Global

Global: An Experiment in Negative Capability








Table of Contents (for speedy navigation to the good parts) - Ch 1-31 Updated 14 July 2010

Introduction (boring)
Map, 200 BCC


Comments welcome. Can you guess who's going to win yet?

The Tribes of Atlan in the Fourth Millennium BCC

The Englands


The early English were silk growers along the mouth of the Thames River, developing ceremonial burial by 3600bc. By 3500bc English noble families were using silk garments in their burial ceremonies as a sign of social prestige. Trade brought the Phoenician tribes into the English tribal networks by 3400bc. It was from the Phoenicians that the English learned of the lustrous farmlands to the south.



By 3000bc the English were mastering irrigation techniques along the Thames and the advanced warrior ethic of the English was leading to advances in archery skills. East of Tyre, the English encountered another tribe, the Vandals, a violent jealous band of cannibals.




The Netherlands


The Dutch began as fishers and farmers along the fertile Rhine River Valley. The abundance of natural resources led to early specialization in Dutch culture and fostered a natural propensity for trade.



Sadly, their suspicious neighbors always seemed to expect the worst from the crafty traders, which led to the failed exchanges with the Spanish, the rejection of business from the Bulgars of the Aragon Land Bridge region, and finally, around 3200bc, the eruption of war with the Huns.



Still, the Dutch continued to be early innovators in human history, being the first society to master the wheel (between 3200-3100bc) as a means of improving commerce. Dutch beads craftsmen around 3100bc had bumbled into Spanish territories and caused a panic in that insular, suspicious nation. About 2900bc Dutch fishermen began developing more advanced coastal crafts to travel in pursuit of more pliable trading partners.

Spain


The Spanish were idle plainsmen dwelling along the Bay of Castile until a devastating war against the Goths around 3700bc. Many of the Spanish workers were slaughtered by the white-clad Gothic brawlers, but the warriors of Castile rushed to the coastal forests north of Madrid and rescued the settlements from extermination.



By 3500 the Goths had been dispersed by Spanish warriors. Legend holds that the Land Bridge of Aragon was discovered (or created by the gods) in 3400 in pursuit of the dying Goths. At the Land Bridge dwelled the savage Bulgar tribe. Spanish and Dutch merchants encountered each other at the natural wonder, but the backward Spanish were unable to purchase the skills needed for mastering Dutch pottery works. Still the haughty Dutch must have been difficult to deal with, for the Bulgar natives provided guides to their country to Spanish travelers, but not to the Dutch.



Dutch incursions into Spanish territory a few hundred years later would cause a wide social panic in the Madrid valley and lead to the first deepening of the primal Spanish faith, as Spanish shamans began to develop their more mystical characteristics.



In the future Spanish priests and priestesses would become the most accomplished of meditants upon the mysteries of the gods. It would be a national characteristic that would both hamper and redeem the Spanish people throughout their history.

The Tribes of Euria in the Fourth Millennium BCC

Iroquoia


The Iroquois were a turbulent, restless people whose national character was formed along the banks of the turbulent, restless Hudson River. They called themselves the Haudenosaunee, but other nations, influenced by the belligerant Celts who loathed them, called them "Iroquois" or "snake men." As the annual flooding and seasons of disease and rampant wild predators plagued them, they were the first peoples of the world needing to develop sturdy earthen buildings to sustain themselves against the elements of a volatile environment. Through periods of sudden expansion and violent unrest, the Iroquois developed the arts of masonry from combining native reeds and the clayish soil of the Hudson Valley.



Still, violence and uncertainty plagued their lives. They adopted the practice of ceremonial burial from the Navajo bands to their west. Long before 3500bc, a population explosion in the fertile Hudson-Connecticut Valley led to the development of government to control the unrest and violent animosities of peoples competing for resources.



Spreading Iroquois culture eventually led to war with the Teotihuacan people along the Abinaki Coast in 3100bc. The first, legendary contact between the Iroquois and the Celts occurred at this time, as Celtic hunters crossed the Green Hills in search of game, adventure, and plunder. Back in Salamanca, crowded townships adapted their masonry for constructing buildings with second floors to maximize space.


Gaul


Originating as cave dwellers in prehistoric times, the Celts were brilliant game hunters who adapted to village life late in antiquity after chasing their beloved game into the busy Emerald Forest area around 3750bc. From ancient times, Celt cavers had uncovered the plentiful deposits of precious stones found in the Wicklow Mountains.



