Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Hey, I have no artistic talent. Until I can convince someone to make something better, I think it's great. The menorah is nice, at least.
Israel Mod for Civ 5
- Thread starter KingYosef
- Start date
Hey, I have no artistic talent. Until I can convince someone to make something better, I think it's great. The menorah is nice, at least.
Lord Shadow
General
Uh, guys, I made a civ icon for you and suggested colour values a couple of pages ago. 
Lord Shadow, yep, I saw the icon today. While it's much better done than the icon I'm using, I specifically thought I wouldn't like to use the Star of David when making a Hebrew mod. The mod is largely based on the ancient Kingdom, not on modern Israel, while the Star of David is much, much more recent than the menorah as a Jewish symbol.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Uh, guys, I made a civ icon for you and suggested colour values a couple of pages ago.
That's very cool too. Nice to have options.
Just thought something up: Promised Land - +1 culture for each unit stationed within your cultural borders. Idea being that the more they control their Promised Land, the more whole they are as a culture.
Might be overpowered, but it wouldn't be affected by any modifiers, and you'd have to devote a good number of resources to gold for maintenance/buildings if you wanted to use it to go culture.
Alternatively, +1 happy for each unit would make more sense, but that'd be OP.
My suggestion, especially for ancient Israel: the Promised Land (I think Eretz Yisrael or Eretz H'Kodesh might be better names) is a unique ability that gives a significant advantage to units fighting inside cultural borders. The ancient Israelites were constantly beating back or revolting against substantially superior foes. But, for the most part, they weren't expansionist beyond the Land of Israel. They wanted to stay independent. But they didn't really want to conquer.
Have you heard of the Alphabet? Ever wonder why we call it that? Alpha, Beta, Gamma etc. in Greek mean nothing. That's because they are borrowed words from Hebrew. Aleph (strength), Bet (house), gimmel (camel) in Hebrew are real words.
The Greeks took the alphabet from the Hebrews. Ironically, the Hebrews themselves stopped writing in their old alphabet during the Babylonian Exile. So, whereas the ancient Hebrew alphabet evolved into Greek, then Latin and English, the Hebrew language itself is now written in Aramaic block characters.
Another unique ability idea would be "the Diaspora" (+1 gold for each foreign city or city-state you have contact with). That doesn't make sense for ancient Israel, but it does make sense for classical Israel (Maccabees through the end of Yehuda HaNasi's principality in Galilee). Jews spread out throughout the world, and kept sending money back home -- first to support the Temple, and later to support the communities left after the Roman destruction, and the academies at Yavneh, Tzippori & Tiberias.
Omega124
Challenging Fate
Personal Opinion on what Israel should be.
UU1: Merkava
Replaces Modern Armour, requires no resources, +4 Strength
UU2: Commando
Replaces Paratrooper, has stealth, +50% City Attack
UA: Aliyah
Temples and other religious building/wonders give a slight bonus to military and growth in ratio to building to units/cities; Piety and Rationalism can be run at the same time with no ill effects.
Leader: David Ben Gurion
UU1: Merkava
Replaces Modern Armour, requires no resources, +4 Strength
UU2: Commando
Replaces Paratrooper, has stealth, +50% City Attack
UA: Aliyah
Temples and other religious building/wonders give a slight bonus to military and growth in ratio to building to units/cities; Piety and Rationalism can be run at the same time with no ill effects.
Leader: David Ben Gurion
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Ouch, that's not true at all. The Phoenicians (biblical Canaanites, if you're interested). It's a Semitic language, so there are similarities.
Punic and Hebrew were practically identical at the relevant time period. In fact, we largely decipher Punic today through our knowledge of Hebrew.
It's disputed whether the alphabet came from the Phoenicians or the Israelites. There are solid claims on both sides. The Phoenicians were traders. But so were the Israelites, particularly the tribes of Dan and Zebulan. It's widely believed, for instance, that the Jewish communities in Spain and Jerba (Tunisia) were founded in the First Temple period.
