where Sofala is usually founded (by Portugese, I think). What's wrong with Durban?

4) The uranium resource in southern Africa represents Namibia. Windhoek is the capital of Namibia so I think that should be the city name if built there. I'm not aware that any colonies existed in the area.

5) A city on Java should be Bantam or Batavia. Bantam was the first, but it was on the western tip of the island which is taken up by a mountain in the game. Batavia is closer to the locations can found a city on.

6) India has no English names. I don't really know if English founded anything larger than a fort in Inida, but Goa and Pondicherry names came to my mind. None of those is English, but since one is on the western and one on the eastern coast of India, they match well with the locations available for colonization in 600AD scenario.

7) No city name for the Philippines. Manila should be ok since the British held it for a short while and didn't change the name.
 
Windhoek and Batavia are Dutch names, and need to br founded by the Dutch if it is build, why would the Enlish give their cities a Dutch name, same for Goa, it was Portugese. There are real names only in the historical area of the civ building the city, in other areas, there is a random name.
 
Sofala should not change to Durban because the area around Sofala was Portuguese, not British. It's part of Mozambique now and was never part of the British colony in South Africa.

Also, there shouldn't be British names in the Philippines because they never colonized the Philippines. As you said they occupied Manila for two years during the Seven Years' War but occupying a city for 2 years doesn't qualify as being colonized by it.
 
What about Fort Albany? I managed to found it both with British and French.

I have no problem with Sofala. What I don't like is founding Cambridge in South Africa, or anywhere else other than England for that matter.
 
What I don't like is founding Cambridge in South Africa, or anywhere else other than England for that matter.
I agree with you, there should be default names for every civ for each square on the map. I hate founding Murcia in the Congo as Spain, or taking the Philippines from a collapsed Japan and having the city names be Nara and Satsuma.
 
There thing is, it is quite difficult to invent English names for, say, cities in Kamchatka.
Now, if the AI often founds cities with no unique names, them these names must be added regardless of anything. (Japan should have "Manila" and "Davao", IMO). But if the AI rarely goes for the spots for which it has no name, I don't see it necessary. You can rename your cities anyway.
 
What about giving every tile a default name, and if a civ founds a city without a name for that tile, it takes the default one? SO if the Rnglish, or Romans, or Germans found a city in the same location in the Phillipines, it will always be Manilla.
 
It does work for Phillipines, more or less, but the thing is, what to do with such locations such as New Orleans?
 
Unless the civ has its own name for the area (i.e. French), use the modern one. Apply this to every tile in the world.
 
But why would, say, Incas, if they found a city at the place of modern New Orleans, call their city in the honor of a European one?
 
How about in the random list just adding the prefix "new" to a lot of the european cities? for example instead of building Cambridge you would build "New Cambridge". You wouldn't have to do this to all of them though cos then it would be tireing seeing that many "new"s (plus the is a St Petersburg in america ;))
 
I think the best solution is in between. Most of us have never heard about most Incan cities, so if Incas build one in place of New Orleans (highly unlikely), just give it the name of some Incan archaeological location that you couldn't include in real Incan territory. If a city is founded by a European civ, it would look nice if it has its modern name or a new "something" name like say1988 and kairob suggested.
 
Or how about we call the cities what their translations in the appropriate language are? I know this won't work for civs where they died out before the city was built, but to be honest they probably won't build the city then.
 
f Incas build one in place of New Orleans (highly unlikely), just give it the name of some Incan archaeological location that you couldn't include in real Incan territory.

Exactly the same system works now.

Or how about we call the cities what their translations in the appropriate language are?

What is the translation of "Houston" or "Caracas"* in Indian? Does it sound any different from the English spelling?

*Possible in case of Indians getting the Conquerors event. It happens very rarely, but I've seen it.
 
Exactly the same system works now.



What is the translation of "Houston" or "Caracas"* in Indian? Does it sound any different from the English spelling?

*Possible in case of Indians getting the Conquerors event. It happens very rarely, but I've seen it.

Well, probably you could slightly "Indianise" the spelling. For aesthetics.
 
I like the 'New ...' idea. In an earlier civ, when the name list was used up, the new build cities were named 'New ...' with the names of the cities the civ controlled in chronological order. So, you'll get New London and not Oxford, and New Plymouth and not...
 
I like the 'New ...' idea. In an earlier civ, when the name list was used up, the new build cities were named 'New ...' with the names of the cities the civ controlled in chronological order. So, you'll get New London and not Oxford, and New Plymouth and not...

As long as France is...nouville?...or whatever, not new.
 
I think there is a logical problem here. You're assuming all civs can be colonial powers. True, it can happen in the game. But in real life it didn't happen. This is why we have a city named after Orleans near Aztecs lands. So you can either assume Aztecs would have called it New Tenochtitlan, or New whatever, or just use a standard city list for all civs that were not colonial powers in real life.
 
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