In later centuries, the Celts spread out across the open southern plains, following migrating game and adventure across the continent. About 3100bc huntsmen began traversing the Green Hills and followed rumors of a lush kingdom they called "Iroquoia." Almost immediately the two civilizations took a dislike to each other. The Iroquois responded to Celtic animosity by spreading word of the barbaric nature of the Gaulish men, but in fact the Celts were a refined poetic people and the first nation to innovate in the distillation of grapes into wine.



In some of the earliest examples of intercultural trade, the Byzantines and Celts seem to have learned ceremonial burial and bronze metalworking from each other around 3000bc. Celtic ceremonial knives began to adopt Byzantine designs at the same time they began adding the proper proportions of tin to their copper weapons.




Byzantium


The Byzantines were resource poor northerners who revered trade due to the historic poverty they endured in the cold Dardanelle River Valley. By 3700, sparse settlements had moved up river along both the Dardanelle and its tributary, the Hellespont River.



Adversity led to innovation. Advanced tool making by Byzantine craftsmen provided some of their warriors with the distinctive Byzantine spears by 3350. With their superior wits and martial discipline, the Byzantine tribes came to dominate their neighbors along the arctic coast both to the west (Anatolia) and to the east (Thrace). Many neighbors either adapted Byzantine culture or were assimilated by Byzantine bronze.



In 3100 Anatolian traders must have encountered Celtic huntsmen, for they too were known to cross the Green Hills at the center of the Eurian Continent, so well traveled by the semi nomadic Celts. In some of the earliest examples of intercultural trade, the Byzantines and Celts seem to have learned ceremonial burial and bronze metalworking from each other around 3000bc. Byzantine burial tombs at this time began to reflect Celtic customs such as the burial of bodies with favored jewelry and personal effects.

The Tribes of Pacifika in the Fourth Millennium BCC

America


Americans were plains dwelling nomads not ready to settle down. However the species of heard animal they followed, cattle, were not aggressive migrators and tended to limit the roaming of their domesticators. The first settled American village was Washington Hill in the Plain of Virginia.



Americans stumbled upon the Japanese in the northern grasslands of Pacifika. But the nomadic Yankees continued to wander the steppes of the Pacifikan continent for most of the millennium. Barely more than barbarians themselves, they lived on the hunting of herds and raiding the villages of nearby and far flung tribes. They prided themselves on the fear they inspired in the most developed tribe they knew, the northern Japanese.



Then around 3000bc, the ruling chieftain in Washington, Gray Fox, began to more rigorously train his warriors in a barracks-style setting at the season settlement of the DeeCee Clan. He created age-cohort companies of hunter-warriors—more skilled and more ruthless than ever seen before—and regular training rituals once thought too complicated for the lackadaisical "Yankee" warrior class. Gray Fox insisted that armies be able to feed themselves as well as fight before setting out, an innovation for its day, and he established a code of honor among the warriors.




Japan


Japanese tribes dwelled in the central Pacifikan grasslands tending to flocks, learning of pottery from their Yayoi neighbors. In 3600bc came the first known contact with the American culture from the south. Beginning in 3500bc, Japanese warriors fought pitched tribal battles against the Avar tribes for control of the spice bearing plants of the Tokyo Forest, eventually driving the Avars into extinction.



By 3200bc, Japanese cuisine was beginning to adopt its distinctive spicy flavorings. Developing various cutlery for pruning and drying peppers and spices had the ancillary effect of allowing Japanese craftsmen to master fine metal working, which resulted in the development of bronze working and stronger weaponry around this time. But the greatest fear the Japanese chieftains had was from raids by the barbaric Americans from the far south of Pacifika.



Early in the next millennium, that fear would come to life.

BuckyRea said:

Comments welcome. Can you guess who's going to win yet?

Click to expand...

More importantly... can you guess which of our eight civilizations is going to die off first?

Interesting approach... I'll be following this!

BuckyRea said:

can you guess which of our eight civilizations is going to die off first?

Click to expand...

My vote is for Japan

I've played a few games like this before. Only with a slight twist, usually 4 of mine against 4 AI controlled players. Eventually it comes down to a massive war between the two sides. Oh and my vote for the first to die off is the Iroquois.

Update please!

Sounds interesting. I'll be watching it!

Oh, and I'd say the Americans or Japanese, as you're saying they're going to start a war.

How do you generally play in wars? What level of peace treaty do you accept?

Sparthage said:

Oh and my vote for the first to die off is the Iroquois.

Click to expand...