I really like the work you have done with this mod but don't mean any offense I think you guys put your religious or personal bias infront of historical facts:
The kingdom of Israel was never that big. It was even smaller than the present state of Israel, and to be accurate, it was a kingdom over some small tribes and in any case wasn't comparable to its neighbors' empires rich with their cultures, like Egypt, Mesopotamia and Phoenicia. You gotta also put in mind that we are talking about a CIVILIZATION. Nearly all the civilizations in V continued in some form or the other through the ages, Egypt for example continued to be a great power in the Middle east long after the pharaohs in the form of the Mamluke empire, Fatimids, and Salahudin, the turks continued to be a source of power after the fall of the seljuks in the form of the ottomans, etc..
The Torah explains that Abraham, the patriarch of the Israelites, migrated from between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Babylon, which is modern day Iraq, into the land of the Philistines (from whence the word Palestine comes), where they then slaughtered the inhabitants, much like today, and took the land from the indigenous peoples. Thus, if the Kingdom of Israel is going to be shown, why isn't the "Kingdom of Philistine" shown before it?.
The natural response to that question is, "The Philistine's didn't have an 'empire' to speak of." That is correct. But neither did the Israelites. Anybody with a decent enough historical knowledge would know that the so-called "Kingdom of Israel" pales by far in comparison to the magnitude of the other great empires in the Middle east, so much so that it begs the question why it is was even some people want it in the first place and if the Kingdom of Israel constituted a kingdom worthy of inclusion on the game, then wouldn't it stand to reason that the Kingdom of Philistine would also be worthy of mention since all the Israelites did was take over the Philistine's land?
Notably, I had an excellent lecture in ancient history in undergrad by a professor that had a Ph.D. in the subject, and never was Israel recognized nor mentioned along with any of the great kingdoms of antiquity. Lemme' guess. Anti-semitism, right? Lastly, your Kingdom of Israel can't be taken seriously. Where exactly is the evidence to support that? What monolithic art and architecture did ancient Jews ever produce? Meanwhile, we have loads of artifacts from their ancient contemporaries. Their are other civilizations and empires in the Middle east that should be concluded, Israel is not one of them.
The kingdom of Israel was never that big. It was even smaller than the present state of Israel, and to be accurate, it was a kingdom over some small tribes and in any case wasn't comparable to its neighbors' empires rich with their cultures, like Egypt, Mesopotamia and Phoenicia. You gotta also put in mind that we are talking about a CIVILIZATION. Nearly all the civilizations in V continued in some form or the other through the ages, Egypt for example continued to be a great power in the Middle east long after the pharaohs in the form of the Mamluke empire, Fatimids, and Salahudin, the turks continued to be a source of power after the fall of the seljuks in the form of the ottomans, etc..
The Torah explains that Abraham, the patriarch of the Israelites, migrated from between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Babylon, which is modern day Iraq, into the land of the Philistines (from whence the word Palestine comes), where they then slaughtered the inhabitants, much like today, and took the land from the indigenous peoples. Thus, if the Kingdom of Israel is going to be shown, why isn't the "Kingdom of Philistine" shown before it?.
The natural response to that question is, "The Philistine's didn't have an 'empire' to speak of." That is correct. But neither did the Israelites. Anybody with a decent enough historical knowledge would know that the so-called "Kingdom of Israel" pales by far in comparison to the magnitude of the other great empires in the Middle east, so much so that it begs the question why it is was even some people want it in the first place and if the Kingdom of Israel constituted a kingdom worthy of inclusion on the game, then wouldn't it stand to reason that the Kingdom of Philistine would also be worthy of mention since all the Israelites did was take over the Philistine's land?
Notably, I had an excellent lecture in ancient history in undergrad by a professor that had a Ph.D. in the subject, and never was Israel recognized nor mentioned along with any of the great kingdoms of antiquity. Lemme' guess. Anti-semitism, right? Lastly, your Kingdom of Israel can't be taken seriously. Where exactly is the evidence to support that? What monolithic art and architecture did ancient Jews ever produce? Meanwhile, we have loads of artifacts from their ancient contemporaries. Their are other civilizations and empires in the Middle east that should be concluded, Israel is not one of them.
Lord Shadow
General
I agree Israel's cultural achievements pale in comparison to that of some of its contemporary peers, and I don't think I'd officially include it in a Civilization game.
However, modded-in civs need not pass such rigurous scrutiny.
Your history is pretty ignorant. At its height, both ancient Israel and classical Israel were much bigger than modern Israel. They included large chunks of present-day Jordan (basically all the fertile areas on the east bank of the Jordan), and much of southern Syria and Lebanon.
And ancient-classical Israel continued for a LONG time. The Israelites conquered the land in about 1300 b.c.e. and stayed sovereign for more than 700 years (till 586 b.c.e.). Then, after about a 60 year lag, the Israelites returned and functioned as a self-governing autonomous region of the Persian and Greek empires for the next 400 years. Then they were independent for about a century. If you count the autonomous rump state in Galilee under Yehuda HaNasi, classical Israel lasts till about 200 c.e. So that's close to a 1500 year period -- far longer than most civs in the game.
Wow you are ignorant. The Caananite tribes preceded Israel, not the Phillistines. The Phillistines were later invaders who post-dated the Israelites by about 200 years, and likely originated in Crete or Anatolia. And the Philistines NEVER ruled more than a small stretch of the land of Israel. Their territory pretty much approximated the modern day Gaza Strip, though it extended a little farther north. The name "Palestine" comes from them only because, as Israel's greatest enemy, the Romans thought it would be fun to rename Judea "Palestine" as a way to insult the Jews. It had nothing to do with Phillistine power.
Again, you are misinformed. There's a pretty substantial record of Israel, both in archeology and in the region beginning in the period of the Divided Monarchy. We've got Hezekiah's cistern. We've got Assyrian slabs that mention Ahaziah, Jehu and Omri. We've got Egyptian steles that record battles. We've got substantial fortifications all over the country. Just a few years ago, they discovered the royal palace in the City of David.
In fact, given that Israel CAN'T dig in most of Jerusalem (because it's inhabited), it's pretty remarkable what we do have.
And by the classical period, we've got a clear record of the Maccebees defeating the Selecuid Empire, of both the Maccabean and Herodian dynasties, and of the revolts against Rome.
Omega124
Challenging Fate
I agree with Drirlake, which is why my Israel is completely about modern Israel. While the ancient kingdom was insignificant, modern Israel proved itself to be one of the greatest modern nation on earth. In countless wars, Israel was able to defend itself from collations after collections of attack (Independence War, 6 Day War, Yom Kippur War, etc). Simulations runned by the /USAF/ showed a hypothetical engagment between them and Israel's air force, and Israel won. While its small, it certainly is a major minor power, and I can see it becoming a major one in its own right in the next 20 years or so.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Israel and the Jewish people have always had a noteworthy contribution of history. It's quite a strange history of religious inspiration, cultural unity while dispersed, and an odd habit of making life difficult for other empires. When many places are conquered, that's the end of it. Israel somehow managed to keep their identity for thousands of years and reestablish itself. It's also the only real example of taking what was basically a dead (or at least not truly used) language and turning it into a primary language.
I'm not saying for a fact whether or not they should be in the game. But there's no question that Israel is a curious case without real parallels in history. Militarily, they were never a powerhouse no question. In fact, while I suggested the two UUs, I'm leaning strongly against a militaristic UA for that reason. Culturally, their influence can be felt in oddly present ways.
I'm not saying for a fact whether or not they should be in the game. But there's no question that Israel is a curious case without real parallels in history. Militarily, they were never a powerhouse no question. In fact, while I suggested the two UUs, I'm leaning strongly against a militaristic UA for that reason. Culturally, their influence can be felt in oddly present ways.
Actually both Hebrew and Greek are derived from Phoenician (Arabic too)
Hebrew descends from Phoenician so I'm not surprised of similarities
Phoenician is a Semitic language
I need proof of them being settled then
for USAF simulation