Man, I hate the Iroquois. They always kick my ass when I play. I normally ride Persian or Greek. I always let the computer randomly select my opponents. But whenever and whoever I play, if I find the Iroquois are on the same planet as me, I know I'm gonna get booted up one hill and down the next. They is straight up evil. Probably because I play on big worlds and their expansionism lets them build up a big head of steam before rolling over me. Grrrr.

Oops, sorry about that rant.

Hmmm... I think I'll throw my weight in against Japan as well, given that - if I'm reading the map right - they have a large patch of desert next to them. Fate doesn't believe in equality of outcome, nor of opportunity...

I'll have to follow this. I'm curious what sort of scenarios you can engineer with all civilizations operating underneath your enlightened rule.

...For one, it offers more excitement than the "Let's all go towards democracy!" crap in the late game.

Ah, the Iroquois, you hate them too? I don't blame you. In my First Reich story, I settled two colonies in the New World, in Florida and Nova Scotia. I had them for only a few turns before like 50+ Iroquois warriors and swordsmen were converging on them. I had no choice but to disband the cities. I later retaliated, of course, by landing several armies on their shores, plus a bunch of normal units. I crushed them all and burnt several cities. Friendly or aggressive, natives will always be subject to abuse. ...These natives deserved it, however.

Iroquoia in the 3rd Millennium BCC

By 2900bc, the trading post of Allegheny had developed into a thriving village located between the Illinois and Connecticut River farming communities. The sedentary Haudenosaunee people rarely ventured outside their own realms, preferring to let nearby pastoral tribes come to their tempestuous lowlands for commerce. Yet not all visitors came to trade.



Around 2700bc, the Celtic raids on the Hudson Valley had become so severe that the Sachem of Salamanca raised an army among his peace loving people and launched a surprise raid on the Celtic battle camp outside the great city.



The Celts were driven off, yet for another 250 years Celtic raiders disrupted trade and farming along the Hudson and Connecticut valley. Failure to prepare for the annual harvests because of barbarian raids led to plagues and starvation that plagued the Iroquois people throughout the 27th and 26th centuries BC. After a generation of seeing their farms plundered, the Grand Sachem of Salamanca began to send out war parties to crush the Gaulish marauders.



The fighting was brutal and the people starved in the aftermath. But the enemy was driven away in the end.


It was not until 2430bc, 120 years after the last Celt was driven off, that the road systems of the Connecticut Valley were functional again. In the wake of the barbarian invasions, the Iroquois began to develop more regulated armies, more standardized government, and a more militant culture—a certain cultural xenophobia had set in among the Haudenosaunee.



Iroquois adventurers, trained in warfare now, engaged another dangerous tribe, the Jutes, at the Diamond Channel in 2150. In 2030bc an Iroquois war party launched its assault on the Jutes.

They finished them off by 2000bc.



If brutality was the commerce between nations, the Iroquois determined that they would excel in this trade, too.

So what is the diplomatic situation right now? Who is at war with whom and how are the English and Americans doing?

Sparthage said:

So what is the diplomatic situation right now? Who is at war with whom and how are the English and Americans doing?

Click to expand...

Patience, young Padawan. For the next two millennia, the story will take it one civ at a time. I want to introduce the characters before they interact too deeply. We really start mixing it up in the late Iron Age. These mooks are still bonkin' each other with bronze weapons.

Take your time, very good story so far. Though it will be hard to top that last picture

Go Iros!

The English in the 3rd Millennium BCC

The English war against the Vandals continued for over a century. It wasn't until 2750 that English warbands drove the last of the Vandals from the frontier.


The English were working bronze tools by the 27th century BC and building wheeled crafts by the 26th—the latter using techniques remarkably similar to designs used by the Dutch, whom the English first encountered at this time. In this same epoch the English trade with the swamp dwelling Huns turned violent, as the savage tribe grew resentful of English prosperity and manners.


In the 22nd Century BC, a branch of mysticism that originated in Spain was spreading across the Atlan continent. Huns, Jutes, Vandals, Seljuk, Phoenician, Iberian, and English tribes all fell under the sway of a shamanic cult, strongly influenced by Spanish traditions. This new mysticism gained influence across English settlements.



From there, the Hispano-English cultural mystic influence moved into Holland, even while, by 2000bc, Dutch style masonry techniques began to influence primitive English architecture and construction. The English were a hearty, ranging lot. By 2000bc, their exploration of the eastern, or "Scottish", peninsula found barbaric tribes like the Seljuk Turks and the Eastern Goths settled in the sparsely populated corner of Euria.

Netherlands in the 3rd millennium BCC


Before 2600bc, legends tell, the troublesome Dutch people descended into anarchy over their ruling chiefs and replaced them with a new regime, which handled public unrest by inventing taxation. By this time the seafaring Dutch had explored the western continental coast as far north as the Saber, or "Graavenhague", Peninsula and had begun using adding tin to their copper tools to make bronze.


By the 23rd century Dutch explorers had sailed as far south as the Equator. As they were aggressive sailors, so were they aggressive fighters, these low-landers. With dizzying speed, Dutch seminomadic tribes spread wide and competed with other peoples for mastery of the MidNorth.


Their warriors rushed upon the settlements of wandering Phoenician savages to protect their Rotterdam seasonal grounds. They impinged on the Spanish to the south and grasped for lands that long figured into Spanish seasonal hunting patterns. After centuries of marauding, however, the Dutch began to settle down just after 2200bc (a development archeologists tie to Dutch innovation of masonry techniques which allowed for sturdier permanent homes).


Soon after Dutch and English traders, while engaging in technological trade, competed for loyalty with the Angle tribe. Again, however, Dutch aggressiveness drove would be trading partners into the hands of rivals.

America in the 3rd Millennium BCC

Early in the 30th century BC, the American barrack culture began to yield a new warrior code and the adaptation of archery from a hunting weapon to a fighting one. American raiders in the north continued to disrupt the Japanese spice trade, though they saw little cultural benefit from the attacks. Still, they harassed the country side and repressed Japanese expansion. In 2800 American bandit lord Old Hickory demanded a tribute from the chieftain of Kyoto. Meekly the Japanese awarded the Americans knowledge of the wheel, which the Yankees lacked, and for the time the Americans withdrew from Nihon.


The Americans' communal military bands began adopting ceremonial burial in the style of the Chinook tribes in the 25th century BC, becoming the last of the world's major civilizations to develop a notion of the afterlife. By 2300bc, a second major population cluster had organized in the Big Apple Groves to the west, domesticating apples and constructing a road-like path back to the American core in the Chesapeake highlands.


American tribesmen began wearing their signature beaver fur hats circa 2070bc, around the same time that the marauding Yanks began a generations-long war with the tribes of the Uzbek swamps located on the Isthmus of Sarosima. History does not record what insult or imagined slight could have triggered the vast ethnic purge that the barbaric Yanks visited upon the unassuming Uzbekis.


By 2000bc, American technology entered the Bronze Age, and it was those bronze tipped weapons that finally turned the tide, allowing the Americans to wipe out the Uzbeks and plunder their homes.

Gaul in the 3rd millennium BCC

In 2900, Celtic raiders had traveled so far south, they were able to raid and trigger more violence from the Kazakh tribes. However Celt marauders dreamed more of assaulting the fabled Iroquois culture and continued to out maneuver Iroquois defenders patrolling deep in the continent's exterior. By 2800bc they were wandering through the Iroquois frontier and approached the central Iroquois settlement.


Although driven back by their initial raids on the Salamanca homeland, later generations of plunderers satisfied themselves with the willful destruction of the early Iroquois road systems, cutting off the northern colonies from the grand sachems of the Hudson. Jute barbarians attacked the wine producing colony at Alesia in 2150bc, but were repulsed by the colony's defenders.


At home, Celtic workmen begin to shift from lumber to masonry constructed building (although homes remain mostly wood), employing Byzantine style stone cutting.

Japan in the 3rd millennium BCC

At the start of the Bronze Age, the Japanese were a peaceful, farming society, settling across the fertile Honshu Plateau and westward to the sea they called the Crystalline Waters. But their docility made them a target to more aggressive nations—the Sakae to the east, the Polynesians to the north, and the Americans, always the lurking Americans, from the south.


Yankee raiders from the south routinely disrupted the vital spice trade, leading to the critical feature of Japanese culture, an enduring fear of Yankee savagery. After centuries of Yankee persecution, the Japanese began to develop a warrior code among their strongest men, dedicated to protecting the peasants of Nihon from the savage bandits.


The first royalty emerged in this age as the armed protectors of society came to demand special treatment and privileges in exchange for their protection. Gradually they even came to attack not only barbarian invaders, but each other in the contest for control of local villages.


They honed their warcraft in raids against far flung barbarian villages. In 2030bc, Japanese warchiefs even joined the Americans in launching raids on the Uzbek swamp dwellers who populated the fetid wetlands on the Isthmus of Sarosima.